My grandfather carried on the business of timber dealer (we in Canada should call it lumber merchant), between Scotland and England, buying up the standing timber in gentlemen's parks, squaring and teaming it southward, and so became a prosperous man. Finally, at his death, he left a large family of sons and daughters, all in thriving circumstances. His second son, William, married my mother, Anna Hawkins, daughter of the Rev. Isaac Hawkins, of Taunton, in Somersetshire, and his wife, Joan Wilmington, of Wilmington Park, near Taunton. My grandfather Hawkins was one of John Wesley's earliest converts, and was by him ordained to the ministry. Through my mother, we are understood to be descended from Sir John Hawkins, the world-renowned buccaneer, admiral, and founder of the English Royal Navy, who was honoured by being associated with her most sacred Majesty Queen Elizabeth, in a secret partnership in the profits of piratical raids undertaken in the name and for the behoof of Protestant Christianity. So at least says the historian, Froude.
One word more about my father. He was a member of the London trained-bands, and served during the Gordon riots, described by Dickens in "Barnaby Rudge." He personally rescued a family of Roman Catholics from the rioters, secreted them in his house on Holborn Hill, and aided them to escape to Jamaica, whence they sent us many valuable presents of mahogany furniture, which must be still in the possession of some of my nephews or nieces in England. My mother has often told me, that she remembered well seeing dozens of miserable victims of riot and drunkenness lying in the kennel in front of her house, lapping up the streams of gin which ran burning down the foul gutter, consuming the poor wretches themselves in its fiery progress.
My father died the same year I was born. My dear mother, who was the meekest and most pious of women, did her best to teach her children to avoid the snares of worldly pride and ambition, and to be contented with the humble lot in which they had been placed by Providence. She was by religious profession a Swedenborgian, and in that denomination educated a family of eleven children, of whom I am the youngest. I was sent to a respectable day-school, and afterwards as boarder to a commercial academy, where I learnt the English branches of education, with a little Latin, French, and drawing. I was, as a child, passionately fond of reading, especially of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, and of Sir Walter Scott's novels, which latter delightful books have influenced my tastes through life, and still hold me fascinated whenever I happen to take them up.
So things went on till 1823, when I was thirteen years old. My mother had been left a life-interest in freehold and leasehold property worth some thirty thousand pounds sterling; but, following the advice of her father and brother, was induced to invest in losing speculations, until scarcely sufficient was left to keep the wolf from the door. It was, therefore, settled that I must be sent to learn a trade, and, by my uncle's advice, I was placed as apprentice to one William Molineux, of the Liberty of the Rolls, in the district of Lincoln's Inn, printer. He was a hard master, though not an unkind man. For seven long years was I kept at press and case, working eleven hours a day usually, sometimes sixteen, and occasionally all night, for which latter indulgence I got half a crown for the night's work, but no other payment or present from year's end to year's end. The factory laws had not then been thought of, and the condition of apprentices in England was much the same as that of convicts condemned to hard labour, except for a couple of hours' freedom, and too often of vicious license, in the evenings.
CHAPTER II.
HISTORY OF A MAN OF GENIUS.
The course of my narrative now requires a brief account of my mother's only brother, whose example and conversation, more than anything else, taught me to turn my thoughts westwards, and finally to follow his example by crossing the Atlantic ocean, and seeking "fresh fields and pastures new" under a transatlantic sky.
John Isaac Hawkins was a name well known, both in European and American scientific circles, fifty years ago, as an inventor of the most fertile resource, and an expert in all matters relating to civil engineering. He must have left England for America somewhere about the year 1790, full of republican enthusiasm and of schemes of universal benevolence. Of his record in the United States I know very little, except that he married a wife in New Jersey, that he resided at Bordenton, that he acquired some property adjacent to Philadelphia, that he was intimate with the elder Adams, Jefferson, and many other eminent men. Returning with his wife to England, after twenty-five years' absence, he established a sugar refinery in Titchfield Street, Cavendish square, London, patronized his English relatives with much condescension, and won my childish heart by great lumps of rock-candy, and scientific experiments of a delightfully awful character. Also, he borrowed my mother's money, to be expended for the good of mankind, and the elaboration of the teeming offspring of his inexhaustible inventive faculty. Morden's patent lead pencils, Bramah's patent locks, and, I think, Gillott's steel pens were among his numerous useful achievements, from some or all of which he enjoyed to the day of his death a small income, in the shape of a royalty on the profits. He assisted in the perfecting of Perkins's steam-gun, which the Duke of Wellington condemned as too barbarous for civilized warfare, but which its discoverer, Mr. Perkins, looked upon as the destined extirpator of all warfare, by the simple process of rendering resistance utterly impossible. This appalling and destructive weapon has culminated in these times in the famous mitrailleuses of Napoleon III, at Woerth and Sedan, which, however, certainly neither exterminated the Prussians nor added glory to the French empire.
At his home I was in the habit of meeting the leading men of the Royal Society and the Society of Arts, of which he was a member, and of listening to their discussions about scientific novelties. The eccentric Duke of Norfolk, Earl Stanhope, the inventor of the Stanhope press, and other noble amateur scientists, availed themselves of his practical skill, and his name became known throughout Europe. In 1825 or thereabouts, he was selected by the Emperor Francis Joseph, of Austria, to design and superintend the first extensive works erected in Vienna for the promotion of the new manufacture of beet-root sugar, now an important national industry throughout Germany. He described the intercourse of the Austrian Imperial-Royal family with all who approached them, and even with the mendicants who were daily admitted to an audience with the Emperor at five o'clock in the morning, as of the most cordial and lovable character.
From Vienna my uncle went to Paris, and performed the same duties there for the French Government, in the erection of extensive sugar works. The chief difficulty he encountered there, was in parrying the determination of the Parisian artisans not to lose their Sunday's labour. They could not, they said, support their families on six days' wages, and unless he paid them for remaining idle on the Sabbath day, they must and would work seven days in the week. I believe they gained their point, much to his distress and chagrin.