Mr. Bramah, the celebrated engineer, appears among Huntington's controversial correspondents; and he tells him that he makes a good patent lock, but cuts a poor figure with the keys of the kingdom of heaven.
Mr. Bensley, the printer, was one of his believers, which explains the handsome appearance of Huntington's collected works, in twenty volumes, octavo; his spiritual employer calls him dear brother in the Lord, and dear Tom in the flesh. Trader in faith as he was, there were some social qualities about him which won and secured the attachment of his friends, even of those upon whom he drew most largely. He mentions particularly Mr. and Mrs. Baker, of Oxford Street, who, having no children of their own, kept caring and travailing many years for him; and though "sorely tried by various losses in business, bankruptcies, and bad debts, supplied him with money whenever he required it." "While the chapel was building," he says, "when money was continually demanded, if there was one shilling in the house, I was sure to have it." This couple and another, with whom he was on terms of equal intimacy, agreed, as they were bound together with their chosen pastor for life and for eternity, not to be divided in death; and accordingly they jointly purchased a piece of ground near Petersham, and erected a substantial tomb there, wherein they might rest together in the dust.
Huntington died in 1813, at Tunbridge Wells; he was buried at Lewes, in a piece of ground adjoining the chapel of one of his associates: it was his desire that there should be no funeral sermon preached on the occasion, and that nothing should be said over his grave. He indited his own epitaph in these words:—
Here lies the Coalheaver,
Beloved of his God, but abhorred of men.
The Omniscient Judge
At the Grand Assize shall rectify and
Confirm this to the
Confusion of many thousands;
For England and its Metropolis shall know,
That there hath been a prophet
Among them.
The sale of his effects by public auction took place soon after his death, at his elegantly-furnished villa, Hermes Hill,[29] Pentonville, and lasted four days. His friends and admirers, anxious to secure some memorial of Huntington, paid most fabulous sums of money for articles of no intrinsic value in the excess of their veneration. A mahogany easy-chair, with hair seat and back cushion in canvas, on brass-wheel castors, with two sets of flowered calico cases, sold for 63l.; an ordinary pair of spectacles sold for seven guineas; a common silver snuff-box, five guineas; every article of plate at from 23s. to 26s. per ounce; his library sold for 252l. 19s.; a handsome modern town coach for 49l. 7s. The aggregate of the four days' sale was 1,800l. 11s. 2½d. In a newspaper, October, 1813, we read:—"At the sale of the effects of the Rev. Mr. Huntington, at Pentonville, an old arm-chair, intrinsically worth fifty shillings, actually sold for sixty guineas; and many other articles fetched equally high prices, so anxious were his besotted admirers to obtain some precious memorial of that artful fanatic." One of his steady followers purchased a barrel of ale, which had been brewed for Christmas, "because he would have something to remember him by."
Huntington is described as having been, towards the close of his career, a fat, burly man, with a red face, which rose just above the pulpit cushion; and a thick, guttural, and rather indistinct voice. A contemporary says:—"His pulpit prayers are remarkable for omitting all for the King and his country. He excels in extempore eloquence. Having formally announced his text, he lays his Bible at once aside, and never refers to it again. He has every possible text and quotation at his fingers' end. He proceeds directly to his object, and except such incidental digressions as 'Take care of your pockets! Wake that snoring sinner! Silence that noisy numskull! Turn out that drunken dog!' he never deviates from his course. Nothing can exceed his dictatorial dogmatism. Believe him, none but him—that's enough. When he wishes to bind the faith of his congregation, he will say, over and over, 'As sure as I am born, 'tis so;' or, 'I believe the plain English of it to be this.' And then he will add, by way of clenching his point, 'Now you can't help it,' or, 'It must be so, in spite of you.' He does this with a most significant shake of the head, and with a sort of Bedlam hauteur, with all the dignity of defiance. He will then sometimes observe, softening his deportment, 'I don't know whether I make you understand these things, but I understand them well.' He rambles sadly and strays so completely from his text, that you often lose sight of it. The divisions of his sermons are so numerous that one of his discourses might be divided into three. Preaching is with him talking; his discourses, story-telling. Action he has none, except that of shifting his handkerchief from hand to hand and hugging his cushion. Nature has bestowed on him a vigorous original mind, and he employs it in everything. Survey him when you will, he seems to have rubbed off none of his native rudeness or blackness. All his notions are his own, as well as his mode of imparting them. Religion has not been discovered by him through the telescopes of commentators."
Huntington's portrait is in the National Portrait Gallery, in South Kensington. He "might pass, as far as appearances go, for a convict, but he looks too conceited. The vitality and strength of his constitution are fearful to behold, and it is certain that he looks better fitted for coal-heaving than for religious oratory."—History of Clerkenwell, 1865, pp. 529-531.
[Amen.]
A Correspondent of the Athenæum, 1865, writes:—"While some philosophers seek information in the Far West, and others in the not-much-nearer East—one, perchance, reducing eccentric arrow heads to a civilised alphabet; another metamorphosing emblematic pitch-forks, tom-cats, &c., of 2,000 A.M. into sensation novels of the period; a third studying the customs and annals of pre-historic America by the aid of Aztec pots and pipkins—it has been the happy lot of the undersigned, with no greater effort than a short railway journey and a pleasant walk, to light upon a treasure of antiquity, which may not be without interest to some of your readers. The internal evidence of the following lines is sufficient to show what they purport to be—viz. the epitaph of an accomplished parish officer at Crayford, in Kent. They run as follows:—
"Here lieth the body of
Peter Isnell
(30 years Clerk of this Parish.)