Had we passed along one of the poorer streets of the city of London some 150 years ago, we might have chanced on a humble shop displaying in the window plaster-casts and figures in clay, and had we lifted the latch and entered, in the cramped space behind the counter we should have found the child who was one day to become England’s greatest sculptor, John Flaxman.

A ricketty, weakly baby in a high stuffed child’s chair, so that his little pale face might be on a level with the counter; the sweet dreamy eyes looked out on the world, all unthinking that a day was coming when the fame of his name would reach wherever men knew and loved his art.

Born in the city of York in 1755, a few months before the Flaxmans settled in London, there were times when his father and mother hardly believed they would be able to “rear” the delicate child. Attacks of illness and weakness were common to him. Indeed, one day he was seized with a fit of gasping so severe that the breath seemed to leave his body, and they even laid him out for dead, but he revived, and his breath came again, and by-and-by he even grew. Few amusements, no childish games were open to the little cripple. The green fields, the blue of the country skies were to him things unknown. The dingy four walls of the narrow cramped shop had to serve him instead. But day by day he grew quick to note the familiar beauty of his father’s casts. He came to see the shape of these white things with the eye of the poet and the artist. There came into his mind the strong desire to copy, inborn in most children, and the baby fingers set to work to mould, and fashion, and make some likeness—if even a dim one—to those of his father’s models. In these old days gentlemen were accustomed to wear bunches of seals dangling from their watch-chains, and the child used to keep a stock of wax, and when he thought a customer seemed kind, he would summon courage to ask him to let him take the impression on the soft wax.

In little John’s early years, when he was as yet a baby of five, a great ceremony took place in London, the coronation of King GeorgeIII. Rumour went that to celebrate the great event there was to be a coronation medal struck, and that hundreds of these were to be thrown to the crowd. The cripple child in the dingy side street of the great city set his little heart on possessing one of these treasures, and begged his father to get him one. But Flaxman was not successful. On the way home, with his mind full of his disappointment, his eye happened to light on a plated button on the pavement, stamped with a horse and jockey. He picked it up. Would he disappoint his little son, or deceive him? He decided on deceiving him, and gave the eager and expectant child the button. The boy received the trophy in wonderment. He was glad to get it, but he remarked that it seemed a strange medal for a coronation!

Customers who came to Flaxman’s house could hardly help noticing the child who sat behind the counter, the big head on the lame body, the high shoulders, the beautiful pure eyes, the sensitive, proud face. They spoke to him, and they found him no common child.

One day, by good luck, when little John was hardly more than seven, a customer, a Mr. Matthew, a clergyman, came to Flaxman’s shop. Writing of that visit, when it had become a memory and the child a great man, Mr. Matthew says—

“I went to the shop of old Flaxman to have a figure repaired, and whilst I was standing there I heard a child cough behind the counter. I looked over, and there I saw a little boy seated on a small chair, with a large chair before him, on which lay a book he was reading. His fine eyes and beautiful forehead interested me, and I said, ‘What book is that?’ He raised himself on his crutches, bowed, and said, ‘Sir, it is a Latin book, and I am trying to learn it.’

“‘Aye, indeed!’ I answered. ‘You are a fine boy, but this is not the proper book. I will bring you a right one to-morrow.’

“I did as I promised, and the acquaintance thus casually begun ripened into one of the best friendships of my life.”

It is a picture! The child of seven trying patiently to make out his Latin book—his weakly frame on one chair, the unwieldy volume spread out before him on another. The beautiful eyes and brow, the winning smile, and the long, brown hair curling to the shoulders.

But the wheel of his fortune seemed as if it had got a turn. Mr. Matthew was as good as his word, and brought him the promised book, and more followed. Translations of old Greek fables and stories from Homer that stirred the imagination of the boy. Then followed the fascinating adventures of Don Quixote. These fired his brain. How great and how heroic it seemed to him to rescue maidens in distress, to set the wrongs of the world right. So strong a hold did the thought take of the imagination of the child that one day, hobbling on his little crutches, he started off for Hyde Park in the hope that he might perchance find some forlorn maiden in need of his protection! But no old-world lady of the kind did he happen on among the thousands of teeming London—either in the Park or Kensington Gardens—and he had to come home cast down and disappointed.

Meantime he strove and worked and laboured in his own childish way—with perhaps no great present results—receiving now and then even a check from which the sensitive mind recoiled, as when one day he showed an artist a drawing of a human eye, to be met with the quizzical question, “Is that an oyster?” Perhaps more secretly after that, but still as perseveringly as ever, he worked.

Long years after, a friend gazing on these early works was struck with proofs of his diligence as a child, and asked him how he had managed to do them.

“Sir,” Flaxman answered, “we are never too young to learn what is useful, or too old to grow wise and good.”

When he was about ten years old a better gift than any fortune could bestow was granted to him. The feebleness of childhood seemed to leave him. The sickly frame seemed suddenly to knit itself together. The weakly limbs gradually strengthened, and the boy was able to throw away his crutches.

No need now to sit solitary in the cramped little shop behind the counter, dreaming lonely day-dreams and fashioning his models all by himself. With new strength a new life was opening up to him—or rather the old life grew day by day transformed and beautified.

It was Mrs. Matthew, the wife of his friend the clergyman, who first drew the boy from his life of loneliness. She was touched and interested in him, and she asked him to her house. He went and he went again. He met there men who fired his smouldering longing one day to be a sculptor—to do some great thing in the world of art. Mrs. Matthew had many friends among such. At other times he spent evenings not less delightful when she herself read aloud from Virgil and Homer soul-stirring tales of ancient heroes—and the boy sat by drinking in the poetry while he tried with eager, untaught fingers to draw some of the passages that took his fancy. Again she would lay aside her book and talk to him of the wonders of sculpture, while there sprang up in his heart a great longing amounting almost to a passion.

No wonder these were golden hours, full of pleasure to young John, and looked back upon many a time in after years as among the happiest times of his life.

A gentleman, seeing some of these boyish attempts, gave the boy an order for a set of drawings, and by and by more orders followed.

When he was eleven years old he left the privacy and quiet of the little side eddy of the stream of life in which he had been living and struck out, as it were, into the mid-stream. That year he won a prize from the Society of Arts for models of figures in clay. Two years later he was again successful. What we know as the Royal Academy then first came into being, and when it was in its second year, and when Flaxman was only fifteen years old, he exhibited models there. Step by step, small steps at first, he was entering on the beginning of that which for long had been the desire of his heart. In the same year he entered as an Academy student, and won the silver medal. People already were beginning to acknowledge his outstanding ability. Rewards, prizes came upon him one by one. The boy’s outlook was beginning to be very bright, and his heart was beginning to beat high with hope, when just as he had reached the age of sixteen he got an unexpected check.

He made up his mind to try for the gold medal—the highest reward of merit—and among all the students he was generally allowed to have the best chance. Hardly a fellow-student but felt sure that he would get it. “Flaxman! Flaxman!” they cried almost unanimously, for they were strongly impressed with the skill and ability of the grave, reserved boy. Speaking of this time in later years Flaxman said—

“I had made up my mind that I was to win.... It was given by Reynolds to Engleheart. I burst into tears. This sharp lesson humbled my conceit, and I determined to redouble my exertions....”

May he perhaps have over-estimated his own skill? Years after he said of himself—

“I was the most conceited artist of the day.” And yet where another might have been downcast he refused to be discouraged. He was upheld by a strong and silent sense of power within him. He went home to his father, and he said, “Give me time, and I will yet produce works which the Academy will be proud to acknowledge.”

Engleheart, the winner of the medal, was never heard of in later life, while the loser made for himself a name that afterwards “waxed wide.”

Now he worked harder than ever. He studied, he exhibited, he moulded, he designed the figure for a statue of Alexander the Great, which brought him some fame. But his father could not keep him, and he was driven to look about and bethink himself how he could keep himself. At this time—the most needy, perhaps, of his life—a door seemed to open to him. He fell in with the great Staffordshire potter, Josiah Wedgwood, and Wedgwood, with that keen eye of his ever on the outlook to discover talent, instantly recognised it in the boy.

A great time was beginning for pottery. For ages hideous things had adorned people’s houses and tables till Wedgwood arose, and there entered his great mind the idea of making common things beautiful, of giving people something to look at, even at their meals, that would raise their tastes and be a sort of education. After Wedgwood discovered young Flaxman he gave him some orders. The boy threw his whole soul into the work. Not that it was such work as always showed the artist at his best. The sculptor had first to make the model in wax. Then a mould was taken of this, and into this the potter’s stuff, soft as dough, was carefully pressed. The thing was not finished yet. It remained for it still to be fired and polished, and so it is not wonderful if some of the delicacy and finish of the first design may have been occasionally lost.

But with Flaxman’s work Wedgwood was satisfied, and while he worked hard for him he paid him handsomely. It was not the sort of thing to bring him name and fame, but there was always the need to live to be faced, and he bravely took what offered and was thankful. And by living simply and saving where he could, he managed to keep himself by what he made. He faced this time of drudgery quietly and patiently, bringing to bear upon its hardships something of that serene spirit that belonged to him all through life.

He gave to Wedgwood, as far as in him lay, of his best. Models of the four seasons, models of the ancient gods and goddesses—those deities whose stories were familiar to him from his childhood, Juno, Jupiter, Minerva, Apollo—models of vases. And besides these, chimney-pieces, plaques, candlesticks, inkstands, anything and everything, for Wedgwood held that a common teapot or a jug might be still a thing of beauty. For the models of the ancient gods he would get perhaps 10s. each, and for a pair of vases as much as £3 3s.

Some of these were so exquisitely done that Wedgwood said more than once, “It really hurts me to think of parting with these gems.”

Long years afterwards, when he had reached the top of the tree, Flaxman used to find endless pleasure in talking of these humble labours.

And all this time he was leading a very quiet life. That strong thirst for knowledge that had always been his, spurred him on to learn all he could. So during the day he worked at casts and models, and in the evenings he sketched or turned to his beloved poets. Either he preferred the old Greek poets’ company to that of living friends, or it might be that the slight deformity that was his through life—the high shoulders, the sidling gait—left him shy and sensitive, and in a measure inclined to creep into his shell.

Looking over the huge portfolio of Flaxman’s drawings that one can still see to-day, it is easy to discover where he went for most of his subjects. The poets came in for their share, and also history and portraits, but his great delight was to produce scenes from the Bible and the Pilgrim’s Progress, “The Marys at the Sepulchre,” “The Flight into Egypt,” “The Angels round the Cradle of Christ.”

But although he was getting to be known among men of talent he was still poor and struggling. It is proof enough of this for us to read how at this time he made his busts half life-size and of clay, whereas had he been rich they would surely have been full-size and of marble. About this time he began to talk of what had been with him till now a secret longing. It was to see Rome. The desire had been long growing in his heart. To Rome sculptors and painters flock, for it is the great city of sculpture and painting, and to a sculptor it is as if his education were unfinished, so long as his eyes have not feasted on those beautiful examples of art.

“If I remain here,” he said sadly, “I shall be accused of ignorance concerning those noble works of art which are to the sculptor what learning is to a man of genius.”

About this time he took what seemed a foolish step, looking alone to the progress of his art. He married. Sir Joshua, the President of the Royal Academy, who had not given him the gold medal, met him in the street one day and stopped him. “Ha! Flaxman,” he said, “I have heard that you have married. I tell you you are ruined for an artist. You cannot now go to Rome to study the great sculptors of antiquity.”

Young Flaxman went home downcast. Not to go to Rome! Not to realise his boyhood’s golden dreams and his life’s ambition!

He told his wife what had happened. She met him with the brave reply, “You will e’en go to Rome and I will accompany you. We must work and economise.”

And now for the next five weary years this brave young couple put their shoulders to the wheel. She kept house and he worked—harder than ever—for Wedgwood chiefly—toiling for long hours, but upheld all the time by the thought of the goal to which he was straining. That journey to Rome!—the very thought of it made all hardship easy. He turned out much beautiful work for Wedgwood at this time. Groups of children—romping, skipping, playing “blind man’s buff.”

Nothing that meant making money came amiss to him. He even collected what was known as “watch rates” for the parish of St. Anne’s, and might have been seen going about with an ink-bottle in his buttonhole.

Often the desires of our heart tarry long in coming to us. This was among the times of hardest work and trial in all Flaxman’s life, and he came out of it well. At the end of the five years the needed money was collected!

And now, while the great event of his life was drawing near, his boyhood had left him, and he was entering on the work of the man. Already he had gained some fame in London. The newspapers took notice of his going.

“We understand that Flaxman the sculptor is about to leave his modest mansion in Wardour Street for Rome.”

And now a very feast of delight awaited him. With his arrival in Rome, what wonders opened to his view, what grandeur and sublimity in the examples of ancient art! What skill and magnificence and luxuriance he saw in the churches, what wealth of creation on their walls and windows and cupolas, what sculpture, what painting! It was as if an enchanted world had suddenly spread itself out before his eyes.

Gradually it came to be known that Flaxman had arrived, and there gathered about him men of taste and culture—rich men many of them—men of position. But the great sculptor’s ways were just the simple ones of old. He was not easily affected by the great of the world. He was always his manly simple self to rich and poor alike. He adopted no more luxurious ways of living with his days of prosperity. He prized money little, just as a something in exchange for which he could get food and clothing, or with which he might help the poor and suffering. The fine character of the boy seemed to have expanded into fuller beauty in the man.

After his stay in Rome he returned to London, his spirit, one could imagine, bathed in a very inspiration from all he had seen and heard. He came back to his native land with a name made, and quietly set about getting a house, a studio, assistants, workmen, models.

He executed a statue of Lord Mansfield, for which he was paid £2,500. Prices were indeed altered from the old days, in which he counted himself well paid with ten shillings for the model of a goddess!

“This little man cuts us all out,” said one generous sculptor to another, willing to acknowledge Flaxman’s great superiority. Honours now flowed in upon him. He was made an Associate of the Royal Academy. He was given the Professorship of the Chair of Sculpture. At his first lecture he was enthusiastically cheered. He had climbed to the highest height of his art. It almost seemed as if no honour remained to be bestowed. He was surrounded by fame and applause, but he was in no wise uplifted. So the years went on in the delight of the work he loved.

But, unexpectedly and all unknown to his friends, his life was drawing to a close. In the winter of 1826 he caught a cold, seeming for a time to be slightly, though not seriously, ailing. In the beginning of December he grew much worse, but he would not go to bed.

“When I lie I cannot breathe,” he said. So, sitting up to the end, and with scarce a struggle, he passed away on the 7th of December.

They buried him quietly in the churchyard of St. Giles-in-the-Fields. There was no great publicity, no large concourse of people. Just a few friends, a few artists—the greatest—were there, men who in tremulous, hushed voices said to each other they “had lost something greater and dearer than they should see again.”

Turning from the ending of his life, we cannot but feel that we are turning from the record of a man who has lived it well.

An enthusiastic admirer has said, “He was a remarkable mixture of simplicity and genius—were you to try any other ingredients you would scarcely form so glorious a creature.” And we hardly think he was far wrong.

We can see very clearly the fine simplicity of his nature in his treatment of his workmen. They were to him rather friends than servants. They in their turn repaid him with a warm and devoted affection, calling him “the best master God ever made.”

To the end, as well in time of difficulty and of toil as in time of triumph, the man retained very much those qualities that had drawn out people’s love for him in boyhood, the kindly word from the customer in the shop behind the counter. The world offered him of its best, as it has a way of doing to those who do well for themselves, but it had no power to draw him from his work and the simplicity of his simple home-life. It was only and always to that which is highest and best that he gave of his genius. That noble mind of his could stoop to nothing less. In churches all over England are to be found beautiful creations of his. In him were at once goodness and genius linked together.

“If ever purity visited this earth,” someone has said, “it remained with Flaxman.”