Directoire that he should endeavour to obtain the secret of the
machines by which the British manufacturer bade defiance to his
continental rivals. The French Government promised him their support,
and he came to Manchester for the purpose of getting the necessary
information. This was in 1798, and he was aided by François de Pauw,
one of his relations. At Manchester he made the acquaintance of an
overseer, Mr. James Kenyon, and his daughter Mary. Whilst talking
business with the father he appears to have talked of other matters to
the girl, who eventually became his wife. The various parts of the
machine, which in Belgium came to be called the “mull jenny,” were
secreted in casks of sugar and in bags of coffee, and shipped to
Hamburg. The statement that he intended to add dealings in colonial
produce to his tanning operations was a sufficient explanation of this
novel step on his part. Some of the packages were to be sent from
Gravesend, and from this port Bauwens intended himself to depart, along
with a number of workmen whom he had engaged. An overseer named Harding
had a wife who strongly objected to the departure of her husband, and
she made a scene, in which the destination and intentions of the party
were made known. The police thus came to a knowledge of the conspiracy,
and the men were arrested. Bauwens managed to escape in the crowd, and
hastening quickly to London, he took passage to Hamburg, where part of
the precious packages and the workmen who had been sent on before
awaited him. Here he had a narrow escape, for Sir James Crawford, the
British Envoy, endeavoured to have him imprisoned. The export of
machinery and workmen was then a criminal offence, and the conspirators
who had fallen into the hands of the authorities were brought before
the Court of King’s Bench and convicted. The contemporary accounts of
the affair in the English periodicals are very meagre, and the French
accounts have an air of exaggeration. Thus we are told that Bauwens
was, in his absence, condemned to death, and _faute de mieux_ hung in
effigy. Whatever his sentence may have been, it was powerless to hinder
his success. He established spinning factories at Ghent, and still
larger establishments at Paris, where he converted a convent of
Bonshommes, at Passy, into a cotton spinning mill. He had a tannery at
St. Cloud; he bought from the French Government the ingots made from
the silver taken in the dissolved monasteries, and sold them at
considerable profit to the Bank of Amsterdam.
Napoleon, when he came to power, had a good opinion of Bauwens; he
visited the great works both at Paris and at Ghent, and after his
inspection of the last-named place, he sent 4,000 francs to be
distributed in presents to the workpeople. Bauwens started a new
spinning mill at Tronchiennes, and was the first in Belgium to employ
steam power. The flying shuttle was also used by him, and he made
essays in cotton printing, in carding, and, indeed, appears to have
been always on the alert for every possible improvement of the
industrial processes in which he was engaged. He took an active part in
local affairs, and was _Maire_ of Ghent and member of the Council of
the Department. In 1805, the town of Ghent presented him with a gold
medal at a banquet, where the services of Bauwens in the creation of
fresh industries was gratefully acknowledged. The French Institute, in
a report on the progress of industry, gave to Bauwens the credit of
having naturalised the English machines in France. Napoleon, who was in
Ghent in 1810, offered him the title of Comte. This he declined, but
accepted the Cross of the Legion of Honour. His great works, and that
at Ghent, are said to have given employment to 3,000 people, were open
to visitors, and he freely gave advice to those who were engaging in
the cotton trade. His own profits were very large, and he showed great
liberality in the treatment of his workpeople, and in the uses he made
of his riches. But this princely opulence was not without check. The
coalition of the great powers against Napoleon, in 1814, resulted in
disaster to French industry, and Bauwens was one of the victims. A
forced sale of the factories turned out very unfavourably, and Bauwens
was ruined.
When the kingdom of the Netherlands was formed, Bauwens sought the
patronage of William I., but in vain. A proposal to establish cotton
spinning on the banks of the Guadalquivir, which he made to the Infanta
of Spain, was equally unsuccessful. In these circumstances he attempted
the creation of a new industry, and began at Paris a process for the
treatment of waste silk. This was in 1819, and his partner, the Baron
Idelot de la Ferté, allowed him an annual salary of 5,000 francs and a
share of the profits. The patent taken out in November, 1821, for the
preparation and treatment of silk floss, might possibly have restored
the fallen fortunes of Liévin Bauwens, but he died of the rupture of an
aneurysm on the 17th of March, 1822. His widow, the former Mary Kenyon,
of Manchester, after burying him in Père-la-Chaise, returned to
Belgium, and died at St. Bernard in 1834. Five years later the two sons
of the manufacturer received the royal licence to use their father’s
Christian and surname as a patronymic. Liévin was himself the eldest of
a family of twelve. By his marriage with Mary Kenyon he had two sons
and a daughter—Napoléon, born at Tronchiennes in 1805, who died at
Paris in 1869; Félix, born at Tronchiennes in 1806, who died in London;
and Elvina Marie Bernardine, born at Tronchiennes in 1809, who married
M. Louis Rysheuvels, of Antwerp.
Ghent has not forgotten the memory of the man who laid the foundations
of a vast industry, and who united to commercial enterprise public
spirit and private generosity. One of her open squares is named in
honour of Liévin Bauwens, and there his statute stands to witness that
peace has her victories no less than war. Such is one of the many
romantic episodes connected with the history of the industrial
development of Manchester.
Footnote 8:
The story of the life of Bauwens is told in “Un Précurseur de Richard
Lenior,” par A. Boghaert-Vaché (Mulhouse, 1886).
Merry Andrew of Manchester.
In that strange old joke-book, “Pasquil’s Jests and Mother Bunches
Merriments,” there is a story in which a “local habitation” is given to
a name suggestive of grotesque amusement. Whether the Mancunian Merry
Andrew was the first of his tribe may be doubted, but as the book was
printed in 1604, he is somewhat of a patriarch in the race. The story
is entitled, “How merry Andrew of Manchester serued an Vsurer,” and
runs thus:—“Merry Andrew of Manchester, who is well knowne, meeting
with three or foure of his companions on a Sunday, presently hee bade
them home to dinner, yet hee neyther had meate nor money in his house.
Well, but to his shifts he goeth, and went into an olde Usurer’s
kitchen, where he was very familiar, and priuily, under his gowne, he
brought away the pot of meate that was sodden for the old miser’s
dinner. When he came home, hee put out the meat, and made his boy
scoure the pot, and sent him with it to the Usurer, to borrow two
groats on it, and bade the boy take a bill of his hand: which the boy
did, and with the money bought beere and bread for their dinner. When
the Usurer should goe to dinner, his meat was gone; wherefore he all to
beat his mayd, calling her whoore. She sayd ‘There came nobody but
Andrew there all that day.’ Then they asked him; and he sayd, hee had
none. But at last they sayd, that he and no body else had the pot. ‘By
my fayth,’ quoth Andrew, ‘I borrowed such a pot on a time, but I sent
it home agayne;’ and so called his witnesse, and sayd: ‘It is perilous
to deal with men now adayes without writing; they would lay theft to my
charge, if I had not his owne hand to showe;’ and so he shewes the
Usurers bill, whereat the Usurer storms, and all the rest fell a
laughing.”
There is another anecdote of this ancient droll, but it is too
indecorous to be repeated. The story quoted occurs also, as Mr. Collier
states, in the _Facetie, Motti e Burle_ (Venet. 1565) of Domenichi
(Bibliographical Account, ii., 124).
A Manchester Jeanie Deans.
“There is none,
In all this cold and hollow world, no fount
Of deep strong, deathless love, save that within
A mother’s heart.”
—MRS. HEMANS, _Siege of Valencia_.
About the beginning of the present century there was resident in the
neighbourhood of Portland Street, Manchester, an elderly Irishwoman,
whose violent temper made her the terror of the neighbourhood. The only
person of whom she stood in awe was the Roman Catholic priest, Father
Rowland Broomhead. She had a tender side to her character, however, and
her son, a wild youth, having committed an offence, which in the then
barbarous state of the criminal law made liable to be hanged, she
undertook a journey to London; walked the entire distance on foot,
braved every difficulty, and by her perseverance gained access to Queen
Charlotte, to whose motherly feelings she made a strong appeal, and
received a promise that the life of her boy should be spared. He was
tried, found guilty, and sentenced to death, but in accordance with the
royal promise he was not hanged, but transported. This was told me by
one who in her youth had known the irascible but true-hearted
Irishwoman.
Some Lancashire Giants.
Like other parts of Old England, the County Palatine has been
distinguished by great men, physically as well as mentally. We begin
with traditions of the former existence of a race of the sons of Anak.
Thus at Heathwaite, in North Furness, two stone-circles are known as
“The Giants’ Graves.” A tradition has of course been fitted to the
name, and it asserts that the last of these Lancashire Anaks was shot
by an arrow on the hill of Blawithknott.
At Manchester the fame of the giant Tarquin, who held a castle on the
ford of the Medlock, was long preserved. His legendary overthrow by Sir
Lancelot du Lake is recorded by Hollinworth, and has since been turned
into verse by one of our local poets. The Rev. John Whitaker, the
learned historian of Manchester, discusses the matter with becoming
gravity, and is quite inclined to believe in the reality of the
gigantic knight and the stalwart courage of Arthur’s hero by whom he
was overthrown. In the audit-room of Chetham’s Hospital there is a
grotesque boss representing Saturn devouring his children, but the
juvenile guides used to describe it as a portrait of Sir Tarquin
enjoying his favourite breakfast of a plump Manchester baby.
The tombstone in the east cloister of Westminster, which had on it the
name of Gervasius de Blois, but was thought by Dean Stanley to cover
the remains of Abbot Byrcheston and twenty-six monks who died of the
black death in 1349, was at one time known as “Long Meg,” and was said
to be the gravestone of “Long Meg of Westminster.” Long Meg of
Westminster was a Lancashire lass, who, according to the story-book,
came up to London with other country wenches by the carrier’s waggon to
seek service, and she began her Metropolitan career by drubbing the
carrier for charging ten shillings each for the ride to the great city.
“The Life of Long Meg of Westminster,” printed in 1635, contains many
particulars, but it has no good claims to authenticity. “Dr. Skelton”
is represented as the object of her affections, and many curious
anecdotes are told of her prowess, and of the emphatic manner in which
she quelled the disturbances in the Eagle, in Westminster, where she
was servitor. She volunteered for service when Henry VIII. went to
Boulogne, in place of a man who had been impressed, and there behaved
so stoutly as to win a pension. But though an Amazon abroad she was an
obedient wife, and declined a bout at quarter-staff with her husband.
“Never shall it be said, though I can swindge a knave that wrongs me,
that Long Meg shall be her husband’s master; and therefore use me as
you please.” As all persons have their detractors, so this “Lancashire
lass” is said to have kept at Southwark for many years “a famous
infamous house of open hospitality.” Those who desire to know how the
Lancashire lass overcame the vicar and bailiff of Westminster, how she
overthrew a Spanish knight, fought with thieves, beat the French at
Boulogne, and performed many other Amazonian exploits, may consult the
“Life of Long Meg,” which has been reprinted in the present century. A
ballad about her was licensed in 1594, and in 1618 a play upon her
exploits was a favourite at the Fortune Theatre. Ben Jonson describes
her:—
“Or Westminster Meg,
With her long leg,
As long as a crane;
And feet like a plane,
With a pair of heels
As broad as two wheels.”
Amongst the proverbs cited by quaint old Fuller is one current in the
seventeenth century—“As long as Meg of Westminster.”
The most famous of the Lancashire giants is the “Childe of Hale,” who
was taken to Court in 1620 and presented to James I. His patron was Sir
Gilbert Ireland, who “with some of the neighbouring Lancashire gentry
dizened him off with large ruffs about his neck and hands; a striped
doublet of crimson and white, round his waist, a blue girdle
embroidered with gold; large white plush breeches, powdered with blue
flowers; green stockings; broad shoes of a light colour, having high
red heels and tied with large bows of red ribbon; and just below his
knees were bandages of the same colour, with large bows, and by his
side a sword, suspended by a broad belt over his shoulder, and
embroidered, as his girdle, with blue and gold, with the addition of a
gold fringe upon the edge. We are traditionally informed that his
amazing size at the time frightened away some thieves who came to rob
his mother’s house.” In this costume he is said to have struggled with
the King’s wrestler, whose thumb he put out. This displeased some of
the courtiers, and hence the King dismissed him with a present of £20.
He returned home by Brasenose College, Oxford, which was then full of
Lancashire students. Here, as we learn from Harland, his portrait was
taken of full life-size, and is now to be seen in the College library.
There is another likeness of him preserved at High Leigh; and an
original painting of the “Chylde” is kept in the gallery at Hale Hall,
bearing the following inscription:—“This is the true portraiture of
John Middleton, the ‘Chylde of Hale,’ who was born at Hale, 1578, and
was buried at Hale, 1623.” About eighty years ago the body is said to
have been taken up, and the principal bones were for some time
preserved at Hale Hall. The thigh bone, it is gravely stated, reached
from the hip of a common man to his feet, and the rest measured in
proportion. After some time the bones were reburied in the churchyard,
but whereabouts is not known. He could only stand upright in the centre
of the cottage in which he resided; and tradition states that he
attained his wonderful stature in one night, in consequence of some
spells and incantations that were practised against him. The Rev.
William Stewart, in his “Memorials of Hale,” printed in 1848, says that
“the cottage is now inhabited by Mr. Thomas Johnson, and is situated
near the south-west corner of the Parsonage Green. A descendant of his
family, Charles Chadwick, was living in 1804, and was more than six
feet high.” There is every appearance of gross exaggeration in the
accounts of the wonderful “childe.”
William Hone has given a portrait in the “Every-day Book” of the
“Manchester gigantic boy,” exhibited at Bartholomew Fair, who was
fourteen years old and stood 5 feet 2 inches, measured 5 feet round the
body, 27 inches across the shoulders, 20 inches round the arm, 24
inches round the calf, 31 inches round the thigh, and weighed 22 stone.
Hone gives his name as Whitehead, but William Wilkinson Westhead
appears to be his correct designation. He was christened in the
Collegiate Church 12th October, 1810, but is said to have been born in
Glasgow. Murphy, the Irish giant, who stood seven feet and a half, and
who died of small-pox at Marseilles in the 26th year of his age, is
said to have begun life as a dock labourer at Liverpool.
At the other extremity may be mentioned Boardman, the Bolton dwarf, who
claimed to be thirty-four years old, and to be only 38 inches in
height. The showman claims to have received the patronage of the Royal
Family at Ascot in 1819. Doubtless further inquiry would greatly add to
these scattered notes of the Lancashire Anakim.
A Note on William Rowlinson.
A scrapbook made by William Rowlinson, first exhibited at a meeting of
the Manchester Literary Club, and then liberally presented by Mr.
Charles Roeder to the Manchester Free Library, is an interesting relic,
and may justify a note on this now forgotten but promising young poet.
It contains many newspaper cuttings, the earliest pages being devoted
to his own compositions, and the remainder consisting of miscellaneous
matter, chiefly poetical, that had attracted his attention.
William Rowlinson was born in 1805, it is believed, somewhere in the
vicinity of Manchester. The family removed, for a time, to Whitby, but
returned again to Manchester. He must early have developed a passion
for writing, as contributions of his appear in the _British Minstrel_
in 1824. The _British Minstrel_ was a weekly periodical consisting of
songs and recitations, old and new. The number for November 20th, 1824,
contains two lyrics by Rowlinson (p. 171). The editor remarks, “We have
received a letter from Mr. Rowlinson, of Manchester, and are obliged to
him for the Originals enclosed. Mr. Wroe, of Ancoats’ Street, is our
bookseller at Manchester; he, no doubt, will afford him every facility
in communicating with us at any time he may have a packet for London.”
A packet was sent, and is acknowledged in the number for December 25th,
1824. One of his lyrics appears in the last number of the _British
Minstrel_, which came to an end January 22nd, 1825. His contributions
are—“I’ll come to Thee” (p. 171). “It is not for Thine Eye of Blue” (p.
171). “Yes, Thyrsa, Yes” (p. 194). “Farewell Land of My Birth” (p.
197). “How Calm and Serene” (p. 303). “Think not when My Spirits” (p.
304). “Serenade” (p. 306). “Knowest Thou My Dearest” (p. 367). “How
Sweet to Me” (p. 369). A copy of this volume has been placed in the
Manchester Free Library by the present writer.
On the cessation of the _British Minstrel_, he began, in January, 1825,
to write for _Nepenthes_, a Liverpool periodical. Still earlier, he is
believed to have contributed to the _Whitby Magazine_.
From the age of eighteen to his death, at the age of twenty-four, he
was a frequent and a welcome writer of prose and verse for the local
periodicals. His range was by no means limited; he wrote art
criticisms, essays in ethics, studies of modern poets, and verse in
various styles and of varying quality. There is a musical flow about
his lyrics that shows a genuine poetic impulse, but his talents had not
time to ripen. His contributions to _Nepenthes_, _British Minstrel_,
_Phœnix_, and _Manchester Gazette_ have never been collected, and it is
too late for the task to be either attempted or justified. An essay of
his on Drunkenness is reprinted in the _Temperance Star_ of May, 1890.
The best of his poems is probably “Sir Gualter,” which is quoted in
Procter’s “Literary Reminiscences” (p. 103). The same charming writer
has devoted some pages to his memory in his “Memorials of Bygone
Manchester” (p. 161). One example, “Babylon,” is given in Procter’s
“Gems of Thought and Flowers of Fancy” (p. 47), and four lyrics appear
in Harland’s “Lancashire Lyrics” (pp. 71-75). One of these, “The
Invitation,” was printed—with another signature!—in the _Crichton
Annual_, 1866. One of Rowlinson’s compositions—the “Autobiography of
William Charles Lovell”—is said to be an account of his own
experiences; this I have not seen. The story of his life is brief. He
studied literature whilst earning his daily bread in a Manchester
warehouse. He was a clerk in the employ of Messrs. Cardwell & Co.,
Newmarket Buildings, and to gratify his love of mountain scenery, he
has been known to leave the town on Saturday night and walk to
Castleton, in Derbyshire, and, after spending the Sunday there, walk
home again through the night, to be ready for his Monday morning task.
Literature did not wholly absorb him, for at twenty-four years of age
he was a husband, with a son and an infant daughter. Early in 1829 he
obtained a more congenial position as a traveller for the firm of
Piggott, the famous compilers and publishers of directories. This gave
him the opportunity of seeing Cambridge, where Kirke White is buried,
and other places, whose historic and literary associations would appeal
to his vivid imagination. But whilst enjoying thoroughly the beautiful
scenery of the south, he pined for his northern home. Whilst bathing in
the Thames he was drowned, June 22nd, 1829, and was buried in Bisham
churchyard, on the 25th.[9]
The Manchester Free Library has copies of the exceedingly rare _Phœnix_
and _Falcon_, with the contributions of Rowlinson and others,
identified in MS. In the _Phœnix_ “Bag-o-nails,” an imitation of the
“Noctes Ambrosianæ,” he appears as Jeremiah Jingler. These periodicals,
and the scrapbook, make as complete a collection of his scattered
writings as is now possible.
John Bolton Rogerson and R. W. Procter have each borne affectionate
testimony to the moral worth and literary promise of William Rowlinson.
Soon after his death there appeared in the _Falcon_ some stanzas which
declared,
“The great in soul from his earthly home,
In his youthful pride hath gone,
Where the bards of old will proudly greet
The Muses’ honoured son.
Oh, there is joy in the blessed thought
Thou art shrin’d on fame’s bright ray,
Though the stranger’s step is on thy grave
And thy friends be far away.”
We need not cherish illusions. The stranger’s step is on Rowlinson’s
grave, but he is not “shrined on fame’s bright ray,” whatever and
wherever that may be. No stone marks his grave, his very resting-place
is unknown; we cannot even brush aside the grass from the forgotten and
moss-grown tomb of William Rowlinson, one who perished in his early
prime; whose music, faint, yet melodious, passed into silence before it
could be shaped into a song the world would care to hear or to remember.
Footnote 9:
I have to thank the Vicar (Rev. T. E. Powell) for searching the
registers. There is no gravestone.
Literary Taste of the Eighteenth Century.