Tom Wedgwood, the first photographer; an account of his life, his discovery and his friendship with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, including the letters of Coleridge to the Wedgwoods and an examination of accounts of alleged earlier photographic discoveries;

Front matter

I

THE FIRST PHOTOGRAPHER

AN ACCOUNT OF HIS LIFE, HIS DIS- COVERY AND HIS FRIENDSHIP WITH SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE INCLUDING THE LETTERS OF COLERIDGE TO THE WEDGWOODS

Contents

CHAPTKR PAGE

Preface ........ vii

Sketch of Family Relationships. . . . xvii

Chapter I

Thomas Wedgwood, fourth son of Josiah Wedgwood, the famous potter, was born on May 14, 177 1, at Etruria Hall, near Stoke-upon-Trent. The hall was a new house which his father had built as a residence for the family, hard by the Pottery, the potting business having been removed from Burslem to this site a year or two previously."^'^ When only six years old the boy was sent to a school kept by Mr. Holland, a Unitarian minister at Bolton, where his brothers already were, and remained there two years. The method of his education was a matter which gave his father many doubts. Josiah Wedgwood's letters to his partner and friend, Bentley, contain frequent speculations on the questions as to what his boys should learn, and how to secure their having a healthy bodily life while the schooling went on.

Erasmus Darwin," he says in one letter (October 1779), *'has approved my idea of curtailing the educa-

* The house still exists ; for many years past it has belonged to the Duchy of Lancaster, which owns the minerals under it and the surrounding lands, and is now used for purposes connected with the mines.

Thomas is often called the third son, one of his elder brothers having died in infancy.

I A tion of my boys in order to establish their health, and give the more strength to their constitution.'' Dr. Darwin advises him to keep them at home, and this he does. They are to have four Latin lessons a week, " only to keep up what they know, till I have decided as to this part of their learning." " I am distressed to find out a sort of compromise between the body and the mind that shall do the least injury to either."

In another letter he describes the regime at length. They " read English before breakfast, newspaper or travels, writing one hour with Mr. Swift ; writing French exercises ; then ride or drive their hoop or jump over a cord, or use any exercise they please for an hour." Later in the day there are two French lessons, and some accounts in the evening, in which the girl takes part."

The earliest letter of Tom which has been preserved is one written when he was nearly twelve years old, giving an account of a scene during the bread riots, which broke out in the Potteries in 1783. His father is in London.

Tom Wedgwood to his father^ Josiah

Etruria,

Wednesday y March li, 1783.

Dear Papa, —

As I thought you would like to hear how the mob went on I will tell you.

On Sunday all was quiet. There was a meeting at Newcastle (at which my brother John was present) to consider what was the best way to quell the Mob and to keep up the market. John subscribed ;^I0 ; a good many others also subscribed.

On Monday the mob came to Bilington's where there was a meeting of the Master Potters, Dr. Falkener, Mr. Ing, Mr. Sneyd of Bellmont, and harrangued to the Mob on the bad way they had begun in to lessen the price of corn, as did my brother John and also Major Sneyd (who came with the Militia) was exceedingly active in speaking to them. He said, " Why do you rise," and he answerM him " on the same account that your father went out of the country." This distressed him so much that he cried. All their speaking was to no effect.

They then raised a subscription. John subscribed £20, This they said would not have been raised without we had risen. This speech pussled them much. They then read the riot act and said if they did not disperse in a hour's time they would fire on them. An hour gone and they did not disperse. Dr. Falkener had got the word " Fire " in his mouth when two men dropt down by accident which stopt him and he considered about it more. The Woemen were much worse than the men ; as for example, Parson Sneyd had got about 30 men to follow him he hurraing and the an all [sic] but a woman cried Nay, nay that wunna do, that wunna do, and so they turned back again ; it was agreed that the corn taken in the boat* should be sold at a fair price.

Bolton, Barlow are taken up and gone to Stafford the rest of the days have been quiet. John and Mr. Lomas are gone to Stone. They all send their love to you and comt^ to Mr. and Mrs. Byerley.

I am,

Your dutifull son,

Thomas Wedgwood.

Turn over.

P.S. — I would have written this letter well but I have got the head ach, but did not like to miss the opportunity of a box. T. W.

* A barge which was stopped and plundered at Etruria, as it was making its way to Manchester, the mob imagining that, as the corn

Another letter to his father, of about a year later, gives a pleasant glimpse of his home life, and shows him as certainly very much grown up for a boy of thirteen. It shows, too, that he was on charmingly easy terms with his father.

T om Wedgwood to his father

Etruria,

Dear Papa, —

By the time this letter reaches you I hope you will have had a pleasant journey and got safe and sound to London. Matthew Mills is very busy at the Garden Pools repairing the dams at the lower Pool, which the cows have damaged very much that go to drink there, and unless some remedy is thought of to secure the dam, it will be considerably damaged. Now making a drinking place just below the lower Pool with the water that runs from the Pool and fencing a post and railing round the dam, will be good security. If you will give me the post of Superintendant of your pools, I will see that they are done properly and soon. My hotbed is compleated all but glazing. The Bricklayers have pulled down part of the lower wall and are building it up again and will finish at the end of the week.

I have had several large fish at my line lately (fishing with a Gudgeon) and leaving it in all night. Some large fish at the top Pool struck at my Bait as I lifted it up. Another, my rod drawn in the water and the bait eat of. Still another, half my bait eat of and the other half drawn up the line.

Fd be very glad if you would give me that post for indeed

was going out of the district, the owners were trying to raise prices against the Staffordshire people. John Wedgwood, Tom's eldest brother, is at this time a lad of seventeen. The reply of the mob to Major Sneyd is enigmatical. Possibly Mr. Wedgwood would understand why it made him cry. The two men taken to Stafford were convicted, and Barlow executed.

I would take very good care and always keep them in good order. Mathew only waits only for Command to go on and finish his job.

My Aunt is much better and will drink Beer and brandy and I don't know what. I wish you would get me a pair of Buckles and send them immediately, for I have got none but a broken pair. I shall furnish all your pools with plenty of baits as I have now near a dozen hands under employment. I have got leave to fish of Mr. Stockley and the miller will get leave of the tenant of Mr. Allen and J. Beech of Mr. Jarvis, so then for Wilkes and liberty.

Give my love to my sister and will answer her letter very soon. Mary Anne is very well indeed and was much pleased with her journey.

Almost everybody have colds but I have escap'd yet. Mr. Chisolm is very well and sends his best respects to you and family.

Give my best love to my Mother, sister and John and should be happy in hearing from them. Pray remember me to Mr. and Mrs. Byerley and believe me to be,

Your dutifull son,

Thos. Wedgwood.

Would have written it better but had not time.

(Address on cover : Mr. Wedgwood, London. — No postmark ; it no doubt went in the box.)

The person who had most to do with the education of Tom ^ Wedgwood, after his father, was Alexander Chisolm, Josiah Wedgwood's faithful secretary and chemical assistant. Chisolm came to Etruria, a man of middle age, in 1780, when Tom was nine years old.

* I shall refer to him thus throughout the book, as he was always so-called, both in and outside of the family circle.

He was a good chemist, a man of education, and at least something of a classical scholar. The boys became much attached to him. The various other influences which would help to mould the mind and character of a boy growing up in the Etruria household may be easily imagined from what we know of Josiah Wedgwood and his life.* Among the friends of the great Potter were some of the foremost Englishmen of the time. He was intimate with James Watt from 1768 onwards. Priestley, who settled in Birmingham in 1780, owed much to his friendship. Wedgwood sent him annually twenty-five guineas in aid of his expenditure on scientific experiments. With Erasmus Darwin and his family there was constant intercourse. Derby, where Darwin lived from about 178 1, was not far off, and the children of the two houses were intimate as well as the parents. James Keir of West Bromwich, ex-captain of foot and glass manufacturer, whom James Watt called " a mighty chemist and very agreeable man,'' was one of the group. Richard Lovell Edgeworth was another. It was a circle in which advanced " ideas prevailed, ideas which

* Unfortunately there is no satisfactory biography of Josiah, the Potter, Miss Meteyard's two bulky volumes give a large amount of information about him, but, as sufficiently appears from her entirely mythical account of Tom Wedgwood's photography (see p. 241) no statement of hers can be trusted which is not confirmed by other evidence, while her persistent strain of magniloquent eulogy is a constant irritation to the reader. The little book by Mr. Smiles (1894) is a lively sketch of the man and his career, but it has many technical errors, and was evidently put together in great haste. The memoir in the " Dictionary of National Biography," by Professor Church, F.R.S., is (I am told by a high authority on the subject) excellently well done.

were in great part a reverberation from the pre-revolutionary movement in France. All this could not fail to give a strong bent to Tom Wedgwood's mind. His training was scientific rather than literary, but we find him working hard at the Latin classics with Chisolm, and also with a tutor by name Lomas, who however, according to his brother Josiah's account, was a quite uninspiring teacher. A French prisoner was found to teach the boys French.

In the autumn of 1786 (^/. fifteen), Tom joined his brother Josiah at Edinburgh University. The lads lived with Dr. Blacklock, the blind poet, who must have been an interesting man in many ways. He was one to whom the world owes something, for it was he who, at a critical moment in the life of Robert Burns, when the young poet, despairing of a career in Scotland, had resolved to leave his native country for ever and was on the point of embarking for the West Indies, induced him to give up the scheme and come to Edinburgh."^

The letters of the two young men from Edinburgh show them, as one would expect, plentifully interested in the place and its student life. They are busy with their lectures and their various societies, and take a good deal of exercise — golf, apparently, is the chief

* " My chest was on its way to Greenock " (writes Burns to Dr. Moore, August 2, 1787) when a letter from Dr. Blacklock to a friend of mine overthrew all my schemes, by opening new prospects to poetic ambition. His opinion that I would meet with encouragement in Edinburgh for a second edition fixed me so much that away I posted for that city without a single acquaintance or a single letter of introduction." (" Currie's Life," Ed. 1800. See also Sir Leslie Stephen's account in " Diet. Nat. Biog.")

form of it, which Jos expects will keep off Tom's headaches. Jos tells his father " the students here are not very genteel ; the Divinity students are the dirtiest set I ever saw ; a company of old potters look like gentlemen compared to them."

Tom corresponds with Chisolm, chiefly on chemical topics ; his letters bristle with rows of the queer old symbols for gases, acids, and metals which were still then in use among chemists. Chisolm gives him wise advice about his studies ; his letters are big folio sheets, closely written in a clear and careful hand. Some read like chapters out of a chemical journal, discussions on what Priestley or Lavoisier is doing, and the conflicting theories of the day. He addresses the boy (who is only fifteen) with the ceremonious formality of the time.

<iAlexander Chisolm to T^om Wedgwood

Etruria,

I wrote to you a few lines two or three days ago along with some books, which I understand are not yet gone, and therefore I cannot let slip the opportunity of thanking you for the very sensible letter I received from you last night, and expressing my unfeigned pleasure in the avidity I observe in you for useful knowledge, and your assiduity in acquiring it. Your plan or study has my perfect approbation. . . . The classics I could wish to be a principal object this winter ; you can now read them with understanding ; you will soon read them with pleasure.

[Here follows much about the question of using translations, the Latin of Livy and of Buchanan, &c. ; then advice as to how to read to the blind Dr. Blacklock, not sinking the voice in the final syllables. At present let him not try to study Moral Philosophy or " Belles Lettres," but let Classics and Chemistry take his whole time.]

Your elaboratory shall be taken care of [and this leads to a long chemical excursus.]

I will only add that I am sincerely glad the salubrious exercise of golf is agreeable to you, and I recommend it to you as strongly for Saturdays as I would Chemistry or Classics any other day.

Remember me to Jos, and believe me to be,

Dear Sir, Your faithful & Obedient servant,

ALEX^ Chisolm.

Tom Wedgwood to his Father

I have just got into a new society here, called the Philological Society, in which I must exert all my oratory powers, which, as I never yet tried them in public, you know, ?nay be very great ; but I dinna ken. There are some very clever members of it : I shall have to write a paper in a little time, but am as yet quite undetermined of the subject of it, and should be very thankful if you would help me a little in this.

There has been a very disagreeable thing here [story of a student having tried to pass a forged bill at a shop]. He was sent to the Tolbooth (the prison). He stands no chance for his life. This unlucky affair will confirm the townspeople a bad opinion of the Irish gentry (He was one). There has already been one hanged, and several have taken French leave.

lo TOM WEDGWOOD

I am come to the end of my paper, and so I shall finish with desiring you to

Believe me,

Yours affectionately,

Thos. Wedgwood.

Auld Reekie, Dec^, Saturday before New Year's Day, 1786.

Josiah Wedgwood to zdlex'' Chisolm

Tom began this letter and I shall finish it. . . . The Philological Society consists of 13 or 14 young men, among which are two or three very clever. I intend to write on the sublime ... I like Dr. Blacklock more every day. . . . We had three visits from Mr. Burns, a natural poet ; his brother is a farmer and he was the ploughman, but had a very uncommon poetic turn. He is now pubHshing a second edition of his poems, to which I shall subscribe. Many of them are in the Scottish dialect.

My love to all at Etruria,

I am your much obliged friend,

Josiah Wedgwood.

Tom Wedgwood spent two winter sessions, apparently, at Edinburgh, 1786-7 and 1787-8. In the spring of 1788 there was a scheme for his going to Rome ; but this dropped, and he remained at Etruria, taking part in the work of the pottery. We find him writing to his father, in March 1790, about such matters as the dismissal of apprentices at Etruria for over much swearing, and the colouring and furnishing of the London show-room in Greek Street. But his letters show him to be keenly eager, all this time, to go on with his studies in Natural Philosophy. This was the main motive of a scheme which he now proposed to his father.

While at Edinburgh he had made the acquaintance of John Leslie, a young man about five years older than himself who had come there as a student of Theology, but had given up the intention of becoming a minister and was working at natural science. Tom and he had not been particularly intimate at Edinburgh, but they had since corresponded at intervals. Leslie, who had no private means — his father was a carpenter — had been to America as a travelling tutor, and was now without any definite plans, supporting himself in a precarious way by teaching and lecturing. Tom's proposition to his father was that Leslie should be asked to come to stay at Etruria to assist him and his brother Josiah in their laboratory work and scientific studies generally. His father agreed to this, and Leslie received the offer with rapturous delight.

John Leslie to Tom Wedgwood

London,

My dearest Sir, —

To-day I received your very kind and flattering letter of the 9th instant. Your uncommon manner of w^riting throws me into a maze of wonder, and transports me with heartfelt joy. What a charming picture of a polished, elegant, and feeling mind ! I am at a loss to answer your kindness. That warmth of affection, and that goodness of heart, give a lovely cast to human nature. A crowd of ideas at once rush upon me. That diffidence and extreme deHcacy is highly pleasing ; but to me is unnecessary. Talk freely — from you nothing can displease. . . . The idea of residing with a young man whose heart is of the same mould, and whose mind is so benevolent, so generous, and so enlarged, is beyond measure delightful. Every other view vanishes in an instant. Money, my dear friend, is to me no object. The situation which you describe is the most fortunate, the most happy I could picture in my imagination. . . .

I am afraid, my dearest friend, you over-rate my real merit. . . . The smallness of my acquisitions will I hope be compensated by steady attention and warm affections. [Then follows an eulogy of the genius of Josiah Wedgwood, the father.] I have long been accustomed to admire the ingenuity and boldness which created a manufacture, that contributes more to the real glory and wealth of our country than our fleets and armies. . . .

But I exhaust your patience and precious time with long epistles. I wait with trembling anxiety — my happiness hangs upon your decision.

I am, my dear Sir,

Yours ever sincerely,

Jo. Leslie.

Excuse this scrawl.

This letter is a characteristic specimen of Leslie's epistolary style. Except when he happens to be writing of thermometers or gases, we seem to be reading Mr. Collins in " Pride and Prejudice." The " scrawl for which he excuses himself is a piece of quite perfect penmanship, without sign of erasure or alteration.

It was a part of Tom Wedgwood's plan that he and Leslie should live together, not in the family house at Etruria, but in a separate house hard by. His father did not see the advantage of this, but Tom is urgent in arguing the point. Here is one of several letters in which he expounds his views. They disclose intensely earnest " views of life and duty.

i

He is full of exalted ideas of self-culture, and of devotion to the service of mankind.

jT om Wedgwood to his Father

I rather suppose that you have formed a wrong idea of my intention. ... Be assured there is no danger of my entering into the selfish, insignificant character of a hermit. I know too well the purposes of my creation. I have conceived too exalted a notion of the real dignity of man, existing in Action from principle^ and despise too heartily those mistaken beings who amuse themselves unprofitably in the mazes of metaphysical refinements and abstruse philosophy. My aim is to strengthen the power of reason by the habit of reflection, and by cultivating the virtues of the heart in a temporal \}ic\ retirement from the world at large ; to purify the motives of conduct — for what is Action unless the sources be pure ? With that openness which should subsist between a father and a son, I joyfully acquaint you that I have already made considerable progress in this most important work — a thousand sensations convince me that in this confidence I am not misled by the illusions of vanity. . . .

I am well aware that the next three or four years of my life are the most important. Manhood is the seal of man. Our passions and affections are all to be moderated and corrected in the season of youth. In this critical moment I shall strive hard to fashion myself so, that I may best perform the grand dutys [his spelling is not impeccable] of this life. I reflect every day on the nature of the relation between the creator and creature, and hope by these instructive speculations to arrive at the knowledge of the purposes of creation, and hence of what these dutys consist in. The question is extremely intricate and comprehensive, and can never receive a full decisive answer from human reason. . . . An inactive and virtuous life are incompatible,

J

I and I mean to exert myself for the good of my fellow creatures. . . .

[In another letter]. Our main dutys are Beneficence and the Social. I can say for myself that whatever my situation and circumstances may be, I shall never sleep in the service of my fellow creatures.

Promiscuous company has no allurements. ... I have a strong desire of enjoying the blessing — the right, perhaps, of choosing my own company and of avoiding that I dislike, by easier methods than I have now recourse to.

One may smile at many things in this letter, but we must remember that the writer is just nineteen years old, and that the time is ten months after the fall of the Bastille. In his aspirations after a life of " beneficence and virtue " one feels the ring of the new ideas which the great upheaval of 1789 was stirring in the young and ardent souls of the time. How Josiah Wedgwood replied to his son's eager pleadings we do not know. We may be sure that the wise father did not laugh at his young enthusiasm, though he may have been amused at the didactic solemnity with which the lad expounds his ideal of life. Nor do we know whether he and Leslie were allowed to set up house apart from the family at Etruria Hall. We might guess that Tom's friend and tutor was treated with Josiah Wedgwood's usual liberality, and received cordially as one of the family. Leslie lets us know, in his magnificent language, that this was the case.

John Leslie to Tom Wedgwood

London,

How shall I make a proper return ? I hope the magnitude of the offer will be an additional spur to my exertions. There is a circumstance, my dear friend, which gives me peculiar pleasure. From the generosity of your nature I am convinced that I shall be upon an easy footing. I am a moderate lover of liberty, but I am every day more riveted in a settled aversion to the fawning arts of the sycophant, and to be submitted to the caprices and tyranny of an Aristocrate \}'ic\ would to me be the more dreadful of punishments. At the same time my dear Sir, I hope this disposition does not arise from any overweaned conceit of myself, but springs from the consciousness of the unalienable rights and native dignity of man. . . .

I am filled with a mixture of wonder and gratitude. . . . United with a gentleman who possesses all the warmth of disposition and the acuteness of discernment of our friend T. M. Randolph, but who possesses, besides, a virtue the most essential to the dignity and success of life, steadiness of conduct and resolution of character, whose passions are subordinate to his reason, and who has imbibed more of the spirit of the Stoic than the Epicurean philosophy — and not yet nineteen I I upbraid myself that I am five years older. This is the age of bliss, the head not hardened by jarring interests is susceptible of every delicate impression, and the soul springs unbounded. . . . What character is so benevolent and so generous as that of a young man who has just left college. You feel the justness of the remark.

I am, my dear Sir,

Yours affect'^.,

Jo. Leslie.

i6

Leslie remained at Etruria about two years, from June 1790. His stay there was doubtless a great help to Tom Wedgwood in his scientific work. One may doubt whether his influence was good in other ways. He pours out his admiration for his pupil in language which is too exuberant to sound sincere, and whether sincere or not, it was hardly wholesome reading for a lad of nineteen.

" Our dispositions, you say, are congenial. I esteem this the highest compliment I could receive."

" I derived great advantage from it [Edinburgh University], but what I am confident is the greatest of all, I commenced at Edinburgh an acquaintance with yourself."

" To reside with a young man whose heart is of the same mould, and whose mind is so benevolent, so generous and so enlarged, is altogether delightful."

" Your time is too precious to spend much of it with me — but to enjoy your company in your intervals of leisure is the most flattering prospect."

These are specimens of Leslie's outpourings ; but his career as a man of science showed him to be a man of more real capacity than one would have inferred from the absurd pomposity of his letters.

Chapter II Etruria And Physical Science Work 1789— 1793

The three years which followed Tom Wedgwood's stay at Edinburgh University, 1789-91, were spent mainly at Etruria, and they may be said to have been the only working years of his short life, for this was the only time during which health allowed him to set himself to any definite occupation. Early in 1790 he became a partner in his father's business, and began taking part in the management of the pottery. During these years he was also working at physical science. The laboratory and the pottery processes at Etruria gave him special facilities for experiments bearing on the relations between heat and light, and he gave much time to a course of experiments of this kind. The results of his work were embodied in two papers which were read before the Royal Society. The first of these, read on December 22, 1791 {Transactions for 1792, pp. 28-47), is entitled " Experiments and Observations on the production of Light from different bodies by heat and attrition," by Mr. Thomas Wedgwood, communicated by Sir Joseph Banks, Bart., F.R.S. The second paper is described as a continuation of the first. This special field of investigation was apparently a new one. He corresponded with Priestley on the subject, and we

B i8 find the great chemist telling him : " I do not know that any experiments have been made on the curious and important subjects that you mention/' and again,

they (your experiments) will throw some new light on a very important subject, about which we as yet know very little."*

In his first paper, after a brief summary of the results of previous observations, beginning with the discovery of the stone which went by the name of

Bolognese Phosphorus," he describes how a great variety of substances, some fifty or more, can be rendered luminous by the method of reducing the substance to powder and sprinkling it on a warm plate of iron, and then gives an account of the processes whereby he has been able to obtain phosphoric effect by attrition.

In his second paper he gives the particulars of various experiments showing the results of making different substances red hot. In the first of these (to take an instance) he fixes two equal cylinders of silver, half an inch long and a quarter of an inch in diameter, with polished surfaces, in a tube of earthenware. One cylinder is painted over, one not so. Both are put into a red hot crucible surrounded by burning coals, and he observes that the blackened silver shines much before that with the non-blackened surface.