What do you give the thirteen year old son of a leading steel manufacturer for Christmas in 1911?
Jacques Reindorp’s The Toolhouse Club, of course.
This beautifully produced book, gilt edged pages and meticulous illustrations, found its way to Reading Sheffield because of its inscription:
A friend of Reading Sheffield found the book in Sheffield’s Oxfam bookshop,searched the name Kenneth Darwin Flather and was led to our interview with Kenneth’s nephew, David Flather. David was heir to various Sheffield traditions. His father’s family were longstanding and pioneering steel manufacturers in the nineteenth century and his mother was related to Sheffield authors from the Leader and Waterhouse families. David himself studied engineering at Cambridge but also became a voracious reader of maps, adventure stories and ‘the Bronte girls.’ You can find his account of his reading history here.
It is a book that could have consumed Kenneth throughout the following year. It describes the purposeful activities of a group of boys absorbed by the challenges of making a canoe in which they set out on bold but never foolhardy adventures. From the outset the processes of decision making are democratic and preceded by thoughtful deliberation. The frontispiece of the book depicts ‘A Debate at the Club’. seven boys in the sparsely furnished club shed, all in three piece suits, seven little homunculi practising at being lawyers rather than engineers. Or perhaps drawing up a new British Constitution.
Though their debates about how to go about building a canoe are extensive, the book is chiefly concerned with the skills the boys acquire in constructing a clinker build canoe. The steps they take at each stage of the process are illustrated by detailed diagrams all designed to be a practical guide for the young engineers. Sheffield is not rich in large expanses of water so it would be surprising if either Kenneth or his nephew were ever able to make practical use of the book but since David was to spend much of his professional life writing technical manuals for the Sheffield firm of Edgar Allen it is tempting to think that he was inspired by the clarity of these images in his uncle’s library.
The off-stage heroine of this novel is ‘mater’ on whom the boys rely to bring on a constant supply of wholesome food for the ‘young lions’ who ‘diligently and merrily’ pursue their dreams.