The Sun.
London, England, 1865-04-25 00:00:00

LITERATIIItE

Meteyard's Life of Wedgwood.

The Life of Josiah Wedgwood. By Eliza Mete-
yard. With numerous Illustrations. Vol. One,

pp. 504. Hurst and Blackett.
In this magnificent volume we welcome one
of the very noblest contributions to the history of
the ceramic art ever published. We place it at once
and permanently—this record of the " Life of Josiah
Wedgwood "—side by side with Bernard Palissy's
Memoirs and with Benvenuto Cellini's Autobio-
graphy. " Silverpen " has here for once writ-
ten with a pen of gold. By this single per-
formance (evidently for her a labour of love) she
has securely established her literary reputation.
Miss Meteyard tells us in her prefatory remarks
that her researches, with a view to the composition
of this biography of Josiah Wedgwood, have ex-
tended over a period of fully fifteen years alto-
gether. Judging from the result, they have been
years in no way mis-spent. A more conscientious
discharge of the delicate and responsible duties de-
volving upon the biographer of a really great man,
has not been witnessed, we believe, since the days
of Boswell, the greatest of all Biographers. A
happy accident appears to have aided the accumula-
tion of the rare and some of them very precious mate-
rials here so admirably put together by the dex-
terous hand and exquisite taste of Miss Meteyard.
This same lucky accident being nothing less than the
passing into the possession of Joseph Mayer of
Liverpool—quite fortuitously—of a considerable
portion of the business papers relating to the Great
Potter's works both at Burslem and at Etruria.
From Mr. Mayer's possession, it will be seen, those
same papers passed on (with how many
more priceless materials, documentary or other-
wise, viva voce anecdotes, letters, drawings,
and so forth !)—into the safe keeping of Eliza Mete-
yard. And they did so, of course, with a view to her
judicious application of them to the purposes of
her long-projected biography—this biography
undertaken by her in her capacity as the chosen
celebrant of the genius, of the career, of the works,
of the fair fame; of the artistic and laborious
life of Josiah Wedgwood. The descendants and
the admirers, the friends and the family of the
Great Potter have, meanwhile, been vying with
each other in pouring into her lap a superabun-
dance of materials, materials which have been
placed (every one of them) at her own complete
discretion, for employment by her, howsoever her
judgment listed, in the building up under her reveren-
tial hand of a literary memorial not unworthy of
perpetuating the name of Wedgwood. And let us
here state at once quite distinctly that the authoress
has manifestly been in no way bewildered by what
must have proved an embaras des richesses to one
less fitted for the task. Prefixed, here, to this Life
of the Great Potter, the authoress has given a rapid
but comprehensive Sketch of the Art of Pottery,
not only in England, but elsewhere, far and wide—
not alone in modern times, not alone in the middle
ages, but, century beyond century, by a daring
retrospect, back even to the remotest antiquity.
As the writer herself says, to undertake the record
of the Life of Wedgewood without the possession
beforehand of a practical knowledge of pottery,
would be equivalent to penning the life of one of the
great composers without a previous knowledge of
music, or of one of the great painters without a prior
familiarity with the mysteries of the graphic art.
As the Historian of the Art of Pottery—for in very
truth such she may henceforth authoritatively
assume to be—as the celebrant of the genius of
Josiah Wedgwood—in one word, as the biographer
of that greatest among all the Potters of England,
Miss Meteyard has, happily for herself, for her
theme, and for her readers, entered upon the per-
formance of her appointed task, endowed with all
the qualifications requisite for its successful
completion. For that task, she has here, in truth,
shown herself to have been, from the very
outset, peculiarly well qualified. She appears
to have had, all along, quite a natural aptitude for
it. Beyond this, she seems to have been familiar
with the theme from her earliest childhood. Born and
nurtured herself in the midst of the localities which
are the scene of the story she has had to relate
while writing this life of Josiah Wedgwood, she has
necessarily enjoyed an intimate acquaintance, alike
with the memory and with the productions—
with the noble memory and 'the lovely
productions—of the hero of her narrative I His
name and his works, both of them the
joint results of his great genius and of his giant
industry, are among her very earliest recollections.
Familiarity, however, so far from leading, in this
instance, to another illustration of the truth
of the old proverb, has conduced, on the con-
trary, to the enhancement of her admira-
tion, to the perfecting of her appreciation, at
once of the man himself, and of his achievements.
Hence, in truth, the eminently satisfactory result of
her labours as Wedgwood's Biographer. And to in-
sure, so far as might be in any way possible, her
own yet greater fitness for the task of penning his
biography, she appears to have included among
her preliminary labours the complete apprehension
by her of the inner mysteries of the particular
craft in which the Great Potter had won for him-
self his radiant reputation. Following him (how
appreciatively !) footstep by footstep, she tracks him
through all the more remarkable of his many in-
dustrial and artistic processes, in the advancement
by him of his beloved art of pottery to a pitch of
excellence it had, until his time, in some respects,
never attained. She carefully and sedulously tracks
him, for example, in his search among spars of all
kinds, when he was so eagerly in quest of the terra
ponderosa, or carbonate of barytes. She notes, in
imagination—almost as sympathetically as Wedg-
wood's wife herself must have been wont to do, when
seated beside him at her spinning-wheel in his
workshop—one by one, each of his rarer successes
in the way of improvement—such, let us say, by way
of illustration, as his perfecting of the jasper body.
The authoress, in effect, is throughout so earnestly
and strenuously bent upon doing her work efficiently
—at once, as the Historian of Pottery and as the
Biographer of Wedgwood—that, among her preli-
minary labours to that two-fold end, we find her
actually getting herself initiated into one of the
innermost mysteries of the craft, to wit, the fritter-
ing of the glazes. The result of all this being,
that—if we come to view the work now under
notice simply as a Treatise upon Pottery—it must
be set down at once as a perfect marvel in its way
—coming to us, more particularly, as it does,
from the hands of a woman, a hand in its every
touch and movement, as will be seen, singularly
delicate and singularly vigorous. Everything
relating to pottery—•from the commonest delft,
nay from the veriest potsherd, up to that antique
Marvel of the Art, the Portland Vase (the effigy of
which is most appropriately emblazoned upon the
cover of the noble volume here commented upon)
—everything, even of the smallest interest, relating,
either directly or indirectly, to the Art or History
of Pottery, will be found to have been here duly
recorded and set down in these pages of Miss
Meteyard. Her retrospect extends back even to
the most primitive achievements in this most ancient
of handicrafts 1 To productions as formless, one
might almost say, as those unshapely vessels, de-
scribed by Daniel Defoe, as having been manufac-
tured by Robinson Crusoe in the desert island !
Nay the very implements of the craft—do we not
here learn all about them ? The potter's wheel—
his lathes, punches, whirlers, gravers, models,
moulds, and drying pans 1 All the essentials of the
art, moreover, are here taken carefully into consi-
deration—body, glaze, form, colour, ornament I
Turn by way of illustration for a moment—merely
to that one particular of colour in regard to this
same marvellous art of pottery ! And note, then,
as you flutter the leaves of the volume while read-
ing it, how from one solitary and perhaps dingy,
murky tinge, there are revealed to us, here, as they
become evolved in the expansion of the potter's
wonderful art, all the colours of the rain-
bow, colours multiplying and contrasting the one
with the other in every conceivable combinatidn—
green-glazed, red-engined, cream-coloured, dark
grey, bluish-black, metallic coloured, vitreous
coloured—until the store-rooms of the potteries,
as we traverse them seem, to become at last as varie-

gated in hue, let us say, as the flower-beds of the
Temple-gardens, in November, when the pompones
and the chrysanthemums are in all the glory of full
bloom ! The intermediate colouring (so to speak) in
particular—alike in the parterres and in the potteries
—being, one is tempted to say, about the most mar-
vellous of all 1 Instance this—the cream ware, with
its tints varying from those of newly-skimmed cream
to a pale sulphur, and so deepening and deepening
until it merges into crocus, or saffron, or orange !
From the record here given to us (very succinctly) of
British Pottery, in all its varieties and fluctuations,
it becomes manifest that it would hardly be any-
thing of an extravagance to speak of it as an art in
some sort indigenous. Among what the authoress
takes occasion to designate very aptly " our many-
nationed race," Pottery reveals itself to us under
how many different aspects or phases ! Now
Celtic as seen, in urns exhumed from the
tumuli—now Roman as evidenced in still-dis-
covered patere and mortaria—now Saxon as
observed in those trenchers and pitchers
which were often among the spoils of the
Vikings—now Norman, as visible in platters and
porringers ornately marked with armorial bearings
—now Medieval or of the period of the Renais-
sance ! After which last mentioned epoch—with
a wide gap or hiatus in between—there follow in
due sequence the greatest of the English masters of
the art, Wedgwood, and Spode, and, Minton, the
greatest of them all being Wedgwood, Josiah
Wedgwood, the hero of Miss Meteyard's book.
How under his direction the art rose and flourished
in the second half of the last century, this her record
of his Life will be found to relate, as it certainly
never before has been related--fully, authoritatively,
picturesquely—often with the interest of a ro-
mance, always with the dignity of a history. In-
cidentally, moreover, through these same chapters
of the life of Wedgwood, there are squandered
around us, as it were, to the right hand and to the
left—as though, in reading the book, we were
traversing a series of galleries littered with
the choicest articles of virtu—all the wares of all
the potteries of all the ages of all the coun-
tries of the earth. Mediaeval ware, including each
of the five distinct classes of tile-work, some of it
gorgeously fretted • and arabesqued—Earthenware
from all parts of England—Majolica ware—
Palissy ware—the Red-ware of Japan—Oriental
Porcelain—marbled ware and mottled ware—
pewter and Treen ware—Yellow ware, Cauliflower
ware, Melon ware, Agate ware, Tortoise-shell ware !
Ware, one might almost say—

" Striped like the zebra, freckled like the pard !"
Goblets, bowls, services of all kinds, three-
handled tygs, posset-pots, and mortuary tab-
lets, masterpieces of the potter's art from
the hand of Wedgwood himself—these and ,mul-
titudes of others represented in engraved effigies
of them meet us at every turn (of the leaf) as we
devour the dozen chapters making up this singularly
handsome and costly volume—the mere care given
to the illustration of which, by the way, reflects the
very highest credit upon the publishers, to say nothing
of their equally obvious care for the general getting
up of the work, more particularly in respect to its
typography. Views of the localities and medallion
portraits of the celebrities alluded to in the course
of the narraiive, are plentifully intermingled with
the embellishments already mentioned—among
these notabilities being numbered, King George
111., Queen Charlotte, the Rev. John Wesley,
Dr. Priestley, Brindley the Engineer, Mrs. Bar-
bauld, Dr. Aikin, besides which, as the frontispiece to
the volume, we have a very fine engraving from the
original portrait of Josiah Wedgwood himself.
As a fitting preliminary to the relation of his his-
tory, our authoress, it should be observed, more-
over, gives a highly interesting account of Wedg-
wood's progenitors, as well as of others among the
famous Potters of Staffordshire, the Mayers of
Norton, for example, and the Burslems of
Dale Hall. The true interest of the narrative,
however, begins only when we come to the record
of the birth —at Burslem, in Staffordshire
the birth, there, to Thomas Wedgwood and
Mary, his wife —of the youngest of a very
numerous family early in the July of 1730
—to wit, JOSIAH WEDGWOOD ! Then, in truth,
the charm of the book fairly " sets in" upon the
reader ! The commencement thus of the genuine
interest of the story may, in point of fact, be in-
dicated to the very page—beginning as that inte-
rest seems to us to do in real earnest with the de-
scription of the old house-place at Burslem; at p. 201,
with its ponderous settle beside the fire, its leather.;
covered easy-chair, its shelved dresser, its clock,
and tables, and—aloft there—hooked to the beams
in the ceiling, the great oak-made cratch for bacon !
From that point in her narrative we are Miss
Meteyard's most obedient ! We " needs must hear"
—she " hath her will"—as quietly but as securely as
ever had the Ancient Mariner in the ballad of
Coleridge. From the holiday visits paid by
Josiah Wedgwood, when a child, to old Mrs.
Egerton, at the Overhouse—we follow the hero
of the story to the dame's school where he gets
his first taste of knowledge (hardly a Pierian spring
can we call it), before wending his way as he does
later on, day after day, across 'the meadows to
Blunt's academy at Newcastle-under-Lyme. There
it is that we note the first evidence of the boy's
ingenuity when, with a pair of scissors and paper,
he cuts out, to the delight of his school-fellows,
a fleet at sea, an army at combat, a house and gar-
den, a whole pot-work—sticking the cuttings after-
wards along the entire length of the sloping desks
of the school-room, to the amazement alike of
scholars and of schoolmaster. His real education,
and the same may be said with regard to all
men of eminence, appears to have been his Self-
education—when, striken down by severe illness,
he fastened upon every book he could lay his
hands upon, during the otherwise weary interval of
a long convalescence. His " real precursor" as a pot-
ter, Miss Meteyard tells us, was Samuel Astbury—
one of whom it is recorded that he won his knowledge
of the mysteries of the potter's art by a wonderful
impersonation (some say during a period of no less
than two years, but our authoress regards that as
an exaggeration) by a wonderful impersonation of
utter idiotcy—an idiotcy assumed by him so as to
enable him to discover the secrets of the
Brothers Elers, certain German potters who
were famous in their day for the manufacture
of Elers' ware at Chelsea. An incident, this, it
will surely be allowed, sufficiently indicative of it-
self
that the annals of pottery are marked with
touches of truly romantic interest. Wedgwood's
own great career as a potter may be said to have
dated from somewhere about the spring of 1759.
Then it was that he began to apply himself
in earnest to the development of the four
great essential of his art, body, glaze, form,
and ornament. Three years after the date last
mentioned, namely, in 1762, he was introduced to
the great friend of his life, Thomasßentley the mer-
chant of Liverpool. Scarcely two years afterwards,
on the 25th of January, 1764, Josiah married—
his wife, Sarah, being one who proved to him in
fact, and not merely in name, a veritable help-
mate. And so we are brought down here to the
close of this first of the two volumes into which Miss
Meteyard's Life of Wedgwood is portioned out—
among the latest facts recorded in this first volume
being one that may be said to have marked a very
turning-point in the artistic and industrial career
of the Great Potter, namely, that of his happening
to light upon the work par excellence upon the Lathe
—that open sesante to all the Mysteries of the Beautiful
in the Art of Pottery—Plumier's " L'Art de Tourner."
From that seemingly chance-reading, came forth,
in point of fact, the full ripening of Wedgwood's
genius, the perfection of his art, the revelation of
his exquisite taste, the establishment of his great re-
putation. Great as that reputation may be consi-
dered to have been, however, before the publication
of this Life of The Master-Potter, it can hardly
be deemed to have attained its full developement
until now—when the seal may be said to have
been at last put to the credentials of his
fame by the hand of Eliza Meteyard Credentials
formally attested—(it can hardly be pronounced
extravagant our so expressing the fact)—on the 26th
of October, 1863, in a celebrated speech delivered at
Burslem—by the Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone, to
whom,• by the way, this really superb work is, we
observe, most appropriately inscribed.

GM DI !MI r.
• -

HER MAJESTY.

OSBORNE, April 24.
The Queen drove out this morning in the grounds.
The Royal Family also took their usual exercise.

The Earl and Countess of Malmesbury come to
town this week from Heron Court, near Christchurch/

Hants,

The Earl and Countess of Derby, who have been
staying a few days at Tunbridge Wells, came to town
yesterday.

The Earl and Countess Spencer intend to come
to Spencer House, St. James's, on the 2d proximo, from
Althorpe Hall, Northamptonshire.
_ _

The Marquis of Tweeddale has engaged the
Countess (Dowager) Poulett's house in Hanover-square
whilst her ladyship is residing in Paris.

THE CRYSTAL PALACE.

..d.

The Approach of the New Season,

If May Day is no longer celebrated by rural
sports and dances round the Maypole—it is at least
marked for Londoners by one most exhilarating
festivity, the commencement annually of a new
season in the People's Palace and Garden down at
Sydenham. Astronomically viewed, the year begins
on the 20th of March, when the sun enters upon his
annual round of the zodiac at the sign of Aries.
Conventionally, since the Gregorian Calendar was
accepted by the nations of Christendom, the year
begins upon-the Ist of January. Financially, the
year opens three months later. By Parliament it
has come to be inaugurated, intermediately, in the
first week or so of February. But—taking a
hint (as it happens very delightfully) from the
fashionable world of London, from the Belgravians
and Tyburnians, the Upper Ten Thousand, the
creme de la creme, the saunterers down Rotten-
Row, the loiterers round the Ring—the Crystal.
Palace Company, yonder in their lovely haunt ai
Sydenham, wisely begin their year, their season,
their annual round of festivities, upon no other daY
than May Day. Their new year, their Twelfth
Season begins, in this way, therefore, on Mon-
day next, the Ist of May, 1865. Between the first
of May and the 30th of April, that Annual Season
Ticket, that Guinea Ticket, runs (saving only, -
alas ! that it should be so, upon Sundays) un-
interruptedly throughout the whole twelve-
month. It is—we do quite seriously believe'
everything considered, and beyond a moment's
doubt of it—the most wonderful guinea's worth
anywhere procurable—this Season Ticket to the
Crystal Palace. It is for the Londoner very moll
what the Ring or the Lamp was to Aladdin in the
old Arabian story. Finger it ! and see what it does
not—that substitute for Aladdin's Ring or LaruPt
the Guinea Season Ticket to the Crystal Palace--
admit us to, us Londoners ! To a Fairy Palace of
gigantic dimensions and of exquisite beauty, t°,
begin ! To a Fairy Palace, moreover, that is reared
in the midst of a Fairy Garden of its own—the
Garden itself surrounded in turn by a radiant stretch
of the green country-side ! Within the Crystal Palace,
—specimens of all the wonders, or at the least of
the very pick of all the wonders gathered together
from all the countries and peoples under the
sun. Not a mere gewgaw bazaar, either, is thin
astonishing accumulation of curious, wonderful,
beautiful, or interesting objects, objects illustrative
of the ingenuity or of the genius of the human race
—it is not, in other words, so much mere lath
and plaster, veneer and tinsel. Take, as affording
instant evidence of this, take but the merest
glance at some of the contents of merely one e`
the departments of that veritable Microcosm, the
Crystal Palace as it now is ! Turning into the
French Court, for example—look for a few seconds
at the display now on view there of Chinese jewels/
spoils from the Summer Palace of Pekin ! Booti
gained by that happy-go-lucky Captain in the French
army, M. de Negroni, who commanded in the
regiment which sacked that same Palace of 0°
Chinese Emperors. We should hardly mind by
the way being, for once, given the sack (thus)
ourselves ! What do we see there in that
one department alone now actually on view
the Crystal Palace ? Pinchbeck ? Glass beads
Shagreen ? Tin foil ? Well—instead of that—among
other trifles in the way of jewellery, a couple °t
Diamonds, 50 carats each, each worth 1,15,000
sterling ! A Sapphire, two inches and a half in
diameter, weighing .742 carats, valued at (a were
bagatelle!) about £166,000! And so on in regard t°
other baubles littered about there—a single RubP
weighing 24 carats, Emeralds like lumps of green
light, and precious stones of various other kinds 0,
similar Splendour in the way both of lustre and
of dimensions. Apart from these bind 01
show-marvels, however, there are there, under
the crystal roof of the Palace, prominently -601°
among the multitude of its decorations',
What ? Well, in regard Statuary—copies of all
the rarest Masterpieces of modern times and of anti'
quity !In respect to Music—the hugest Orchestra
in the World—one of the noblest Organs—and an
accumulation each season (take this one as an ill;
stance!) of all the most rarely-gifted performers that
can be gathered together from both the Opera,
o
Houses and elsewhere, Patti and Titjiens, I%lari
and Giuglini, Santley and Ronconi, with a radiant
catalogue of other renowned artistes. Out °t
doors—glancing into the gardens—the Fountainls;
there, are the very largest ever constructed, far
beyond the Great Waters of St. Cloud and Ver.'
sailles. Within the building—turning back ag/
for a saunter, let us say, down the Mane'
facturing Court—one may see any day the"
in a single afternoon, in action, the various 10°1:
cesses of pin making, needle making, silk wen
ing, wood turning, medal striking, and so forth;
It were needless, however, to attempt anything 111 0
a succinct narrative of what the visitor may 000,
he cares to make use of his eyes, in this departnie,o
or in that department, to the right hand or to tP
left, upstairs or downstairs, in that marvell°tio
world of wonders, put, as such wonders ought W ~
proverbially, under a glass case—here, as it happy
under that most wonderful of all glass cases, t
glass case of the Crystal Palace ! Londoners are'ar
year by year, getting to be more and more fannll,o
with the glory and the beauty of it. And they
now likely, thanks to the early prospect of the Ito
Level Station being opened opposite the front of 710
Centre Transept, they are now likely to be ruv
rapidly than ever brought into daily communleoro
tion withthis the favourite haunt, already, of 0,0
great mass of intelligent Londoners! So that, 0
attractions of the Season Ticket, of the Gull' c,
Ticket for the whole year, to the Crystal rained
are fast multiplying—are, indeed, becoming so ir...Ay
obvious, at last, that what was recently looked oro
as a luxury is beginning to be viewed rather 0
the light of a delightful necessity. There do
now no conceivable reason why every well-t°:
fee
household in this vast city of ours, peopled by
millions of inhabitants, should not, for mere heale' s
sake, for health alike of mind and body, Ins:00
season ticket of its own to that Sans Souci ofleo
People, the Crystal Palace and the Crystal Psiwocl
Gardens, down yonder in that lovely neighbour
of Anerley, Penge, and Sydenham.
f ifjj'
VICTORIA LABOUR-MARKET.--The number o
otll
migrants who arrived by sea in Victoria during the Woo
of January last was 2,819, of whom 1,092 were frltring
United Kingdom. The departures from Melbourne the
the month were 2,036 persons. The rates of wages 004
colony were from £3O per annum for single farm lab: frond
to £6O for married labourers without children, '''ll
£l5 for nursemaids to £35 for cooks. The number one
migrants remaining at the Government depot in /SO'
on the 18th of January was 33.
The Town Council of Rochdale held a Ithectiie,
meeting on Saturday, to pass a vote of condolence I°, eler
widow of their late member. It was stated that
tion had prevented this step being taken at a-e.„o,3otie "
period, but the speeches which were made at the de'
le
showed how sincerely the memory of Mr. Lob
revered in the borough.
,gea
THE IRISH REPRESENTATIVE coVe
election of a representative peer to fill the vacanc-i3d. I,t
by the death of the Earl of Desart has connuenc-visce,,llo4
understand that two candidates are in the field-71 the 'Ai()
Gort, representing the Conservative interest ; ann,ll9D.i'eo
of Listowel, the Whig interest. The last ten elecLito 0113,44
passed off without a contest, none having taken I:nth
Lord Talbot de Malahide's unsuccessful contest v"
Bangor.—Dublin Evening Mail. .

I