THE first thing after my arrival in Newcastle was to see my old master,
and the next to engage my old lodgings at Hatfields, and to fit up a
work bench there. I then set to work upon my wood cuts. This, however,
was interrupted by other jobs; and the first of the kind was that of
engraving a copper plate of the “Theban Harp,” for the Rev. James
Murray, for some of his publications.[21] Some of the silversmiths also
began to press their jobs upon me. I had not, however, been long at work
for myself till proposals were made to me to join in partnership with my
late master; and this was brought about by a mutual friend (?) This
proposal—which was to set me down at once in a well-established
business—I did not relish so warmly as our _mutual friend_ expected. I
had formed a plan of working alone, without apprentices, or being
interrupted by any one; and I am not certain, at this day, whether I
would not have been happier in doing so than in the way I was led to
pursue. I had often, in my lonely walks, debated this business over in
my mind; but, whether it would have been for the better or the worse, I
can now only conjecture. I tried the one plan, and not the other:
perhaps each might have had advantages and disadvantages. I should not
have experienced the envy and ingratitude of some of my pupils, neither
should I, on the contrary, have felt the pride and the pleasure I
derived from so many of them having received medals or premiums from the
Society for the Encouragement of Arts, and taken the lead, as engravers
on wood, in the Metropolis. Notwithstanding this pride and this
pleasure, I am inclined to think I should have had—balancing the good
against the bad—more pleasure in working alone for myself.
Footnote 21:
The Rev. James Murray, a Church of Scotland minister, with whom I had
been long acquainted. He was accounted one of the best Hebrew scholars
of his day. His “Sermons to Asses” attracted much notice, and so did
many of his other works. He was a keen, satirical writer, and, amongst
his friends, he was of a lively, witty, and pleasant temper, and
greatly valued by a numerous acquaintance for his humanity and good
sense. He died in January, 1782, aged 50 years, and was buried in St.
Andrew’s Church Yard, Newcastle.
During my absence in London, Mr. Beilby had taken an apprentice with a
premium; and, to make us equal, I took my brother John as mine. With him
I was extremely happy. He was constantly cheerful, lively, and very
active, and my friends were his friends. Mr. Beilby was as well pleased
with him as I could possibly be; for, besides his affable temper, he
took every kind of work in hand so pleasantly, and so very soon learned
to execute it well, that he could not miss giving satisfaction. This he
continued to do as long as he was with us; but other parts of his
conduct, when he arrived at manhood, was not so well, and gave me great
uneasiness; for he got acquainted with companions whom I thought badly
of, and my remonstrances respecting them proved in vain. He would not,
as he called it, be dictated to by me; but this I persisted in till it
made us often quarrel, which was distressing to me, for my regard for
him was too deeply rooted ever to think of suffering him to tread in the
paths which led to ruin, without endeavouring to prevent it. To the
latest day of his life, he repented of having turned a deaf ear to my
advice; and as bitterly and sincerely did he acknowledge the slighted
obligations he owed me. He _rued_; and that is as painful a word as any
in the English language.
As soon as I thought my brother might be able to work his way in the
world,—he having been, I think, about five years with me,—I gave him his
liberty, and he set off to London, where, being freed from his former
associates, his conduct was all that could be desired, and he was highly
respected and esteemed. He was as industrious in London as he had been
with us, and had plenty of work to do. He was almost entirely employed
by the publishers and booksellers in designing and cutting an endless
variety of blocks for them. He was extremely quick at his work, and did
it at a very low rate. His too close confinement, however, impaired his
health. He revisited Cherryburn, where he did not remain long till he
thought himself quite recovered, and he then returned to London, where
he continued a few years longer, and where the same kind of confinement
affected his health as before. A similar visit to his native air was
found necessary; his health was again restored to him; and again he
returned to London. He, however, found that he could not pursue the same
kind of close confinement, on which account he engaged to teach drawing
at the Hornsey Academy, then kept by Mr. Nathaniel Norton, which obliged
him to keep a pony to ride backwards and forwards; thus dividing his
time between his work-office in London and the school for some years,
when his health began again to decline, and he finally left London early
in the summer of 1795, and returned once more to the banks of the Tyne.
Here he intended to follow the wood engraving for his London friends,
and particularly for Wm. Bulmer, for whom he was engaged to execute a
number of blocks for the “Fabliaux” or “Tales of Le Grand,” and for
“Somerville’s Chace.” Many of the former he had, I believe, finished in
London, and had sketched others on the blocks, which he finished at
Cherryburn. He had also sketched the designs on the blocks for the
“Chace;” and to these I put the finishing hand, after his decease, which
happened on the 5th of December, 1795, aged 35 years. The last thing I
could do for him was putting up a stone to his memory at the west end of
Ovingham Church, where I hope, when my “glass is run out,” to be laid
down beside him.
While my brother was my apprentice, he frequently accompanied me on my
weekly visits to Cherryburn. He was then a clever, springy youth, and
our bounding along together was often compared to the scamperings of a
pair of wild colts. These journeys commenced while I was an apprentice.
I then mostly went and returned on the same day; but, when I became my
own master, for many years—in summer’s heat and winter’s freezing cold—I
did not miss a single week. When I was an apprentice, I had a few
holydays at Easter and Whitsuntide allowed me, according to promise; and
these were wholly employed in angling; but, after the time came when I
might do as I pleased, I mostly stopped, when the weather suited, in
spring and summer, and spent the Mondays in various streams, at this my
favourite—and, indeed, only—diversion. In this I was accompanied by my
cheerful associate, “Jack Roe,” with his flies and his tackle; and, when
we had got a sufficient number, I returned to Newcastle with my creel
well filled with fish, which I divided amongst my friends. With an
account of these hungry, stream-wading ramblings, and the days spent in
angling, and with a description of the beautiful scenery of water-sides,
and the renovating charms which these altogether inspired, a volume
might be filled, in imitation of the patriarch of anglers, Izaac Walton:
as might also one of a descriptive or sentimental journal of these my
weekly visits to my parents. These visits continued regularly from 1777
till 1785, in which year my mother, my eldest sister, and my father, all
died.
It will readily be believed that, if I had not felt uncommon pleasure in
these journeys, I would not have persisted in them; nor in facing the
snow storms, the floods, and the dark nights of so many winters. This,
to some, appeared like insanity, but my stimulant, as well as my reward,
was in seeing my father and mother in their happy home. I always
reflected that this would have an end, and that the time would come when
I should have no feelings of warm regard called up on their account.
Besides these gratifications, I felt others in observing the weekly
changes of the long-lengthened and varied year, which, by being so
measured out, appeared like living double one’s time. The “Seasons,” by
the inimitable Thomson, had charmed me greatly; but, viewing nature thus
experimentally, pleased me much more. To be placed in the midst of a
wood in the night, in whirlwinds of snow, while the tempest howled above
my head, was sublimity itself, and drew forth aspirations to Omnipotence
such as had not warmed my imagination so highly before; but, indeed,
without being supported by ecstacies of this kind, the spirits, beset as
they were, would have flagged, and I should have sunk down.
As soon as the days began to lengthen, and the sprouting herbage had
covered the ground, I often stopped with delight by the sides of woods,
to admire the dangling woodbine and roses, and the grasses powdered or
spangled with pearly drops of dew; and also, week after week, the
continued succession of plants and wild flowers. The primrose, the wild
hyacinth, the harebell, the daisy, the cowslip, &c.,—these, altogether,
I thought no painter ever could imitate. I had not, at that time, ever
heard the name of the great and good Linnæus, and knew plants only by
their common English names. While admiring these beautifully-enamelled
spots on my way, I was also charmed with the equally beautiful little
songsters, which were constantly pouring out their various notes to
proclaim the spring. While this exhilarating season glided on by
imperceptible degrees, unfolding its blossoms till they faded into
summer, and as the days lengthened, my hours of rising became more and
more early. I have often thought, that not one half of mankind knew
anything of the beauty, the serenity, and the stillness of the summer
mornings in the country, nor have ever witnessed the rising sun’s
shining forth upon the new day.
I had often listened with great pleasure and attention to my father’s
description of the morning, with his remarks upon the various wild
quadrupeds and the strange birds he had seen or heard in these still
hours throughout the year; for he left his bed very early in summer, and
seldom later than four or five o’clock in the winter. The autumn I
viewed as the most interesting season, and, in its appearance, the most
beautiful. It is then that the yellow harvest of the fields, and the
produce of the orchards, are gathered in, as the reward of the labours
of the year; while the picturesque beauties and varying foliage of the
fading woods, with their falling leaves, and the assembling in flocks of
the small birds, put me in mind of the gloomy months with which the year
is closed.
This is the short account of many years of uninterrupted health, bouyant
spirits, and of great happiness to me. I had begun betimes, and by
degrees, to habituate myself to temperance and exercise, which hardened
the constitution to such a pitch that neither wet nor cold had any bad
effect upon me. On setting out upon my weekly pedestrian “flights” up
the Tyne, I never looked out to see whether it was a good day or a bad
one; the worst that ever fell from the skies never deterred me from
undertaking my journey. On setting out, I always waded through the first
pool I met with, and had sometimes the river to wade at the far end. I
never changed my clothes, however they might be soaked with wet, or
stiffened by the frost, on my returning home at night, till I went to
bed. I had inured myself to this hardship, by always sleeping with my
windows open, by which a thorough air, as well as the snow, blew through
my room. In this way, I lay down, rolled in a blanket, upon a mattrass
as hard as I could make it. Notwithstanding this mode of treating
myself, I never had any ailment, even in the shape of a cold, while I
continued to live in this way; nor did I experience any difference
until, when I married, I was obliged to alter my plans, and to live and
behave like other folks. If persons brought up and habituated to the
tender indulgences common in the world, and not trained by degrees to
bear the mode of life I have been describing, were to try it,
unprepared, the experiment would be at their peril. My travelling
expenses for the day, were commonly only a penny or twopence for
crossing the water. On the hottest day, I was never made violently to
perspire, but only felt a dampness on my brow. I carried no useless
weight of fat about me, and the muscular parts were as hard as it was
possible to be on any human being. On being asked by a gentleman—an
acquaintance whom I met at Ovingham—what I got to drink on such hot
days, on my road, my reply was—“Nothing.” He had not been used to such
doings himself; and was surprised, and could hardly believe me. He
earnestly persuaded me to try the experiment of the amazing good a glass
of brandy and water would do me in hot weather. This I took no notice of
for some time: at length, however, on a thundery, hot day, on being
scorched with heat, and in danger of being struck with lightning, which
darted from a sky almost as black as ink, I stepped into a public house,
and, for the first time in my life, called for a glass of brandy and
water. I was then about 28 years old. This would not be worth noticing,
but only on account of its being a beginning to me, and which I did not,
when occasion pressed me, leave off for some years afterwards.
This life of rapturous enjoyment has its acids, and at length comes to
an end; and so did my walks, and my reflections, or contemplations,
which passed through the mind while engaged in them. These, at the time,
were mostly communicated to a moralising, sensible, and religious
friend, who waited my return on the Sunday evenings, when, over our
supper, he, in return, detailed to me the import of the sermons he had
heard through the day.
[Illustration]
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