I hardly suppose we can speak of a woman who was the mother of thirteen children before she was forty, and taking care of them all without a servant, as highly cultivated. Several of Josiah's brothers and sisters never learned to read and write, for like Judith Shakespeare, the daughter of William, they made their mark: which shows us that there are several ways of turning that pretty trick. Children born of the same parents are not necessarily related to each other, nor to their parents.
Mary Wedgwood, Josiah's mother, wrote for him his name in clay, and some years after he related how he copied it a hundred times every day for a week, writing with a stick in the mud.
Lame children or weakly ones seem to get their quota of love all right, so let us not feel sorry for them—everything is equalized.
When Josiah was fourteen he could write better than either his mother or his brother Thomas; for we have the signatures of all three appended to an indenture of apprenticeship, wherein Josiah was bound to his brother Thomas for five years. The youngster was to be taught the "mystery, trade, occupation and secrets of throwing and handling clay, and also burning it." But the fact was that as he was born in the pottery and had lived and worked in it, and was a most alert and impressionable child, he knew quite as much about the work as his brother Thomas, who was twenty years older. Years are no proof of ability.
At nineteen, Josiah's apprenticeship to his brother expired. "I have my trade, a lame leg and the marks of smallpox—and I never was good-looking, anyway," he wrote in his commonplace-book.
The terrific attack of smallpox that he had undergone had not only branded his face, but had left an inflammation in his right knee that made walking most difficult. This difficulty was no doubt aggravated by his hard work turning the potter's wheel with one foot. During the apprenticeship the brother had paid him no wages, simply "booarde, meate, drink and cloatheing."
Now he was sick, lame and penniless. His mother had died the year before. He was living with his brothers and sisters, who were poor, and felt that he was more or less of a burden to them and to the world: the tide was at ebb. And about this time it was that Richard Wedgwood, Esquire, from Cheshire, came over to Burslem on horseback. Richard has been mentioned as a brother of Thomas, the father of Josiah, but the fact seems to be that they were cousins.
Richard was a gentleman in truth, if not in title. He had made a fortune as a cheesemonger and retired. He went to London once a year, and had been to Paris. He was decently fat, was senior warden of his village church, and people who knew their business addressed him as Squire. The whole village of Burslem boasted only one horse and a mule, but Squire Wedgwood of Cheshire owned three horses, all his own. He rode only one horse though, when he came to Burslem, and behind him, seated on a pillion, was his only and motherless daughter Sarah, aged fourteen, going on fifteen, with dresses to her shoe-tops.
He brought her because she teased to come, and in truth he loved the girl very much and was extremely proud of her, even if he did reprove her more than was meet. But she usually got even by doing as she pleased.
Now they were on their way to Liverpool and just came around this way a-cousining.