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THE BOYHOOD OF GREAT INVENTORS
[Illustration: THE EDDYSTONE LIGHTHOUSE.
_Frontispiece._]
_The Boyhood of
Great Inventors_
BY
A. FRASER ROBERTSON
AUTHOR OF "EARLY YEARS OF SOME NOBLE LIVES"
NEW EDITION
_LONDON_
JOHN F. SHAW AND CO.
48, PATERNOSTER ROW, E.C.
_UNIFORM WITH THIS VOLUME._
THE BOYHOOD OF GREAT INVENTORS A. FRASER ROBERTSON.
TWILIGHT STORIES CATHARINE SHAW.
FOR LOVE AND DUTY FRANK SAVILLE.
THE BOYS OF ALL SAINTS MABEL MACKINTOSH.
DARING DEEDS FRANK SAVILLE.
MIDSHIPMITE CURLY DR. GORDON STABLES.
THE DOG CRUSOE R. M. BALLANTYNE.
THE SWORD OF THE CAREWS DUNCAN MCLAREN.
THE NUGGET FINDERS H. ALGER.
ROBIN HOOD & HIS BRAVE FORESTERS S. PERCY.
MARTIN RATTLER R. M. BALLANTYNE.
THE KING'S MESSENGER L. MARSTON.
FOUR, AND WHAT THEY DID H. CAMPBELL.
FOR WANT OF A WORD M. MACKINTOSH.
FOR ELSIE'S SAKE J. CHAPPELL.
CURLEY'S CRYSTAL EMMA MARSHALL.
IN SHADOWLAND E. EVERETT-GREEN.
ROB AND MAG L. MARSTON.
THAT BOY TOM ISMAY THORN.
TIM'S TREASURE ALICE LANG.
LITTLE BOOTS J. HARRISON.
CLEMENT AND GEORDIE EMMA MARSHALL.
GOLD THAT GLITTERS E. S. HOLT.
PETER'S PROMISES EMMA MARSHALL.
MOLLIE WYNTER M. MACKINTOSH.
THE SLAVE GIRL OF POMPEII E. S. HOLT.
MISS PRIMROSE AGNES GIBERNE.
MAB'S BURDENS E. BODDY.
BESIDE ALL WATERS M. L. ASTREE.
WATCHING FOR THE KING L. MARSTON.
NAN, THE CIRCUS GIRL FRANCES STRATTON
HOW THE TIDE TURNED S. WATSON.
A BROTHER'S RANSOM ALICE LANG.
LITTLE EYEBRIGHT AGNES GIBERNE.
A LITTLE CURIOSITY EMMA MARSHALL.
MADCAP MARIGOLD MABEL MACKINTOSH.
THE GOLDEN PAVEMENT E. CHAPMAN.
A WAIF OF THE WAVES S. WATSON.
CHRISTOPHER'S NEW HOME EMMA MARSHALL.
HIRA'S QUEST L. MARSTON.
FROGGY'S LITTLE BROTHER BRENDA.
LONDON: JOHN F. SHAW & CO.,
48, PATERNOSTER ROW, E.C.
CONTENTS.
PAGE
JOHN SMEATON 9
JOHN FLAXMAN 30
SIR HUMPHREY DAVY 48
SIR RICHARD ARKWRIGHT 67
JOSIAH WEDGWOOD 83
GEORGE STEPHENSON 102
THOMAS ALVA EDISON 118
JAMES WATT 141
THE BOYHOOD OF GREAT INVENTORS
JOHN SMEATON.
People who have been on a long sea voyage, and have ended by sailing up
the English Channel, tell us how their hearts beat high, after weary
weeks and months at sea, when the cry went up while as yet land was
a mere shadowy outline, "The Eddystone in sight!" For the gleaming
lighthouse standing immovable in the midst of boiling waves and great
mountains of blinding white spray spells "home" to the voyager.
To us the "stone" round which the waters ceaselessly churn and "eddy"
speaks of John Smeaton, the man who built it. The great engineer has
been in his grave now for more than a century, but his most lasting
monument stood for longer than that time firm as a rock.
John Smeaton was born in 1724, near Leeds. Not the Leeds of to-day--a
bustling, smoky centre of manufacture--but a quaint little town hemmed
in by green country fields and lanes. It was in one of these that
Austhorpe Lodge stood, the house of Smeaton's father, a lawyer in Leeds.
We shall yet come across many boyhoods tinged with shadow and struggle,
and are not sorry to find this one happy, fondly tended, and bright with
sunshine. There was no pinch in the lot of the Smeatons, no grinding
poverty that we sometimes find to spur a boy to manhood before his time.
Little John was cradled, as it were, in love. As a child his parents
taught him at home. He was not eager to mix with other boys in outdoor
romp or play, and very early, while yet hardly more than a baby, he
showed a strong love for pulling his toys to pieces to see what they
were made of! Never was he happier than when he could get hold of a
cutting-tool with which to shape toy pumps and houses and windmills.
Another amusement of his babyhood was to divide squares and circles!
As a boy he was rather quiet and thoughtful, though his tongue
straightway loosed the moment anything in the shape of a workman came
to his father's house. He was then always to be found on the spot, and
with eager eyes fixed on their every movement, he would unconsciously
"pose" them with eager questions--such questions as from the boyish
lips made them shake their heads and stare at him dumb and stupid.
And all the time the boyish brain was deeply plotting, and it was ever
that he might "go and do likewise." One day, after watching a millwright
at work, his anxious parents were alarmed by the sight of their boy
perched on the top of the barn fastening a windmill to the roof! At
another time, when a pump was being made in the village, by good luck a
piece of bored lead came in little John's way. He promptly set to work
and made a toy one after the pattern of the big one, and even managed to
make it raise water.
But his greatest childish feat took place on his discovering a
fire-engine being erected at a colliery in the village to pump the water
out of the mine. He was constantly on the spot, eagerly watching it as
it slowly progressed, and quickly his boyish brain grasped the whole.
He went home and began with trembling fingers one day to copy it. His
father had given him an outhouse with bench and tools to carry out his
hobby, and soon the engine worked. He looked round to see what he could
use it upon, and espied the fish-pond. So he began to pump out the water
till he had pumped the whole place dry. When his father came home it was
to find an empty pond, and all his fish lying dead at the bottom!
And now John had to leave his beloved workshop for school in Leeds.
And there it seemed as if the boy showed up quite a different side of
himself. The bright, eager alertness that marked him at home or with the
workmen about Austhorpe was gone. He was quiet with the boys--out of his
element. He did not care for their rough play. He was like a fish out of
water. Silent, shy, even stupid--the boys nicknamed him "Fooley
Smeaton."
But though he might be dull at school, the boy's real education was
surely going on at home among his pumps and model engines, his lathes
and chisels.
The boyish hands had begun to do that which all through life threw over
him a very spell of fascination--_to construct_--to build up. The baby
fingers were learning how to use tools in a way that was to give him
one day, long years after, a skill that would place him on the very
top of the ladder. And all the time the young mind was pondering great
mechanical principles that were by-and-by to make the name of John
Smeaton famed throughout the world. So it was not to games and boyish
play that he gave his spare moments, but to his workshop. When he was
fifteen he could use his turning-lathe to turn wood and ivory. When he
was eighteen he could handle tools as deftly and cleverly as any workman
who all his life had known no other trade.
When he was sixteen he left school and took his place in his father's
office, and tried to bring his mind to look forward to law as his
life-work. He worked conscientiously day after day, coming home at
evening to spend half the night in working--making--constructing things.
He had all the instincts of a born mechanic. It was almost as if he
could not help it.
When his father sent him to London to study law, the boy tried again
to stifle his longings, and to set himself to carry out his father's
wishes. But strive and struggle as he would, it was impossible to crush
the desire of his heart. And so one day he sat down and wrote to his
father that he could go on with law no longer. Nothing except to be a
mechanic would satisfy him. His father, deeply disappointed though he
was, quietly made up his mind to what could not be helped, and wrote to
John that he must make his own choice.
The boy was delighted. He had chosen what was then the work of a common
labourer, with a labourer's wages. The term Civil Engineer was unknown.
With a heart beating high with hope he went off and engaged himself
to a philosophical instrument-maker--a man who made instruments for
navigation and astronomy. With him he worked steadily--eager to improve
the instruments--eager to improve himself--so eager, indeed, that he
divided out his time so as to make the most of it: so much for reading,
so much for experiments, so much for business, and so much for rest and
relaxation.
And so on the threshold of manhood--having got, as it were, "a free
hand"--he made great strides onward. He may not have done much business
at the time, but he read papers before the Royal Society, and he kept
open a keen, mechanical eye for everything--from minute, delicate
instruments to the building of canals and bridges and waterworks. He
thought no trouble too great to take if so it made him thorough. He set
himself to study French and Italian, so as to read the works in these
languages on mechanical subjects, and he even set off to Holland--that
land of dykes and harbours and docks--that he might examine them for
himself.
And while he looked about him, always at the same time busy with the
work that lay nearest to his hand, the great work of his life was
drawing close to his door.
Many years before Smeaton lived, England was in the custom of lighting
up her rocky headlands with lights or beacons. First came "the candle in
the cottage window" to light the sailor husband home, then stacks of
blazing wood, piles of coal, oil, torches, pitch-pots. Guided by these
flaring lights in the darkness, men and vessels plying round our coast
were saved from shipwreck and death. Sometimes these beacons, flaming
high from their pinnacles, warned the people inland that war was
expected, the country was in danger of being invaded, or that pirates
were about to swoop down upon them. At other times _false_ lights were
shown by men known as "wreckers," and homeward-bound vessels, rich in
goods and human souls, were dashed upon the rocks. So our coasts were
lighted up in those old days, but it happened at times that the pitch
would become drenched and drowned, the wood and coal fires would spurt
up for a space and then drop down and fade. Things were uncertain. It
did not matter, perhaps, greatly, as long as England's commerce by sea
was small, but when our trade with foreign lands began to grow, there
grew, too, the question how best to light our rocky coasts and docks and
headlands. So an order of monks--the Brethren of Trinity House--was
made, and these prayed for the safety of the sailors, and later looked
to the lighting of the coast.
Eddystone rock we can easily find on the map, a low, black reef lying
S.S.W. of Plymouth, a place of lurking danger as well for ships cruising
up and down the Channel as for those coming into Plymouth harbour.
In the days of Smeaton, and for some time earlier, the way in which
lighthouses were built was for a private man to go to the owner and say,
"I will build a lighthouse on that rock if you will let me." If his
offer were accepted and he carried out the work he had then the right to
levy dues on the ships that passed, or, in other words, to make them
pay toll. In this way he sometimes collected quite a large income.
Towards the end of the seventeenth century a man called Winstanley
undertook to build a lighthouse on Eddystone. He drew out plans and
started on the work, and it was no light work. The base of the rock was
narrow and sloping. It was hard to make the foundations fast, for winds
and waves had a way of rising suddenly, and the whole of the work would
be drowned for the time, and perhaps many of the materials swept away.
But by dint of waiting patiently for fine weather and smooth water
the building was at last finished. It was made of wood, rather in an
ornamental style, and had many projections. It took four years in the
building, for although in other parts of the Channel the waters might be
smooth enough, yet round the Eddystone they were almost sure to seethe
and foam. For several seasons the building stood.
"I wish," exclaimed the builder one day, elated that his work had turned
out so well, "that I might be here in the fiercest storm, just to see it
stand."
After it had stood some three years from its finish Winstanley went out
one day to see to some repairs. He remained on the rock overnight, and
during the night his wish, though hardly as he would have had it, was
fulfilled. A gale and storm terrific in their fury burst overhead and
broke along the English coast. With the first streak of dawn an anxious
people looked from shore to see how it fared with the lighthouse. Not a
trace of it remained. Not a speck was to be seen on the waters. It and
its maker had been utterly swept away!
Next came a man called Rudyerd, who volunteered to build a lighthouse
that would stand. He pondered the last, and he came to the conclusion
that it had failed in form. He determined to alter that. So he made
a long, high column in the shape of a cone, with no ornaments, no
projections jutting out to catch the wind, and at the end of four years
the thing was finished--a wooden building coated over with oakum and
pitch.
For a time all went seemingly well. It held four rooms, one above the
other. The lantern was lit by candles. Years went on, and still it
stood defying the winds and storms for half a century. There were two
light-keepers, who snuffed the candles overnight, sitting up for four
hours at a time. One of these men fell ill and died. A storm was raging
at the time. No help could come to his companion, and so through a long
month he kept the body, afraid to throw it into the sea, in case he
should be thought a murderer.
At last help came from shore, but the loneliness and horror had told so
terribly upon the remaining man that ever afterwards three men were
employed to keep the light burning, in case of one falling ill or dying.
But in spite of its long standing there was a hidden flaw in the
lighthouse. It was inflammable--capable of catching fire. One day--no
one could quite tell how it happened, it might be the flame had dried
and scorched the timber. At any rate, a man going in to snuff the
candles found that fire had broken out. It wanted but a few minutes till
the place was in flames. The men rushed below, while a perfect rain of
beams and burning lead fell in showers about their heads. Seeing the
blaze from the shore a boat put off with all speed. When it reached the
rock it found the men, not on the rock, but crouching beneath a ledge,
dripping and half dead, and with just enough life in them to enable them
to catch the rope thrown to them, for it was too rough for the boat to
reach the rock. And so they were towed on board.
And now the third attempt at the lighthouse was to be made by John
Smeaton.
"Thou art the man to do it," were the words of the letter asking him to
undertake the work. And so Smeaton was launched on that which was to
make his name famous.
The first step he took was to get and study the plans of the former men.
To succeed he had first to find out where the others had failed.
The first building had failed in weight. The second had not been
fire-proof. And so he decided to make his lighthouse of stone. People
when they heard of it called out that it was a wild project. It could
not be done. "Nothing but wood could possibly stand on the Eddystone."
But Smeaton was in no way moved or cast down. What he made he wanted to
stand, and not to last for a few years merely; and so of stone he
determined it should be.
He began to draw out the design. He kept to the shape of Rudyerd's--the
long cone-like column. He made the diameter of the foundation broader.
He planned the locking and bonding and dovetailing of the stones--each
to each, and all to the centre. When this was all carefully thought and
made out he started from London for Plymouth. He was _six days_ on the
journey owing to the "badness of the roads."
On the 2nd of April he set sail for the rock, but winds and waves beat
so vehemently that he found it impossible to land. All he could do was
to view the low, treacherous black thing on which he was to build his
house of stone. Back he went three days later, and for the first time
he stood on Eddystone, but only for a couple of hours. There was almost
nothing to be seen, only one or two iron branches left from the wrecks
of the former wooden buildings. On the third attempt he made he could
not even see the rock. Spray and foam hid it entirely from view. In
the same way his fourth and fifth visits failed, but his sixth was
successful, and he landed at low water, and in the stillness of the
evening made his first measurements.
"I went on with my business till nine in the evening," he wrote, "having
worked an hour by candlelight."
Again and again he tried to get a landing. Sometimes he managed it, at
others it was impossible. After having spent fifteen hours in all on the
rock he went back to London, and with his own expert hands made a model.
The work took him two months in all, and that proficiency that he had
learned as a boy in his little workshop at Austhorpe stood him in good
stead now. After this he set out for Plymouth again. No detail of his
work was too small for him to attend to himself. He visited the quarries
where the stones were to be hewn. He carefully chose the kind of cement
that was to bind them together; the workmen, the work-yards, the ships
that were to carry the stones to the rock. Each and all passed under his
eye.
It was a great day when, in August, 1756, he and his men started for
Eddystone, and the master fixed the centre and laid down the lines. Now
the work might be said to be fairly begun. But was ever work so often
broken in upon? Winds and waves are not to be counted on--least of all
about the stormy Eddystone, for often though the water is calm and
smooth in other places, it smothers in foam the low black reef.
There were times when the workmen could work as long as six hours at a
stretch, going on eagerly by torchlight if necessary. Again it would
happen they could not work more than two hours out of the twenty-four.
Time was precious, and time was grievously taken up in going to and
from Plymouth, and so Smeaton arranged that a "buss"--a fishing-vessel
with two masts and a cabin at either end--should ride at anchor near the
scene of work, with provisions and other necessaries.
But here, again, it was hard to plan ahead. One day a mighty storm
arose. The men could not work. Their yawl broke from its moorings. They
could neither send to shore, nor could they get help. But they must eat.
Days passed, and gradually their store of provisions grew less and less.
By the time relief reached them they were at their last crust.
During the long months of winter when work was out of the question the
time was spent in dressing the stones in the yard on shore. Smeaton
himself saw them laid out in lines and numbered, after which they were
put in order on board ready to be lifted off when the rock was reached,
and easily put in their places. Dangers and difficulties often crowded
thick on the work, enough to daunt a man less dauntless than Smeaton.
One night on the homeward way a big storm arose.
The night was dark, and Smeaton was roused from sleep by the sound of
much stamping and hurrying to and fro overhead. He rushed on deck in
his nightshirt. The helmsman was holding frantically by a rope.
"For God's sake," he shouted when he saw Smeaton and others, "heave hard
at that rope, if you mean to save your lives."
So Smeaton as well as the others laid hold. In the pitchy darkness there
fell on their horror-struck ears the sound of waves breaking on the
_rocks_. The jibsail was blown to pieces. They hastily lowered the
mainsail. The waves dashed over them. But gradually the ship obeyed the
straining helm and rounded off. In anxious fear they lay out to sea.
When morning broke land was nowhere to be seen, and they found
themselves driving towards the Bay of Biscay. For four long days they
were tossed and driven to and fro before they made Plymouth harbour.
One day Smeaton had an accident, which, however, might have been worse
in its effects. He was taking a turn up and down the narrow strip of
rock that was all that afforded a promenade when his foot slipped and he
fell among the rocks. When he got up he thought himself unhurt till a
stinging pain informed him that he had dislocated his thumb. He was
hours from shore--far from a surgeon. Delay meant disablement. So he
took hold of it with his other hand, pulled hard, and it snapped into
place.
But in spite of danger and difficulty and hindrance the great work
went on, though slowly still surely. By the end of the second year the
building had risen thirty-five feet high--out of reach of the heavy dash
and thud of the waves. Gradually one above another rose the rooms for
the light-keepers--their walls twenty-six inches thick to stand against
the fearful onslaught of the wind as it blew up the Channel from the
Atlantic. For in a gale the place shook and the doors slammed and the
windows rattled with such terrific force that the new and unaccustomed
keepers earnestly wished themselves at Land's End or anywhere else, so
that it meant land.
To say that as it neared the finish it was much in the great builder's
thoughts is to draw but a faint picture of how day and night it lay upon
his heart. How when on land the early morning found him out betimes on
the Hoe, at Plymouth, telescope in hand, gazing out to sea. If a storm
raged and the spray flew high for a moment it seemed to his sinking
heart that it was Winstanley's lighthouse over again and that there was
no Eddystone!
Again his heart leaped in gratitude a moment afterwards when the upright
column--strong, firm, immovable--pointing black and clear against the
sky, came to view, and a deep "Thank God!" would burst from his lips.
And now the months flew by and the great work neared its end. Smeaton
himself chose the last details--the iron railings--the glass for the
lantern. In the upper storeroom directly beneath the ceiling he had the
motto carved--"Except the Lord build the house they labor in vain that
build it." And the mason's last work was a "Laus Deo" in stone.
Towards the end Smeaton could not leave it. With his own hands he
fitted the windows in their sashes--fixed the gilt ball on the top--no
easy matter--but he had ever filled the post of danger himself. He
asked no one to put himself where he was not willing too to go. Expert
as any skilled mechanic, he himself gave his great work its finishing
touches. Twenty-four candles in a chandelier formed the light. The
lightning-conductor was fixed--the rooms finished. The magnificent
column towered to seventy feet, the lantern and gilt ball twenty-eight
inches higher, and on October 16th, 1759, the work was done.
Three years later a mighty storm broke along the coast, wrecking docks
and ships and harbours, but the Eddystone stood firm.
And now Smeaton's name was made. Other feats followed. Other triumphs
awaited him--the building of docks and harbours and bridges--but the
thing that men will ever link with his name is the Eddystone. After the
stress and struggle of public life, he went back again to the old home
of his boyhood. He gathered again about him his workshop, his study, his
observatory. And so he worked to the end. He could not help it. He could
not live without his tools.
Great man though he was, his wants were very few and simple. Offers of
riches and magnificence had no power to tempt him, and when he refused a
post abroad which meant wealth and position, the Russian Princess who
offered it exclaimed, in wondering admiration--
"I shall go back to Russia and tell them there is one man who has _not_
his price."
He was happiest in the quiet of his own home. As a boy he had been
rather retiring and thoughtful. As a man he was found the same. Simple,
modest, while he would converse easily on other subjects, it was hardly
possible to get him to talk of self. In this, as well as in his
life-work, "he was indeed a very great man."
He had had a long life of work--hard, incessant toil--from six to sixty,
though it had been work that he had loved. It may be he had overtaxed
his strength, for as age crept on he grew less robust. In his
sixty-eighth year he had a slight stroke. He feared a gradually clouding
brain. "The shadow must lengthen as the sun goes down," he said to
himself. But this distress was spared those dear to him, and with not
much suffering, on the 28th October, 1792, he passed away. They buried
him in the old church of Whitkirk, and raised a tablet to his memory,
naming in it that great work of his that will "convey to distant ages,
as it does to every nation of the globe, the name of its constructor."
The world looks still upon John Smeaton as a wonderful engineer--a great
mechanic--a man who climbed to the top of his profession, and the sound
of whose fame spread over Europe; but he will ever be best remembered by
the light of the Eddystone, that memorial monument that stood firm for
more than a century, sometimes hid in blinding spray, anon gleaming out
clear and steady, a rescuer from shipwreck and death.
Till 1877 storms continued to beat upon it without avail. Then, owing to
the undermining of a portion of the reef, it was thought well to build a
new house on another part of the rock. The old base still stands on the
old place, and the upper rooms have been put on the Hoe at Plymouth.
These are, after all, the best monuments we could have of the builder.
Welded into the stones, it seems to us we can trace, not alone genius
and great mechanical power, but a patience in difficulty, a courage in
danger, and in face of long, wearing months of anxiety. It is these,
perhaps, more than all else, for which we honour the name of Smeaton.
JOHN FLAXMAN
Had we passed along one of the poorer streets of the city of London some
150 years ago, we might have chanced on a humble shop displaying in the
window plaster-casts and figures in clay, and had we lifted the latch
and entered, in the cramped space behind the counter we should have
found the child who was one day to become England's greatest sculptor,
John Flaxman.
A ricketty, weakly baby in a high stuffed child's chair, so that his
little pale face might be on a level with the counter; the sweet dreamy
eyes looked out on the world, all unthinking that a day was coming when
the fame of his name would reach wherever men knew and loved his art.
Born in the city of York in 1755, a few months before the Flaxmans
settled in London, there were times when his father and mother hardly
believed they would be able to "rear" the delicate child. Attacks of
illness and weakness were common to him. Indeed, one day he was seized
with a fit of gasping so severe that the breath seemed to leave his
body, and they even laid him out for dead, but he revived, and his
breath came again, and by-and-by he even grew. Few amusements, no
childish games were open to the little cripple. The green fields, the
blue of the country skies were to him things unknown. The dingy four
walls of the narrow cramped shop had to serve him instead. But day by
day he grew quick to note the familiar beauty of his father's casts. He
came to see the shape of these white things with the eye of the poet and
the artist. There came into his mind the strong desire to copy, inborn
in most children, and the baby fingers set to work to mould, and
fashion, and make some likeness--if even a dim one--to those of his
father's models. In these old days gentlemen were accustomed to wear
bunches of seals dangling from their watch-chains, and the child used to
keep a stock of wax, and when he thought a customer seemed kind, he
would summon courage to ask him to let him take the impression on the
soft wax.
In little John's early years, when he was as yet a baby of five, a great
ceremony took place in London, the coronation of King George III.
Rumour went that to celebrate the great event there was to be a
coronation medal struck, and that hundreds of these were to be thrown to
the crowd. The cripple child in the dingy side street of the great city
set his little heart on possessing one of these treasures, and begged
his father to get him one. But Flaxman was not successful. On the way
home, with his mind full of his disappointment, his eye happened to
light on a plated button on the pavement, stamped with a horse and
jockey. He picked it up. Would he disappoint his little son, or deceive
him? He decided on deceiving him, and gave the eager and expectant child
the button. The boy received the trophy in wonderment. He was glad to
get it, but he remarked that it seemed a strange medal for a coronation!
Customers who came to Flaxman's house could hardly help noticing the
child who sat behind the counter, the big head on the lame body, the
high shoulders, the beautiful pure eyes, the sensitive, proud face. They
spoke to him, and they found him no common child.
One day, by good luck, when little John was hardly more than seven, a
customer, a Mr. Matthew, a clergyman, came to Flaxman's shop. Writing
of that visit, when it had become a memory and the child a great man,
Mr. Matthew says--
"I went to the shop of old Flaxman to have a figure repaired, and whilst
I was standing there I heard a child cough behind the counter. I looked
over, and there I saw a little boy seated on a small chair, with a large
chair before him, on which lay a book he was reading. His fine eyes and
beautiful forehead interested me, and I said, 'What book is that?' He
raised himself on his crutches, bowed, and said, 'Sir, it is a Latin
book, and I am trying to learn it.'
"'Aye, indeed!' I answered. 'You are a fine boy, but this is not the
proper book. I will bring you a right one to-morrow.'
"I did as I promised, and the acquaintance thus casually begun ripened
into one of the best friendships of my life."
It is a picture! The child of seven trying patiently to make out his
Latin book--his weakly frame on one chair, the unwieldy volume spread
out before him on another. The beautiful eyes and brow, the winning
smile, and the long, brown hair curling to the shoulders.
But the wheel of his fortune seemed as if it had got a turn. Mr.
Matthew was as good as his word, and brought him the promised book, and
more followed. Translations of old Greek fables and stories from Homer
that stirred the imagination of the boy. Then followed the fascinating
adventures of Don Quixote. These fired his brain. How great and how
heroic it seemed to him to rescue maidens in distress, to set the
wrongs of the world right. So strong a hold did the thought take of the
imagination of the child that one day, hobbling on his little crutches,
he started off for Hyde Park in the hope that he might perchance find
some forlorn maiden in need of his protection! But no old-world lady of
the kind did he happen on among the thousands of teeming London--either
in the Park or Kensington Gardens--and he had to come home cast down and
disappointed.
Meantime he strove and worked and laboured in his own childish way--with
perhaps no great present results--receiving now and then even a check
from which the sensitive mind recoiled, as when one day he showed an
artist a drawing of a human eye, to be met with the quizzical question,
"Is that an oyster?" Perhaps more secretly after that, but still as
perseveringly as ever, he worked.
Long years after, a friend gazing on these early works was struck with
proofs of his diligence as a child, and asked him how he had managed to
do them.
"Sir," Flaxman answered, "we are never too young to learn what is
useful, or too old to grow wise and good."
When he was about ten years old a better gift than any fortune could
bestow was granted to him. The feebleness of childhood seemed to leave
him. The sickly frame seemed suddenly to knit itself together. The
weakly limbs gradually strengthened, and the boy was able to throw away
his crutches.
No need now to sit solitary in the cramped little shop behind the
counter, dreaming lonely day-dreams and fashioning his models all by
himself. With new strength a new life was opening up to him--or rather
the old life grew day by day transformed and beautified.
It was Mrs. Matthew, the wife of his friend the clergyman, who first
drew the boy from his life of loneliness. She was touched and interested
in him, and she asked him to her house. He went and he went again.
He met there men who fired his smouldering longing one day to be a
sculptor--to do some great thing in the world of art. Mrs. Matthew
had many friends among such. At other times he spent evenings not
less delightful when she herself read aloud from Virgil and Homer
soul-stirring tales of ancient heroes--and the boy sat by drinking in
the poetry while he tried with eager, untaught fingers to draw some of
the passages that took his fancy. Again she would lay aside her book and
talk to him of the wonders of sculpture, while there sprang up in his
heart a great longing amounting almost to a passion.
No wonder these were golden hours, full of pleasure to young John, and
looked back upon many a time in after years as among the happiest times
of his life.
A gentleman, seeing some of these boyish attempts, gave the boy an order
for a set of drawings, and by and by more orders followed.
When he was eleven years old he left the privacy and quiet of the little
side eddy of the stream of life in which he had been living and struck
out, as it were, into the mid-stream. That year he won a prize from the
Society of Arts for models of figures in clay. Two years later he was
again successful. What we know as the Royal Academy then first came into
being, and when it was in its second year, and when Flaxman was only
fifteen years old, he exhibited models there. Step by step, small steps
at first, he was entering on the beginning of that which for long had
been the desire of his heart. In the same year he entered as an Academy
student, and won the silver medal. People already were beginning to
acknowledge his outstanding ability. Rewards, prizes came upon him one
by one. The boy's outlook was beginning to be very bright, and his heart
was beginning to beat high with hope, when just as he had reached the
age of sixteen he got an unexpected check.
He made up his mind to try for the gold medal--the highest reward of
merit--and among all the students he was generally allowed to have the
best chance. Hardly a fellow-student but felt sure that he would get
it. "Flaxman! Flaxman!" they cried almost unanimously, for they were
strongly impressed with the skill and ability of the grave, reserved
boy. Speaking of this time in later years Flaxman said--
"I had made up my mind that I was to win.... It was given by Reynolds to
Engleheart. I burst into tears. This sharp lesson humbled my conceit,
and I determined to redouble my exertions...."
May he perhaps have over-estimated his own skill? Years after he said of
himself--
"I was the most conceited artist of the day." And yet where another
might have been downcast he refused to be discouraged. He was upheld
by a strong and silent sense of power within him. He went home to his
father, and he said, "Give me time, and I will yet produce works which
the Academy will be proud to acknowledge."
Engleheart, the winner of the medal, was never heard of in later life,
while the loser made for himself a name that afterwards "waxed wide."
Now he worked harder than ever. He studied, he exhibited, he moulded, he
designed the figure for a statue of Alexander the Great, which brought
him some fame. But his father could not keep him, and he was driven
to look about and bethink himself how he could keep himself. At this
time--the most needy, perhaps, of his life--a door seemed to open to
him. He fell in with the great Staffordshire potter, Josiah Wedgwood,
and Wedgwood, with that keen eye of his ever on the outlook to discover
talent, instantly recognised it in the boy.
A great time was beginning for pottery. For ages hideous things had
adorned people's houses and tables till Wedgwood arose, and there
entered his great mind the idea of making common things beautiful, of
giving people something to look at, even at their meals, that would
raise their tastes and be a sort of education. After Wedgwood discovered
young Flaxman he gave him some orders. The boy threw his whole soul into
the work. Not that it was such work as always showed the artist at his
best. The sculptor had first to make the model in wax. Then a mould was
taken of this, and into this the potter's stuff, soft as dough, was
carefully pressed. The thing was not finished yet. It remained for it
still to be fired and polished, and so it is not wonderful if some of
the delicacy and finish of the first design may have been occasionally
lost.
But with Flaxman's work Wedgwood was satisfied, and while he worked hard
for him he paid him handsomely. It was not the sort of thing to bring
him name and fame, but there was always the need to live to be faced,
and he bravely took what offered and was thankful. And by living simply
and saving where he could, he managed to keep himself by what he made.
He faced this time of drudgery quietly and patiently, bringing to bear
upon its hardships something of that serene spirit that belonged to him
all through life.
He gave to Wedgwood, as far as in him lay, of his best. Models of the
four seasons, models of the ancient gods and goddesses--those deities
whose stories were familiar to him from his childhood, Juno, Jupiter,
Minerva, Apollo--models of vases. And besides these, chimney-pieces,
plaques, candlesticks, inkstands, anything and everything, for Wedgwood
held that a common teapot or a jug might be still a thing of beauty. For
the models of the ancient gods he would get perhaps 10_s._ each, and for
a pair of vases as much as L3 3_s._
Some of these were so exquisitely done that Wedgwood said more than
once, "It really hurts me to think of parting with these gems."
Long years afterwards, when he had reached the top of the tree, Flaxman
used to find endless pleasure in talking of these humble labours.
And all this time he was leading a very quiet life. That strong thirst
for knowledge that had always been his, spurred him on to learn all
he could. So during the day he worked at casts and models, and in
the evenings he sketched or turned to his beloved poets. Either he
preferred the old Greek poets' company to that of living friends, or
it might be that the slight deformity that was his through life--the
high shoulders, the sidling gait--left him shy and sensitive, and in
a measure inclined to creep into his shell.
Looking over the huge portfolio of Flaxman's drawings that one can
still see to-day, it is easy to discover where he went for most of his
subjects. The poets came in for their share, and also history and
portraits, but his great delight was to produce scenes from the Bible
and the _Pilgrim's Progress_, "The Marys at the Sepulchre," "The Flight
into Egypt," "The Angels round the Cradle of Christ."
But although he was getting to be known among men of talent he was still
poor and struggling. It is proof enough of this for us to read how at
this time he made his busts half life-size and of clay, whereas had he
been rich they would surely have been full-size and of marble. About
this time he began to talk of what had been with him till now a secret
longing. It was to see Rome. The desire had been long growing in his
heart. To Rome sculptors and painters flock, for it is the great city of
sculpture and painting, and to a sculptor it is as if his education were
unfinished, so long as his eyes have not feasted on those beautiful
examples of art.
"If I remain here," he said sadly, "I shall be accused of ignorance
concerning those noble works of art which are to the sculptor what
learning is to a man of genius."
About this time he took what seemed a foolish step, looking alone to the
progress of his art. He married. Sir Joshua, the President of the Royal
Academy, who had _not_ given him the gold medal, met him in the street
one day and stopped him. "Ha! Flaxman," he said, "I have heard that you
have married. I tell you you are ruined for an artist. You cannot now go
to Rome to study the great sculptors of antiquity."
Young Flaxman went home downcast. Not to go to Rome! Not to realise his
boyhood's golden dreams and his life's ambition!
He told his wife what had happened. She met him with the brave reply,
"You will e'en go to Rome and I will accompany you. We must work and
economise."
And now for the next five weary years this brave young couple put
their shoulders to the wheel. She kept house and he worked--harder
than ever--for Wedgwood chiefly--toiling for long hours, but upheld
all the time by the thought of the goal to which he was straining.
That journey to Rome!--the very thought of it made all hardship easy.
He turned out much beautiful work for Wedgwood at this time. Groups of
children--romping, skipping, playing "blind man's buff."
Nothing that meant making money came amiss to him. He even collected
what was known as "watch rates" for the parish of St. Anne's, and might
have been seen going about with an ink-bottle in his buttonhole.
Often the desires of our heart tarry long in coming to us. This was
among the times of hardest work and trial in all Flaxman's life, and he
came out of it well. At the end of the five years the needed money was
collected!
And now, while the great event of his life was drawing near, his boyhood
had left him, and he was entering on the work of the man. Already he had
gained some fame in London. The newspapers took notice of his going.
"We understand that Flaxman the sculptor is about to leave his modest
mansion in Wardour Street for Rome."
And now a very feast of delight awaited him. With his arrival in Rome,
what wonders opened to his view, what grandeur and sublimity in the
examples of ancient art! What skill and magnificence and luxuriance he
saw in the churches, what wealth of creation on their walls and windows
and cupolas, what sculpture, what painting! It was as if an enchanted
world had suddenly spread itself out before his eyes.
Gradually it came to be known that Flaxman had arrived, and there
gathered about him men of taste and culture--rich men many of them--men
of position. But the great sculptor's ways were just the simple ones of
old. He was not easily affected by the great of the world. He was
always his manly simple self to rich and poor alike. He adopted no more
luxurious ways of living with his days of prosperity. He prized money
little, just as a something in exchange for which he could get food and
clothing, or with which he might help the poor and suffering. The fine
character of the boy seemed to have expanded into fuller beauty in the
man.
After his stay in Rome he returned to London, his spirit, one could
imagine, bathed in a very inspiration from all he had seen and heard. He
came back to his native land with a name made, and quietly set about
getting a house, a studio, assistants, workmen, models.
He executed a statue of Lord Mansfield, for which he was paid L2,500.
Prices were indeed altered from the old days, in which he counted
himself well paid with ten shillings for the model of a goddess!
"This little man cuts us all out," said one generous sculptor to
another, willing to acknowledge Flaxman's great superiority. Honours now
flowed in upon him. He was made an Associate of the Royal Academy. He
was given the Professorship of the Chair of Sculpture. At his first
lecture he was enthusiastically cheered. He had climbed to the highest
height of his art. It almost seemed as if no honour remained to be
bestowed. He was surrounded by fame and applause, but he was in no wise
uplifted. So the years went on in the delight of the work he loved.
But, unexpectedly and all unknown to his friends, his life was drawing
to a close. In the winter of 1826 he caught a cold, seeming for a time
to be slightly, though not seriously, ailing. In the beginning of
December he grew much worse, but he would not go to bed.
"When I lie I cannot breathe," he said. So, sitting up to the end, and
with scarce a struggle, he passed away on the 7th of December.
They buried him quietly in the churchyard of St. Giles-in-the-Fields.
There was no great publicity, no large concourse of people. Just a few
friends, a few artists--the greatest--were there, men who in tremulous,
hushed voices said to each other they "had lost something greater and
dearer than they should see again."
Turning from the ending of his life, we cannot but feel that we are
turning from the record of a man who has lived it well.
An enthusiastic admirer has said, "He was a remarkable mixture of
simplicity and genius--were you to try any other ingredients you would
scarcely form so glorious a creature." And we hardly think he was far
wrong.
We can see very clearly the fine simplicity of his nature in his
treatment of his workmen. They were to him rather friends than servants.
They in their turn repaid him with a warm and devoted affection, calling
him "the best master God ever made."
To the end, as well in time of difficulty and of toil as in time of
triumph, the man retained very much those qualities that had drawn out
people's love for him in boyhood, the kindly word from the customer in
the shop behind the counter. The world offered him of its best, as it
has a way of doing to those who do well for themselves, but it had
no power to draw him from his work and the simplicity of his simple
home-life. It was only and always to that which is highest and best that
he gave of his genius. That noble mind of his could stoop to nothing
less. In churches all over England are to be found beautiful creations
of his. In him were at once goodness and genius linked together.
"If ever purity visited this earth," someone has said, "it remained with
Flaxman."
SIR HUMPHREY DAVY.
Amid the wild beautiful scenery of Cornwall, where the waters of the
Atlantic wash our English shores, was born in the winter of 1778 the
greatest chemist England has ever seen. We read in our childish
geography books that for being the birthplace of Humphrey Davy the town
of Penzance has for long been famous, for the coming into the world of
that man whose name is perhaps best known for the invention of the
Miners' Safety Lamp, that has lit the darkness of our coal mines and
saved hundreds of human lives.
Humphrey was the son of a wood-carver, a man not high up in the world,
but we find him free enough from the straits of poverty that have often
been the cradle of genius, though, indeed, a cradle out of which genius
has had a way of growing to sturdy stalwart manhood. The child from the
outset entered on life with eagerness and enthusiasm, seeming to take
a firm, earnest grip, as it were, even from babyhood. It was this same
vigour of mind that spurred him on all through--in boyhood and manhood
alike--that made him face difficulty with such a brave, dauntless
spirit, and overcome obstacles with never a thought of letting them
overcome him.
He was quick, energetic, and alert, even as a child. When hardly more
than five years old his mother often noticed him with baby fingers
rapidly turning the pages of some book as if he were counting their
number or glancing at the pictures. To her no small astonishment on
questioning him, she found the lisping baby lips could repeat the story.
It was the same through life. Long years after, when he was a great
chemist, making wonderful experiments in his laboratory, he had no
patience with slowness. He would keep several experiments going at
the same time, attending first to one, then to another. If the exact
instrument he wanted were not at hand, he would recklessly break or
alter another to suit his purpose. His impetuous spirit could never
brook delay. With him quickness meant power, and while quick he was also
sure.
As a child he specially loved the _Pilgrim's Progress_. The charm of its
word-pictures, its characters fired his quick imagination. And history
too, especially the history of his own country. These two, it may be,
inspired him very early to a love of romance and story, and among the
boys at school in Penzance he was not slow to gain the reputation of
story-teller. Some were tales of fun, others tales of thrilling wonder
and terror, but all flowed easily from the boy's lips and held his
listeners enthralled.