Finally they got to making Delftware in Staffordshire. This was about the middle of the Eighteenth Century. And it seems that, a little before this time, John Wesley, a traveling preacher, came up this way on horseback, carrying tracts in his saddlebags, and much love in his heart. He believed that we should use our religion in our life—seven days in the week, and not save it up for Sunday. In ridicule, some one had called him a "Methodist," and the name stuck.
John Wesley was a few hundred years in advance of his time. He is the man who said, "Slavery is the sum of all villainies." John Wesley had a brother named Charles, who wrote hymns, but John did things. He had definite ideas about the rights of women and children, also on temperance, education, taxation and exercise, and whether his followers have ever caught up with him, much less gone ahead of him, is not for me, a modest farmer, to say.
In the published "Journal of John Wesley," is this: "March 8, 1760. Preached at Burslem, a town made up of potters. The people are poor, ignorant, and often brutal, but in due time the heart must be moved toward God, and He will enlighten the understanding."
And again: "Several in the congregation talked out loud and laughed continuously. And then one threw at me a lump of potter's clay that struck me in the face, but it did not disturb my discourse."
This whole section was just emerging out of the Stone Age, and the people were mostly making stoneware. They worked about four days in a week. The skilful men made a shilling a day—the women one shilling a week. And all the money they got above a meager living went for folly. Bear-baiting, bullfighting and drunkenness were the rule. There were breweries at Staffordshire before there were potteries, but now the potters made jugs and pots for the brewers.
These potters lived in hovels, and, what is worse, were quite content with their lot. In the potteries women often worked mixing the mud, and while at work wore the garb of men.
Wesley referred to the fact of the men and women dressing alike, and relates that once a dozen women wearing men's clothes, well plastered with mud, entered the chapel where he was preaching, and were urged on by the men to affront him and break up the meeting.
Then comes this interesting item: "I met a young man by the name of J. Wedgwood, who had planted a flower-garden adjacent to his pottery. He also had his men wash their hands and faces and change their clothes after working in the clay. He is small and lame, but his soul is near to God."
I think that John Wesley was a very great man. I also think he was great enough to know that only a man who is in love plants a flower-garden.
Yes, such was the case—Josiah Wedgwood was in love, madly, insanely, tragically in love! And he was liberating that love in his work. Hence, among other forms that his "insanity" took, he planted a flower-garden.