Part 4

It was now Sarah's turn to be uncomfortable, and this was a great relief to him. He felt he must put her at ease, so he said, "These roses would look well on a platter--I will model one for you when I go home." This helped things a little, and the girl offered to show him the garden. There were no flowers in Burslem. People had no time to take care of them.

And just then the Squire appeared, bluff, bold and hearty, and soon everything was all right. That evening the young lady played for them on the harpsichord; the father told stories and laughed heartily at them because nobody else did; and Josiah seated in a dim corner recited pages from Thomson's "Seasons," and the next day was frightened at his temerity.

* * * * *

When Josiah returned to Burslem, it was with the firm determination that he must get away from his brother and branch out for himself. That he loved Sarah or had any idea of wedding her, he was not conscious. Yet her life to him was a great living presence, and all of his plans for the future were made with her in mind. Brown butter-crocks were absolutely out of the question! It was blue plates, covered with vines and roses, or nothing; and he even had visions of a tea-set covered with cupids and flying angels.

In a few weeks we find Josiah over near Sheffield making knife-handles for a Mr. Harrison, an ambitious cutler. Harrison lacked the art spirit and was found too mercenary for our young man, who soon after formed a partnership with a man named Whieldon, "to make tortoise-shell and ivory from ground flint and other stones by processes secret to said Wedgwood." Whieldon furnished the money and Wedgwood the skill. Up to this time the pottery business in England had consisted in using the local clays. Wedgwood invented a mill for grinding stone, and experimented with every kind of rock he could lay his hands on.

He also became a skilled modeler, and his success at ornamenting the utensils and pretty things they made caused the business to prosper. In a year he had saved up a hundred pounds of his own. This certainly was quite a fortune, and Sarah had written him, "I am so proud of your success--we all predict for you a great future."

Such assurances had a sort of undue weight with Josiah, for we find him not long after making bold to call on Squire Wedgwood on "a matter of most important business."

The inspired reader need not be told what that business was. Just let it go that the Squire told Josiah he was a fool to expect that the only daughter of Richard Wedgwood, Esquire, retired monger in Cheshire cheese, should think of contracting marriage with a lame potter from Burslem. Gadzooks! The girl would some day be heiress to ten thousand pounds or so, and the man she would marry must match her dowry, guinea for guinea. And another thing: a nephew of Lord Bedford, a rising young barrister of London, had already asked for her hand.

To be a friend to a likely potter wasn't the same as asking him into the family!

Josiah's total sum of assurance had been exhausted when he blurted out his proposal to the proud father; there was now nothing he could do but to grow first red and then white. He was suppressed, undone, and he could not think of a thing to say, or an argument to put forth. The air seemed stifling. He stumbled down the steps and started down the road as abruptly as he had appeared.

What he would do or where he would go were very hazy propositions in his mind. He limped along and had gone perhaps a mile. Things were getting clearer in his mind. His first decision as sanity returned was that he would ask the first passer-by which way it was to the river.

Now he was getting mad. "A Burslem potter!" that is what the Squire called him, and a lame one at that! It was a taunt, an epithet, an insult! To call a person a Burslem potter was to accuse him of being almost everything that was bad.

The stage did not go until the next day--Josiah had slackened his pace and was looking about for an inn. He would get supper first anyway, and then the river--it would only be one Burslem potter less.

And just then there was a faint cry of "Oh, Josiah!" and a vision of blue. Sarah was right there behind him, all out of breath from running across the meadows. "Oh, Josiah--I--I just wanted to say that I hate that barrister! And then you heard papa say that you must match my dowry, guinea for guinea--I am sorry it is so much, but you can do it, Josiah, you can do it!"

She held out her hand and Josiah clutched and twisted it, and then smacked at it, but smacked into space.

And the girl was gone! She was running away from him. He could not hope to catch her--he was lame, and she was agile as a fawn. She stepped upon a stile that led over through the meadow, and as she stood there she waved her hand, and Josiah afterward thought she said, "Match my dowry, guinea for guinea, Josiah: you can do it, you can do it." Just an instant she stood there, and then she ran across the meadow and disappeared amid the oaks.

An old woman came by and saw him staring at the trees, but he did not ask her the way to the river.

* * * * *

From a shy youth, Josiah Wedgwood had evolved into a man of affairs, and was surely doing a man's work. He had spent about five years making curious earthenware ornaments for the Sheffield cutlers; and then with full one thousand pounds he had come back to Burslem and started business on his own account. He had read and studied and worked, and he had evolved. He was an educated man; that is to say, he was a competent and useful man. He determined to free Burslem from the taint that had fallen upon it. "Burslem?" he once wrote to Sarah, "Burslem? the name shall yet be a symbol of all that is beautiful, honest and true; we shall see! I am a potter--yes, but I'll be the best one that England has ever seen."

And the flower-garden was one of the moves in the direction of evolution.

Occasionally, Josiah made visits to Cheshire, riding forty miles on horseback, for he now had horses of his own. The roads in Spring and Winter were desperately bad, but Josiah by persistent agitation had gotten Parliament to widen and repair, at the expense of several hundred pounds, the road between Lawton in Cheshire to Cliffe Bank at Staffordshire.

And it so happened that this was the road which led from where Wedgwood lived to where lived his lady-love. Josiah and Sarah had many a smile over the fact that Cupid had taken a hand in road-building. Evidently Dan Cupid is a very busy and versatile individual.

Sarah was her father's housekeeper. She had one brother, a young man of meager qualities. These two were joint heirs to their father's estate of something over twenty thousand pounds. Josiah and Sarah thought what a terrible blow it would be if this brother should die and Sarah thus have her dowry doubled!

The Squire depended upon Sarah in many ways. She wrote his letters and kept his accounts; and his fear for her future was founded on a selfish wish not to lose her society and services, quite as much as a solicitude for her happiness.

For a year after Josiah had exploded his bombshell by asking Squire Richard for his daughter's hand, the lover was forbidden the house.

Then the Squire relaxed so far that he allowed Josiah and Sarah to meet in his presence. And finally there was a frank three-cornered understanding. And that was that, when Josiah could show that he had ten thousand pounds in his own name, the marriage would take place. This propensity on the part of parents to live their children's lives is very common. Few be the parents and very great are they who can give liberty and realize that their children are only loaned to them. I fear we parents are prone to be perverse and selfish.

Josiah and Sarah reviewed their status from all sides. They could have thrown the old gentleman overboard entirely and cut for Gretna Green, but that would have cost them an even ten thousand pounds. It would also have secured the Squire's enmity, and might have caused him a fit of apoplexy. And surely, as it was, the lovers were not lost to each other. To wed is often fatal to romance; but it is expecting too much to suppose that lovers will reason that too much propinquity is often worse than obstacle. The road between them was a good one--the letter-carrier made three trips a week, and an irascible parent could not stop dreams, nor veto telepathy, even if he did pass a law that one short visit a month was the limit.

Lovers not only laugh at locksmiths, but at most everything else. Josiah and Sarah kept the line warm with a stream of books, papers, manuscripts and letters. By meeting the mail-carrier a mile out of the village, the vigilant Squire's censorship was curtailed by Sarah to reasonable proportions.

And so the worthy Richard had added the joys of smuggling to the natural sweets of a grand passion. In thus giving zest to the chase, no thanks, however, should be sent his way. Even stout and stubborn old gentlemen with side-whiskers have their uses.

And it was about this time that John Wesley came to Burslem and was surprised to find a flower-garden in a community of potters. He looked at the flowers, had a casual interview with the owner and wrote, "His soul is near to God."

* * * * *

Wedgwood knew every part of his business. He modeled, made designs, mixed clay, built kilns, and at times sat up all night and fed fuel into a refractory furnace. Nothing was quite good enough--it must be better. And to make better pottery, he said, we must produce better people. He even came very close to plagiarizing Walt Whitman by saying, "Produce great people--the rest follows!"

Wedgwood instituted a class in designing and brought a young man from London to teach his people the rudiments of art.

Orders were coming in from nobility for dinner-sets, and the English middle class, instead of dipping into one big pot set in the center of the table, were adopting individual plates.

Knives and forks came into use in England about the time of Good Queen Bess, who was only fairly good. Sir Walter Raleigh, who never posted signs reading, "No Smoking," records, "Tiny forks are being used to spear things at table, instead of the thumb-and-finger method sanctified by long use." But until the time of Wedgwood a plate and a cup for each person at the table was a privilege only of the nobility, and napkins and finger-bowls were on the distant horizon.

Wedgwood had not only to educate his workmen, but he had also to educate the public. But he made head. He had gotten a good road to Cheshire, and an equally good one to Liverpool, and was shipping crockery in large quantities to America. Occasionally, Wedgwood taught the designing classes, himself. As a writer he had developed a good deal of facility, for three love-letters a week for five years will educate any man. To know the right woman is a liberal education. Wedgwood also had given local addresses on the necessity of good roads, and the influence of a tidy back-yard on character.

He was a little past thirty years old, sole owner of a prosperous business and was worth pretty near the magic sum of ten thousand pounds.

Squire Wedgwood had been formally notified to come over to Burslem and take an inventory. He came, coughed and said that pottery was only a foolish fashion, and people would soon get enough of it. Richard felt sure that common folks would never have much use for dishes.

On being brought back to concrete reasons, he declared that his daughter's dowry had increased, very much increased, through wise investments of his own. The girl had a good home--better than she would have at Burslem. The man who married her must better her condition, etc., etc.

It seems that Josiah and Sarah had a little of the good Semitic instinct in their make-up. The old gentleman must be managed; the dowry was too valuable to let slip. They needed the money in their business, and had even planned just what they would do with it. They were going to found a sort of Art Colony, where all would work for the love of it, and where would take place a revival of the work of the Etruscans. As classic literature had been duplicated, and the learning of the past had come down to us in books, so would they duplicate in miniature the statues, vases, bronzes and other marvelous beauty of antiquity.

And the name of the new center of art was chosen--it should be "Etruria." It was a great dream; but then lovers are given to dreams: in fact, they have almost a monopoly on the habit!

* * * * *

Great people have great friends. Wedgwood had a friend in Liverpool named Bentley. Bentley was a big man--a gracious, kindly, generous, receptive, broad, sympathetic man. Your friend is the lengthened shadow of yourself.

Bentley was both an artist and a businessman. Bentley had no quibble or quarrel with himself, and therefore was at peace with the world; he had eliminated all grouch from his cosmos. Bentley began as Wedgwood's agent, and finally became his partner, and had a deal to do with the evolution of Etruria.

When Bentley opened a showroom in London and showed the exquisite, classic creations of Flaxman and the other Wedgwood artists, carriages blocked the streets, and cards of admission had to be issued to keep back the crowds. Bentley dispatched a messenger to Wedgwood with the order, "Turn every available man on vases--London is vase mad!"

A vase, by the way, is a piece of pottery that sells for from one to ten shillings; if it sells for more than ten shillings, you should pronounce it vawse.

On the ninth of January, Seventeen Hundred Sixty-four, Wedgwood wrote Bentley this letter: "If you know my temper and sentiments on these affairs, you will be sensible how I am mortified when I tell you I have gone through a long series of bargain-making, of settlements, reversions, provisions and so on. 'Gone through it,' did I say? Would to Hymen that I had! No! I am still in the attorney's hands, from which I hope it is no harm to pray, 'Good Lord, Deliver me!' Sarah and I are perfectly agreed, and would settle the whole affair in three minutes; but our dear papa, over-careful of his daughter's interest, would by some demands which I can not comply with, go near to separate us if we were not better determined.

"On Friday next, Squire Wedgwood and I are to meet in great form, with each of us our attorney, which I hope will prove conclusive. You shall then hear further from your obliged and very affectionate friend, Josiah Wedgwood."

On January Twenty-ninth, Sarah and Josiah walked over to the little village of Astbury, Cheshire, and were quietly married, the witnesses being the rector's own family, and the mail-carrier. Just why the latter individual was called in to sign the register has never been explained, but I imagine most lovers can. He surely had been "particeps criminis" to the event.

And so they were married, and lived happily afterward. Josiah was thirty-four, and Sarah twenty-nine when they were married. The ten years of Laban service was not without its compensation. The lovers had lived in an ideal world long enough to crystallize their dreams.

In just a year after the marriage a daughter was born to Mr. and Mrs. Josiah Wedgwood, and they called her name Susannah.

And Susannah grew up and became the mother of Charles Darwin, the greatest scientist the world has ever produced.

Writers of romances have a way of leaving their lovers at the church-door, a cautious and wise expedient, since too often love is one thing and life another. But here we find a case where love was worked into life. From the date of his marriage Wedgwood's business moved forward with never a reverse nor a single setback.

When Wedgwood and Bentley were designated "Potters to the Queen," and began making "queensware," coining the word, they laid the sure foundation for one of the greatest business fortunes ever accumulated in England.

Two miles from Burslem, they built the little village of Etruria--a palpable infringement on the East Aurora caveat. And so the dream all came true, and in fact was a hundred times beyond what the lovers had ever imagined.

Sarah's brother accommodatingly died a few years after her marriage, and so she became sole heiress to a fortune of twenty thousand pounds, and this went to the building up of Etruria.

Wedgwood, toward the close of his life, was regarded as the richest man in England who had made his own fortune. And better still, he was rich in intellect and all those finer faculties that go into the making of a great and generous man.

Twenty-two years after his marriage, Wedgwood wrote to his friend Lord Gower: "I never had a great plan that I did not submit to my wife. She knew all the details of the business, and it was her love for the beautiful that first prompted and inspired me to take up Grecian and Roman Art, and in degree, reproduce the Classic for the world. I worked for her approval, and without her high faith in me I realize that my physical misfortunes would have overcome my will, and failure would have been written large where now England has carved the word Success."

WILLIAM GODWIN AND MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT

If children are to be educated to understand the true principle of patriotism, their mother should be a patriot; and the love of mankind, from which an orderly train of virtues springs, can only be produced by considering the moral and civil interest of the race. Woman should be prepared by education to become the companion of man, or she will stop the progress of knowledge, for truth must be common to all, or it will be inefficacious with respect to its influence on general practise.

--_Mary Wollstonecraft_

[Illustration: WILLIAM GODWIN]

Others may trace the love-tales of milkmaids and farmhands; I deal with the people who have made their mark upon the times; people who have tinted the world's thought-fabric and to whose genius we are all heirs. And the reason the story of their love is vital to us is because their love was vital to them. Thought is born of parents, and literature is the child of married minds. So this, then, is the love-story of William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft.

History and literature are very closely related. If one sets down the chief events in political history, and over against these writes the names of the radical authors and orators of the time, he can not but be convinced that literature leads, and soldiers and politicians are puppets tossed on the tide of time. A thought, well expressed, is a bomb that explodes indefinitely.

Two men, Rousseau and Voltaire, lighted the fuse that created the explosion known as the French Revolution. Luther's books and sermons brought about the Reformation.

Thomas Paine's little book, "The Crisis," of which half a million copies were printed and distributed from Virginia to Maine, stirred the Colonists to the sticking-point; and George Washington, who was neither a writer nor an orator, paid "Letters and Truth" the tribute of saying, "Without the pamphlets of Thomas Paine the hearts and minds of the people would never have been prepared to respond to our call for troops." No one disputes now that it was a book written by a woman, of which a million copies were sold in the North, that prepared the way for Lincoln's call for volunteers.

Literature and oratory are arsenals that supply the people their armament of reasons. And through the use and exercise of these borrowed reasons, we learn to create new ones for ourselves. Thinkers prepare the way for thinkers, and every John the Baptist uttering his cry in the wilderness is heard.

And the fate of John the Baptist, and the fate of the Man whom he preceded, are typical of the fate of all who are bold enough to carry the standard of revolt into the camp of the entrenched enemy. The Cross is a mighty privilege; and only the sublimely great are able to pay the price at which hemlock is held.

Buddha said that the finest word in any language is "Equanimity." This is a paradox, and like every paradox implies that the reverse is equally true. Equanimity in the face of opposition, steadfastness in time of stress, and wise and useful purpose, are truly godlike.

And there is only one thing worth fighting for, talking for, or writing for; and all literature and all oratory have this for their central theme--Freedom. It was only Freedom that could lure Cincinnatus from his plow or Lincoln from his law-office.

And so Mary Wollstonecraft's book, "The Rights of Woman," was the first strong, earnest, ringing word on the subject. She summed up the theme once and for all, just as an essay by Herbert Spencer anticipates and answers every objection, exhausting the theme. And that the author had a whimsical touch of humor in her composition is shown in that she dedicates the book to that Prince of Woman-Haters, "Talleyrand, Late Bishop of Autun."

"Political Justice," by William Godwin, was published in Seventeen Hundred Ninety-three. The work, on its first appearance, created a profound impression among English thinking people, although orthodoxy has almost succeeded in smothering it in silence since John Stuart Mill declared that this book created an epoch and deserved to rank with Milton's "Speech for Unlicensed Printing," Locke's "Essay on Human Understanding" or Jean Jacques' "Emile." That it was a positive force in Mill's own life he always admitted.