In the Stocking Weavers' Hall, in Redcross Street, London, there used to hang a picture, representing a man in collegiate costume in the act of pointing to an iron stocking-frame, and addressing a woman busily knitting with needles by hand. Underneath the picture appeared the following inscription: "In the year 1589, the ingenious William Lee, A.M., of St. John's College, Cambridge, devised this profitable art for stockings (but, being despised, went to France), yet of iron to himself, but to us and to others of gold; in memory of whom this is here painted." As to who this William Lee was, and the way in which he came to invent the stocking-frame, there are conflicting stories, but the one most generally received and best authenticated is as follows:—
William Lee, a native of Woodborough, near Nottingham, was a fellow of one of the Cambridge Colleges. He fell in love with a young country lass, married her, and consequently forfeited his fellowship. A poor scholar, with much learning, but without money or the knowledge of any trade, he found himself in very embarrassed circumstances. Like many another "poor scholar," he might exclaim:—
"All the arts I have skill in,
Divine and humane;
Yet all's not worth a shilling;
Alas! poor scholar, whither wilt thou go?"
His wife, however, was a very industrious woman, and by her knitting contributed to their joint support. It is said—but the story lacks authentic confirmation—that when Lee was courting her, she always appeared so much more occupied with her knitting than with the soft speeches he was whispering in her ear, that her lover thought of inventing a machine that would "facilitate and forward the operation of knitting," and so leave the object of his love more leisure to converse with him. "Love, indeed," says Beckmann, "is fertile in invention, and gave rise, it is said, to the art of painting; but a machine so complex in its parts, and so wonderful in its effects, would seem to require longer and greater reflection, more judgment, and more time and patience than could be expected of a lover." But afterwards, when Lee, in his painfully enforced idleness, sat many a long hour watching his wife's nimble fingers toiling to support him, his mind again recurred to the idea of a machine that would give rest to her weary fingers. His cogitations resulted in the contrivance of a stocking-frame, which imitated the movements of the fingers in knitting.
Although the invention of this loom gave a great impulse to the manufacture of silk stockings in England, and placed our productions in advance of those of other countries, Lee reaped but little profit from it. He met with neglect both from Queen Elizabeth and James I.; and, not succeeding as a manufacturer on his own account, went to France, where he did very well until after the assassination of Henri IV., when he shared the persecutions of the Protestants, and died in great distress in Paris.
III.—JOSEPH MARIE JACQUARD.
Joseph Marie Jacquard, the inventor of the loom which bears his name, and to whom the extent and prosperity of the silk manufacture of our time is mainly due, was born at Lyons in 1752, of humble parents, both of whom were weavers. His father taught him to ply the shuttle; but for education of any other sort, he was left to his own devices. He managed to pick up some knowledge of reading and writing for himself; but his favourite occupation was the construction of little models of houses, towers, articles of furniture, and so on, which he executed with much taste and accuracy. On being apprenticed to a type-founder, he exhibited his aptitude for mechanical contrivances by inventing a number of improved tools for the use of the workmen. On his father's death he set up as a manufacturer of figured fabrics; but although a skilful workman, he was a bad manager, and the end of the undertaking was, that he had to sell his looms to pay his debts. He married, but did not receive the dowry with his wife which he expected, and to support his family had to sell the house his father had left him,—the last remnant of his little heritage. The invention of numerous ingenious machines for weaving, type-founding, &c., proved the activity of his genius, but produced not a farthing for the maintenance of his wife and child. He took service with a lime-maker at Brest, while his wife made and sold straw hats in a little shop at Lyons. He solaced himself for the drudgery of his labours by spending his leisure in the study of machines for figure-weaving. The idea of the beautiful apparatus which he afterwards perfected began to dawn on him, but for the time it was driven out of his mind by the stirring transactions of the time. The whirlwind of the Revolution was sweeping through the land. Jacquard ardently embraced the cause of the people, took part in the gallant defence of Lyons in 1793, fled for his life on the reduction of the city, and with his son—a lad of sixteen—joined the army of the Rhine. His boy fell by his side on the field of battle, and Jacquard, destitute and broken-hearted, returned to Lyons. His house had been burned down; his wife was nowhere to be heard of. At length he discovered her in a miserable garret, earning a bare subsistence by plaiting straw. For want of other employment he shared her labours, till Lyons began to rise from its ruins, to recover its scattered population, and revive its industry. Jacquard applied himself with renewed energy to the completion of the machine of which he had, before the Revolution, conceived the idea; exhibited it at the National Exposition of the Products of Industry in 1801; and obtained a bronze medal and a ten years' patent.
During the peace of Amiens, Jacquard happened to take up a newspaper in a cabaret which he frequented, and his eye fell on a translated extract from an English journal, stating that a prize was offered by a society in London for the construction of a machine for weaving nets. As a mere amusement he turned his thoughts to the subject, contrived a number of models, and at last solved the problem. He made a machine and wove a little net with it. One day he met a friend who had read the paragraph from the English paper. Jacquard drew the net from his pocket saying, "Oh! I've got over the difficulty! see, there is a net I've made." After that he took no more thought about the matter, and had quite forgotten it, when he was startled by a summons to appear at the Prefectal Palace. The prefect received him very kindly, and expressed his astonishment that his mechanical genius should so long have remained in obscurity. Jacquard could not imagine how the prefect had discovered his mechanical experiments, and began vaguely to dread that he had got into some shocking scrape. He stammered out a sort of apology. The prefect was surprised he should deny his own talent, and said he had been informed that he had invented a machine for weaving nets. Jacquard owned that he had.