Lives of Illustrious Shoemakers. W. E. Winks
preachers” led to the conversion of the two sons of Lackington’s employer, and set the young apprentice on a train of thought and inquiry which eventually led him also to cast in his lot with the Methodists. He was then about sixteen years of age, and had so little knowledge of reading that he gladly paid the three halfpence per week which his mother allowed him as pocket-money to one of the young Bowdens for instruction. Yet he had at this time no literary taste, and no thought beyond the limited round of devotional reading, which consisted chiefly of the Bible, and the tracts, sermons, and hymns of the Wesleys. His desire to hear the Methodist preachers was so great at this time, that one Sunday morning, when his mistress had locked the door to prevent his going out for this purpose, he jumped out of the bedroom window, fondly imagining that the words of the ninety-first Psalm, the eleventh and twelfth verses, which he had just been reading, would be sufficient guarantee of his safety in perpetrating such an act of rashness and folly. The last three years of his apprenticeship were spent in the service of his master’s widow, Mr. Bowden having died when Lackington had served about four years. When he was just twenty-one, and about six months before the expiration of his time, a severe contest for the representation of Taunton in Parliament took place, and the friends of two of the candidates purchased his freedom from Mrs. Bowden’s service in order to secure both his vote and his services. The scenes of excitement and dissipation into which he was thrown at this time unsettled his mind, and for a time entirely ruined his religious character. The election over, he went to live at Bristol, and lodged in a street called Castle Ditch, with a young man named John Jones, a maker of stuff shoes, who led him into dissipation. Jones, however, had been pretty well educated, and managed to awaken in Lackington’s mind a desire for more knowledge than he then possessed. He was, indeed, wofully ignorant, had no idea of writing, and when he began to feel a thirst for general reading, confesses that he dared not enter a bookseller’s shop because he did not know the name of any book to ask for. His friend Jones picked up at a bookstall a copy of Walker’s “Paraphrase of Epictetus,” which seems to have charmed the young shoemaker immensely, and to have turned him for a time into a regular stoic.
The taste for reading once awakened, he soon grew weary of a life of sin and folly. One evening he turned into a chapel in Broadmead to hear Mr. Wesley, who was preaching there. The old fire of religious enthusiasm was once more enkindled, and burned as fiercely as ever. His companions were soon brought to join the Wesleyan Society, and for a time the little knot of shoemakers working together lived a life of intense religious devotion, working hard and singing hymns or holding religious conversation all day, reading the works of leading evangelical divines during the greater part of the night, and seldom allowing themselves more than three hours’ sleep.
The religious was combined with the philosophic mind. He bought copies of such books as Plato on the “Immortality of the Soul,” Plutarch’s “Lives,” the “Morals of Confucius,” etc.; and, speaking of this time, he says: “The pleasures of eating and drinking I entirely despised, and for some time carried the disposition to an extreme. The account of Epicurus living in his garden, at the expense of about a halfpenny per day, and that when he added a little cheese to his bread on particular occasions he considered it as a luxury, filled me with raptures. From that moment I began to live on bread and tea, and for a considerable time did not partake of any other viand, but in that I indulged myself three or four times a day. My reasons for living in this abstemious manner were in order to save money to purchase books, to wean myself from the gross pleasures of eating, drinking, etc., and to purge my mind and make it more susceptible of intellectual pleasures.”
Leaving Bristol in 1769, he lived for a year at Kingsbridge, Devonshire, where he worked as a maker of stuff and silk shoes. In 1770 he went back to Bristol, and lodged once more with his old friends, the Joneses. At the end of that year he married Nancy Smith, an old sweetheart, whom he had fallen in love with seven years previously, “being at Farmer Gamlin’s at Charlton, four miles from Taunton, to hear a Methodist sermon.” Nancy was dairymaid then, and was accounted handsome; she was a devout Methodist, and an amiable, industrious, thrifty woman. But they were wretchedly poor at the time of their marriage, and had to go and live in lodgings at half a crown a week. “Our finances,” he remarks, “were but just sufficient to pay the expenses of the (wedding) day, for in searching our pockets (which we did not do in a careless manner), we discovered that we had but one halfpenny to begin the world with. ’Tis true we had laid in eatables sufficient for a day or two, in which time we knew we could by our work procure more, which we very cheerfully set about, singing together the following strains of Dr. Cotton:
‘Our portion is not large indeed,
But then how little do we need!
For Nature’s calls are few.
In this the art of living lies,
To want no more than may suffice,
And make that little do.’
“The above, and the following ode by Mr. Samuel Wesley, we did scores of times repeat, even with raptures:
‘No glory I covet, no riches I want,
Ambition is nothing to me:
The one thing I beg of kind Heaven to grant
Is a mind independent and free.
‘By passion unruffled, untainted by pride,
By reason my life let me square;
The wants of my nature are cheaply supplied,
And the rest are but folly and care.
‘Those blessings which Providence kindly has lent
I’ll justly and gratefully prize;
While sweet meditation and cheerful content
Shall make me both healthy and wise.
‘How vainly through infinite trouble and strife
The many their labors employ;
When all that is truly delightful in life
Is what all, if they will, may enjoy.’”
Sound sense and true philosophy this; and sorely did the young shoemaker and his much-enduring wife feel the need of such philosophy to hearten and console them when four and sixpence a week was all they had to spend on eating and drinking, and when, as he states, “strong beer we had none, nor any other liquor (the pure element excepted); and instead of tea, or rather coffee, we toasted a piece of bread, at other times we fried some wheat, which, when boiled in water, made a tolerable substitute for coffee; and as to animal food, we made use of but little, and that little we boiled and made broth of.” That the cheerful sentiments with which they set out in life did not fail them under the stress of such hardships as these is sufficiently shown by the statement with which he closes the chapter which deals with this part of his history: “During the whole of this time we never once wished for anything that we had not got, but were quite contented, and with a good grace in reality made a virtue of necessity.”
After three years Lackington resolved to go to London in the hope of meeting with better work and pay. It was indeed dire necessity that drove him to take this step. Incessant suffering and semi-starvation seemed inevitable if he remained in Bristol. His wife had been extremely ill almost from the beginning of their residence in the city, probably owing to the change from country air and active employment to the close atmosphere and sedentary occupation to which she was now accustomed. Her continued illness and his own hopeless state of poverty drove him to make the venture. Accordingly, having given her all the money he could spare, he set off for the metropolis, and arrived there in August, 1774, with half a crown in his pocket.
Once in London, the tide of his fortune turned. He soon found plenty of work and got good wages. In a month his wife was sent for, and the two worked so industriously and lived so economically, that before long Nancy changed her cloth cloak for one of silk, and her worthy husband indulged in the luxury of a greatcoat, the first he had ever worn. When he had been in London about four months he received tidings of the death of his grandfather, who had left ten pounds apiece