But none more barren than its own rough side,
Till Hoskin rose, a man of birth obscure,
Heir to no wealth, and forced by fate to endure
The toils of humble life, till innate worth
And active fancy drew his talents forth.
On Castle Downs his fertile mind he cast,
And soon by industry did improve its waste.
The starving poor who knew not where to gain
The scanty pittance that should life sustain,
Employed by him, and by his bounty fed,
They had the honest means to earn their bread;
Nor stayed the hireling's wages in his hand,
But weekly each his stipend might command.
Some pick the stones, some cut the turf, and some
Dig from the pit the builders' useful loam.
The straw-thatched cottage rises from the ground,
And the strong stone enclosure spreadeth round.
And now where moss-grown rocks and heath did rise,
Green meads and beauteous cornfields greet the eyes.
The lowing herds and fleecy bleating flocks
That crop'd the scanty herbage round the rocks,
Now ruminating stand and seem to say,
May Heaven's best gift our benefactor pay.
The Master sees, well pleased, and smiles to see
The honest fruits of live industry.
The "poem" concludes with invocations of blessings on the head of Mr.
Hoskin--
Long, very long may he survive to see
The distant fruits of his industry;
And may Almighty power to him dispense
Earth's greatest bliss--Health, Peace, and Competence.
Having heard of the prosperity of those who had settled in America, he
resolved on going thither and seeing the condition of the farmers in
the States and the quality of the land, so that he might be able to
advise others whether to leave the mother country and settle there,
and with half a mind himself to cast in his lot with those who were
farming there. On his return he printed, but did not publish, his
experience and his observations. He printed for his own use, and kept
a very few copies for distribution among his relations and friends.
Through the kindness of the Rev. A. C. Boscawen, Rector of Ludgvan, I
have been afforded a sight of his Narrative. It is interesting as
affording a picture of the condition of the States and the farming
there a century ago. The "Narrative" was printed by Vigurs, of
Penzance, "for the Author" in 1813. In his preface, he says:--
"I am well aware that in the composition there may be much room for
criticism; to this I answer, I have neither the wish nor
qualification to become an AUTHOR, I need only say I am a FARMER. This
carries its apology with it, for the book contains plain facts on
agricultural subjects, which I affirm are nearly, if not perfectly,
correct. [I have written nothing designedly false.] The passage within
brackets he cancelled with his own hand after the book was printed.
"I sailed from Penzance on the 28th of December, 1810, on board an
American schooner called the _Packet of Boston_, bound for New York with
a cargo of iron, boxes of tin-plate, etc. On leaving the quay the seamen
of a brig gave us three cheers, which we returned. Soon a number of
people on the quay gave us three more. I asked the men, was it customary
on sailing? They said they had been on the pier two months, but never
saw it done before. So much for cordiality towards the Americans."
Blood is thicker than water. This is interesting. It shows that even
then, after the States had declared their independence, and only two
years before war was declared between England and the States, the
feeling, at all events in Cornwall, was one of affection and regard
for the gallant people who had been driven by stupidity into revolt
against the Crown.
After a very rough passage, on the 14th February, 1811, in the depth of
winter, the little vessel reached Vineyard Island. "We soon landed, and
put up at Dr. Spalding's tavern, a handsome house, with good
entertainment and accommodation. Our host was a doctor, a justice of the
peace, a tavern keeper, but quite the gentleman. The family at meal
times sat down with us--this is the American fashion. With our tea we
had plenty of beefsteaks, boiled eggs, preserved fruit, hot cakes, etc.
This is customary all over America. We paid a dollar per day (bed
included), but all through America we saw nothing of those pests of
beggars, waiters, chambermaids, coachmen, postboys, etc., which
constantly harass and frequently insult the traveller in England."
On reaching New York he got into trouble with his captain, who was
"slim," and tried to take advantage of him. "I was detained three
weeks by the captain I came over with from England. I bought at
Penzance some earthenware to carry out. On the passage I sold the
whole to the captain, and had a written agreement from him to pay me
on arriving at New York. At first he put off the payment for want of
money, so on one pretence or another until he began to unload the
vessel, and then he told me that he had given me no bill of lading to
show the goods were mine, and that I could not prove them mine. Indeed
he did everything in his power to plunder me of the whole. I then went
to the merchant to whom the cargo was consigned. He was much hurt at
the captain's conduct in attempting to defraud me, and wrote him a
letter immediately. The next day the merchant called on me, and told
me if the captain did not pay me in half an hour to acquaint him, but
before the half-hour was expired the captain was come with the money."
From New York Hoskin sailed in the _William Eaton_ schooner for
Alexandria and Washington.
"The captain (being intoxicated) would have the cook to kill and pick
a fowl and dress it in an instant (the cook was an old man, a negro).
The poor man set about it with all speed, but in the boiling the
captain found fault, caught up the hot fowl and beat it in the cook's
face. The captain confessed that he had sprung six feet high, and
thought he should have fallen overboard. The captain scalded his three
fingers, etc. Two days after he was full of spite and vengeance
towards the poor old black man. 'D---- the negroes,' said he, 'I hate
them,' and going on deck beat the poor man dreadfully with pieces of
trees cut to burn, some time after with a rope, and after that with a
fire-shovel. The poor man was very bad all night. I expected he would
have died before morning. Next morning in that condition he would make
him work. I said, 'Captain, I will attend breakfast; I can do it
better than he.' So I kept him out of the way. In the afternoon the
captain would make the poor creature come on deck. 'Shall I pay him
wages for nothing?' says he. I told him that the cook could do
nothing, but that I could do much better, and that I would work for
him. In three hours after word was brought to him that the cook was
dying. After he was dead, the captain came to me and asked what I
thought was the cause of his death, which I turned off."
James Hoskin excuses himself for not trying to bring the captain to
justice. His reasons are not very satisfactory. First, "it might
destroy the happiness of a dear woman, his wife." In the next place,
the mate would have sworn in the captain's favour; and, finally, by
accusing the captain he would have done no good to the dead cook.
On ascending the Potomac he was put ashore for a while.
"I asked at the hut of a white woman for some water. I shall, while I
live, never forget this hut. The outside was like a stable, built of
logs, having no glass windows. She brought me a bowl of milk, a china
pint to mix water with it. The water stood on a stool without doors,
covered nicely. The hut and everything within were in such neat order.
This milk and water was as a cordial of wine. I contemplated the
happiness of the farmers in this place, flowing in abundance of the
first necessaries of life; their wants few and easily supplied; no
cares about raising money for other people, all being peace, plenty,
and happiness around them."
He ascended the Delaware "in the steem [_sic_] boat." The boat was
worked by a steam-engine "which turns round a wheel each side of the
boat in the water. It has wide boards to the end of each spoke, like a
water under-shut wheel. The boat is 100 feet long, wide and roomy, and
a tavern kept on board. The passage comes very cheap, only 3 dollars
for 100 miles, baggage included."
He tells a story of William Cobbett when in America. Cobbett conducted
a newspaper entitled the _Pesca Post_ at Philadelphia, and kept a
stationer's shop. He was very outspoken against the French Revolution,
and that did not please the Yankees. One day some one entered the
stationer's shop and asked for some quills. Cobbett sold them. "Ah,
ha!" said the purchaser. "These be porcupine quills, I guess."
"Porcupine quills they were till I sold them to you," was Cobbett's
ready answer. "Now they are goose quills."
"As I was at breakfast one day on Long Island," says Hoskin, "there
came in a young woman. 'The English,' said she, 'have pressed my
brother in the Downs; I wish I could guillotine the English, I wish
the English were guillotined.' 'But,' says one in the room, 'the
Christian English will hang a man for stealing a horse, or stealing a
sheep; but for stealing a man they shall have money.'" Hoskin was too
discreet to bring up the case of the negro slaves and of the captain
and the cook. He saw the first attempt at a torpedo. A Mr. Fulton had
invented one "for the purpose of sinking it under vessels at anchor
and blowing them up. Likewise to anchor under water and blow up ships
coming in a harbour. The Congress has voted him 6000 dollars to defray
the expenses for making trials, etc. Some time back a day was fixed
for trial at New York, the _President_ a frigate of 44 guns, and the
_Argus_ brig of war lay there; Mr. Fulton chose to attack the brig,
the captain of which prepared for defence by casting a net round the
brig to prevent the torpedo diving under, and by hanging shot and
heavy weights to the yards and studding sail-booms, to destroy the
torpedo if it came near; but Mr. Fulton could not succeed at that
time; he says he has made vast improvements since, and shall succeed.
This Fulton has a patent for the steamboats on the Delaware and Hudson
Rivers. They go five miles an hour against wind and tide."
On his return to England he had a better passage than on going out.
"Then chiefly three or four days in a week it blew what the sailors
call a gale. In the gale of last week we sailed before the wind, and
the ship rolled much more then than if it was a side wind. We laughed
at supper, though tossed about. We had cords and bars spread over the
table, which was bound fast to keep the things on it; one held the
teapot, and the mate was desired to bind the tea-kettle with a string
to the side of the cabin. This put me in mind of last winter's
passage. The cook would be called an hour or two before day to light
his fire, and get his kettle under way, as the phrase is on board; by
and by we should hear the cook on deck crying and swearing, the sea
breaking over having upset the tea-kettle--the fire is again lit, and
the tea-kettle set on again. Soon we hear the cook in the like
distress, and swearing he would rather go before the mast than be
cook, and so on. Three times of a morning, one day, one of the
tea-kettles went overboard; and some days we could only light fire in
the cabin stove, and were obliged to boil beef in the tea-kettle."
In London, in January, 1803, he had fallen ill, and thought he had not
long to live. This was seven years before he visited the States, and
he then addressed the following letter to his children:--
"London, _January 13th, 1803_.
"My dear Children all and each,
"For the last three days I have found my illness so to increase,
and I am so exceedingly ill at this time, that I believe it is the
Lord's good pleasure that I shall never see your dear faces again.
The God of heaven take you under His precious, His most special
protection and care. Fear it not my dear sweet loves, but that
good and holy Lord of life and glory will be to you what He has
always been to me--a father. When I was about six years old, His
good pleasure was to take my mother. With her I lost I may say my
father, mother and all. But I had a Father in heaven, Who blessed,
watched, and protected me. If you would be wise, seek true
happiness. If you would be happy, rich and wise, be truly virtuous
in word, action, and, as much as possible, in thought.
Seek virtue, and of that possessed
Leave to Providence the rest.
"If you will tell a lie, you will tell another; if you tell two,
you will go on further and tell ten, and so on, to lying on any
occasion. If you lie, you will cheat, when occasion offers you,
and so on to other vices. With the loss of a virtuous disposition
of mind, you will lose your peace, troubles will come upon you,
one after another; you will endeavour to shun them, but they will
overtake you. Let the words of an affectionate and perhaps dying
father, sink deep into your hearts every time you read them.
"If you should fall in love with those true Christians, called
Quakers, how much, I think, would it, by God's blessing (of which
you need not fear) and their friendly aid to you, advance you in
piety and virtue. But beware of Methodists' Class Meetings. Not
but that there are many among them who are patterns of religion;
but the human heart being, as it has been truly said, 'the devil's
tinder-box,' the heart falls by degrees into some favourite sin,
and falsehood and deceit at these meetings are sent in the place
of piety, and of all states this is the most dangerous and
destructive to the soul. May the Lord of His goodness bless you,
protect you, be your guide through life, and in death receive you
to Himself is the prayer of
"Your father, JAMES HOSKIN."
Happily he recovered and lived on for many years.
JOHN HARRIS, THE MINER POET
"On the quiet evening of October 14th, 1820, in a straw-thatched,
boulder-built cottage, with bare rafters and clay floor, locally known
as the 'six chimneys,' on the top of Bolennowe Hill, Camborne,
Cornwall, as the leaves are falling from the trees, and the robin
mourns in the thicket, a gentle mother gives birth to a babe; and that
baby-boy is a poet."
So John Harris begins his account of his own life. It is not always
safe for a composer of verses to be too sure that he is a poet, and
that his lines will live. Horace did it,[40] so doubtless has many
another man who has hammered out verses; but only Horace was justified
in his prophecy.
[Illustration: JOHN HARRIS, THE MINER POET]
A plum-pudding without plums may be a good suet dumpling, and without
suet also a respectable batter pudding, but neither is a plum-pudding;
and a set of verses without ideas may be pleasant verses, but is not
poetry; and without ideas and without imagination is very poor stuff
indeed. John Harris could write smooth lines, he had a tender
appreciation of the beauties of nature, but he went no further. His
verses bear the same relation to poetry that Tupper's _Proverbial
Philosophy_ bears to the Philosophy of Plato. But to return to his
life. He tells us that "from first to last the majority of my poems
have been written in the open air, in lanes and leas, by old stiles
and farm gates, by rocks and rivers and mossy moors."
He was put to a miserable school where the hedge-school master was
hard-hearted and cruel, and "verily hoots the lessons in his ears. He
beats his pupils without mercy, with a polished piece of flat wood
studded with small, sharp nails, until the blood runs down, and soon
scares the little learner from his straw-roofed academy."
From this school he was removed to another after a few days. "On the
edge of a brown common, in a little thatched school-house by the side
of the highway, very near the famous Nine Maidens, he finds another
master, who wore a wooden leg, with more of the milk of human kindness
in his soul, a thorough Christian, and a man of prayer." He says
further: "You might have seen him on a summer evening, when his merry
schoolmates are chattering in the hollow--you might have seen him
walking by the stream, or stretched on the moss listening to the wind
tuning its organ among the rocks, or gazing up at the purple heavens.
He roams among the flowers, kissing them for very joy, calling them
his fragrant sisters. Born on the crest of the hill, amid the crags
and storms, he grows up in love with Nature, and she becomes his chief
teacher. And now come the promptings of early genius, which develop
themselves in snatches of unpolished song, pencilled on the leaves of
his copybook for the amusement of his wondering schoolmates. He often
writes his rhymes on the clean side of cast-off labelled tea-papers
which his mother brings from the shop, and then reads them to his
astonished compeers with rapt delight."
At the age of nine he was taken from school and put to work in the
fields. At the age of ten he was employed by an old tin-streamer to
throw up the sand from the river, earning threepence a day. At twelve
he was working on the surface "nearly three miles from his favourite
home. As he travels to and fro from his labour through long lanes
bramble covered, and over meadows snowy with daisies, or by hedges
blue with hyacinths, or over whispering cairns redolent with the hum
of bees--" he means thyme on which the bees hover gathering
honey--"the beautiful world around him teems with syllables of song.
Even then he pencils his strange ditties, reciting them at intervals
of leisure to the dwellers of his own district, and older heads than
his tell of his future fame."
One thing is evident, that at this early age he was inordinately
conceited. He had a true appreciation of the beauties of Nature. He
had a receptive soul, but it was that which might have made of him a
painter, not necessarily a poet.
At the age of thirteen, or as he styles it, "When thirteen summers
have filled his lap with roses, and fanned his forehead with the
breeze of health, we find him sweating in the hot air of the interior
of a mine (Dolcoath), working with his father nearly two hundred
fathoms below the green fields."
So time passes, and he grows to manhood. Then in his stilted style he
says: "Love meets him on his flowery pathway, and he weaves a chaplet
of the choicest roses to adorn her head. He worships at the shrine of
beauty till they stand before the sacred altar, and the two are made
one." In plain English, he fell in love and got married to Jane Rule.
One of his earliest pieces of verse, "The First Primrose," got into a
magazine, and attracted some little notice, amongst others that of Dr.
George Smith, of Camborne, who gave him encouragement and induced him
to publish. His first book appeared in 1853; soon after he was
appointed Scripture Reader at Falmouth.
He says in his _Autobiography_: "Soon after my marriage, the Rev. G.
B. Bull, of Treslothian, lent me a volume of Shakespere. The first
play I read was _Romeo and Juliet_, which I greedily devoured,
travelling over a wide down near my father's house. The delight I
experienced is beyond words to describe, as the sun sank behind the
western waters, and the purple clouds of evening primed the horizon,
the bitters of life changed to sweetness in my cup, and the wilderness
around me was a region of fairies. Sometimes I cried, sometimes I
shouted for joy, and over the genii-peopled heights a new world burst
upon my view." Next he read _Childe Harold_, or portions of it. "My
younger brother James possessed an eighteenpenny copy of Burns' poems,
to which I had access. One day, I was reading Burns in our Troon-Moor
home. No one can tell the ecstasy of my spirit, or the deep joy of my
heart. Not only was I tired with my mine-work, but also crippled in
the quarry raising stone for the garden-wall. I believe I was in my
shirtsleeves, when a middle-aged matron entered my home. Seeing a
small book before me, she asked what it was. I told her, and her
answer surely displayed her prejudice and her narrowness of mind.
Looking at me with severity in her features, she exclaimed, 'You ought
to be ashamed of yourself! You, a local preacher, and reading Burns!'
This strange sin put me quite beyond the reach of her favours, and I
do not remember her ever speaking to me afterwards."
It is an infinite pity that John Harris did not inspire his muse from
Burns; had he done so, his "poems" might possibly have lived, but
_poëta nascitur, non fit_.
"For more than twenty years I was an underground miner, toiling in
the depths of Dolcoath. Here I laboured from morning till night, and
often from night till morning, frequently in sulphur and dust almost
to suffocation. Sometimes I stood in slime and water above my knees,
and then in levels so badly ventilated that the very stones were hot,
and the rarified air caused the perspiration to stream into my boots
in rills, though I doffed my flannel shirt and worked naked to the
waist. Sometimes I stood on a stage hung in ropes in the middle of a
wide working, when my life depended on a single nail driven into a
plank. Had the nail slipped, I should have been pitched headlong on
the broken rocks more than twenty feet below. Sometimes I stood on a
narrow board high up in some dark working, holding the drill, or
smiting it with the mallet, smeared all over with mineral, so that my
nearest friends would hardly know me, until my hands ached with the
severity of my task, and the blood dropped off my elbows. Sometimes I
had to dig through the ground where it was impossible to stand
upright, and sometimes to work all day as if standing to the face of a
cliff. Sometimes I have been so exhausted as to lie down and sleep on
the sharp flints." (There are no flints in Cornish mines.) "And
sometimes so thirsty that I have drunk stale water from the keg,
closing my teeth to keep back the worms. Sometimes I had wages to
receive at the end of the month, and sometimes I had none. But I
despaired not, nor turned the nymph of song from my side. She murmured
among the tinctured slabs," etc. etc. That the water brought down from
the spring for the use of the miners was ever full of worms is not to
be believed, nor that he did not receive his regular monthly wages.
John Harris was evidently vastly sorry for himself, thinking he was
born for better things. I have known many a man who has worked
underground as a common miner, without whining and breaking into
extravagance such as this.
"We were at supper one evening in Troon-Moor house, our two daughters
in a window, I at the end of the kitchen table, and Jane sitting on a
chair beside it. We had fried onions, and the flavour was very
agreeable. I was hungry, having just returned from a long day's labour
in the mine. Suddenly we heard a step in the garden, and then a knock
at the door. My wife opened it, and I heard a gruff voice say, 'Does
the young Milton live here?' My wife asked the possessor of the gruff
voice to walk in; and we soon discovered that it was the Rev. G.
Collins. We invited him to partake of our meal, to which he at once
assented, eating the onions with a spoon, exclaiming at almost every
mouthful, 'I like fried leeks.' He asked for my latest production, and
I gave him 'The Child's First Prayer,' in MS. He quietly read it, and
before he had finished I could see the tears streaming down his face.
Besides the two daughters, Jane and Lucretia, already named, we were
afterwards blest with two sons, Howard and Alfred."
I have given this passage from the _Autobiography_ of John Harris with
pleasure, as it exhibits the author at his best. Whether the tears may
not have been an adjunct of his fancy, I do not pretend to say. When
he writes simple English, concerning his own life and experiences, he
is always interesting, but when he steps up into his florid car, as a
chauffeur at the Battle of Roses at Nice, he is intolerable.
"Throughout my mining life I have had several narrow escapes from
sudden death. Once when at the bottom of the mine, the bucket-chains
suddenly severed and came roaring down the shaft with rocks and
rubbish. I and my comrade had scarcely time to escape; and one of the
smaller fragments of stone cut open my forehead, leaving a visible
scar to this day. Then the man-engine accidentally broke, hurling
twenty men headlong into the pit, and I amongst them. A few scars and
bruises were my only injuries. Standing before a tin-stepe on the
smallest foothold, a thin piece of flint (?), air-impelled, struck me
on the face, cutting my lips and breaking some of my front teeth. Had
I fallen backwards among the huge slabs" (the rock does not form
slabs) "death must have been instantaneous. Passing over a narrow
plank, a hole exploded at my feet, throwing a shower of stones around
me, but not a hair of my head was injured."