Josiah Wedgwood, F.R.S., His Personal History
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
I JOSIAH WEDGWOOD, F.R.S. HIS PEKSONAL HISTOEY BY SAMUEL gMILES, LL.D. AUTHOR OP "SELF-HELP" "CHARACTER" "THRIFT" ETC, Never hasting, never resting, With a firm and joyous heart, Ever onward slowly tending, Acting, aye, a brave man's part. Undepressed by seeming failure. Unelated by success,' Heights attained, revealing higher, Onward, upward, ever press. NEW YORK HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS 1895 Copyright, 1894, by HARPER & BROTHERS. All rights reserved. Wio 710775 CONTENTS CHAP. PAGE I. JOSIAH WEDGWOOD BIRTH AND EDUCA- TION 1 II. THE WEDGWOOD FAMILY . .... 7 III. JOSIAH WEDGWOOD LEARNS HIS TRADE . 21 IV. PARTNERSHIPS WITH HARRISON AND WHIEL- DON 33 V. WEDGWOOD BEGINS BUSINESS FOR HIMSELF 42 VI. IMPROVEMENT OF WARE FRIENDSHIP WITH BENTLEY 57 vii. WEDGWOOD'S MARRIAGE 68 VIII. WEDGWOOD APPOINTED QUEEN'S POTTER . 76 IX. FOUNDING OF ETRURIA PARTNERSHIP WITH BENTLEY 89 */X. ROADS AND CANALS THROUGH STAFFORD- SHIRE 96 J" XI. IMPROVEMENT OF MODELS CHEMISTRY . Ill XII. AMPUTATION OF WEDGWOOD'S RIGHT LEG . 125 J xin. WEDGWOOD'S ARTISTIC WORK .... 137 XIV. PORTRAITS MEDALLIONS ARTISTIC WORK 158 XV. GROWAN KAOLIN BOTTGHER COOK- WORTHYMANUFACTURE OF PORCELAIN 179 xvi. WEDGWOOD'S JOURNEY INTO CORNWALL . 193 XVH. WEDGWOOD AND FLAXMAN 210 iv Contents CHAP. PAGE XVIII. WEDGWOOD AT WORK AGAIN DEATH OF BENTLEY 247 xix. WEDGWOOD'S PYROMETER OR THERMOM- ETER 264 XX. THE BARBERINI OR PORTLAND VASE . 282 xxi. WEDGWOOD'S PERSONAL HISTORY HIS SONS' EDUCATION 297 XXII. CHARACTER OF WEDGWOOD 315 JOSIAH WEDGWOOD CHAPTER I JOSIAH WEDGWOOD BIRTH AND EDUCATION JOSIAH WEDGWOOD was born in the house adjoining the Churchyard Works at Burslem, Staffordshire, in 1730. The actual date of his birth is not his is recorded known ; but baptism in the parish register of St. John's, Burslem, " in these words : Josiah, son of Thomas and * Mary Wedgwood, baptized 12th July, 1730." Josiah's father was a potter, like his fore- fathers before him. He possessed a small estate, including a pottery, adjoining the Bur- slem Churchyard. His mother's maiden name was Mary Stringer, the daughter, it is said, of a nonconformist minister. She was a small and delicately organized woman, quick and sensible, and kindly in her disposition. Thomas and Mary Wedgwood had thirteen children in all seven sons and six daughters. * It is carved on his monument at Stoke-upon-Trent that he was "born in August, 1730 "; but this must be a mistake, as he was baptized in the previous month. 2 Josiah Wedgwood Josiah was the youngest of the family. In that respect he resembled his contemporary, Sir Richard Arkwright, who was the youngest of thirteen children. From the year 1710 to 1715 Burslem was the principal seat of the pottery manufacture in Staffordshire. There were few pot-works any- where else in that county. Of the fifty small potters in Burslem many were named Wedg- wood. They and their ancestors had been manufacturers of earthenware for more than two hundred years. Burslem used to be called the Butter Pottery, meaning the place where butter-pots were prin- cipally made. The other earthenware produced in Burslem was for the most part coarse in tex- ture, clumsy in design, and very liable to fract- ure it not ; yet was totally devoid of taste, either in form or ornament. It may also be mentioned that at the begin- ning of the eighteenth century there were seven small potters at Hanley (now a place of some thousand forty inhabitants) ; but there was only one horse and one mule in the hamlet. There was neither cart nor carriage of any kind in Hanley, the roads being almost impassable for even pack-horses. The coals used in the place were carried on men's or women's backs. There were only two houses at Stoke Ward's and Poulson's but no pot-works as yet existed there. Birth and Education 3 Very little is known of Josiah's childhood. There are, unfortunately, no family letters or of the to refer to and bio- journals period ; graphical material of any description is not to be depended on. There have, indeed, been tra- ditions and surmises printed from time to time, but these are not to be relied upon for accuracy. It was, on the whole, a good thing for Josiah that he was one of a numerous family. On en- tering life he found a little world of boys and girls about him. The child in a large family receives a kind of social education by contact with his brothers and sisters. The little corners of his temperament are rubbed off and smoothed down, as with boys in a public school. If he wishes to pass comfortably through life, he finds that he must give and take, especially when, like Josiah, he has to make his own way in the world. Not much is recorded about his boyhood. He played about the fields and strips of waste ground near the Churchyard Works. There were occasionally pack-horses at the pottery waiting for their loads of ware. As riding was one of his early ambitions, he occasionally be- strode the pack-horses, held on by the willing packmen. The mother had of course plenty to do in " bringing up such a long family." She had to feed, to clothe and maintain them. But she never was found wanting. She was, as we have 4 Josiah Wedgwood said, lively, quick, and sensible, with a soul full of kindness. She was any thing but selfish or hardened by the number of her children. With a heart opened to them all, young as well as old, she proved herself one of the best of mothers. She taught her children the value of industry, for, indeed, the greater part of them had little else to look forward to, together with those good rules of life : integrity, self- help, self-restraint, and perseverance. Little is known about the school education of her youngest son. When able to toddle about, Josiah was sent to a dame's school to learn his ABC. This was at that time the only school in Burslem, and he was sent there more to keep him out of the way of the other children, or perhaps out of mischief, than for any learning he received. The local historian, Simeon Shaw, says that scarcely any person in Burslem learned more than reading and writing until about 1750, when some individuals endowed the free school for instructing young persons to read the Bible, write a fair hand, and know the primary rules of arithmetic. Josiah's early education was thus limited to reading and writing. When seven years old he was sent across the moors to a school at Newcastle-under-Lyme, kept by a Mr. Blunt. The school was about three and a half miles from Burslem, and in fine weather his walks across the fields and Birth and Education 5 commons were joyous and healthful. Among his school-fellows were several who afterward achieved considerable distinction, though none proved so great as that of Wedgwood himself. He remained, however, only a short time at that school. He was taken away at his father's death, which occurred in June, 1739, when Josiah was only nine years old. All that he had learned up to this time were the beginnings of reading, writing, and arithmetic. The rest of his knowledge and learning he accomplished by himself. Like many men of action and en- terprise, like Brindley and Stephen son, he was, for the most part, his own educator. Josiah's father, Thomas Wedgwood, did not leave much money or property behind him. By his will, dated 26th June, 1739, he left to his eldest son, Thomas, the Churchyard Pottery, and all his real estate, with a provision for his wife for her maintenance and "the proper bring- ing up of her younger children." Twenty pounds were to be paid to six of them on their reaching twenty years of age. The eldest daughter, Ann, was omitted, from which it may be inferred that she had done something dis- to her father and pleasing ; he could not forgive her, even in his dying hours. Josiah was included among those who were to receive twenty pounds on their coming of and this the entire age ; was capital on which he began his industrial and artistic career. As 6 Josiah Wedgwood he himself afterward said of his fortunes : "I myself began at the lowest round of the ladder." To recur again to Josiah's early education. Mr. Leslie, afterward Sir John Leslie, pro- fessor of natural philosophy in the University of Edinburgh, was, in the early part of his career, the tutor of Wedgwood's eldest sons. He knew ^much of the history of the proprietor of Etruria, and after his death collected materials for his biography. He says that Wedgwood's early education was confined to the usual routine of a country school, where he learned no language but his own, and that imperfectly. Although deprived of the advantage of a liberal educa- tion, by diligence and perseverance he found his own way to useful knowledge and the right- ful application of it. Mr. Leslie records that Josiah himself attrib- uted much of his success in after life to the opportunity which was given him during a long illness to repair, by reading, the deficiencies of his mental training. His anxiety to accomplish this end as he grew up, and also the urgent way in which he advised his children to gain all the knowledge they could in their early life, show how keenly he felt the disadvantages from which he himself had suffered.