“The same rains rain from heaven on all the forest trees;
Yet those bring forth sweet fruits, and pois’nous berries these.”

Trench.

In my first visit to the Potteries, I was accompanied by the City Missionary, who introduced me to some fourteen or sixteen families residing there.

I was, as usual, at once impressed with the great deficiency of home comforts; and the miserable countenances of many of the children told of neglect and bad management more forcibly than words could have done.

I told them I had just come to reside near them, and I hoped we should be good neighbours. Like them, I was so occupied with my home duties, that I feared I should not be able to visit them frequently; but it had occurred to me, that if they could spare an hour one evening in the week, I would try to do so also, and we would spend it together in conversing over our various duties and difficulties, more especially those relating to our children, and by this means I hoped we might mutually benefit each other, as well as get more intimately acquainted.

This invitation was by no means warmly responded to at first, but it was the first step taken towards the formation of the Kensington Potteries Mothers’ Society.One morning, a very decent elderly woman, whom I had seen at the Mothers’ Meetings, asked me to call upon her husband, who had not been able to leave his house for some weeks, and was too ill to read. In the afternoon I went to the Potteries. Fortunately, I met a boy of my acquaintance in the street, and he conducted me to the dwelling, which, with the direction given me that “it was in no street in particular,” would have proved difficult to find. I had to pass through a kind of shed to reach the room in which this old couple lived; it was filled with feeding-troughs, tubs, old hoops, and wheel-barrows. I managed to steer safely through all this, and ascended two or three steps into the one chamber which served at once for bed-room, kitchen, and living-room. The man was sitting in a comfortable arm-chair by a neat little fire, and the room was very clean. His hair was perfectly white, and scantily covered one of the finest-formed heads I have ever seen. The features of his face were of a very uncommon order, and everything marked him as one of nature’s “men of power.” He scarcely noticed me when I entered; but his wife said, “This is the lady, John, as has the meeting.” He said, “Oh,” and gave me a kind of nod. The woman seemed annoyed at his want of cordiality, and said again, “John, I have told you about the lady often, and I went myself this morning to ask her to come and see you.”

“I know,” was the laconic answer.

I saw the first advances must come from me, so I took a seat by him, and said, “I am sorry to hear you have been suffering from illness so long.”

“I am seventy-five years old; I have hardly had any illness all my life; I have done a deal of work, and God has been very good to me, and I am not going to grumble at Him now for shutting me up a few months.”

“Your wife tells me you cannot read much, on account of your eyes; I suppose you find the time a little tedious after the active life you have led?”

“I shouldn’t find the time tedious at all, if we were only left to ourselves.” I looked to the wife for an explanation, and she said, “He means, ma’am, that the neighbours hereabout annoy him so by their ways of going on.” This touched a theme upon which he could be eloquent. He began to tell me a great deal about the wickedness of his neighbours; their desecration of the Sabbath seemed to vex him exceedingly. He complained that he could get no peace on the Sunday for the cries of those who went about selling things; while the swarms of children that came out to spend their halfpence that day shewed how wicked their parents must be. As I generally avoid talking of the faults of other persons when visiting the poor, I said, wishing to change the subject, “Well, we have so much to do with ourselves that we must not judge our neighbours harshly.” The old man looked indignantly at me, and exclaimed, “Do you think if God was to call me away this instant, and I had to go to be judged before His throne, and He was to tell me of all the wicked ways I have seen going on before my eyes, and He was to say to me, ‘Why did you see all that sin, and not reprove it?’ do you think He’d take for excuse my saying, ‘that I oughtn’t to judge my neighbours harshly?’ No; depend upon it, He’d hold me guilty for it. He’d say, ‘You know’d better, and you ought to have cared for their souls, and told ’em of it.’ I have always been in the habit of reproving sin when I have seen it, and I always shall.”

The character of Nehemiah came so forcibly into my mind while he was speaking, that when he had ended I could not help remarking, “If you had lived in the days of Nehemiah, I suppose you would not have disapproved of what he did? You know, he not only reproved the people, but he smote certain of them, and plucked out their hair.”

“Ah!” said the old man, “he was in the right of it. Whenever I reads that, I always says, ‘Sarved ’em right.’ We want Nehemiahs bad enough now-a-days,—people, I mean, as has got the courage to call things by their right names.”

“But,” I replied, “we have a later example than Nehemiah to go by, and a more perfect one. Jesus did not reprove sin in this way.”—“He made a whip of small cords and drove them all out of the temple, I know,” said the old man.—“So He did once,” I said; “but a whip of small cords in the hands of Jesus is a very different thing from what it would be in our hands.”—“I don’t understand you,” was the rejoinder.—I explained, “Jesus would only use it where and when it ought to be used, because He would know the extent of the evil in every heart He had to do with; but we, who can judge only after the outward appearance, might make mistakes, and inflict a wound where we ought rather to have bound one up.”

He was silent a minute, and then, as if unable to keep in any longer what had evidently been in his thoughts throughout, he said, “Ma’am, I’ve often heard from my old ’ooman and the rest of ’em what you says to ’em at the meetings, and it has been upon my mind, when I did see you, to tell you I think, if you know’d more about some of ’em you get there, you would be rather more sharp upon ’em than you are.”

“You mean, I suppose, that when I know of anything particularly wrong in any of them, I ought to reprove them?”

“Why, yes. You see, they look up to you a good deal; and, it seems to me, you might do a power of good this way.”

“I think you do not take quite the right view of my position. I do not profess to come amongst them as a reprover of sin, and just to preach to them about their duties; I really have no right to take such an office on myself. I want to help them, knowing that many of their mistakes arise from ignorance. Most of them come in after a hard day’s work, and much suffering in body and mind from fatigue and anxiety; and while I know much of that fatigue and anxiety might have been prevented, if they had set about things in a right way instead of a wrong one, I feel the best use I can make of the little time we have together is, to try to shew them ‘a better way.’ We always begin with reading God’s holy Word, and that is the best reprover of sin; for Paul says, you know, ‘I had not known sin, except by the law.’ It was the law that made sin appear to him ‘exceeding sinful;’ and that is the effect I hope and pray it may have upon us.”

“Well,” said the old man, “some of ’em is a deal better for going, I must confess; but it ’pears to me you say things to them as if they were all alike, whereas some of them is a deal wickeder than others.”

I saw it would be quite impossible to separate in the mind of this veteran the offices of teacher of righteousness, and reprover of sin, or to make him comprehend how many enemies I should make, and what confusion there would be, if I adopted the course which he recommended. So I just remarked, “Well, you know I always ask God to give me a wise and understanding heart before I go amongst them, and I hope I shall be guided to do what is right. If I could see into the heart as God can, I might be able to adapt myself to individual cases; but as it is, I think it would be a worse mistake to distress and vex, by unjust comments, those already sufficiently weary and heavy laden. Encouragement in a right course will often do much more than finding fault with what is wrong. I believe, that whatever good has been done, has arisen from the reading together of God’s Word; whether comfort, counsel, or reproof has been wanted, they have come in this way, and the promise has been fulfilled, ‘My word shall not return unto me void.’”

“Ah!” said he, “that blessed book! I have lived in this place through a dark time, and I am sure I can say that it has been ‘a light to my feet, and a lamp to my path.’” Just then a sad fit of coughing came on, which seemed almost to deprive him of the power of breathing. When it was over, I said, “Do you often cough like that?” “I often do in the night,” he replied. “I can never quite lie down; for if the cough were to come on suddenly, I might be choked before I could be got up. The doctor says I shall go off in one of these fits some night.”

I asked the wife if any one was with them at night: she said, “Oh, no, John isn’t never afraid.” “The last thing that I and my old ’ooman does at night,” added John, “is to kneel down and commend ourselves to God’s keeping. I said to her last night, after we had been praying, ‘Jane, if I am sent for to-night, I am ready;’ and what it will be to leave this poor place, and go right off at once to the mansion my Saviour has provided for me!”

“Can you feel as trustful as your husband?” I asked Jane.

“Why, ma’am, I do try to, and I am as happy to think about heaven as he is; but you see, ma’am, the thing I feel is, that we must die first before we can go there, and death may be an awfuller thing than we think for.”“Jane,” cried her husband, in a reproving tone of voice, “how often I have told you, that if death is to be a great trouble, then God is going to send us great help for it. He took care of me and helped me when I was a strong man, and now that I am as feeble as a child, He will be strength to me; and, Jane, I wish you would mind, that it isn’t any more hard to God to help us out of great troubles than out of little uns. You wouldn’t believe, ma’am,” he continued, “how happy I am at night, sometimes, when I am lying awake. He makes me to feel that love and trust in Him, that as sure as David I can say, ‘I fear no evil.’”

Blessed old man! The little room, with its close atmosphere, and many discomforts, seemed to me like the gate of heaven; and had he lived in Old Testament days, his name might have ranked with them of whom it is said, “These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth.”

A few months after I had established the Mothers’ Society, one of the women brought a message from her husband, expressing his great wish to see me. I promised to call in the course of the week, and the next afternoon I found my way to a little low dwelling, which was pointed out to me as the residence I was seeking. It consisted of only two rooms—one in front, where the family seemed to live during the day, while that behind served as a bed-room. Three or four children were playing on the floor; the mother was busy at her washing-tub; and near the fire sat the husband, who, I saw, from his leather apron and the boot he held in his hand, was a shoemaker. The reception here was very different from the one previously described. When the wife announced me, the man rose from his seat; and, as his height exceeded six feet, his head scarcely cleared the ceiling. His fine figure, the form of his head, and the expression of his countenance, conveyed the idea that, had the man been born in a different position, he might have risen to be Lord Chancellor. After the usual greeting, he said (still standing)—

“Madam, I have wanted to see you for some time past, to thank you for what you have begun to do for us. You have thought of what we want done for us more than anything, and I hope, madam, you will go on with it; and God will bless you for this work, and so shall many of us; for we often think we might do better, if somebody would take the trouble to put us in the way of it.”

I told him that I was quite rewarded for any trouble which I was taking, by the pleasant friends I made. When I was living in the country, I had always been accustomed to a large number of poor friends; and since coming to London, I had missed them very much. I told him of a book society that my brother and I had established in the village near our house. Twelve men, like himself, (I believe, four out of the twelve were shoemakers,) each brought a book, and on the first day of the month each man passed on his book to the member next on the list; and thus all had the benefit of reading twelve books at the cost of one. We had quarterly meetings with these men, to converse about the books; I repeated to him some of the observations they used to make, and I saw my listener was much amused.

“Ah!” said he, “I lived in the country, too, before I came here; but there was nothing of that sort going on there. I wish there had; it would have kept me out of a deal of mischief. I have blessed God that ever I came to this place; for though it is poor and dirty enough, I have met the best friends here that I ever knew.”

He then gave me a long and interesting account of his previous life; how he had early imbibed infidel principles from some of his companions, and had gone on for years rather wishing them to be true than actually believing them to be so.

“I couldn’t bear,” he said, “to think there was a God, or another life to come after this; it made me so miserable. I was obliged to try and get rid of the thoughts as fast as they came; and then there was the people as called themselves religious; I really couldn’t see that they were better than those as didn’t say anything about it. They liked eating, and drinking, and pleasuring, just as much in their way as any one else; and though we often heard that they talked about us in a way that shewed they despised us, and thought themselves a deal better, that only made us feel worse. But since we have been here, some of the ladies as bring round the tracts has stopped and talked to us sometimes in quite a different sort of way, you know, ma’am. One of them left me a tract to read some time ago. I couldn’t get this tract out of my mind after I had read it. There, whilst I was at work, it was lying on the bench, and I kept looking into it again and again. One day, while I was puzzling about it, the missionary came in. I soon saw he wasn’t like them religious people I knew before, and I told him all that was in my mind: and ’twas the best day of my life when I met with him; for he has helped me to see things very different; and I bless God that ever he came here, and so does many others beside me.”

“Well,” I said, “you can say you are a happier man now than ever you were before, cannot you?”

“Yes, ma’am, thank God, I can trust Him for this life, and through my blessed Saviour I have hope of a better life to come.”

I saw, by the thoughtful and earnest expression of his face, that the man had still something on his mind; so I did not reply, but waited a minute.

“Do you know, ma’am,” he continued, “though God has been so good to me, and has made me to see how He can and will save me, sinner though I am, it do trouble me, and I can’t help it, to see so much confusion, like, in this world. Some people as isn’t worse than others, nor yet so bad, seems to be always a-suffering; and little children too, it do grieve me to see them suffer: and then you see, ma’am, what a place this very ‘Potteries’ is, to be in God’s world.”

“But,” I replied, “God did not make the Potteries what they are. Some sixty years ago, before any one lived here, the air was fresh and sweet; flowers and trees were growing here; and it was altogether as pleasant a place as any other portion of God’s dominions.”

“Well,” he said, “that’s true:” but the shade had not passed away from his countenance.

“Do you know,” I continued, “it is one of the greatest troubles of my life that I so often feel just what you describe. It was only a short time ago, I was walking in London; and as I turned into one of the back streets, I saw a little boy sitting on a doorstep, with a baby in his arms about five or six months old; as I passed by, the baby began to cry, and the miserable expression of its little face, and the hopeless look of its nurse, feeling so powerless to do anything to comfort it,—both little faces looking already old from hunger, cold, and neglect,—so troubled me that I could scarcely look at or enjoy anything while I was out. In the evening, after my own healthy, happy children were gone to bed, I was sitting in my comfortable room by the cheerful fire, surrounded by everything to make life comfortable and desirable; but instead of feeling thankful for so many mercies, I sat and cried at the recollection of those unhappy little children.”

“And did ye sure, ma’am?” said the man. “Law! now, how we do feel alike after all, when we come to know! But I suppose, ma’am, that sort of thing does not last long with you?”

“I remember, that evening at family prayer,” I continued, “the chapter which was read had this verse in it: ‘Even so it is not the will of your Father which is in heaven, that one of these little ones should perish.’ I thought it was not my will, either; but there was this great difference,—whatever God willed He had the power to do; that He had sent His Son to die for the world, and these little creatures were part of His world, and He would do with them just what is right.”

“Do you think, ma’am,” said the man, “that God is altogether angry with us for this sort of feeling? He must know that it is very difficult for us to see so much misery, and not be troubled about it.”

“I do not think that is quite so clear,” I said, “as that He is pleased with us for trusting Him entirely. I think He has great sympathy with us in the difficulty we have to contend with in this respect. He says, ‘And blessed is he whosoever shall not be offended in me.’ Though He did not blame Thomas for his unbelief, He said, ‘Blessed are they who have not seen me, and yet have believed.’ Even a grain of faith is commended, and spoken of as having much reward connected with it: and the apostle tells us, ‘Cast not away, therefore, your confidence, which hath great recompense of reward.’”

“Well, ma’am,” he replied, “I do pray for faith. I do think it is a glorious thing to be able to trust everything with God. I says to myself often, ‘There, wait a bit, and you’ll know.’”

I answered, “I once heard my dear mother talking to a person who troubled himself very much about the management of God’s world. She said, ‘I have often compared our present condition to that of servants who might be called into a great house to assist in performing some important work; but instead of the same servants being employed throughout, each was expected to work only one hour, and then to give place to others. Of course, from this circumstance, no one of them would be able to understand the object and design of the work; these would only be known to the master. All that he required of them was, to do his bidding a little while, and then to receive a great reward. How foolish it would be of those servants to go fretfully through their short period of service, and dishonour their master by evil reports of what they could not understand, and lose their reward at last!’”

“O ma’am,” said the man, “that is beautiful: it was never so plain to me before.”

Just then the children, who had been sent out by their mother to play, that they might not interrupt our conversation, returned; and, after making a little acquaintance with them, I took my leave. As I returned home, I hoped that this pleasant interview might be the beginning of a long friendship; but I never saw my friend again. Only about a week from that time, he was taken ill, and died a few days afterwards. I did not hear of his sickness in time to see him; but I heard that he died in peace, trusting wholly in the Saviour. How soon was the mystery, with him, exchanged for perfect knowledge! How soon was he admitted where every tear shed, either for himself or others, was for ever wiped away; while we, who tried even out of our own dimness and sorrow to enlighten and comfort him, are still left to wonder and weep!

Foster, after the death of his wife, when writing to a friend, says, referring to the years that may elapse before he may be permitted to join her, “Does that to her appear a long time in prospect, or has she begun to account of duration according to the great laws of eternity? Earnest imaginings and questionings like these arise without end, and still, still there is no answer, no revelation. The mind comes again and again up closer to the thick black veil; but there is no perforation, no glimpse. She that loved me, and, I trust, loves me still, will not, must not, cannot answer me. I can only imagine her to say, ‘Come and see. Serve our God, so that you shall come and share at no distant time.’” And again, in another letter, he says, “How striking to think that she, so long and so recently with me here, so beloved, but now so totally withdrawn and absent, that she experimentally knows all that I am in vain inquiring.”

The cottage of the communicative little old woman, to whom I am indebted for so much of my information, was amongst the earliest erected in the Potteries. It must have been a picturesque object when the smoke first curled from the low chimney across the verdant plain, where neither villa, terrace, nor steeple were to be seen. The Hippodrome was then on the spot where the graceful church of Saint John’s now stands. Travellers, who were in the habit of coming this way, tell us that was then the waymark, just as the church now seems to be the town-mark.

Not far from the Hippodrome stood “Tucker’s Cottage,” which an artist thought sufficiently picturesque to transfer to his sketch-book. The reader may confirm this opinion on reference to my frontispiece. This interesting dwelling consisted of one floor, divided into two apartments, one for the family, the other for domestic purposes and such animals as were thought indispensable to the general welfare. Before and behind was an ample plot of ground, enclosed by a thick mound of earth that resembled the outworks of a fortification. The ground front was the domain of poultry, pigs, and the donkey; in the rear stagnated a lake, into which flowed the foul streams of the province. The pond was overhung with willow stumps, that assumed the title of trees. Like a sea far more famous, it had “no outlet but the ambient air.” As years passed, and the events previously described took place, this primeval cottage was fast advancing to decay. The roof and walls had been often repaired with old pieces of board, condemned teatrays, plaster, and similar rubbish; the windows had become opaque, and the chimney transparent. Various means had been adopted to prevent the downfall of the whole house. After a “stiffer breeze” than common, the little old man might have been seen doctoring Jenny’s (the donkey’s) apartment, and his own also. But all his trouble and pains were unavailing. The little dwelling, which he and his “guidwife” had helped to rear with their own hands, laughed at by the world, but endeared to them by the associations of a lifetime, was sentenced by the Commissioners to be taken down; and thus, just five years before the expiration of their lease, the venerable pair were compelled, at a cost to themselves of thirty shillings (which they could very ill afford), to pull down what remained of the old fabric. “Some natural tears they shed, but wiped them soon.” Yes, literally, they “wiped them soon;” for the poor old couple belonged to the company of the faithful, who believe that “here they have no continuing city, but seek one to come.” It was “the Lord’s will,” they said. “He ordered all for the best.” “The Master would soon call them to a house not made with hands;” and so, without repining, they rented an adjoining cottage. Here the principal inconvenience was, that “grannie,” in her old age, had scarcely room to stretch her weary limbs: so narrow was the new domicile, that the chain of the faithful dog had to be shortened, against his wishes; and the poor ducks and hens, accustomed to a more ample domain, could scarcely find a roosting-place.

There is yet another member of this little family who must not be forgotten. A deaf and blind sister has long received shelter in this humble home, where no charitable aid has entered, or parochial relief intrudes. Though feeling is the only avenue of access to this afflicted one, she shares their family devotions. The Bible is brought to her, and she passes her hands over it, and then places them in the attitude of prayer, in which she always keeps them a certain time. After they removed to their present habitation, this poor creature was much perplexed at the loss of the old familiar turns and corners by which she had been accustomed to feel her way about. The only way in which they could comfort her, was to bring to her the Word that “endureth for ever,” pass her hands over it, and lift them up to heaven.

It is not unusual to find persons of determined character holding peculiar sentiments, and very dogmatical in the expression of them. With significant nods and wise shakes of the head, you may frequently hear this worthy couple saying, that “man can do nothing towards converting himself—no, nothing. You may as well tell me to mount up to the sky, as that man can think one good thought of himself, or do one right action.”

The old woman entertains a very high respect for the excellent curate we have before mentioned. Once, on detecting herself speaking more highly of him and his work than was consistent with her principles of the “creature being nothing,” she qualified her praise by saying, “He was able to do all this, because the Lord’s time was come; he wouldn’t have done nothing without that, d’ye see, ma’am.”

I spoke to her once about some plans of my own, by which I hoped to effect some improvement. “Well, ma’am,” she said, “if the Lord’s time is come for it, you’ll do it; and if it isn’t, you won’t. He’ll stop you up, or let you go on, just as He sees fit. I don’t trouble so much as some people do about trying to alter things, and make ’em better; for I know the Lord have planned it all out, and He’ll do it just as He likes.”

Although they have the greatest respect for the whole of God’s Word, yet some portions of it are much more frequently quoted and dwelt upon than others. “No man can come to me, except the Father which hath sent me draw him,” seems to have made a greater impression than, “Him that cometh to me, I will in no wise cast out.”

Divine grace sanctifies the natural disposition, but it does not entirely alter it; and we can often trace an intimate connexion between character and creed. The opposition which these good people had experienced had tended to strengthen a severity natural to them. How different were these impressions of truth from those of the kind-hearted man previously described, who “would have all men to be saved,” and could scarcely bring his mind to acquiesce in any wish short of that. There are few Christians to be met with who are not more deeply impressed with one form or phase of truth than another. Nor is this to be regretted, if we can only meet on the common ground of “love to Him who has died for us.” In the words of one of the most popular preachers of the present day, “Supposing the Spirit of truth to descend upon the earth, would He anywhere find a temple erected to Himself, of which He could take possession and say, ‘This is mine?’ No; but He would go from one building to another, and see here a stone that He could claim as His own, and there another, and we should hear Him saying, ‘The materials for my temple are now scattered, though most of them are to be found even here; but the day is coming when I will collect them together, and My temple shall stand upon the earth.’”

In the sketches of character thus presented, there is no intention of conveying the idea that the inhabitants of the Potteries generally answer to this description. The object has been to shew that, in the midst of every disadvantage, and surrounded by all incentives to evil, God has had His own people, and has given them grace to persevere to the end.

To such as have accustomed themselves to look down upon this place as a plague-spot—a pest that we should be well rid of, this narrative will shew that there is good material to be picked out of the rubbish, and that even the rubbish itself may be capable of conversion into good material. In talking to policemen, I have more than once heard them say, “We hardly ever take up any of the Pottery people for theft; they are known amongst us to be honest and industrious. Our work lies among the Irish. We have very little to do with the Pottery people; and if it were not for the DRINK, we should have nothing to do with them.”