When Josiah Wedgwood was born, some 170 years ago, I daresay the people of the little village of Burslem would have been greatly astonished had they been told that the humble potter’s child was by-and-by to change the place, with its few straggling houses, into a flourishing town with thousands of inhabitants. And not this alone, but that he would make for himself such fame that his name should be a household word throughout Great Britain, and indeed throughout the world.

When Josiah came into the world there was already a small army of brothers and sisters awaiting him in the humble little house close by the churchyard of Burslem, for he was the youngest of thirteen.

Although then large towns and places near the sea were marching on with the progress of civilisation, little country places buried inland were shunted into a siding, as it were, and so were left far behind the great world. In this way the midland counties of England were a long time emerging from the darkness of the Middle Ages. Staffordshire, the county of pottery, lagged a long way behind in improvements. Its villages were straggling and dirty. Its houses little better than thatched hovels or mud huts. Heaps of waste and dirt and rubbish blocked their doorways. Broken ware was scattered everywhere. Hollows in the ground, where clay had been scooped out to make ware, gaped close to the doorways, and collected great pools of evil-smelling stagnant water.

Burslem was in something of this sorry state when Josiah Wedgwood opened his eyes on the world. The people of the village for the most part had been potters for upwards of 200 years. That is, they made pots and butter-dishes and porringers—for spoons and plates were still of wood—out of the clay of which their soil was made; not fine and polished and gleaming white, as we know them to-day, but rough-hewn things, for the trade of pottery was yet in its infancy.

A potter’s work could be divided among one family. The father and sons made and fired the dishes. The mother and daughters strapped them on the backs of horses and donkeys, driving them along roads so wretched that the poor beasts often stuck in the mud or fell down in the ruts, while the women, with pipes in their mouths and rough words on their lips, urged them on with whip and lash.

It was this sort of life that lay before Josiah. But he had been born with a boy’s best blessing—a good mother—a woman who had a heart large enough for thirteen children, and who tried what she could to hand down to them by example a birthright better than riches—to make them patient, industrious, dependent on self.

When the child was little more than a baby, and able only to toddle with uncertain step, he was sent to a dame’s school, quite as much to be out of the way as to learn his ABC. For the rest he played about the door of the cottage, his greatest treat to bestride the pack-horse’s back, hoisted up by some good-natured packman. When he was seven years old he was sent to school to a place called Newcastle-under-Lyme, some three and a half miles across the fields. In long days of sunshine the walk was full of pleasure to the boy, as he came to know Nature’s beauties—her birds and flowers and sweet fragrances—as we best can know things, by close and loving intimacy. Long years afterwards, when he had reached the highest heights of his trade, it was the unforgotten faces of the wild flowers lurking in the fields between Newcastle and Burslem that rose before his mind’s eye as he decorated his china services with coloured leaves and flowers.

When Josiah was nine years old his father died, and the mother was left to struggle with her thirteen as best she could. Nor do we find that she failed. She was a woman with a large, loving heart, that rarely quailed before stress or struggle. The old potter had not been able out of his hard-won earnings to leave to his children much—£20 when they reached the age of twenty-one.

“And so,” as Josiah used to say long afterwards, “I began on the very lowest round of the ladder.”

And now the child’s scanty schooling had come to an end. He could write and he could read, and he knew something of the mysteries of arithmetic, but for the rest—that great storehouse of knowledge the world contained—he had to unlock the door of that for himself, and he did it patiently, often in weariness and pain and suffering, as the years went on.

To his eldest son Thomas the father had left the pottery, and now it fell to him to act as father to the family. Josiah, as a matter of course, went into the business, beginning, I suppose, at the humble post of turning what was called “the potter’s wheel.”

This was a wheel with a strap round it attached to a disc that revolved horizontally and beside which sat a man called “a thrower,” shaping with his fingers and hands the moist clay that was to form a bowl or plate or whatever vessel was to be made, copying a pattern in front of him.

The boy worked steadily, but hardly had he reached the stage of “thrower,” hardly had people noted and admired the wonderful deftness with which the boyish hands moulded and shaped the clay, when a cloud descended and settled on his life—a cloud that, though he struggled bravely against its depression all through life, never entirely lifted.

The terrible epidemic of small-pox visited Burslem, and the Wedgwood family, living as they did on the edge of the churchyard, were among the first to take it, the youngest so badly that his life was despaired of. However, after long struggle, they pulled him through; but the disease left behind it a knee which gave him hours and days of excruciating pain, and seemed almost as if it would blight his whole life and ruin his career. Every remedy was tried, in vain. At first when he rose in bed, weak and unstrung, he fell back again. When later he began to stand it was with weariness and pain. But the dark cloud had, though all unseen at first, a silver lining. Out of what looked a great calamity there sprang good. The boy when he crawled back to work was no longer fit for the “thrower’s” bench. The position he had now to take—with his leg stretched out in front of him—cramped and impeded him. No longer active and able-bodied, he was thrown, as it were, in upon himself, and so took to thinking—not in a gloomy, despondent way, but thinking how best he could improve himself, how best he could succeed in that calling that from the very outset held a charm for him and all through life lay very near to his heart.

At the age of fourteen Josiah was formally bound apprentice to his brother. Here is the form. The quaint words sound ceremonious—almost solemn. The writing provided that he was—

“To learn the Art, Mystery, Occupation or Imployment of throwing and handling which he, the said Thomas Wedgwood, now useth, and with him as an apprentice to dwell, continue and serve.”

An apprentice in those days at the pottery works was allowed “his meat, drink, washing and lodging, with suitable apparel of all kinds, both linen and woollen and all other necessaries, both in sickness and in health.”

In return the master “was to teach or cause to be taught the art of throwing and handling.”

How poor these potters were, and how poorly they paid their apprentices, may be gathered from this:

For the first three years he got 1s. a week, for the second three years he got 1s. 6d. a week, and for the seventh and last 4s. a week. Besides this he got, once a year, a pair of shoes. At the end of his apprenticeship, if he chose, he got 5s. a week for five years. It was a dreary enough outlook for an eager, ambitious boy anxious to make his way in the world.

But boy though he was, the difficulty of getting on—pain, weakness—none of these obstacles were allowed to overcome Josiah. Then even at that early age he showed the germs of that perseverance that stood out so strongly by-and-by in the character of the man.

Strange as it may seem to us, what sounds the very common business of making rough earthenware milk-bowls and butter-pots and plates was often half shrouded in mystery, and went near to being something of a secret.

Pottery was yet in its beginnings—not yet an art—and it could only grow and come to perfection by someone giving to it deep thought and long, patient, painstaking experiments. For instance, one man might pore over the matter and discover something new or come to some conclusion. He might find one substance, a clay or a soil, that when mixed with a second substance produced a third thing—something new. He might begin to work this out in his pottery, and immediately all the workmen in the place knew the secret of how he did it. The knowledge spread, and while he believed it was still all his own, other men had seized on his discovery; other potteries were turning out his ware and selling it.

So keen were men to find out the discoveries of other men, and so closely have these secrets been kept, that sometimes a master would prefer to employ idiots, when he could get them, to turn his wheel. If one workman appeared more skilled than the others he was shut up while at work. The door was locked, the windows were blinded, and when he came out he was carefully searched. Men have been known to pretend to be idiots just that they might get inside a noted pottery; even to put up with kicks and blows for their stupidity; to make intentional mistakes to encourage the falsehood; to hold on to this perhaps as long as two whole years; while night after night they crept home and there wrote down carefully every item of what they had seen, and so made the secrets their own.

In Josiah’s boyhood there was much of this sort of thing carried on. A strict secrecy—a protection of themselves—as merchant vessels on the high seas in olden days guarded themselves from the pirates who, ready to pounce upon them, roamed the waters.

But as a man—a great, large-hearted, open-minded man—and one of the greatest inventors of his time, Wedgwood never followed this line of action. Rather was he nobly willing that others should be the better for his brains. And so during his long life he took out only one patent, as we call that which makes an invention all a man’s own and prevents others touching it.

At the time we write of there was just beginning to dawn on Josiah’s boyish mind what was by-and-by to raise him to the very top of his calling.

He took to pondering and considering and making experiments with the clay that lay about the doors. How to make the black mottled ware more delicate—the ruddy-coloured of a fairer hue—how to mould rough edges more smoothly—how to introduce fresh colours and glazes.

The whole thing threw over the boy a great glamour of fascination. They show in Burslem yet a teapot—an ornamented thing made of the ochreous clay of the district—as “Josiah Wedgwood’s first teapot.”

But the elder brother, brought up to the cut-and-dried routine of the potteries life, had little patience with what he looked on as the younger’s shiftless dreamings. He had brothers and sisters to keep, and money to make, and if Josiah were not more practical he wanted him no longer.

And so the honest but short-sighted brother, his eyes blinded by the present need of ready money, failed to realise that there was something greater, and that the young brother would one day leave him and his plodding ways far behind.

But while his brother looked upon the boy as an unpractical dreamer, there were others in Burslem who saw the beauty of the patient, uncomplaining, steadfast life, and more than one father in the place called on his sons to take a pattern from Josiah Wedgwood.

But in the midst of his patient inquiries, and while he was yet little more than a boy, a swift blow descended upon the Wedgwoods. The mother who had for so long been father and mother in one to them was taken from them. They laid her in the quiet little church of Burslem, and the brothers and sisters went on living together.

It was not till he had reached the age of twenty-two that Josiah cut the knot that bound him to home and went out into the great world to seek his fortune, as eager youths will do to the end of time. He took with him his little all—his father’s legacy of £20, a pair of capable hands, and a wonderful brain.

His boyhood was over. Manhood lay before him—rough places at first in the world, puzzles, difficulties, trials, but in the end name, fame, riches. If we could follow him past boyhood and just peep at the future, I should like to tell you how he let some of these fancies his brother had despised have free play; how he invented a new green earthenware, forming plates in the shape of ornamental leaves; how he coloured snuff-boxes and toilet vessels to imitate precious stones, and how the London jewellers eagerly bought these up. How he made flowered cups and saucers, familiar enough to us to-day, but strange and beautiful to people then. Under him things took a step forward. People even at their meals saw things of beauty. These became an education to them—an art. Besides this they found other improvements. Lids fitted, spouts poured, handles could be held! These were small beginnings, but from these Josiah made great strides.

And one of the secrets of these strides was that he bent his whole mind upon his work. At night, after a day of hard work, he would sit down and write out every smallest detail of his experiments and discoveries. No pains were too great for him to take. Neither would he trust to memory, so often in pain and weariness, but with a perseverance that was never daunted, he would make his evening notes.

To him no trouble seemed too great, no detail too small. The boyhood rarely fails to show the stuff the man is made of, and it was no ordinary stuff the great potter was made of. So we are not surprised that step by step he moved upwards and onwards. Hands and brain were never idle. Often prostrate with pain and weakness, he would still read and think and plan. Indeed, so much did he get into the habit of planning that many a night it robbed him of his sleep, for he never lay down at nights without making in his head a programme for the coming day.

Another secret of his success was his courage. Was it long familiarity with pain—for his knee broke out again and again, and gave him weary hours of suffering—that taught him to endure and resolutely refuse to be overcome? Was it this made him say with Napoleon, “Nothing is impossible”?

He met all difficulties alike with patience and with a steadfast purpose to overcome them. He had two special ones. His workmen—often lazy, indolent, drunken—were a trouble to him, as were also the furnaces, where the heat had to be of a certain degree to fire his ware, and where sometimes the work and labour of months would be destroyed in a few hours. By patience he won the hearts of the first, and they came to trust him, and by patience, too, he gradually righted the second. He pulled down and he built up till the kilns were right.

“It must be done,” he used to say of any difficult enterprise, “let what may stand in the way.”

He had great ambition for his beloved calling. He wanted to make it an art. England had been long famed for cheapness but not for beauty, and so he set himself to study the designs of the ancients and of the Greeks, copying them on china and porcelain.

And yet it seemed that even as he took step after step there were ever on each round of the ladder new difficulties. There was a long-standing one—the wretched state of the roads in Staffordshire, and the difficulty of getting the ware carried to other places for sale, and of getting necessaries for the work brought into the county.

The backs of horses and donkeys, these were the only mode of conveyance—miserable underfed creatures that tottered and stumbled along and not seldom stuck in the muddy lanes or fell in the ruts and rugged roads, and often broke their legs and their wares, and had to be shot where they lay—a happy release for the poor animals. Josiah saw all this, and realised that something must be done to remedy the evil. So in the midst of his watchful care and constant thought for his beloved potteries he made time to push the grand scheme of a canal that began gradually to see daylight. It was not pack-horses that would labour slowly to Birmingham and Sheffield, but a broad waterway to carry goods to Liverpool and other seaports. This was what his native county wanted. And so he subscribed largely to this, and helped to push a Bill through Parliament.

“I scarcely know,” he wrote, “whether I am a landed gentleman, an engineer, or a potter, for indeed I am all three and many other characters by turns.”

In time Burslem, to which he had come back after absence, could hold him no longer, so he bought a place near and called it Etruria, because for long he had admired the beautiful work of the Etruscans away north of the Tiber in Italy.

By his wonderful enterprise he made this bare place blooming and fruitful, and from a lonely wilderness converted it into a place with thousands of flourishing houses and workmen. And he himself was the mainspring of it all—the moving spirit.

Now the inventions of his brain were selling all over the country, and indeed all over the world. His delicate china had attracted the notice of the Queen—Charlotte, the wife of GeorgeIII. It was the full development of that “cream” ware whose first beginnings had dawned on his brain as a boy. She ordered a set of it, and henceforth it was known the “Queen’s Ware,” and she sent to Josiah Wedgwood and said he might call himself “Potter to the Queen.”

And now his name was made, and soon a fortune followed. He discovered a “jasper dip,” and he invented a special kind of ware of which he made vases, and for a time it seemed as if the country went mad for Wedgwood’s vases. “A violent vase mania,” he called it himself. The mania spread to Ireland and the Continent. Before this he had opened showrooms in London, and the Wedgwood vases were wont to draw crowds as great as the pictures in the Royal Academy. Nor did he confine himself to vases. He made portraits in china of great men, and fashioned beautiful chimney-pieces. His heart went out in burning indignation against the curse of slavery, and he produced a model of a negro chained in a supplicating attitude, with this motto round the figure: “Am I not a Man and a Brother?”

Now he had made his fortune, but the man remained the same, much as he had been as a boy—hard-working, conscientious, painstaking. As a grand foundation to all his work he had made the surface of the earth a mighty study, and when he died he left 7,000 specimens of soils and clays labelled and classified.

Even when rich and famous he still took minute note of details. He would visit each department of his works himself. He would have nothing “scamped.” Well did the workmen know the “thud” of his wooden leg on the floor that announced his coming, and with his stick he would break any article he did not think perfect.

“That won’t do for Josiah Wedgwood!” he would say.

As life advanced, while it brought him joys, it brought him also clouds and sorrows. His knee grew so tormenting that he was forced to have it taken off. After this he used a wooden leg, or rather many wooden legs, for he was very particular about having it often renewed. Partial blindness attacked him, general ill-health, but his pluck, his perseverance never failed.

As he withdrew a little from active life he took to gardening, but his family noted his failing powers—not of mind, but of body. Asthma was added to his other sufferings.

“I am becoming an old man,” he wrote. “Age and infirmity overtake me, and more than whisper in my ear that it is time to diminish rather than increase the objects of my attention.”

The end came very suddenly, and while he was yet not old. A pain in his jaw was the beginning. Fever and insensibility followed, and in his sixty-fifth year Josiah Wedgwood closed his eyes on a world that he left the better for his passage through it.

He had scaled the ladder to its highest height. He was born in a humble potter’s cottage. He died in a mansion, surrounded by a population he had gathered together and made to flourish. He left half a million, but he had used his riches well. He had given of them to suffering and distress. He made a poor depressed trade into one of the flourishing industries of Great Britain, and for himself a world-wide name. He was a great pioneer, and he accepted with patience the difficulties, the thanklessness, the buffetings that confront the man who in anything attempts the first beginning.

But while we admire his splendid qualities, it is the singular beauty of his nature—a nature doubtless softened and sweetened by trial—his uncomplaining bravery, his thought for others, his simple, steadfast determination to carry through his life-work, in spite of the burden of weariness and sickness and bodily pain, that most of all speak to our hearts.