Henry Morcar was born in the very middle of the English middle class, the son and grandson of solid but not wealthy West Riding cloth manufacturers. He might have been the great-grandson of such a manufacturer too, for all he knew, but he set little store on great-grandfathers and never troubled to enquire. A good-natured, even-tempered, affectionate boy, healthy always, fair-complexioned, burly for his age, Harry spent a thoughtless and carefree childhood which included no poignant moments of anguished intensity. Accordingly his recollections of this period were scattered and overlaid. Certain places, people and incidents however were still vivid in his mind.
One of these was his grandfather’s house, Hurstfield, which stood in Hurst, a suburb of the town of Annotsfield in Yorkshire, on the well-thought-of Hurstholt Road, where a group of similar houses looked across at the new Hursthead Park with the sober satisfaction of substantial ratepayers. Old John Henry Morcar’s house was built of good local stone, with bay windows in the rooms each side the door, to which two large flat steps whitestoned at the edges gave access. Its air of prosperity verging on affluence was emphasised by a family of steep gables, two above the attics and a smaller one over the front porch, two well-painted iron gates and a short curving gravel drive between, circumnavigating the front garden. The letters JHM in the rubber mat on the top step were always in complete repair, the pointing of the walls was fresh, the lace curtains were always spotless in their handsome symmetry, the front door was magnificently grained, the laurels by the gate were well pruned and the flower-beds and plot of grass were held in check by small plum-coloured tiles in the interests of neatness. Hurstfield lacked the pink marble pillars and glass conservatory of the more impressive house on the right, but was superior to the semi-detached houses on the left where the Shaws lived, which had a straight asphalt path to the front door and only one gable. The marble-pillar house had three maids, the Morcars two and the Shaws one of a more general kind. In the same way Alderman Morcar did not keep his own carriage, but never scrupled to take a hansom when occasion really required, offering a lift sometimes to Mr. Shaw from the station. Yes, the Morcars were middle middle-class, the backbone of England as Morcar’s grandfather often proudly told him.
Down the hill to the right the road became suddenly precipitous and turned into Hurst Bank, and at the bottom of Hurst Bank lay a nest of mills and workmen’s houses, and one of those railway viaducts of which the hilly West Riding has such an abundance. Amidst this industrial cluster at Hurst Bank Bottom lay his grandfather’s mill, built in 1871, a substantial stone building with a couple of extra weaving sheds at the back and a shortish hexagonal chimney which had been added to at the top, so that it looked as if it wore a collar. The brass plate at the side of the door announcing that this was the abode of J. H. MORCAR & SON always gleamed with what Harry’s grandfather mystifyingly called elbow grease. Within, the office was fitted along the walls and in the centre with massive sloping desks of gleaming mahogany, divided along the top by a gleaming brass rail. High cushioned stools without backs were ranged along the desks, where inkpots, ledgers, round black rulers and letters to which were pinned snippets of cloth lay in geometrically neat array, quite dustless. A door on the far side of the office led into the mill; when this was opened the restless clacking of the looms rushed in and drew Harry towards the weaving sheds.
His father and grandfather were very willing that he should wander about the mill as he liked, provided he were wearing a navy blue sailor suit and not a white one. There had been tears from his mother when he returned once with a white drill suit all smudged; it was a new suit, she had finished machining it, pressed it and attached its black silk tie and whistle cord only that very morning, so that he should look well when walking out with his father, and now it was all smeared with textile grease. She wept with vexation at the sight and since tears were rare with her, both husband and father-in-law were appropriately impressed. But in a blue sailor suit of cloth from the mill Harry was free to wander as he chose, and accordingly he could not remember a time when he was unfamiliar with looms. He stood at the end of a loom-gate watching and wondering, his mouth perhaps a little agape, his sailor hat on the back of his round fair head, and occasionally his father—solid and cheerful in those days—passed by and smoothing his fine straw-coloured moustache threw out some information about picks or reeds, or his grandfather paused beside him and taking his hand explained the whole loom mechanism in technical language. His grandfather, a plump fresh-complexioned man with a round white beard, had a marvellous gold watch-chain— it cost a pound a link, said Harry’s mother—with two remarkable gold coins swinging from the centre; the coins and the loom divided Harry’s attention, so that he did not always hear all his grandfather said; but the incident occurred so often that imperceptibly he acquired a deposit of knowledge. The weavers too would smile at him and calling him “lovey” allow him to approach quite close and watch while they put fresh bobbins into their shuttles; he was a sensible boy, they felt, who would not get hurt or into trouble. In those days the weavers wore clogs at their work and shawls in the street, and sang hymns (or sometimes more secular songs) as they stood in the loom-gate. Harry early acquired the knack of talking and hearing through the noise of the looms and scorned those ignoramuses who tried to shout above it.