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Menhardoc: A Story of Cornish Nets and Mines, a novel by George Manville Fenn |
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Chapter 34. Winding Up With A Dab Of Clay |
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_ CHAPTER THIRTY FOUR. WINDING UP WITH A DAB OF CLAY. To enter into the occurrences of the next few years would be to give the business career of young men, when the object of this book was to tell of some of the pleasant adventurous days passed by three boys and their friends in that beautiful rugged county in the far west of England which the sea wraps so warmly that winter is shorn of half his force. It is only right to tell, though, that Mrs Marion, upon being taught by Mr Temple's treatment of her nephew that the boy was what some would call a lad of parts, suddenly began to display a deep interest in him-- in his clothes--in his linen; and Uncle Abram found her one day scolding poor Amanda the maid till she put her apron over her head and sat down on the floor and cried. Uncle Abram stood smoking his pipe and sending puffs here and there as Aunt Marion's tirade of bitterness went on. "What's matter?" he said at last. "Matter!" cried the old lady fiercely. "Matter enough. Here's this thoughtless, careless hussy actually been throwing away some specimens of ore that Will brought in. I declare it's monstrous--that it is." Uncle Abram nodded solemnly, sent a puff of smoke to east, another to west, and another due south, and then went out into his garden to tie up an Ayrshire rose that had been blown down by a late gale. "Wind's changed," he said to himself, "dead astarn; and our boy's v'y'ge through life will be an easy one now." Uncle Abram was right, for Mr Temple began to make quite a confidant of Will Marion at once, and depended greatly upon him for help in his business transactions over the kaolin and felspar upon his land. Dick said it was a jolly shame, and Arthur considered it to be a nuisance; but Mr Temple told them it was for their benefit, and to make them more useful to him in time to come, so they had to go to a great school for the next two years, at the end of which time the kaolin works were in full swing, and Mr Temple, as he never forgot to say, thanks to Will Marion, on the high road to fortune. For while this tin mine proved a failure, and that copper mine had paid no dividend for years, while the fisheries were sometimes successful, sometimes, through storms and loss of gear, carried on at a loss, Mr Temple's kaolin works became yearly more profitable, the vein growing thicker and finer in quality the more it was opened out. Kaolin--of course you all know what that Chinese word means. Eh? What? A little boy at the back says he doesn't know? Then we must enlighten him, and be a little learned for a minute or two. Earthenware is of course ware made of earth that was ground into a paste, and after working into shape, baked or burned hard in a kiln. The roughest earthenware is a brick, the red brick of simple clay, the yellow and white bricks of simple clay mixed with more or less chalk. Then we get the flower-pot, again of clay; the common pan, which is glazed by covering the interior with properly prepared minerals, which melt in the baking, and turn into a glaze or glass. Then we have finer clay worked up into crockery; and lastly, the beautiful white clay which, when baked, becomes transparent,--a Chinese discovery, and to this day it bears its name, "china." This fine white clay the Chinese call _kaolin_, and it is to the discovery of veins of the soft white plastic material in England that the wonderful strides in our china manufactures are due. And what is this kaolin of which Will had discovered so grand a store? Well, it is easily explained. The rocks of Cornwall are largely of granite, a stone that must be familiar to every one. It is formed of grains of quartz, mica the shiny, and felspar, that soft white creamy stone like our old alley marbles. This vein of granite will be close and hard, and contain a vast preponderance of quartz, the flinty; and that vein of granite will be very soft from containing so much felspar; and this granite, a familiar example of which can be seen in the material of Waterloo Bridge, the learned, who give names, call porphyry. Such granite as this abounds in Cornwall, and some, too, which is nearly all felspar, and such rock as this in the course of ages forms such a bed of kaolin as Will Marion disclosed to the father of his friends. For the felspar is soft, and imbibes water; and in the course of time the water causes it to break up, decay, and change from stone to a soft white clay, while where it is hard, burning and pounding will do the work that nature has not quite finished yet. Mr Temple did not go so far as to commence a pottery, for there was no need, the manufacturers being ready to purchase all the clay that the works could produce; and when Dick and Arthur Temple finally settled down to business, it was to find Will Marion their father's right-hand man. Later on some further investigations were made of the mineral deposits in the seals' cave; but, good as they were, Will Marion shook his head at them, and Mr Temple took his view. The tin looked promising; but tin and copper mining was so speculative a venture that it was determined to keep only to the china-clay, which brought prosperity to all. The lads often visited the haunts of their old adventures in company with Josh, who was still venerable Uncle Abram's head man; and it was only necessary to hint at the desire for an evening's fishing to make Josh declare, that as long as there was a gashly boat in the bay, they should never want for a bit of fishing. But Josh never forgave Will in his heart for deserting the fishing business. "Oh, yes! I know all about the gashly old clay, Master Rickard, sir," he would say; "and it's made him a sort of gentleman like; but I can't seem to see it, you know. He was getting to be as fine a sailor as ever stepped, and look at him now; why, he wouldn't be satisfied to sail anything commoner than a yacht." Dick remained the same frank merry fellow as ever; and even when there was a thick crop growing on his cheeks and chin, which he called brown mustard and cress, he was as full of boyish fun as ever. It was Arthur in whom the greatest changes had taken place. Contact with the world had rubbed off the stiff varnish with which he had coated himself. He had learned, too, that a lad can command more respect from his fellows by treating them with frankness than by a hectoring haw-haw display of consequence, and a metaphorical "going about with a placard on the breast saying what a superior young being I am ism." In fact Arthur Temple's folly had all gone, and he had developed into a true English gentleman, who could be refined to a degree, but in time of need lend a hand in any of the many struggles of life. Will, too, refined greatly, and one of the Sunday sights down at Peter Churchtown was to see Aunt Ruth Marion waiting at her door, while the bells were going, for Will to come and take her to church, while Uncle Abram in his best blue coat, with crown-and-anchor buttons, smoked his pipe to the last minute and then trotted after them along the cliff path to the pew close under the reading-desk. "Yes, Abram," she used to say, "our Will has grown to be as fine a gentleman as ever stepped; but you always spoiled him, you did; and I don't know what he would have done if it had not been for me." [THE END] _ |
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