Speaker 1: Welcome back to part two of our double episode about
Speaker 1: the life and literature of working class writer Jack Hilton.
Speaker 1: If you haven't listened to part one yet, we suggest
Speaker 1: you go back and listen to that one first.
Speaker 2: Alamatina happen. Oh, very large child, very large child. Be
Speaker 2: large child, child child Alamatina.
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Speaker 1: Class History and working Class Literature because of the support
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Speaker 1: Radical Reads and fireside chat link in the show notes.
Speaker 1: As we mentioned in part one, Jack Hilton's experience of
Speaker 1: long term unemployment was all too common during the Great
Speaker 1: Depression in Britain. But out of that mass experience of unemployment,
Speaker 1: and in part because of the extra time that unemployment
Speaker 1: allowed came a huge upsurge in writing not just about
Speaker 1: working class people, but actually by them, recounting their experiences
Speaker 1: of both work and worklessness, as well as their hopes
Speaker 1: for change. The result was that the nineteen thirties was
Speaker 1: an extremely rich decade for working class literature, arguably even
Speaker 1: the high point in the history of British working class writing.
Speaker 1: Caliban Shrieks was very much a part of this literary moment. Here,
Speaker 1: Jack Chadwick, who we spoke to in Part one and
Speaker 1: whose tireless efforts brought Caliban Shrieks back into print, reads
Speaker 1: a passage from Hilton's text on the effects of hard
Speaker 1: work on working class minds and bodies.
Speaker 3: Most of my mates have uneventually fallen into the way
Speaker 3: of working for their living. Most of them greet me
Speaker 3: and seem proud of Ela. They think they can perform
Speaker 3: the function of his favorite recreation of a working class
Speaker 3: bester than their fellows. I can eat the bloody job
Speaker 3: is a common expression. Beastly blondes of toil, willing eagers,
Speaker 3: eaters up of production. To me, they are overdoing it.
Speaker 3: I think they work too hard and think too little.
Speaker 3: But they know they are good ones at it, and
Speaker 3: work never killed anyone, not hard work, even workingmen do
Speaker 3: at times die. The stimulus to existence is work. It
Speaker 3: is life's sole purpose. Work for a decent wage if possible,
Speaker 3: but work, certainly for regularity, and plenty of it hard.
Speaker 3: Many are prepared to do it under the odds. Of course,
Speaker 3: they thought the work game would go on forever. Rationalization
Speaker 3: has now made their services less important. Thank goodness, poor
Speaker 3: cattle full of pomposity when adorned in a new suit
Speaker 3: of Montague Burtons tailor made. What tailor could meet their
Speaker 3: slender purses and yet hide the fact that they are toilers?
Speaker 3: Where is their poise, straightness carriage? Where is their elasticity
Speaker 3: of heel? What collar could rest unwrinkled when their bony
Speaker 3: collar bones stick out so generously? How can one's head
Speaker 3: sit graciously when the nape of vertebrate aches with jaded exhaustion?
Speaker 3: Such is the price of eating the bloody job. What
Speaker 3: mental returation is acceptable to the fatigued body? None? Only
Speaker 3: the artificial manufactured kind. Horse ology, cardology, rology, and sexology.
Speaker 3: Man is the creature of conditions environ. If the bruise
Speaker 3: is overworked, he generally cannot think what must be done
Speaker 3: for him by ed Go Wallace win a lot on
Speaker 3: the bow Street reporter. Of course this is for the good.
Speaker 3: What is nicer than hewing wood and drawing water to
Speaker 3: the thoughts of what's going to win the two thirty
Speaker 3: or yes, he has to hang by the neck until
Speaker 3: dead possible fortune on the one hand, and glorious better
Speaker 3: than he on the other.
Speaker 1: In this passage, Hilton aims his trademark sarcasm at the
Speaker 1: cult of hard work under capitalism. But what's interesting here
Speaker 1: is that he's directing that sarcasm at other working class people,
Speaker 1: specifically those workers who pride themselves on their hard work,
Speaker 1: on their ability to, as he says, eat the bloody job.
Speaker 1: Work is life's sole purpose, jokes Hilton. So work for
Speaker 1: a decent wage if possible, but work certainly. Hilton is
Speaker 1: being sarcastic here because his fellow workers belief in hard
Speaker 1: work for its own sake is actually damaging to themselves,
Speaker 1: not just because of their bony collar bones or how
Speaker 1: their vertebrate ache, but because of how overwork exhausts the mind. Again,
Speaker 1: Hilton's working class background is so important here because a
Speaker 1: passage like this by an upper class writer would risk
Speaker 1: being condescending. Hilton, meanwhile, strikes a fine balance between concern
Speaker 1: for his fellow workers but also frustration with them, precisely
Speaker 1: because he shares their experiences. The period that Hilton was
Speaker 1: writing and saw a huge huge interest in working class writing,
Speaker 1: as publishers and literary journals increasingly wanted to document the
Speaker 1: experiences of the Great Depression. This was one of the
Speaker 1: most productive periods in British working class literary history. So
Speaker 1: there are far too many authors and novels from this
Speaker 1: period to mention here, but two of the most famous
Speaker 1: working class novels from the nineteen thirties were Love on
Speaker 1: the Doll and Means test Man. Love on the Doll
Speaker 1: depicts the effects of unemployment on a young working class
Speaker 1: couple in depression hit Northwest England. It was probably the
Speaker 1: most successful working class novel from the period, being reissued
Speaker 1: ten times between nineteen thirty four and nineteen thirty seven.
Speaker 1: On the other hand, Means test Man was written by
Speaker 1: outer work Derbyshire coal miner Walter Brierley and follows an
Speaker 1: unemployed miner and his wife in the week leading up
Speaker 1: to their invasive means test inspection. We go into a
Speaker 1: bit more detail about the means test and how it
Speaker 1: worked in Part one. Both Love and The Doll and
Speaker 1: Means test Man are what's known as realist novels in
Speaker 1: that they attempt to depict reality quote unquote as it is,
Speaker 1: making sure to accurately describe the details of the external world,
Speaker 1: what the characters look and sound like, etc. But perhaps
Speaker 1: because of its origin as Hilton substitute for speech writing,
Speaker 1: which we discussed in Part one, Caliban Shrieks is very
Speaker 1: different from both these novels.
Speaker 3: Really with you other sort of quite well known working
Speaker 3: class texts from this period, like Lavoma Dol and Meancess Man.
Speaker 3: He was so so so removed from the styles of
Speaker 3: these texts and the sort of way they're structured. The
Speaker 3: fact that he never set out to be a writer
Speaker 3: meant that he wasn't oblivious to how these texts were
Speaker 3: being written, but he just didn't care because he wasn't
Speaker 3: writing to fit into any mold. He wasn't make You know,
Speaker 3: even if you're not conscious of it, if you're trying
Speaker 3: to write something with the idea of it getting published
Speaker 3: and read, even if you're not conscious of the fact
Speaker 3: that you're doing this, you are still going to be
Speaker 3: writing it with these norms in mind. So like Walter
Speaker 3: Greenwood's Love on the Door would have been written with
Speaker 3: the idea of it having the kind of structure that
Speaker 3: it really ended up having, even if Greenwood wasn't exactly
Speaker 3: like I'm going to write this and it's going to
Speaker 3: tick all these boxes or whatever. Hilton just did not
Speaker 3: have any kind of sense of needing to tick off
Speaker 3: certain rules of what constitutes a good piece of prose
Speaker 3: when he was writing his own masterpiece. And I think
Speaker 3: because of the rough draft of Caliban, Shrieks and what
Speaker 3: would become colorb and Streaks made it to listenerary people
Speaker 3: and publishes before Hilton even knew that he could publish it,
Speaker 3: it meant that they then encouraged him to keep going
Speaker 3: with his eccentricities and the things that defined his debut
Speaker 3: novel as completely uncategorizable. So I think that the main
Speaker 3: point is that there's just absolutely there's just nothing to
Speaker 3: compare Hilton too, or if there is, I think there
Speaker 3: probably is, you know, but it's completely buried and completely
Speaker 3: forgotten and lost. I mean, I wonder how any other
Speaker 3: private journals remained private journals from this period and from
Speaker 3: afterwards and from before. You know, there's probably scores of
Speaker 3: them that just never had for good luck to have
Speaker 3: the sort of a fluke exposure at Hilton had, and
Speaker 3: maybe the only text would ever have any kind of
Speaker 3: similarity tiltings of those ones people's private diaries and journals.
Speaker 3: He wasn't writing to be read. He just didn't care.
Speaker 3: And by the time but his writing had been discovered
Speaker 3: the fact that it was so form less or he
Speaker 3: had its own form, and that this was something that
Speaker 3: made it so special to people that you know, got
Speaker 3: the hands on it, and the encouragement from these people
Speaker 3: was then emphasizing the uniqueness of Hilton's pros. So Hilton
Speaker 3: never had to really fit inside any of the uh,
Speaker 3: you know, the accepted rules of writing, and he was,
Speaker 3: before he even knew it, he was being celebrated for
Speaker 3: flouting these rules. I certainly, I think, you know, his
Speaker 3: editors would have had a hard time because although you know,
Speaker 3: he taught himself to write in the face and it's
Speaker 3: unduskly the case for his pros at that point would
Speaker 3: have been probably quite hard to read in the sense
Speaker 3: that it would have been if you read some of
Speaker 3: his letters and stuff correspondence, even from the late thirties,
Speaker 3: it's sort of like its punctuation and spelling and stuff.
Speaker 3: It's not it's like you can understand it, but it's
Speaker 3: far more it's vernacular Lancastrian, and I think his editors
Speaker 3: tried to keep as much of it as possible, but
Speaker 3: still had to sort of put a bit of a
Speaker 3: stret jacket on his writing.
Speaker 1: However, Hilton was not always happy to receive this kind
Speaker 1: of straight jacket from his editors. A few years after
Speaker 1: Caliban Shrieks was published, one of Hilton's stories was due
Speaker 1: to appear in the literary journal New Writing, but he
Speaker 1: pulled it when he found out he'd gotten a book
Speaker 1: deal elsewhere. In a letter to friend and fellow working
Speaker 1: class author Jack Common, Hilton explained that he didn't want
Speaker 1: what he referred to as the New Writing editors amendments
Speaker 1: and cuttings. Quote he takes the bloody life out of
Speaker 1: a job. These parts of university boys with a flairy
Speaker 1: flair for lit in the worst form are too dictatorially important.
Speaker 1: End quote. In another letter to Common, Hilton explains how
Speaker 1: he was determined to quote break through the independence of
Speaker 1: this lot of little big men, these silver spoon progressive editors.
Speaker 1: End quote.
Speaker 3: I don't want anyone to get the impression from what
Speaker 3: I've said that Hilton didn't know what he should be
Speaker 3: doing with Caliban Shrieks, because you know, like I say,
Speaker 3: he did read hundreds and hundreds of novels from the
Speaker 3: English canon, and including like modernist texts like Lawrences, Sons
Speaker 3: and love It. He'd read it all, and so you know,
Speaker 3: he would have had an idea of what a novel
Speaker 3: should have been in the eyes of the people that
Speaker 3: over time held the purse strings that publishes. But so
Speaker 3: many people, even critics nowadays, responding to Caliban Shrieks, have
Speaker 3: this tendency to view what Hilton does as being just
Speaker 3: either completely acts or just not giving him the credit.
Speaker 3: But it's due for the effects. But his book has
Speaker 3: it's almost like, oh, it's just a it's just a
Speaker 3: happy accident that he has. It's this stirring effect and
Speaker 3: that he takes you on this emotional journey.
Speaker 1: Indeed, Hilton was well acquainted with the works of the
Speaker 1: literary canon, not to mention it's various techniques and motives,
Speaker 1: as shown in this next passage that Jack is about
Speaker 1: to read out.
Speaker 3: The lily painted descriptions of nature by an artist in
Speaker 3: the throes of hypnotic rapture is but the expression of
Speaker 3: the dualism of being well fed and ideally imaginative. The Grecians,
Speaker 3: with their culture, belong to the well fed minority, while
Speaker 3: their slave brethren are more or less inexpressive. So it
Speaker 3: is that we paint pictures according to our stage of evolution.
Speaker 3: Well fedness is the objective stimulus for the nice abstract
Speaker 3: words or canvas painting. A hungry man has a hungry
Speaker 3: outlook and little or no interest in the octanmbulist wall
Speaker 3: gatherings of a nature devotee who raves away. You know
Speaker 3: how a sky of silk and blues stuck ord with
Speaker 3: the golden riplets, sunny tints above hills of green brown
Speaker 3: majesty overmook of metaphor how U kid for soft high
Speaker 3: falutin hungering shop assistance with such stuff and send them
Speaker 3: on their Sunday hikes with those back to nature. Rook's
Speaker 3: acts to the hobover sky is hardly ever noticed unless
Speaker 3: it is to be seen whether it offers mildness or
Speaker 3: storm pleasant scenery is totally ignored. Only nature, in differambic
Speaker 3: humor is worthy of concern, and only because of its
Speaker 3: possibility of discomfort. The miles are long and reary, They
Speaker 3: lead uninterestingly from one town to another. Man must have
Speaker 3: some purpose walking from one town to another is the tramps.
Speaker 1: There's a biting cynicism here which seems aimed at the
Speaker 1: writings of romantic nature poetry or Victorian landscape painters, which
Speaker 1: he calls noctanbulist wall gatherings, that is, the pointless daydreams
Speaker 1: of a sleepwalker. Basically, Hill unmocks their descriptions of silken
Speaker 1: blue skies and stockered sunny tints, saying that they have
Speaker 1: no interest to the hobo, which he'll was for about
Speaker 1: a decade. As we discussed in Part one, the hobo's
Speaker 1: relationship to nature and the sky is entirely practical. Will
Speaker 1: it rain? Will I be able to walk for miles
Speaker 1: or sleep outside comfortably? In stark contrast to the scenes
Speaker 1: of nature poets or painters. Then, Hilton writes that the
Speaker 1: hoboes paths are long and weary and lead uninterestingly from
Speaker 1: one town to another. But this contrast is not necessarily
Speaker 1: a total rejection of the literary canon. As mentioned previously,
Speaker 1: Hilton frequently quotes Shakespeare in his novel, and in this
Speaker 1: passage itself, he even drops little mentions of the ancient Greeks,
Speaker 1: like his comments about Grecian culture belonging to a well
Speaker 1: fed minority and nature's dithrambic humor, with the dithorm being
Speaker 1: an ancient Greek form of choral song or poem. So
Speaker 1: while it might seem at first that Hilton's point is
Speaker 1: that literary tradition is of no interest to the poor,
Speaker 1: on closer inspection, it's more that the conditions of the
Speaker 1: poor detach them from literary tradition. Hilton's mockera tradition, while
Speaker 1: drawing on parts of it, can be reared as another
Speaker 1: example of his attempt to seize it for the working class.
Speaker 1: As much as it's a comment about bourgeois literature, it's
Speaker 1: also a comment about what society does both to the
Speaker 1: poor and to culture, and how that might be different
Speaker 1: if only everyone was well fed. The success of Caliban
Speaker 1: Shrieks opened up new opportunities for Jack hillan.
Speaker 3: After Caliban Shrieks was met with critical acclaim and you know,
Speaker 3: favorable reviews from the likes of All Well and Order
Speaker 3: and the rest of the source of moderness circle around Fidelphi.
Speaker 3: It gave Hilton this confidence to pursue writing, even though
Speaker 3: he'd never in his entire life thought that he could
Speaker 3: one day do this. He never thought of himself as
Speaker 3: ever having the ability to make money from his expression.
Speaker 3: He'd only ever thought of his expression as being potentially
Speaker 3: useful in getting a better quality of life for his class.
Speaker 3: But he took the opportunity presented by the success of
Speaker 3: Calaban Shrieks to go and study at Ruskin College. And
Speaker 3: he studied there, And I'd not be able to find
Speaker 3: it exactly what he studied, but it would have been,
Speaker 3: I think, quite an all encompassing course, maybe evolving politics, economics, literature.
Speaker 1: Ruskin College was set up in eighteen ninety nine with
Speaker 1: the aim of providing education to the working classes. The
Speaker 1: college received funding from trade unions and sympathetic wealthy benefactors,
Speaker 1: and provided working people with the opportunity to do long
Speaker 1: distance and evening courses. However, its main function was as
Speaker 1: a residential college where working class people could live and
Speaker 1: study for a minimal price, with many attending on scholarships.
Speaker 1: Over the next few years, Hilton would publish two more novels,
Speaker 1: Champion in nineteen thirty eight and Laugh at Polonius in
Speaker 1: nineteen forty two.
Speaker 3: Both of these have fantastically written demonstrations for his ability
Speaker 3: to write a very neat novel that gets across working
Speaker 3: class life in a really powerful way, but they weren't really,
Speaker 3: I don't think, the kind of things that he wanted
Speaker 3: to write. And by this point there was just this
Speaker 3: general turn away from working class writers on the part
Speaker 3: of publishing houses, and it became more and more of
Speaker 3: an uphill struggle. And it had always been steep, it
Speaker 3: became almost vertical struggle to get publishers to pay any
Speaker 3: mind to people like Hilton, even though he did have
Speaker 3: the assistance of people with big profiles, of more respected
Speaker 3: writers like Orwell. And in the case of Orwell, he
Speaker 3: received a lot of help, particularly into the forties, and
Speaker 3: this help was I think, really it's quite fair to
Speaker 3: say that Orwell gave more support and more concrete help
Speaker 3: to Jack Hilton than he gave to any other writer
Speaker 3: in his life. And this, you know, it took the
Speaker 3: shape of in the I think nineteen forty five the
Speaker 3: two after making their correspondence because of the war, because
Speaker 3: of Orwell's illness, is just in general, because of you know,
Speaker 3: we'd both been busy with other things. That Hilton had
Speaker 3: been doing something for the war effort, I think working
Speaker 3: in you to put out fires. They got back in
Speaker 3: touch with each other, and Hilton asked Llwell for help
Speaker 3: with moving forward with the kinds of things he wanted
Speaker 3: to write, and all Well not only putting a good
Speaker 3: word for Hilton with his publisher at Jonathan Cape, but
Speaker 3: he invited Hilton to come and take tea with him
Speaker 3: in his Latin Islington, which was incredibly rare. Or Well
Speaker 3: did this with only might be like less than a
Speaker 3: handful of other people, you know, inviting around for tea
Speaker 3: and ren rental publim. He was a very guarded private man,
Speaker 3: and so was Jack Hilton. I'm really intrigued by what
Speaker 3: the dynamic between Orwell and Hilton would have been like.
Speaker 3: I think because Orwell was a listener as well. I
Speaker 3: think it was really unusual because with Hilton, Orwell was
Speaker 3: in the position of actually having talk, which is enough
Speaker 3: really quick thing about their relationship with it from the
Speaker 3: accounts of their meetings, I think both of them sort
Speaker 3: of had to sort of talk more than either were
Speaker 3: used to with each other, because I Fee would have
Speaker 3: been silenced and black Pudding theilibscot Or. I went to
Speaker 3: support Hilton, a really remarkable he even you know, often
Speaker 3: negotiating on his behalf with Jonathan Cape. He even came
Speaker 3: with Hilton to meet the bearer of bad news from
Speaker 3: the publisher in which you know, Hilton found out that
Speaker 3: he wouldn't be commissioned to write the kinds of books
Speaker 3: but he really wanted to write.
Speaker 1: Indeed, All would arranged a dinner for Hilton with Veronica Wedgwood,
Speaker 1: a reader for the publisher Jonathan Cape, who had already
Speaker 1: published some of Hilton's work. All Well in Hilton's hope
Speaker 1: was that Wedgwood might be able to secure a three
Speaker 1: book contract for Hilton, which would give him the kind
Speaker 1: of longer term financial stability to be able to leave
Speaker 1: his plastering job and pursue a career in writing. However,
Speaker 1: as Jack mentioned, the tide was to against working class literature,
Speaker 1: with Wedgewood herself writing an internal memo at Jonathan Cape
Speaker 1: saying that quote, the Proletarian novel, in my opinion, is
Speaker 1: finished completely end quote. Before this, however, Hill and also
Speaker 1: experimented with another literary genre, the travelogue.
Speaker 3: One of these sort of other forms of the writing
Speaker 3: that he sort of thought he could play a lot
Speaker 3: with and develop in the same way as he did
Speaker 3: with his pros and Caliba tricks. It was sort of
Speaker 3: like the form of a travelogue. I think my second
Speaker 3: favorite of his books is English Ways, is a sort
Speaker 3: of dare I say, satire or sort of. It takes
Speaker 3: the popular format of the travelogue, which is really like
Speaker 3: probably like the most sold books of a time, where
Speaker 3: of these travelogs about like, you know, trips our English countryside,
Speaker 3: quite quaint narrations of these journeys by upper middle class writers.
Speaker 3: And Hilton, you know, took this format and turned it
Speaker 3: on its head by using it as a way to
Speaker 3: talk about different working class difminnities across the country and
Speaker 3: exploring the people of these communities and the types of
Speaker 3: people in these certain places. And you know, he was
Speaker 3: the only person who wrote a travelog to start in
Speaker 3: the north of England. All the other start either in
Speaker 3: London or in places just on the outskirts.
Speaker 1: As Jack mentioned, English Ways is fundamentally satirical in tone,
Speaker 1: but as some have pointed out, Hilton's travelogue seems to
Speaker 1: be a satire specifically directed at George Orwell. The writer
Speaker 1: Andy Kroft argues that English Ways can be read as
Speaker 1: an answer to the Road to Wig and Pier, while
Speaker 1: literary scholar Ben Clark points out that while Hilton doesn't
Speaker 1: mention all Well by name, he does mention quote a
Speaker 1: best seller from a middle class socialist who was at
Speaker 1: particular pains to stress the acuteness of his sense of
Speaker 1: smell and insisted that working men's stank end quote.
Speaker 3: So he wrote English Ways n First seven, ten years later,
Speaker 3: English Ribbon. And they're quite cocky and quite cheeky, and
Speaker 3: I think there's more of a sort of humor. There's
Speaker 3: certainly less bleakness and tragedy in these texts, but they
Speaker 3: are nonetheless really special for the way that Hilton's found
Speaker 3: his voice, and he is the voice of the same
Speaker 3: Caliban you know of nineteen thirty four, but Caliban after
Speaker 3: Prosperous Ireland, really Caliban or Once. He's got a full
Speaker 3: mastery of himself. Really, and it's really terrible that the
Speaker 3: publishers didn't jump on these books and really back them
Speaker 3: in a way that would have got Hilton a proper
Speaker 3: lifelong literary career, especially because after the refusal to give
Speaker 3: him a kind of contract would guarantee him a good
Speaker 3: quality of life and writing. After that refusal, he sort
Speaker 3: of gave up, and within five years he's sort of
Speaker 3: after English Ribbon. He sort of just gave up on
Speaker 3: the idea of being a full time writer because he
Speaker 3: realized that to do it, to sort of get those
Speaker 3: kinds of contracts where he wouldn't have to go begging
Speaker 3: back after writing each book, where he'd have the sort
Speaker 3: of guarantee of stable work, to do that, he'd have
Speaker 3: to really censor himself in a way, the garbling effects
Speaker 3: of mortgage respectability. He would have to really sort of
Speaker 3: change his tone and write differently, and he never wanted
Speaker 3: to do that. His voice and its routiness. In his
Speaker 3: status as a manual politarian, it's a worker from Rochdale,
Speaker 3: from a north so far outside of London. It was
Speaker 3: more important to him to keep that than to be
Speaker 3: paid for writing more. I guess the word is tasteful,
Speaker 3: more tasteful as an essential more of works that were
Speaker 3: more sort of in keeping with the taste for people
Speaker 3: who held the purse strings, so he chose to stop
Speaker 3: trying to get his writing published. He kept on writing
Speaker 3: throughout his life. Unfortunately, a lot of what he wrote
Speaker 3: has been lost.
Speaker 1: This really highlights a common theme in the production of
Speaker 1: working class writing. That is that beyond the struggle to
Speaker 1: find time between long working hours to actually write, and
Speaker 1: even after the struggle to actually get published, is the
Speaker 1: struggle for that work to actually be remembered and valued.
Speaker 1: As Jack mentioned in Part one, Hilton was celebrated by
Speaker 1: some of the biggest writers of his time, thought of
Speaker 1: as possibly the next d. H. Lawrence. That a working
Speaker 1: class author is appreciated as Hilton could be forced to
Speaker 1: drop out of writing and then fall immediately into almost
Speaker 1: total obscurity really demonstrates just how easy it is to
Speaker 1: lose such authors, and Hilton would have been lost, possibly forever,
Speaker 1: had it not been for Jack's determination, and what, it
Speaker 1: has to be said, was quite an amazing series of
Speaker 1: lucky events.
Speaker 3: I'd sort of given up on finding anything more I
Speaker 3: could about Jack Hilton, So after reading Caliban Shreeks in
Speaker 3: the Working Class Movement, I had been salted. I was
Speaker 3: just desperate to find out whatever I could about him
Speaker 3: and finish his story, find out what had happened to
Speaker 3: this man. You know, after you've taken you through this
Speaker 3: psychic tour of his first thirty five years, you just
Speaker 3: left with his desperate feeling of money no more. And
Speaker 3: so I set about doing things of googling. I even
Speaker 3: used ash jews. I was desperate. I just I was
Speaker 3: trying to think of whatever I could to try and
Speaker 3: find out whatever I could. I spoke to the librarian
Speaker 3: and she only added fuel to this fire. She just
Speaker 3: was able to tell me that he'd mysteriously left righting
Speaker 3: for reasons, but no one that she knew could really
Speaker 3: speak to. I even went on ancestry dot co dot
Speaker 3: uk transfer like to find out more about his family,
Speaker 3: to see if any of them, would you know, still
Speaker 3: be alive, still know anything about what happened to Jack
Speaker 3: that you know got me nowhere at all. The last
Speaker 3: thing that I could think to do was after finding
Speaker 3: out that he died in Chaddleton and Oldham in nineteen
Speaker 3: eighty fourth and his death or I can't remember if
Speaker 3: it was his death stificult. I found some kind of
Speaker 3: proof that he died in Oldham in nineteenth fourt and
Speaker 3: so I went as a last ditch effort, I went
Speaker 3: to what would have been his old locals, I think herself,
Speaker 3: with the intention of going to like four pubs. So
Speaker 3: I was still standing from when he have lived there
Speaker 3: in the late seventies and early eighties. So I went
Speaker 3: around these pubs with a poster that I had printed
Speaker 3: out that had the only picture I could find of
Speaker 3: him printed on it in big letters, do you remember
Speaker 3: Jack Hilton or something to that effect, And then never
Speaker 3: bottom that'll like tear off tassels with my number, asking
Speaker 3: people to get in touch of fame. And I had
Speaker 3: any vague recollections of this man, and it was in
Speaker 3: I went around two pubs, put up these posters had
Speaker 3: a pine, and you know, I was continuing going down
Speaker 3: this bus route towards Chatterton. Then in the third pub
Speaker 3: I go in and I start talking. You have the
Speaker 3: two pubs before, no one had been ver interested in
Speaker 3: what I was doing, so I've been in and out
Speaker 3: after the pine. But in the third pub, the last
Speaker 3: pound of bar was really interested, and so I started
Speaker 3: talking to her about it, and I think she just
Speaker 3: thinks I'm a little bit mad. But then from like
Speaker 3: the bar's got like columns along it, and from behind
Speaker 3: this column so out of side to me but not
Speaker 3: to the bar made it was like a woman. It
Speaker 3: must have been like in a seventies, late seventies maybe
Speaker 3: who I'd been basically just eavesdropping on my conversation with
Speaker 3: a bar maid. And she after about like five minutes,
Speaker 3: she just popped up like sticked to her head forward
Speaker 3: so I could see her, and was say, oh, you
Speaker 3: know what, love, I think I might know who you
Speaker 3: are about. And basically she had only the vague she'd
Speaker 3: been drinking in the pub for decades and decades from
Speaker 3: the time of Hilton, but she only the vaguest memories
Speaker 3: of Jack. But she could tell me a lot about
Speaker 3: Jack's best friend, a guy called Brian, who was much
Speaker 3: younger than Jack and had gone on drinking the same
Speaker 3: pub for you know, about thirty years more. He'd in fact,
Speaker 3: only died the year before I went to visit his pub.
Speaker 3: He's old local. So she was able to give me
Speaker 3: Brian's name and tell me that, you know, he used
Speaker 3: to hang around with his kind old man Jack Hilton.
Speaker 3: He was dead quiet. He used to come sit in
Speaker 3: a pub if there was three of them, she said
Speaker 3: there was Brian, there was another blow whose name she forgot,
Speaker 3: and then there's Jack, and we used to just keep
Speaker 3: themselves to themselves. But she was able to tell me
Speaker 3: Brian's full name. I looked up immediately. I tried to
Speaker 3: find anything I could, and an old Yellow Pages had
Speaker 3: his address as listed as being just around the corner
Speaker 3: from the pub. So I went and a nocton and
Speaker 3: I had no response on the knock. So there's no
Speaker 3: cars of my drive, So I thought, you know why,
Speaker 3: you know, it's pissy down the rain, So I felt,
Speaker 3: you know what this might be. I got excited, but
Speaker 3: probably is not going to lead to anything. But I thought,
Speaker 3: you know what, I've got these posters with me, and
Speaker 3: just pure look, I had a Bira on me, so
Speaker 3: I put a note through the door. And one thing
Speaker 3: I've said since is, you know, and I never was
Speaker 3: the kind of person to carry pen and paper around
Speaker 3: with me until that date, but ever since I realized,
Speaker 3: you know that basically the rediscovery of Hilton rested on
Speaker 3: the fact that I had a Bira on me that day.
Speaker 3: I've always carried one with me since, and I'd left
Speaker 3: my email and my phone number about week later, I
Speaker 3: got an email back from a woman called Mary Hassel,
Speaker 3: who was Brian's widow, informing me that Brian had passed away,
Speaker 3: but that she remembered Jack. Dear old Jack, she called him,
Speaker 3: who used to come over for his tea at her
Speaker 3: and Brian's house several times a week, especially after Jack's
Speaker 3: wife had died, you know, and he was on his own.
Speaker 3: He was sort of like a sorry good grandfather to
Speaker 3: her two kids. And so she invited me over for
Speaker 3: a couple of tea and some custard tarts. And I
Speaker 3: went over, and you know, we talked for hours about Jack.
Speaker 3: And as we're talking more and more memories and come back,
Speaker 3: you know, I go around again. We keep talking. I'm recording,
Speaker 3: and I'm writing everything I can about about her memories
Speaker 3: of Jack, and then we ad one time, she tells
Speaker 3: me this story about how when the kids were bored,
Speaker 3: he could blow smoke rings. He was he was a chainsmoker,
Speaker 3: and he could blow smoke rings with his pipe, which
Speaker 3: you know, would would do the trick most of the
Speaker 3: time to instant the kids, but if they were being
Speaker 3: particularly rowdy, Hilton had another part of trick up his sleeves,
Speaker 3: which was that he could blow smoke through his ears.
Speaker 3: And I at first when Mary told me this, I
Speaker 3: was just like, what are you sure, because I've never
Speaker 3: heard of this before in my life. And I looked
Speaker 3: into I actually got in touch with a friend of
Speaker 3: mine who's the GP the strangest request for medical advice
Speaker 3: I think this mate of mine's ever received in his life.
Speaker 3: I was like, would he ever be possible for someone
Speaker 3: to blow smoke through their ears? And he told me, yeah,
Speaker 3: but only if you've had severe damage to your ears.
Speaker 3: The kind of damage that could in the case of Hilton,
Speaker 3: it could have come from the mill machinery when he
Speaker 3: was eleven working with cotton mill in Rochdale, could have
Speaker 3: come from the trenches, could have even come from like
Speaker 3: breaking rocks in the poorhouses in the nineteen twenties. So
Speaker 3: this was, you know, one of the tricks he would
Speaker 3: do to keep the kids of used.
Speaker 1: The fact that Hilton could take what were likely perforated
Speaker 1: ear drums that he'd gotten from one or another of
Speaker 1: the traumatic experience is that he'd lived through and used
Speaker 1: them for the entertainment of others, is in a way
Speaker 1: a miniature version of what he did with Caliban Shrieks.
Speaker 1: Mary also told Jack about Hilton's pet buddy, which in
Speaker 1: its own way led indirectly to the republishing of Caliban Shrieks.
Speaker 3: When he passed away, as his best mate Brian you know,
Speaker 3: was at his death bed and Brian and Mary took
Speaker 3: on agreed to take on the sort of efforts of
Speaker 3: like organizing funeral and clearing out his flat, and they
Speaker 3: also decided to adopt Hilton's budgy. They brought it into
Speaker 3: their house and within a day or so the budgy
Speaker 3: was at death's door and then it just died. And
Speaker 3: now for the reason, according to the vet Mary Tolby
Speaker 3: that had just passed away after Jack's death, it was
Speaker 3: suffering from nicotine a straw because he was such a
Speaker 3: heavy smoker and the budget had been just used to
Speaker 3: being absolutely just hot boxed with nicotoon all of his
Speaker 3: waking life. But you know, without it was such a
Speaker 3: stress on its little anatomy it packed itself in. But
Speaker 3: that made me think, what else had Brian and Mary
Speaker 3: been left by Jack Kilton? And so using information from Mary,
Speaker 3: I was able to check down his probate and the
Speaker 3: probate was he was small he didn't. He had very
Speaker 3: little when he died, he'd left most of it to Mary.
Speaker 3: And you know, as you get with probates, at the
Speaker 3: end of it, you have a clause where it's like
Speaker 3: and anything not named in this last interestament goes to,
Speaker 3: and in this case the everything else goes to. The
Speaker 3: clause was to Brian. So, without ever knowing that Jack
Speaker 3: had been a writer, Brian hassell is mate inherited all
Speaker 3: of the literary rights to his collected works. And then Mary,
Speaker 3: again without ever knowing that that Brian had had the
Speaker 3: rights to Jack's work or that Jack had ever been
Speaker 3: a writer, then inherited the author's rights to his writings
Speaker 3: when Brian passed away. And so after realizing this, I
Speaker 3: told Mary about it and said, you know, but this
Speaker 3: is fantastic because this means that we can get Hilton
Speaker 3: back in print potentially, you know, if we can make
Speaker 3: the case to publish it and get someone interested. At
Speaker 3: that point I thought, you know, the best case scenariould
Speaker 3: be getting a small independent publisher to maybe do a
Speaker 3: small run of of you know, a few hundred or something,
Speaker 3: or potentially, you know, if that wasn't possible, we could
Speaker 3: maybe raise some money to get some copies self published.
Speaker 3: So I had no idea that it would ever end
Speaker 3: up with a publisher of the world's largest literary publisher, Penguin,
Speaker 3: and Mary was thrilled. But she said, you know what, Jack,
Speaker 3: it sounds like a lot of work, and it kind
Speaker 3: of worked that really it should be for you to do.
Speaker 3: And so she said, you know, I don't know how
Speaker 3: to do this exactly, but I'll sign over whatever these
Speaker 3: rights are to you on the provisor that you do
Speaker 3: your utmost to get Hilton back in print. And that's
Speaker 3: what happened. We ended up looking up, you know, how
Speaker 3: to do this and found a Google template for we
Speaker 3: had to look up what exactly a literary right was
Speaker 3: and look up how to do like transfers and stuff
Speaker 3: like that and it, and then I ended up with
Speaker 3: the rights. And then I started to turn the story
Speaker 3: of my discovery of Hilton and my feelings about what
Speaker 3: I found, and then the story of finding Mary and
Speaker 3: reminiscing about Drack. I started to turn that into an
Speaker 3: article for a small independent Manchester based magazine called The Mill.
Speaker 3: But then when it was eventually published a few mouths
Speaker 3: after I first met Mary, had the most amazing response
Speaker 3: and became one of the outlets best reads ever pieces
Speaker 3: and it caught the ear or the eyes rather of
Speaker 3: people working at various media outlets. So within a couple
Speaker 3: of months of that, I was on Times Radio, BBC
Speaker 3: six Music, even you know, it was in national print
Speaker 3: of The Independent, the Guardian, and then it all culminated
Speaker 3: in being invited for a segment on BBC front Row. Now,
Speaker 3: of all the people listening to that segment, there was
Speaker 3: one bloke, Nick, who was publishing director of a vintage
Speaker 3: classics and imprint of Penguin Books, and he was listening
Speaker 3: to this segment at fifteen minute long segment waiting for
Speaker 3: the good news at the end to be and so
Speaker 3: Hilton's Caliban Troocks will be republished with you know, ex publisher.
Speaker 3: But by that point I had no idea how to
Speaker 3: approach publishers, and I had no idea what it would
Speaker 3: take to get a book back in print, and so
Speaker 3: there was no deal done. So Nick was listening to
Speaker 3: this segment on front Row waiting for the good news
Speaker 3: story and then to reasa to disbelief there was no
Speaker 3: and then the book will be brought back out with
Speaker 3: brother you know in so and so time period. So
Speaker 3: he found me on Twitter and he sent me a
Speaker 3: direct message and then we had a conversation on the phone.
Speaker 3: He was on paternity to leave, so he ducked out
Speaker 3: of paternitally to basically say, you know, let's go ahead,
Speaker 3: let's try to get this bought out with Vintage. And
Speaker 3: that's what happened. Within a few months, it was all agreed,
Speaker 3: and then about a year and a half later, here
Speaker 3: we are with the book out and with a response
Speaker 3: to its publication that I could never have ever imagined.
Speaker 3: It became for number one seller for Vintage and entered
Speaker 3: the top one hundreds on Amazon and has sold incredibly well.
Speaker 3: It cleared ten thousand copies. I don't think Hilton could
Speaker 3: ever imagined. I don't exactly know how many were printed
Speaker 3: in the thirties, but my suspicion is that it was only,
Speaker 3: you know, in the hundreds. So to say that his
Speaker 3: legacy is exploded now, you know, ninety years after the
Speaker 3: book was first published, as an understatement.
Speaker 1: Finally, then Jack Hilton is getting the recognition he so
Speaker 1: richly deserves. But as Jack points out, well Hilton absolutely
Speaker 1: should be remembered for the excellent writing that he left behind.
Speaker 1: His legacy also needs to be thought of in relation
Speaker 1: to his trade union activity outside of his writing.
Speaker 3: He never saw himself as a writer, and he did.
Speaker 3: He just he loved the work of plastering so much,
Speaker 3: and he loved due by this point after the war,
Speaker 3: it was it was a decent pay he got from plastering.
Speaker 3: It was enough to have quite a decent life by
Speaker 3: his standards at least, so he kept to it. And
Speaker 3: he loved the union work. He loved the fact that
Speaker 3: this craft gave him an opportunity to better the lives
Speaker 3: of working class people through the strengthening of the establishment
Speaker 3: of union in the Northwest. You know, we talk about
Speaker 3: the legacy of Jack Hilton, and I think if you
Speaker 3: were to talk to Jack Hilton about his legacy for him,
Speaker 3: this sort of new look at his books which were
Speaker 3: never popular back in the first and force we're never
Speaker 3: that well read. The credit that he's been given now
Speaker 3: and the celebration of him now is an important part
Speaker 3: of his legacy. Bought no less important to me, or
Speaker 3: to him or to the people. But his life touched
Speaker 3: is his work in the trade union movement and the
Speaker 3: fact that you know, he was a plasterer who was
Speaker 3: proud of his work. He founded the Rochdale Bruanch of
Speaker 3: the Plasters Union and was its first president, and I
Speaker 3: believe potentially also this branch was you know, integral to
Speaker 3: forming the wider sort of Lancastrian chapter of the Plasters Union.
Speaker 3: And Hilton was involved in and senior in the regional
Speaker 3: sort of union structure in Torbet think that nineteen fifty five.
Speaker 3: And he was proud of not only of the work
Speaker 3: that he did as a plaster and the buildings that
Speaker 3: he beautified and the you know, the frescoes and stuccos
Speaker 3: that he was able to do in these big houses
Speaker 3: across Greater Manchester, but he's also proud of the fact that,
Speaker 3: you know, he'd be passed on not only of these
Speaker 3: skills to younger workers, but he also founded these branches
Speaker 3: that won't better lives for our members. And if he
Speaker 3: wants to look for a material legacy for Jack Hilton,
Speaker 3: it is in the better life space is union brunches
Speaker 3: left for his workers, and that's just as important a
Speaker 3: legacy as his writing The luck Out.
Speaker 2: The luck Out, They luck Out, Dody.
Speaker 1: That's it for this double episode. On the life and
Speaker 1: work of working class author Jack Hilton. We also have
Speaker 1: a bonus episode where our interviewee, Jack Chadwick reads and
Speaker 1: discusses more passages from Caliban Shrieks. That bonus episode will
Speaker 1: be available soon exclusively for our supporters on Patreon. It
Speaker 1: is only support from you, our listeners, which allows us
Speaker 1: to make these podcasts, So if you appreciate our work,
Speaker 1: please do think about joining us at patreon dot com
Speaker 1: slash working Class History link in the show notes. In
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Speaker 1: absolutely no problem. Please just tell your friends about this
Speaker 1: podcast and give us a five star review on your
Speaker 1: favorite podcast app. Thanks also to our Patreon supporters for
Speaker 1: making this podcast possible. Special thanks to Jazz Hands, Fernando
Speaker 1: Lopez Ojeda, Nick Williams, and Old Norm. Our theme tune
Speaker 1: is Bella Chow. Thanks for permission to use it from
Speaker 1: Disky de sale. You can buy it or stream it
Speaker 1: on the links in the show notes. This episode was
Speaker 1: edited by Jesse French. Anyway, that's it for today. Hope
Speaker 1: you enjoyed these episodes and thanks for listening.