Lives of Illustrious Shoemakers Part 17

Thomas Olivers in his autobiography[139] tells us that he was born at Tregonon in Montgomeryshire in 1725. After the death of his father and uncle, Thomas was left in charge of another relative named Tudor, who sent him to school and afterward bound him apprentice to a shoemaker. He was, by his own account, idle, dissolute, and profane--"the worst boy seen in those parts for the last twenty or thirty years." His evil conduct compelled him to fly from the scene of his early dissipation as soon as he could; and, after living a wild life at Shrewsbury and Wrexham, he came to Bristol. This city was his spiritual birthplace; for, under a sermon by George Whitfield, the sinful, reckless young Welshman was converted, and became as noted for piety and earnest Christian work as he had once been for blasphemy and opposition to all religion. Shortly after his conversion he removed to Bradford in Wilts, where he joined the Methodists. On recovering from a terrible attack of small-pox he went back to visit the scenes of his early life. In this expedition he had a double object--to obtain a sum of money left him by his uncle, and then to go round to all his creditors and pay his debts.

This most Christian conduct won him golden opinions and formed a capital introduction to the preaching of the Gospel; for Olivers had now begun to exercise his rare gifts in that direction. Returning to Bradford, he was soon appointed by John Wesley as a travelling preacher. After preaching in many parts of England and enduring the usual amount of hardship and risk to life and limb incident to the field-preacher's work in those days, he finally settled in London as John Wesley's _editor_, having charge of the _Arminian Magazine_, and other publications, for which Wesley was responsible. This office he held for twelve years; but he was never quite fit for it, and his chief was reluctantly compelled at last to put a more scholarly man in his place.

[139] See a book of unusual interest, "Lives of the Early Methodist Preachers," ed. by Rev. I. Jackson. Wesleyan Book-Room, London, 3 vols. 1865.

In the controversy between Wesley and Toplady on Predestination, etc., a controversy marked by the worst features of the time, the fiery Welshman was put forward to take the leading part on the Arminian side. Nothing could exceed the severity of Toplady's remarks and the fierceness of his attacks, both on the character and teaching of the veteran preacher, John Wesley, whom all the world now agrees to honor as one of the most devout, unselfish, and useful men who have adorned the Christian Church in any age. Right manfully did the "Welsh Cobbler," as Olivers was contemptuously styled, stand up for the doctrine of free grace. In his hands Wesley was quite content to leave the work of reply to Toplady's _Zanchius_, quietly remarking, "I can only make a few strictures, and leave the young man Toplady to be further corrected by one that is fully his match, Thomas Olivers."

Tyerman[140] speaks of Olivers as a man of high intellectual power; but "laments that the fiery Welshman undertook to meet the furious Predestinarian with the not too respectable weapons of his own choosing." What this means may be imagined by the following sample of Toplady's personalities in this strife of tongues. He says, "Mr. Wesley skulks for shelter under a cobbler's ap.r.o.n;" and again, "Has Tom the Cobbler more learning and integrity than John the Priest?" It must be confessed that Cobbler Tom hit hard in reply. But an end has now come to the discreditable and useless strife; and, happily, it is in no danger of revival; while the hymns written by the pious Calvinist[141] and the zealous Arminian are both alike sung with devout emotion wherever the Saviour's name is known and adored.

[140] "Life of Wesley," vol. iii. p. 108. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1870.

[141] Toplady wrote the fine hymn "Rock of Ages,"

etc.

Besides several controversial tracts, Olivers wrote a number of hymns, and is known as the composer of a number of Psalm-tunes.[142] He continued his ministry in London till March, 1799, when he died at the age of seventy-four. He was buried in John Wesley's tomb, in the City Road Chapel Yard, London, as a token of the esteem in which he was held by Wesley and his friends.

[142] "_Helmsley_" has been set down to Olivers; but Mr. Benham says it was composed by Martin Madan, Cowper's uncle, author of "_Thelyphthora_." See Cowper's "Poems," Globe Ed., Intro., p. 34.

THOMAS HOLCROFT, DRAMATIST, NOVELIST, ETC.[143]

[143] "Memoirs of the late Thomas Holcroft, written by Himself, and Continued to the Time of his Death from his Diary," by W. Hazlitt. The Traveller's Library, vol. xvii.

1856.

Thomas Holcroft was a much more noteworthy man. At the time of the State Trials he had made a considerable name as a writer of political novels.

In his "Anna St. Ives" and "Hugh Trevor" he had exposed the follies and vices of society around him, and had set forth his own political views in a manner well calculated to captivate the fancy of young and ardent reformers. When the trial of Hardy began, Holcroft surrendered himself in court, deeming it base and unmanly to refuse to share the fate of those whose political views he had warmly espoused. Both friends and foes honored him for his chivalrous conduct in the affair. On the acquittal of his friends he was discharged without a trial.

The life of Holcroft is as full of romance as any of those depicted in his novels. He was born in London in 1745. During the first six years of the boy's life, his father was a shoemaker. Giving up this occupation in 1751, Holcroft, senior, "took to the road" as a hawker and peddler, and his poor child led a vagrant, gypsy-like life, and pa.s.sed through privations which he could never afterward think of without shame and sorrow. And yet he managed to turn this worst period of his life to some account. The first-hand knowledge it afforded him of nature and human affairs gave freshness and power to the comedies and dramas written in later years. During these early years his father taught him to read out of the Bible, and such was his progress, that in a little while the daily task consisted of eleven chapters. These, he tells us, he could often have missed by telling a falsehood, which his conscience never would allow; and, besides this, he had no wish to evade the task, for the stories of the Old Testament were so full of interest to his boyish mind, that he was eager to go on to the end. While his father and mother were engaged as hawkers, young Holcroft was sent out to beg. In this miserable employment he became quite an expert; and, like many another unfortunate beggar, he was led to draw on his imagination for tales to answer his purpose. On returning home he would recount his adventures, and repeat the marvellous stories he had invented, until his father, who at first admired the lad's gift as a romancer, came to be ashamed of allowing him to lead such an idle and mischievous life, and put a stop to his escapades.

After this he was employed as a stable-boy and jockey at Newmarket. The change in his circ.u.mstances thus brought about was a very happy one, for he had now good fare, a comfortable bed to sleep on, decent or rather _smart_ clothes, of which he was not a little proud; and, added to all this, a certain position in respectable society! His father had a friend at Newmarket who had a taste for reading, and followed the "profession"

of feeder and trainer of gamec.o.c.ks for the pit. This man was struck with Thomas Holcroft's natural ability, and lent him books to read, such as the "Spectator" and "Gulliver's Travels." While at Newmarket he was one day pa.s.sing a church, and stopped to listen to the music of the choir, then engaged in practice. He ventured to enter the church, and feeling a strong desire to learn to sing, spoke to the leader. Mr. Langham, who, finding the stable-boy had a good voice, admitted him into the choir. He threw himself so heartily into this new and fascinating study, that it was not long before he could read music and sing in good style.

At the age of sixteen, he again went to live with his father, who had once more returned to the shoemaker's stall, and lived in London. Here he learned enough of the trade to earn a livelihood, but he involved himself in premature cares by an imprudent marriage when only twenty years of age.

And now the pa.s.sion for a roving life got the better of him, and quitting the monotony of a cobbler's room, he betook himself to the stage. For seven years he led the life of a strolling player, "and sounded all the depths and shoals" of misery incident to such a precarious existence.

It was not till after his thirtieth year that he began to acquire settled habits of study, to learn the languages--French, German, and Italian--in which he afterward became a ready translator, and to set about any kind of literary work. The first products of his pen appeared in the _Whitehall Evening Post_. He was in his thirty-fifth year when his first novel, "Alwyn, or the Gentleman Comedian," appeared. The year after this saw the issue of his earliest comedy, _Duplicity_, which was put on the stage at Covent Garden Theatre, and had a good run of success. This was followed by some thirty dramatic pieces of one kind or other, in poetry or prose, comedies and comic operas, dramas and melodramas, which last he had the credit of introducing into England.

The _Road to Ruin_ is accounted, by some judges of note, the best of his dramas. Holcroft was a man of versatile powers and great industry. His natural gifts were remarkable, and his extensive knowledge was almost entirely self-acquired. As already indicated, he was a very prolific author. Besides the three novels and the plays referred to above, he issued translations from the _French_ of Toucher d'Obsonville and Pierre de Long; from the _German_, Goethe's "Herman and Dorothea;" and from the Italian. He spent much of his time in Germany and France, and his interesting work, "Travels into France," is one of his most valued productions. Thomas Holcroft died 23d March, 1809, at the age of sixty-four, having crowded as much work into his eventful life as most of the leading men of his time.

JOSEPH BLACKET, POET, "THE SON OF SORROW."

At the beginning of this century there were two young shoemakers in London who were spending their leisure time in hard reading and attempts at musical composition. One of them, Robert Bloomfield, a sketch of whom has already been given,[144] is known as widely as the English language itself. The other, _Joseph Blacket_, made but little stir in the world, and is now well-nigh forgotten. He took to writing poetry at a much earlier age than Bloomfield, who wrote nothing before his sixteenth year, while Blacket, if we may trust the notes in his "Specimens" and "Remains," began, very characteristically, with "The Sigh," written at _ten_ years of age. His unhappy life was brought to a close when he was but twenty-four years old. At this age Bloomfield had written very little poetry, and "The Farmer's Boy" was not begun. But if his genius ripened slowly, it produced fruits far more valuable than those presented to the world by the precocity of poor Blacket. There is nothing of Blacket's to compare with "The Farmer's Boy," or "Richard and Kate," or "The Fakenham Ghost." It is interesting to know that the two poetical sons of Crispin were acquainted, and cherished a high regard for each other. They seem to have met at the house of Mr. Pratt, Blacket's patron and editor, and afterward to have exchanged copies of each other's works, accompanied by friendly letters. What Bloomfield thought of his young friend may be gathered from the following portion of a letter: "The instant I received your volume I resolved to shake hands with you, by letter at least, and to thank you for a pleasure of no common sort. The 'Conflagration' is so truly full of fire that it almost burns one's fingers to read it. 'Saragossa' is a n.o.ble poem.

Choose your own themes, and let the master-tints of your mind have full play."

[144] It may be thought by some readers that Bloomfield's brothers, George and Nathaniel, ought to have a place in our list of ill.u.s.trious shoemakers. _George_, in his correspondence with Mr. Capel Lofft, Robert's patron, showed himself a man of good sense and a fair writer. See preface to Bloomfield's Poems. But _Nathaniel_, the author of a little volume of poems, edited by Capel Lofft, 1803, ent.i.tled, "An Essay on War," in blank verse, and "Honington Green, a Ballad,"

was _not_ a shoemaker. He was a _tailor_, though not a few writers have made Byron's mistake of cla.s.sing him with "ye tuneful cobblers."

[Ill.u.s.tration: JOSEPH BLACKET]

In a letter to his friend Mr. Pratt, Blacket says that he was born in 1786 at Tunstill, five miles from Richmond, in Yorkshire. His father was a day-laborer, who had eight children to provide for at the time Joseph was old enough for school.[145] It was therefore fortunate for him that the village schoolmistress took a fancy for him, and taught him for nothing. He stayed with her until he was seven, and then went to a school taught by a master. At the age of eleven he was removed to London, his brother John having engaged to provide a home for him and teach him his trade during the next seven years. In this respect his position was very similar to that of Bloomfield, whose brother George became the guardian of the shy Suffolk lad when he first went up to London.[146] John Blacket was so anxious that his ward should not forget his little learning that he often kept the lad at home to write on Sunday. There were such books in John's library as "Josephus,"

"Eusebius' Church History," "Fox's Martyrs," all of which were read through by the time Joseph was fifteen years of age. "At that time," he says, "the drama was totally unknown to me; a play I had neither seen nor read." One evening a companion called on him and begged him to go and see Kemble play _Richard the Third_ at Drury Lane. His brother John refused consent at first, but yielded at last to the clever strategy of an appeal made in a few impromptu verses, which so greatly pleased and surprised the fond brother, that he at once "gave him leave to go, together with a couple of shillings to defray his expenses." From this time forth he devoted himself to the study of the poets Milton, Pope, Young, Otway, Rowe, Beattie, Thompson, but especially, and for a time almost exclusively, to Shakespeare. As a young poet it is said of him that "His anxiety to produce something that should be thought worthy of the public in the form of a drama appears to have surpa.s.sed all his other cares.... Something of the dramatic kind pervades the whole ma.s.s of his papers. I have traced it on bills, receipts, backs of letters, shoe patterns, slips of paper hangings, grocery wrappers, magazine covers, battalion orders for the volunteer corps of St. Pancras, in which he served, and on various other sc.r.a.ps on which his ink could scarcely be made to retain the impression of his thoughts; yet most of them crowded on both sides and much interlined."[147]

[145] Blacket's "Remains," preface, vol. i. pp. 62, 63. London, 1811.

[146] Blacket's "Remains," preface, vol. i. pp. 2-7.

[147] Editor of Blacket's "Remains," Letters, pp. 9, 10.

Like most ardent young students in poor circ.u.mstances, Blacket was reckless of his health. His hard work by day and loss of nightly sleep sowed the seeds of the disease to which he eventually fell a victim. He married very young, and had the misfortune to lose his wife when he was only twenty-one years of age. A sister who came to nurse her was taken ill of brain fever, and nearly lost her life. "Judge of my situation,"

he says to his friend Mr. Pratt, "a dear wife stretched on the bed of death; a sister senseless, whose dissolution I expected every hour; an infant piteously looking round for its mother; creditors clamorous, friends cold or absent. I found, like the melancholy Jaques, that 'when the deer was stricken the herd would shun him.'" In this wretched position he was obliged to sell everything to pay his debts. No wonder that he became a "son of sorrow," and that most of the poetry written after this date bears the marks of gloom and distraction of mind. Yet it must be confessed that when the young poet sought to enter on his literary career by the publication of his poems, he had no cause to complain of want of friends. Mr. Marchant, a printer, took kindly to him, and published his first copies of "Specimens" free of expense. It was he who introduced the young aspirant for poetical fame to Mr. Pratt, the editor of the "Remains," who seems, from the letters published, to have been a man of considerable means, but not of the best judgment in literary affairs. This friend had the most exalted notions of the "genius" of his _protege_, showed him the utmost kindness till the day of his death, and took charge of the funds raised by the publication of his "Remains," investing them in behalf of the poet's orphan child. In August, 1809, Blacket removed to Seaham, Durham, to the house of a brother-in-law, gamekeeper to Sir Ralph Milbanke of Castle Eden. The baronet and his family were very kind to him; a horse was lent him; dainty food was sent down for him from the castle; doctors were procured who attended him gratis; Lady Milbanke and Miss Milbanke, afterward Lady Byron, visited him constantly, and interested others in his behalf; among them the d.u.c.h.ess of Leeds, who procured a large number of subscribers to his volume of "Specimens."[148] No effort was spared by either doctors or friends to save his life and to ensure his reputation as a poet; but to no purpose, as it seemed, in either case. He died of consumption on the 23d of September, 1810, at the house of his brother-in-law, and was buried in Seaham churchyard by his friend Mr.

Wallis, rector of the parish, who had been a Christian counsellor and comforter to the young poet during his long illness. At his own request, Miss Milbanke selected the spot for his grave, and caused a suitable monument to be placed over it, on which were inscribed the lines, taken from his own poem, "Reflections at Midnight"--

"Shut from the light, 'mid awful gloom, Let clay-cold honor rest in state; And, from the decorated tomb, Receive the tributes of the great.

"Let me, when bade with life to part And in my narrow mansion sleep, Receive a tribute from the heart, Nor bribe one sordid eye to weep."

[148] That these generous friends labored to some purpose may be judged from the fact that after Blacket's little legacies and funeral expenses were paid, 97 10s remained over for the benefit of his child. "Remains," p. 101.

DAVID SERVICE, AND OTHER SONGSTERS OF THE COBBLER'S STALL.

David Service of Yarmouth represents a pretty numerous cla.s.s of songsters of the cobbler's stall, worthy men in their way, but writers of inferior merit, of whom much cannot be said. Such writers were _John Foster_ of Winteringham, Lincolnshire, who owed the publication of his "Serious Poems," in 1793, to the kindness of the vicar of the parish; _J. Johnstone_, a Scotchman, who published a small volume of poems in 1823; the Rev. _James Nichol_ of Traquair, Selkirkshire, who in his shoemaking days "published two or three volumes of poetry."[149] _Gavin Wilson_, of Edinburgh, who, in 1788, published "A Collection of Masonic Songs," of whom Campbell says: "I knew Gavin Wilson; he was an honest, merry fellow, and a good boot, leather-leg, arm, and hand maker, but as sorry a poetaster as ever tried a couplet."[150] _James Devlin_, a man of versatile gifts and most irregular habits, who by turns wrote poetry, corresponded for the _Daily News_, and contributed to the _Spectator_, _Builder_, and _Notes and Queries_, and died about twenty years ago in poverty and obscurity.[151] These men, as regards their literary merit and fame, excepting perhaps the last, are well represented by the herdboy from the banks of the Clyde, who, after serving his time as a _sutor_ at Greenock, journeyed south in search of work, and settled at Yarmouth, Norfolk, and there, at the age of twenty-seven, published a "Rural Poem," called "The Caledonian Herdboy," in 1802. Two years after he was encouraged by his friends to issue "The Wild Harp's Murmurs" and "St. Crispin, or the Apprentice Boy," the former being dedicated to that friend of unknown young poets, Capel Lofft, the friend of the Bloomfields and Kirke White. His last adventure in this line bore the romantic t.i.tle "A Voyage and Travels in the Region of the Brain." This verse occurs in one of his publications--

"'Apollo, why,' a matron cried, 'Are poets all so poor?'

'They write for fame,' Apollo cried, 'And seldom ask for more.'"

But this _poet_, it is to be feared, obtained neither wealth nor fame.

He became an inmate of the Yarmouth Workhouse, and died there on the 13th of March, 1825. And his "memorial," like that of many another local celebrity, has well-nigh perished with him.

[149] "Crispin Anecdotes," pp. 87, 88.

[150] Ibid.

[151] "Campion's Delightful History," p. 81.

JOHN STRUTHERS, POET, EDITOR, ETC.

John Struthers, a Scottish poet, the friend of Sir Walter Scott and Joanna Baillie, followed the trade of a shoemaker for many years after he had begun to gain a literary reputation. He was born at Kilbride in Lanarkshire in 1776, and learned his trade in his own home, for his father was a member of the same craft. Struthers is best known in Scotland as the author of "The Poor Man's Sabbath," a simple, unpretentious poem, which appeared in 1804, and rapidly pa.s.sed through several editions.[152] His success in this first venture led to the publication of "The Peasant's Death," in 1806; "The Winter's Day," in 1811; "The Plough," in 1816; "The Dechmont," in 1836. He was the editor of a Scottish anthology, called "The Harp of Caledonia," in three volumes, to which his friends Sir Walter Scott and Joanna Baillie "sent voluntary contributions." He wrote a history of Scotland from the Union, 1707 to 1827, by which his reputation was greatly enhanced.

[152] Of "The Sabbath," a writer in the _Quarterly Review_, January, 1831 (p. 77), says it is "a poem of which unaffected piety is not the only inspiration, and which but for its unfortunate coincidence of subject with the nearly contemporary one of the late amiable James Grahame, would probably have attracted a considerable share of favor, even in these hypercritical days."

A considerable number of the biographies in Chambers's "Lives of Ill.u.s.trious Scotchmen" are from his pen. For several years he held the position of press-corrector for Khull, Blackie & Co., of Glasgow. In 1832 he was made librarian in Stirling's Library, which office he held until within a few years of his death in 1853. His poetical works were collected and published by himself in 1850. He is spoken of as an excellent specimen of a shrewd, intelligent, strong-minded Scotchman.[153]

[153] "Imperial Dictionary of Biography." Glasgow: Blackie & Co.