The Rise and Fall of Florrie Clough

By P.J. Holmes

Born on a Yorkshire farm in the 1820s, Florrie Clough’s life is anything but easy. Yet, her restless spirit and daydreams of a life beyond the confines of her upbringing never waver.

Embark on a journey with Florrie as she breaks free from her humble beginnings, venturing into territories she once only imagined. Destiny smiles upon her, gifting her fame and fortune, allowing her star to burn bright. But when unexpected tragedy befalls, Florrie’s path takes a twist, leading her to a more profound sense of purpose and joy.

Amidst an era of profound societal transformation - from advancements in education, technology, and medicine to the evolutions in entertainment, work, and transport – Florrie’s tale seamlessly weaves the tapestry of a world in transition.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Mar 28, 2024
• ISBN: 9781035800087

P.J. Holmes

P.J. Holmes was born in North Yorkshire in 1948 and has always had a vivid imagination. Storytelling and writing was in her blood from a very early age, as her friends and family would testify. She was always jotting down ideas and thoughts and poems, in addition to writing a couple of fantasy adventure stories This is her second novel, the first being The Disappearance of Amarylis August. It is entirely fictional. She moved to South Lowestoft in 2012 and fell in love with it, enjoying long walks along the beach with her beloved dogs in all weathers. After a long illness, she passed away surrounded by her family, in July 2022, shortly after completing this book, and, sadly, she never got to see either of her books in published form.

Book preview

Chapter 1

Edward Clough walks down to the Talbot Arms. It’s a Saturday evening. The usual gathering of blokes playing ‘horseshoes’ are outside. They throw cast off horseshoes at a pin staked in the ground. Probably the same ones he removes from their mares. Edward is a farrier, the only specialist in equine hoof care in a hundred-mile radius of Settle. So he knows most of these men.

Raising a hand in acknowledgement, he walks into the alehouse. Logs burn in a large inglenook fireplace. It’s busy and noisy. There are men aiming feathered darts at a board, ringed and numbered, on the end of a beer barrel. Others sit at tables, their tankards of warm frothy beer beside them. They play dominoes, cribbage and card games. Sometimes in a sudden lull, the tap of a domino can be heard when someone cannot place one.

’Ow do, Edward, says the barman. Same as?

Aye. An ’ave one thissen.

Is tha celebratin?

Aye. Ah’m cock-a-hoop mate. Us Alice be in’t puddin’ club.

John Talbot leans over the bar and thumps him on the shoulder. Chuffin’ eck! Abaht time, eh?

Edward Clough already has three sons, Arthur, Thomas and Frank. And two daughters, Kathleen and Martha. But it’s been seven years since Martha’s birth. During those years, Alice, miscarries twice, has three still births and loses three in infancy, including a set of twins. Edward feels bad that he puts her through all this. But what’s a man to do? He has needs. And he’s never felt inclined to seek solace elsewhere.

He wanders over to the card table. What’s tha playin? he asks.

Vingt-un, snaps a voice. It belongs to a mardy whiskered farmer. His teeth are yellow and rotten from chewing tobacco. It’s a new substance brought back from America. You can rub it on your gums. Sniff it or even smoke it in a pipe. Edward carries a snuff box in his pocket. Has the occasional sniff.

The farmer, Edward recalls, is from the upper Dales. He has shire horses. Beautiful beasts which he fetches to have their hooves cleaned, honed or re-shod if necessary. He’s always somewhat dour. Life has dealt him a bad hand. Taken his wife and child. And the widow he’s long carried a torch for, married someone else. But now he’s in charge of his fate. He’s the dealer. The one holding the cards.

Stop tha faffing aboot Jones, he says to another chap. Youngish. A cap on his fair hair. Albert thinks Edward. He remembers he forges tongs for him as a wedding present. Quite a work of art. Two feet long. With an unusual hinge at the joint of its two long legs.

Be tha wantin another card?

Aye.

Edward sees that Albert’s three cards laid in front of him add up to 15. Watches as the farmer turns the top card over. It’s a King. He places it alongside Albert’s other cards.

With a sudden flourish, the young lad picks them all up. Slams them down in front of the dealer and calls, Bust!

Show us tha brass then, lad, the dour farmer says with what can only be described as a smirk.

Intrigued, Edward watches the game proceed whilst he knocks back the warm ale. Finally when one of the players gets up to leave, Edward sits at the table. He’s given a quick resumé of the game and is ‘in’.

He staggers home in the dead time. Saturday night is the only night he goes to the pub. The only night he gets slightly cat hawed because the following day is ‘put on your Sunday best’ day. A day of piousness. He knows Pastor Lonsdale beholds neither drinking nor betting. And certainly not drunkenness. He gives enough sermons on the subject which the womenfolk listen to avidly, nodding their hatted heads in agreement. Whilst most of the men become suddenly cloth-eared. Pick their teeth with a none too clean fingernail or doze until they hear, We will now sing Hymn number…

Edward takes off his hobnailed boots inside the door and shuffling up the wooden stairs, tries to avoid the boards that creak. Alice lies on her back in their bed. She’s snoring gently, the small mound of the baby outlined under the horsehair blanket. Discarding his outer garments, he climbs in next to her and snuggles as close as he can. The bedchamber is cool, a light breeze wafting through the open window. The muslin curtains flutter lazily. He places a hand softly on her stomach. Prays that this bairn will thrive. Survive birth and infancy. And then Edward Clough falls into a deep sleep. His dreams dance to a variety of snorts and snores which, reaching a crescendo, stop only to start all over again. It’s only when Alice is expectant that she doesn’t prod and poke him. Shout obscenities that Pastor Lonsdale would certainly not entertain. But what’s a man to do? He has no control of his body when it is comatose.

Light filters into the bedchamber. The cockerel announces a new day. And Edward hears the clop clopping of horses’ hooves on the rough road below. Draft horses. George Banham’s. He’ll want them all shod. ‘Well, more cast-off shoes for the pub,’ he thinks. Sliding out of the bed, he feels as if he’s had no sleep at all. Where does time go? Leaving Alice to rest, he goes to wake the lads. His eldest sons, Arthur and Thomas, light the forge now. His youngest son, Frank, is kept away from its burning heat. Because of an accident he has as a child. But it is not the forge that fells him…

Beyond the forge, the Cloughs grow a quarter of an acre of flax plants. This is enough to clothe the family. After harvest, in which the whole family participates, the plants are rutted in water to break down the cellulose in the stalks. After this they are ‘broken’ and then ‘scutched’ (scraped) with a knife and ‘hackled’ across several boards covered with sharp metal teeth. These separate and align the fibres for spinning.

The day of the accident, Alice is in the shed. She’s collected the fibres that are ready and now sits at a low wheel spinning them. She’ll then take the spun thread into the house where there’s a loom in the parlour. Beyond the house and forge the Cloughs have a few yackers (acres) of land. They grow barley, maize and flax. The flax feeds that loom enough to weave linen clothes, bed sheets and table linen. Alice sings hymns as the wheel spins. She does not see little Frank wander into the shed until she hears a mighty scream and spinning round like the wheel, she sees him. Now Alice’s scream drowns Frank’s, Lord God Almighty, she cries.

He’s flat on his back, impaled on the spikes.

Dunt tha move, Frankie, she shouts. Dunt tha move! EDWARD, she yells. Her voice carries across to the forge where Edward is showing the two older boys how to hammer out horseshoes. It pierces their quiet thoughts as they work. Dropping everything they dash across to the flax shed. Lay witness to what has happened.

Thomas runs to his brother and takes his hand. Eeh yer daft apeth, Frank. Tha’s nobbut a babbi but tha’s a reight twonk, he says jokingly. Then, knowing his brother’s love of hedgehogs, adds, Tha’s fallen on a fuzz-pig! Tries to make light of what he’s really fallen on. Kudn’t a dun it better missen. He looks into Frank’s terrified eyes. Whilst he tries to avert his own from the blood now dripping down the spikes.

Ah’s nay kilt it, ’ast, ah? cries the boy.

Nay, lad. It’s reight. An tha’ll be reight un all if tha keeps thissen still. Look Da’s ’ere.

Whereupon Edward, in all his bulk and breadth, rushes to his son. Thomas lets go his hand and steps back, puts an arm around his mother with ghost like face, she stands by the spinning wheel. All of a quiver. Her voice now muted by shock.

Edward gently lifts their son off the spikes. It’s not as bad as it first appears. The lad is light. He wears a jacket. It’s only where there are gaps in his clothing that the skin has been pierced.

Wilst ah gi o’er to Banham’s da? asks Arthur. Because in an emergency George Banham will lend them a horse. To fetch the one and only doctor in Settle.

Nay Arthur. Yer ma will see lad reight. Edward knows the doctor will cost them dear. Alice will mix one of her salves using healing leaves and honey. She can collect a comb from their one beehive. It’s set well away from the house, just in case. But the bees know Alice. They will neither begrudge nor attack her when she takes it.

Little Frank’s back heals quickly. But from that day, of a sudden, he oft falls backward, rigid, lays like a dropped plank. Sometimes he twitches. Then, after a few minutes he awakens with no memory of what has befallen him.

Me lass ’ad summat like, a pal tells Edward. ‘Ospickle tells us it’s t’ falling sickness. ’Appen as tha lad’s same.

Heeding his words, Edward and the family shield Frank from the many hazards of the forge and fields. Something which, as he grows older and watches his brothers learn the trade, saddens him. Fills him with resentment. He wants to be a farrier too. And whilst his brothers will follow in his da’s footsteps, he cannot.

But at least there’s no more. Get a’ gate or tha’ll be late fer school.

Edward Clough has never been to school. He oft wishes he has. A most practical man but illiterate. He does not believe in a fancy education for the likes of himself and his own. But he does want his sons, his daughters too, at least to be able to read and write.

Anyways, Alice can teach the lasses all they need to know. How to get their one cow, Bessie, into the milkshed. Tease her nipples so the milk flows freely into the bucket. Bessie supplies the family with all the milk, cream, butter and cheese they need. Her milk is also used to mix with barley. This is fed to their pig to fatten it. The pig is unnamed since it will be slaughtered and supply meat for the long winter months.

And he can teach the lads how to seed the flax and barley. How to scythe it when the time is right. Frank can join in with this as he is behind the slashing blade. Cannot fall backward on to it. The blades for the scythes are manufactured by Isaac Nash. Made to a standard pattern. But the farrier can alter the snead (the scythe’s wooden handle) to a local design. And adapt the butt of the blade to suit the particular snead. Edward Clough does this in his forge. Another feather in his bonnet. And more brass for the coffers.

But he makes sure Kathleen, Martha, Arthur, Thomas and Frank do attend the local school just for a year or two so they are not illiterate like him. There’s a lady in Settle who lives in a large fancy house. She’s put desks and chairs in one of the downstairs rooms. Extols the virtues of letters and numbers to her audience of mixed pupils, ranging from four years old to twelve.

She also teaches other subjects. But Edward’s brood are not interested. They learn to read and write is all. Then return to their home to work for their family. The lasses hopefully one day to marry. Arthur and Thomas, one day, to take over the hot and grinding work of the forge. As for Frank his future is uncertain.

Edward wonders, as he reminisces, how the hours of the day are so long, yet you can remember a lifetime in minutes. But now, this morning, as every other morning, he ‘mun awa t’ werk’. Grabbing a flummery, he leaves the house. Alice has just made another batch of the bittersweet almond cakes. They are Edward’s favourites. After he has shod the draft horses, he will return for breakfast. Then back to the forge to make a fire grate for another customer. Make a new link for a chain. Weld it into the broken one. Possibly shoe another horse. And then back for dinner. The acrid smoke from the burning forge clings to his clothes. Smothers the smells of whatever Alice has cooked.

And then it’s back to the forge. He has a swing plough to make. Fire irons, poker tongs, a couple of shovels. And cleats for a lady’s box iron.

At the end of each day, he and his kegs are as black bright as the irons he makes.

Life is not easy for a farrier in the eighteen hundreds on the Dales. Beautifully encapsulated in a poem by Longfellow.

Toiling, rejoicing, sorrowing,

Onward through life he goes,

Each morning sees some task begin,

Each evening see it close;

Something attempted, something done,

He’s earned a night’s repose.

Thanks, thanks to thee, my worthy friend,

For the lesson thou has taught!

Thus at the flaming forge of life

Our fortunes must be wrought;

Thus on its sounding anvil shaped.

Each burning deed and thought.

Chapter 2

The months pass. Alice blooms. Despite the hard work each day throws at her, she hangs on to this baby. Now, when she lies in the bed like a beached whale, Edward beside, her ‘bump’ lifts the horsehair blanket up. Cold air circulates around Edward. He finds it hard to sleep. Whilst Alice seems unbothered. Her body always warm.

In the late backend of 1826, in the early afternoon, Alice’s waters break. She knows what to expect. The birth will follow quickly. It always does. She calls the girls to put water in the large cast iron pot that hangs over the fire. To fetch rags. And then smiling at her husband says, Get thissen down’t Talbot fer a sneck lifter. There’s nowt tha’ can do ‘ere. Us an t’ lasses ull manage. Edward is only too happy to oblige.

There are a few blokes leaning on the bar, slightly cat hawed. Spluttering into their beers with laughter. ’Ow do Edward, they say. Grand day, i’n’it?

’As summat ’appened, lads? he asks. He’s seen ’em before. Reight sackless beggars. Allus laughin at summat silly.

Aye, certain ’as. Now, betwixt giggling and slurring, they recount the reason for their hilarity. Tha knows pudgy Prudence, t’ lass wi’ all ‘em cats? Well, one o’ ‘ems gotten stashed in t’ coil ’oyle. They laugh some more. An’ wi’ ‘er’ too fa’ ‘t gi’ it oot.

Gi’ o’er. Edward smiles but does not find it funny. He eventually gleans that pudgy Prudence’s cat is stuck in the coal cellar. And her too fat to get it out. He supposes if you’ve had a sink full of sneck lifters (pints) it might seem uproariously funny. But Edward, sober as a judge, finds himself pitying both the cat and the lass.

Suddenly young Frank bursts into the bar. Da, he shouts. Weerz me da?

Chuffin’ ’eck, lad, says the barman. Is tha yam afire?

Nay, ’s me Ma. Frank halts. A sea of faces stare at him.

Gi’ ye o’er t’ pub, she says, an’ fetch yer da. Tells ‘im… Suddenly he spots Edward and darts up to him. "Da, tha’s gotta come. T’ babby b’aint gi’ nay ’ead…

Flippin’ eck, murmur some of the men.

Jus’ feets.

Breach thinks Edward. That’s bad. Gi’ ye o’er t’ Banham’s Frank, fast as. Fetch George t’ forge. He picks up his tankard off the table. Swigs the rest of the ale back.

Si thee Cyril, he calls to the barman. Ah’m awa yam. Wish us luck.

There’s a push iron oot back, says Cyril. Tha lad can tak it. ‘Appen ’e’ll get t’ farm faster peddlin’ as footin’. Edward prays Frank won’t have a fit of the falling sickness. Tumble off. But he doesn’t.

And so it is that Alice’s baby, though on the small side, and slightly jaundiced, is safely delivered. Not by a midwife or a doctor but by George Banham, a farmer on the Yorkshire Dales. Also safely delivered to the forge by young Frank. As soon as the farmer sees the feet poking out of the birth canal he gently manoeuvres the baby’s shoulders so they will not tear Alice. Though weak and tired, she manages to give a final push. The rest of the baby’s body and head slide out. It’s a girl. George cuts the umbilical cord and gently hands her to Alice.

Kathleen and Martha look on. Amazed that she is not bald, as was Frank. But covered with a tight mop of carrot orange curls. And she has the cutest little retroussé nose.

A girl thinks Edward. Another lass to find a husband for. Yet he is grateful to George Banham that both she, and Alice, survive. Will ensure to make no charge when, next time around, he puts new shoes on the farmer’s shires. He might even throw a new fire grate in for good luck.

Alice names her Florrie. She wishes her baptised at their church, St Alkelda’s at the nearby parish of Giggleswick. Asks that George and Elizabeth Banham attend as godparents. So it is Pastor Lonsdale who wets the baby’s head and welcomes Florrie Clough into the parish. He marvels at her sunny disposition. Not a whinge or cry escapes her little ruby lips. Marvels at her tiny feet. They seem to dance throughout the ceremony. Are never still. Something Edward’s bruised knees and legs are testament to. For as soon as Florrie can sit up, he will plonk her over a knee and spoon feed her from a bowl of mushed up dinner. And all the while those small, yet strong, feet kick against his legs.

There are no records of Florrie Clough’s birth and baptism. But her name appears on a census in the late eighteen hundreds when she no longer lives on the Dales.

Florrie is scarcely three years old when Alice begins to suffer nose bleeds. Nose bleeds which, when they occur, last, not for minutes, but hours. She has a temperature. Shivers. Angry bruises cover her arms and legs. She does not want to eat. Becomes fatigued and frail. Whatever ails, her paints over the country glow of her cheeks with a pallid shade of grey.

Edward worries. She’s not ‘his Alice’ anymore. Is gradually diminishing before his eyes. Finally, he has no choice but to call his namesake, Dr Edward Forester. The forge has been busy of late so he can spare the odd guinea or two. But in the event, he doesn’t have to part with a penny.

It just so happens the doctor rides up from Settle on a beautiful roan horse. Edward tells him about his Alice. How worried he is. Well, now Mr Clough, he says. Shall we agree like for like? I will examine your wife, Alice, is it not? Whilst perhaps you could examine my mare’s hooves. And replace any shoes. He inclines his head. Should it be necessary.

They shake hands on it. Edward goes across to the forge where Arthur, Thomas, and Frank, are admiring the doctor’s horse. They run their hands down her neck. Blow into her nostrils.

Edward cleans the hooves. The shoes are well worn. So he forges four new ones. Hammers in the nails to keep them into place. Then leaving the mare with the lads, he goes back to the house where, upstairs, the girls sit with Alice. She’s in bed. Drifts in and out of consciousness. Dr Forester opens his leather bag. Takes out various instruments and proceeds to examine her. Kathleen and Martha watch. Ask no questions. They are in awe of him. Then, hearing Edward return, Dr Forester wipes his hands and goes down the stairs to meet him.

Duz tha knows then wha’s up wi’ ’er? Edward asks. He’s not sure he wants to hear the answer. Ah’s shod t’ mare,