The Flying Yorkshireman

Most people have an image of a typical Yorkshireman. These days that image might be corrupted by non-standard, media-influenced examples such as Geoffrey Boycott or Michael Parkinson. But not so long ago, it would have resembled Sam Small.

I suspect, though, that many people, then or now, would find the idea of someone who was not only a Yorkshireman but also could fly, deeply disturbing. But such was Sam. Being from Yorkshire myself, I was bound to be attracted to Sam. I first encountered him (ignoring the other Sam Small chronicled by Stanley Holloway, who refused to pick up his musket before the Battle of Waterloo) fifty years ago when my dad passed over a book he’d acquired some time before: Sam Small Flies Again (1938) by Eric Knight. I say ‘acquired’, as it contains a label which indicates that it was due back at a library on 1 August, possibly in 1946. Anyway, I was instantly enchanted by these ten varied tales. Knight spent his adult life in America, writing newspaper articles and film scripts, as well as short stories and novels. The Sam Small stories were, he said, inspired by homesickness for his native county and by memories of stories passed on by generations of Yorkshire folk. They tell of a little, not-so-young fellow, full of the standard Yorkshire virtues – ‘courage, patience, truth, sticking it out as best you may’ (to quote the author’s introductory note). Of course, he’s also not above taking the chance to make a bob or two here or there – like finding a fine dog perhaps before it becomes entirely lost; or training it to retrieve dropped florins but forgetting to teach it to distinguish coins dropped by other people. The introductory note omits other characteristics, such as magnificent arrogance and a capacity for rigid obstinacy, but they appear clearly in the stories, making Sam and his friends all the more lovable, oddly enough. The friends are often encountered in the Spread Eagle in Polkingthorpe Brig, near Huddersfield, the village where Sam lives. They include Rowlie Hellicker, Gaffer Sitherthwick, Capper Wambley and the immensely strong but slow-minded Big Ian Cawper, who was possibly not the son of Black Cawper, being born nine months after a visit to Black’s wife by a blond giant with apparently supernatural powers. The supernatural plays a significant part in a number of the stories, possibly, like the folk tales, designed to show just how wonderful a Yorkshireman can be. Sam’s aeronautical ability is discovered only in the fourth tale, ‘The Flying Yorkshireman’, by which time we’ve already met the blond giant and also seen Sam split into two versions of himself, one staying at home with Mully, his wife, the other going off to enjoy himself in Blackpool. Flying, it seems, is simply a matter of faith and (for followers of Douglas Adams’s Hitchhiker’s Guide) nothing to do with throwing yourself at the ground and missing. Talking of Adams, the scene in his So Long and Thanks for All the Fish, where Arthur and Fenchurch spiral up into the sky together, was surely inspired by Sam and Mully who, forty years earlier, do the same – except that Mully’s underwear remains firmly in place and does not float to the ground like Fenchurch’s. After that, Sam resolves never to fly again (it causes too much trouble), doing so only when it becomes essential during the final tale. This, ‘The Truth about Rudolph Hess’, so clearly explains why Hess flew his plane to Scotland that I’m amazed it does not appear in any historical account. Presumably it’s just part of the conspiracy by the southern establishment to avoid acknowledging anything of value done by a northerner – the only issue in which Yorkshire and Lancashire share a common interest. Between flying escapades, Sam sorts things out when the days of the week stop turning, and finds a collie which transforms into a teenage girl. But not all the stories involve fantasy. Several are just tales of an ordinary Yorkshireman who is relied on by his peers for wisdom in the light of his having been able to retire from the local mill after inventing the Sam Small Self-Doffing Spindle – and managing to keep the patent out of the hands of the mill-owners. So we read of how to collect a debt from a tight-fisted cockle-man; how Sam is helped by an unlovely dog to arrest a bunch of spies; and how Ian Cawper and his fiancée, Mary Ann, do the Duke of Rudling a favour, fixing a date for their wedding that enables the Duke to exercise his droit de seigneur (‘drawit de saynoor’) with Mary Ann before the honeymoon. Incidentally, I should in passing comment on the way Knight addresses the problem of presenting dialect in print. Too often it is overdone, is intrusive or is just wrong. Knight does it perfectly. I’ll say no more. I can’t prove it by quoting small chunks. You’ll have to read the book. Anyway – back to Sam: even when experiencing the fantastic, he displays the same down-to-earth Yorkshire composure that he shows at other, what you might call ‘normal’, times. That is one of the book’s great charms. Sam as a character is utterly engaging and the description of his life and that of his friends is compelling. He does, however, find it difficult to cope with Los Angeles when he’s dragged there by Mully to support their daughter Lavinia (Vinny), who is on her way to becoming a film star. Knight, of course, had some familiarity with Hollywood. I’ve already mentioned his script-writing (he worked with Frank Capra), but perhaps you don’t know that he was the author of Lassie Come Home, about a Yorkshire collie, which was later adapted as a film. He visited the film set in 1942, but was killed the following year in a plane crash on military duty. Of what did that deprive us, I wonder? Like Sam, Mully meets all events with unruffled equanimity (except when she finds Sam’s transformed collie in their bedroom). Indeed, her strength of character is another piece of typical Yorkshire; remember how Yorkshire’s female spirit showed itself during the miners’ strike of 1984–5? I like to think that, had she been there, Mully would have been organizing the Polkingthorpe Brig group of Women against Pit Closures and amazing the men in the Spread Eagle at the idea that she could have a role outside the kitchen and the bedroom. Polkingthorpe Brig does have a pit as well as a mill, since we are told that Sam worked there in his younger days. But therein lies a mystery. For over thirty years I too have lived in villages near Huddersfield. But try as I may, I can’t identify anywhere which might be Polkingthorpe Brig. The problem is simple. Look for a village with a pit (closed, now, obviously), a mill (ditto) and nearby moorland. Well, I’ve looked. Tell me I’m wrong, but I’m convinced there isn’t one. Perhaps the village is intended to represent, if not the whole of Yorkshire, then at least the whole of the West Riding. As to whether Sam and his like still exist, well, yes, thank heaven, they do, both in villages and on Yorkshire’s borough and city councils. Though I’d better not name them, I can easily bring to mind examples of the latter from Leeds, Barnsley, Wakefield, even a mayor of Rotherham and, naturally, from Huddersfield itself – though I never asked whether any of them could fly.

Extract from Slightly Foxed Issue 24 © John Emms 2009