Latest / Stories of Grit / How a Lame Boy Became the World's Greatest Potter

Transcript

How a Lame Boy Became the World's Greatest Potter · Stories of Grit

• 0:01
  Chapter two of Stories of Grit. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox
• 0:08
  recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please
• 0:14
  visit LibriVox dot org. Stories of Grit by Archer Wallace How a lame boy
• 0:23
  became the World's greatest Potter. In the summer of seventeen thirty, a little
• 0:30
  lad was born at Burslem in Staffordshire, England. There was no fear of
• 0:35
  the little fellow being lonely, for he came into a family where there were
• 0:40
  already twelve boys and girls. Josiah Wedgwood, for that was the boy's name,
• 0:47
  was number thirteen. Was he unlucky? Well, in some ways he
• 0:54
  was, but in others he was not. His mother had her hands full
• 0:59
  with so larger family, but she taught Josiah to read and write, and
• 1:03
  then sent him to a dame's school. Later he was sent to a school
• 1:08
  in Newcastle under Lyme. This school was three and a half miles from where
• 1:15
  he lived, but the little fellow was keen to get an education, and
• 1:19
  cheerfully trudged the seven miles to and from school each day. He was a
• 1:26
  lively boy, fond of all kinds of sports and a general favorite. At
• 1:32
  school, he showed a remarkable faculty for making paper designs. With pen and
• 1:40
  scissors, he cut out designs of an army in combat, a fleet of
• 1:45
  ships at sea, a house and gardens, and many other interesting things.
• 1:52
  This gift of Josiah's gave great pleasure to his little friends, but the schoolmaster
• 1:59
  took the very different view and rather severely admonished the budding designer. Josiah was
• 2:07
  also fond of collecting fossils, shells, and beautiful things which he found around
• 2:14
  the country lanes. He was constantly bringing these things home, and at last
• 2:20
  he fitted up a disused workshop of his father's, and it served the purpose
• 2:25
  of a miniature museum. When Josiah was nine years of age, his father
• 2:32
  died. It was a great blow to the family, for while the father
• 2:38
  had never been more than an ordinary working man, he had kept his family
• 2:43
  in fairly good circumstances. Josiah was taken from school at once and sent to
• 2:50
  help in the factory, where his beldest brother, Thomas, was in charge.
• 2:55
  For several generations, the Wedgewoods had been posted and the whole countryside was
• 3:01
  famous as the chief center of the industry in England. It was a proud
• 3:07
  day for Josiah when first he began to work at the trade in which he
• 3:12
  was destined to become so great. He was too young to understand what a
• 3:17
  serious handicap it is to be sent out into the world with little education.
• 3:23
  And besides, in those days, comparatively few received a thorough training in school.
• 3:31
  Several of his brothers and sisters never learned to read or write, and
• 3:37
  after they became men and women, they had to sign their names with a
• 3:42
  mark, for they had never learned to write even their own names. When
• 3:47
  he was eleven, a serious misfortune befell Josiah, one which darkened his whole
• 3:55
  life. The terrible scourge of small swept over England, as it did over
• 4:03
  all European countries from time to time, and he suffered a severe attack.
• 4:11
  In those days, medical skill had not developed very much, and the doctors
• 4:17
  were quite unequal to the task of dealing with the dreadful disease. Besides that,
• 4:25
  the utter lack of sanitation and the conditions under which most of the people
• 4:31
  lived were such that it seemed as though plagues must just run their course.
• 4:38
  Severe cases of smallpox were almost regarded as hopeless, and recovery was very rare.
• 4:46
  For a time it seemed as though Josiah could not live, but at
• 4:51
  last he rallied. His right knee, however, was seriously affected, and
• 4:59
  for the remains of his life he was a cripple. When only fourteen years
• 5:04
  of age, Josiah was formally apprenticed to his brother, He had, like
• 5:12
  other apprentices, to sign an agreement that he would not gamble, frequent taverns,
• 5:18
  or indulge in any of the prevailing vices. Many boys, of course,
• 5:26
  signed such agreements without really intending to live up to their vows, but
• 5:31
  Josiah lived up to his pledge. Throughout the years of his apprenticeship, he
• 5:38
  devoted himself with amazing concentration to his trade. There was a great deal of
• 5:45
  drunkenness and gambling and other vices at that time, but Josiah's record was beyond
• 5:53
  reproach. He loved his work and gave himself fully to it. Everything connected
• 6:00
  with the potter's trade he found interesting. He did not know what dull moments
• 6:08
  were. Josiah soon showed a desire to do things in his own way.
• 6:15
  He was constantly striving after new effects and attempting new designs. Many of those
• 6:21
  working with him marveled at his wonderful skill, but his brother Thomas did not
• 6:29
  like it. Thomas was making a fair living by doing the same old things
• 6:34
  in the same old way, and he did not want any changes introduced.
• 6:41
  It seemed to him that Josiah was simply wasting his time with his new fangled
• 6:46
  ideas. When Josiah had served his apprenticeship, he offered to go into partnership
• 6:55
  with Thomas, but the elder brother was not willing, so Josiaha had to
• 7:00
  look elsewhere for work. For a while, he became associated with other men,
• 7:06
  and he was at liberty to make his experiments to his heart's content.
• 7:12
  But soon Josiah discovered that his associates were simply taking advantage of his good nature
• 7:19
  and profiting by his skill. In seventeen fifty nine, when he was twenty
• 7:26
  nine years of age, he started in business for himself. His beginning was
• 7:32
  in a very humble way, for he had very little money, but he
• 7:38
  rejoiced in being his own master and resolved to work away at carrying out some
• 7:45
  of the ideas he had cherished for so long. About this time he suffered
• 7:51
  very great pain from his injured leg. At times he had to work away
• 7:59
  with his leg resting on a stool in front of him. On one occasion,
• 8:03
  he injured his leg and was laid up in bed for several months.
• 8:09
  During this period he did a great deal of reading and tried to make up
• 8:15
  for his lack of early training. He also had time to think out many
• 8:20
  new plans for his work, and he solemnly resolved to become the greatest potter
• 8:26
  of his time. His mother had died some years previously, and his outlook
• 8:31
  in some ways was not very bright. He wrote in his diary, I
• 8:37
  have my trade a lame leg, the marks of smallpox, and they never
• 8:43
  was good looking anyway. When he was able to get about again, he
• 8:50
  resumed his work with more enthusiasm than ever. Instead of doing as his brother
• 8:56
  Thomas and other potters were doing, simply making plain butter crocks, brown jugs,
• 9:03
  and such like, he spent a great deal of time experimenting in glazes
• 9:09
  in a semi transparent green color, which he had made for himself. Soon,
• 9:16
  his wonderfully artistic designs began to attract attention, and his reputation extended throughout
• 9:24
  England. Up till this time, practically all the really beautiful pottery in England
• 9:33
  had been imported from other countries. Because of the great distance and of the
• 9:39
  difficulties of transportation, this pottery was very expensive. An aristocratic Burnham family,
• 9:48
  who possessed some very fine, rare specimens, had the misfortune to have their
• 9:54
  largest plate broken. They sought the assistance of all the leading potters to help
• 10:01
  them get a duplicate, but failed. Then they were directed to Josiah Wedgwood.
• 10:07
  He succeeded where others had failed, and to the amazement of all,
• 10:13
  he produced the perfect facsimile of the broken plate. The news of this achievement
• 10:20
  soon spread and he received orders for more work than he could carry out.
• 10:28
  Some years before this, Josiah had seen Sarah Wedgwood and had become deeply attached
• 10:35
  to her. Sarah's father and his own were cousins, but whereas his father
• 10:41
  had been a pumple workman, Richard Wedgwood was considered a wealthy man by dint
• 10:48
  of hard work. Josiah saved a hundred pounds, which in those days was
• 10:54
  considered quite a sum of money. He wrote to Sarah and told of his
• 11:00
  success, and she wrote back and congratulated him, telling him how proud they
• 11:07
  were of his achievements in artistic pottery. Josiah was greatly encouraged by this letter,
• 11:15
  and on the strength of it, he visited her home and asked her
• 11:20
  hand in marriage. Sarah seems to have been quite willing, but her father
• 11:26
  was very angry. He had taken a friendly interest in his distant relative and
• 11:33
  was glad to know of the wonderful things he was doing in artistic pottery.
• 11:37
  But after all, Josiah was still poor, lame, and disfigured by smallpox.
• 11:46
  He had no intention of allowing his daughter to marry such a man.
• 11:52
  He had someone else in view, whom he considered would be a much better
• 11:58
  match it. He was a painful experience for the lame man, but its
• 12:03
  bitterness was offset by one thing. Sarah herself hastened to make it clear to
• 12:11
  Josiah that she loved him and did not want to marry anyone else. Encouraged
• 12:18
  by this, he resolved to work harder than ever. He wrote to Sarah,
• 12:26
  telling her that he would yet be the best potter that England had ever
• 12:30
  seen. This was no idle boast. Orders for his work came so fast
• 12:37
  that he had to extend his workshop from time to time and take on more
• 12:43
  workmen. He had often noticed how untidy and slovenly the men were in the
• 12:50
  various workshops, and he determined to have things done differently in his factory.
• 12:56
  Some of the men keenly resented him particular ways, but he reasoned with them
• 13:03
  and showed them the wisdom of his methods. Soon the workmen caught the enthusiasm
• 13:09
  of their master and fell heartily in with his plans. He determined that not
• 13:16
  one bit of poor pottery should leave his workshop. Sometimes he would look very
• 13:24
  carefully at some peace, then say it is good, but not good enough
• 13:30
  for Josiah Wedgwood. Then it would be destroyed. Day after day he sat
• 13:37
  with his workmen, going from one to another, rendering assistance and seeking to
• 13:43
  give to each one a very high ideal for work. He had to face
• 13:48
  great difficulties. Many of the tools and use were of no service whatever in
• 13:56
  his porcelain were. He had often to grin greatly improved the tools, and
• 14:01
  in many cases invent new ones altogether. But he was not easily daunted,
• 14:09
  and his marvelous perseverance overcame all difficulties. He was married to Sarah Wedgwood in
• 14:18
  seventeen sixty four, when he was thirty four years of age and she was
• 14:24
  twenty nine. For many years she had been a great inspiration to him in
• 14:31
  his work, and she continued to be throughout his life. Four years after
• 14:37
  this, his leg, which had seldom allowed him to have one day without
• 14:43
  pain for twenty two years, became worse. After consultation with several doctors,
• 14:52
  it was decided to have the limb amputated. There were no anesthetics in those
• 14:58
  days by which a patient in such a severe operation could be made unconscious,
• 15:05
  and so without anything to alleviate the pain, he suffered the operation. He
• 15:11
  did not shrink, but bore the pain with magnificent courage. It was not
• 15:18
  his way to complain. During the twenty two years of suffering, he had
• 15:24
  very seldom said a word about his agony. By this time Josiah Wedgwood was
• 15:31
  known throughout England and in many lands far beyond. There was great interest taken
• 15:37
  when his leg was amputated, and many of the leading people of England,
• 15:43
  including the King and Queen, were greatly relieved when it was known that the
• 15:50
  operation had been a success. When he regained his strength, he soon returned
• 15:56
  to the work he loved so much, and saw to make his products more
• 16:02
  perfect. Probably there has never been a more skilled potter than Josiah Wedgwood.
• 16:10
  There have been other skillful men, but they have almost always copied one from
• 16:15
  another. He followed out his own ideas. When a boy walking several miles
• 16:22
  to and from school each day over the wide moorland, he had noticed the
• 16:27
  exquisite tints of the wild flowers. When he became a potter, he copied
• 16:34
  out those same flowers in his marvelous designs. He did not copy the works
• 16:41
  of other men. He followed as his ideal the things which God had made.
• 16:48
  He was by far the most original potter that the world has ever seen.
• 16:53
  His business became one of the great industries of England, and he and
• 16:59
  Sarah bill an ideal village called a Truvia, where they lived with their daughter
• 17:04
  Susannah, who became the mother of the famous scientist Charles Darwin. And so
• 17:12
  it was that the crippled boy who left school at nine and for long years
• 17:19
  was hardly ever a day without violent pain, became the greatest potter the world
• 17:26
  has ever known. End of Chapter two,