Lives of Illustrious Shoemakers. W. E. Winks
results. “But,” he remarks, “as the first king of Bohemia kept his country shoes by him to remind him from whence he was taken, I have put a motto on the doors of my carriage constantly to remind me to what I am indebted for my prosperity, viz.,
“SMALL PROFITS DO GREAT THINGS.”
The Lackington family had been farmers in the parish of Langford, near Wellington, in Somersetshire. They were members of the Society of Friends, and held a respectable position in the locality. For some cause, not fully explained in the memoirs, James Lackington’s father was apprenticed to a shoemaker at Wellington. He made an imprudent marriage, and for a time forfeited his father’s approval and favor; but when the good-wife proved herself to be a very worthy and industrious woman, the old man relented and set his son up in business. This, however, was of no advantage to him; in fact, it proved his ruin. He might have remained a steady and hard-working man, bringing up his children honorably, if he had remained a journeyman. The position of a master presented temptations that were too much for his weak disposition. Lackington’s own words will best describe his unhappy circumstances in youth and the character of his father. “I was born at Wellington, in Somersetshire, on the 31st of August (old style), 1746. My father, George Lackington, was a journeyman shoemaker, who had incurred the displeasure of my grandfather for marrying my mother, whose maiden name was Joan Trott.... About the year 1750, my father having several children, and my mother proving an excellent wife, my grandfather’s resentment had nearly subsided, so that he supplied him with money to open shop for himself. But that which was intended to be of very great service to him and his family eventually proved extremely unfortunate to himself and them; for as soon as he found he was more at ease in his circumstances he contracted a fatal habit of drinking, and of course his business was neglected; that after several fruitless attempts of my grandfather to keep him in trade, he was, partly by a very large family, but more by his habitual drunkenness, reduced to his old state of a journeyman shoemaker. Yet so infatuated was he with the love of liquor, that the endearing ties of husband and father could not restrain him: by which baneful habit himself and family were involved in the extremest poverty; so that neither myself, my brothers, nor sisters, are indebted to a father scarcely for anything that can endear his memory, or cause us to reflect on him with pleasure.”
James, as the oldest child in the family, fared for a time rather better than the rest. He was sent to a dame-school and began to learn to read; but before he could learn anything worth knowing, his mother, who was obliged to maintain her children as best she could, found it impossible to pay the twopence per week for his schooling. For several years his time was divided between nursing his younger brothers and sisters and running about the streets and getting into mischief. At the age of ten he began to feel a desire to do something to earn a living. His first venture in this way showed his ability and gave some promise of his success as a man of business. Having noticed an old pieman in the streets whose method of selling pies struck the boy as very defective, the boy was convinced that he could do the work much better. He made known his thoughts to a baker in the town, who was so pleased with the lad’s spirit that he at once agreed to take the little fellow into the house and employ him in vending pies in the streets, if his father would grant permission. This was soon obtained. In this queer enterprise young Lackington met with remarkable success. He says: “My manner of crying pies, and my activity in selling them, soon made me the favorite of all such as purchased halfpenny apple-pies and halfpenny plum-puddings, so that in a few weeks the old pie merchant shut up his shop. I lived with this baker about twelve or fifteen months, in which time I sold such large quantities of pies, puddings, cakes, etc., that he often declared to his friends in my hearing that I had been the means of extricating him from the embarrassing circumstances in which he was known to be involved prior to my entering his service.”
Such a story is a sufficient indication of character. It exhibits the two qualities which distinguished him as a man—good sense and courage. Another story of his boyhood is worth telling for the same reason. He was about twelve years of age when he went one day to a village about two miles off, and returning late at night with his father, who had been drinking hard as usual, they met a group of women who had turned back from a place called Rogue Green because they had seen a dreadful apparition in a hollow part of the road where some person had been murdered years before. Of course the place had been haunted ever since! The women dared not go by the spot after what they had seen, and were returning to the village to spend the night. Lackington and his father laughed at the tale, and the dauntless boy engaged to walk on in front and go up to the object when they came near it in order to discover what it was. He did so, keeping about fifty yards ahead of the company and calling to them to come on. Having walked about a quarter of a mile, the object came in sight. “Here it is!” said he. “Lord have mercy on us!“ cried they, and were preparing to run, ”but shame prevented them.” Making a long file behind him, the order of procedure of course being according to the degree of each person’s courage, they moved on with trembling steps toward the ghost. Although the boy’s “hat was lifted off his head by his hair standing on end,” and his teeth chattered in his mouth, he was pledged in honor and must go on. Coming close to the dreaded spectre, he saw its true character—“a very short tree, whose limbs had been newly cut off, the doing of which had made it much resemble a giant.” The boy’s pluck was the talk of the town, and he “was mentioned as a hero.”
His merits as a pie vender had made him a reputation, and now an application was made to his father to allow James to sell almanacs about the time of Christmas and the New Year. He rejoiced immensely in this occupation and drove a splendid trade, exciting the envy and ire of the itinerant venders of Moore, Wing, and Poor Robin to such a degree that he speaks of his father’s fear lest these poor hawkers, who found their occupation almost gone, should do the daring young interloper some grievous bodily harm. “But,” he says, “I had not the least concern; and as I had a light pair of heels, I always kept at a proper distance.”
At the age of fourteen he was bound for seven years to Mr. Bowden of Taunton, a shoemaker. The indentures made Lackington the servant of both Mr. and Mrs. Bowden, so that, in case of the death of the former, the latter might claim the service of the apprentice. The Bowdens were steady, religious people who attended what Lackington calls “an Anabaptist meeting,” i.e., we presume, a Baptist chapel, for the Baptists long bore the opprobrious epithet which was first given to them in Germany and Holland at the time of the Reformation. The Baptists of Taunton in 1760 seem to have been a dull, lifeless class of people, if we may judge from the type presented in the family of the quiet shoemaker with whom James Lackington went to live. Yet they were on a par with the vast majority of churches, established or non-established, in that age of religious apathy in England. The boy accompanied the family twice on the Sabbath to the “meeting,” and heard, yet not heard, sermons full of sound morality, but devoid of anything like vigorous, soul-searching, and soul-converting gospel truth, and delivered, withal, in the flattest and most spiritless manner. The ideas of the family were as circumscribed as their library, and that was small and meagre enough, in all conscience. It may be worth while to give an inventory of its contents. It will cover only a line or two of our space, and will be of some use to those, perhaps, who are apt to mourn their own poverty as regards books, and their small advantages, though, perchance, they may have access to free libraries or cheap subscription libraries, or may be able to buy or borrow all they could find time to peruse if only they had the wish to read. Imagine a youth with any taste for literature living in a sleepy town like Taunton in 1760, and looking over his master’s bookshelves and finding there a school-size Bible, “Watts’ Psalms and Hymns,“ Foot’s ”Tract on Baptism,“ Culpepper’s ”Herbal,” the “History of the Gentle Craft,” an old imperfect volume of receipts on Physic, Surgery, etc., and the “Ready Reckoner.” Bowden was an odd character, evidently. One of his strange customs is thus described: “Every morning, at all seasons of the year and in all weathers, he rose about three o’clock, took a walk by the river’s side round Trenchware fields, stopped at some place or other to drink half a pint of ale, came back before six o’clock and called up his people to work, and went to bed again about seven.”
“Thus,” says Lackington, “was the good man’s family jogging easily and quietly on, no one doubting but he should go to heaven when he died, and every one hoping it would be a good while first.”