“Among the Seddon papers is a letter which her husband wrote to her during a short absence in 1766. On the back of his letter Mrs Seddon prepares a rough draft of an answer to her truant husband. The word which puzzles her most is ‘adieu,’ and she has to spell it over three times before she can determine whether the ‘e’ comes before the ‘i,’ or the ‘i’ before the ‘e.’ The knotty point is at last settled and the fair copy written out; and this, too, her careful husband put away and preserved among his papers.”
I cannot resist quoting the last paragraph of this most charming but laborious letter.
“Let me hear of you as often as you can; for it does me more good, and has a much stronger affect upon my spirits than either eather or salvolatiley. Adieu, my dear, except the sincerest and best wishes for your health and happiness, of one whose greatest pleasure in this world is in subscribing herself your truely affectionate wife.—J. Seddon.
“P.S.—I shall want cash before you return; what must I doe? Pray put me in a way how to replenish. Remember me propperly to everybody.”
We cannot, however, concern ourselves at greater length with the life at the Warrington Academy, or dwell much longer on the fortunes of that seat of learning. To do full justice to the theme would need indeed the witty pen which in “Cranford” delineated the social life of a neighbouring town with such inimitable grace and charm.
The worthy Mr Seddon died in 1770, and was succeeded as Rector by Dr Enfield, a man distinguished for elegance of taste and sound literary judgment, and who, on the death, ten years later, of Dr Aikin, became chief tutor. For various reasons, which it is unnecessary to state here, the trustees eventually decided to remove the Academy to Manchester, and Warrington knew it no more after 1786.
During the twenty-nine years of its existence in the latter place some 400 pupils had passed through it—many of them noteworthy men in their day, such as Percival; the Aikins; Rigby of Norwich; Estlin of Bristol; Sergeant Heywood; Hamilton Rowan, the Irish rebel; Malthus, the political economist; Lord Ennismore; Sir James Carnegie of Southesk; Mr Henry Beaton, Mr Pendlebury Houghton and Dr Crompton.
“In looking over the students’ names,” says Mr Bright, “I cannot but notice how many of their descendants are still the staunch supporters of the liberal dissent which was the distinguishing characteristic of the Academy. Some families, like the Willoughbys of Parkham, whose last lord was educated at Warrington, have now died out; others, like the Aldersons of Norwich, of which family the late judge was a member, have seceded to the Church of England. But we still find united the lineal and the theological successors of the Academy’s students in the Rigbys, the Martineaus, and the Taylors of Norwich, the Heywoods and the Yateses of Liverpool, the Potters of Manchester, the Gaskells of Wakefield, the Brights of Bristol, the Shores of Sheffield, the Hibberts of Hyde, and the Wedgwoods of Etruria.”
CHAPTER IV
Priestley marries—Is ordained—His Essay on Education—Lectures on History and General Policy—His Chart of Biography—Becomes a Doctor of Laws of the University of Edinburgh—His visits to London—Makes the acquaintance of Dr Price, Canton and Benjamin Franklin—Writes the History of Electricity—Is elected into the Royal Society.
Priestley’s entrance into the Warrington community affected his career in more ways than one. In the first place, the improvements in his worldly prospects enabled him to marry; and in the second he was led to turn his attention to Natural Philosophy, to which, as we have seen, he was already predisposed. The selection of his wife and of his studies influenced the subsequent course of his life profoundly. Why he should have left the sprightly, witty “Nancy Aikin, with the blue and laughing eyes,” to be “carried off to Palgrave by that queer little man” whom she had to “honour and obey” as a school-mistress, is one of those inscrutable dispensations which the hymeneal god delights in. That they were the best of friends and had pleasure in each other’s society is abundantly evident. Priestley warmly admired her genius: she confessed, indeed, that he first encouraged her to try her ’prentice hand at poetry. She was about eighteen when Priestley first appeared at Warrington, and about ten years his junior, a girl of many personal attractions and, as demonstrated by her writings, of great mental ability and accomplishments. She had been carefully educated by her father, had a considerable knowledge of modern literature, and was fairly well-read in that of Greece and Rome. Her first volume of poems was printed at Warrington in 1773 and ran through four editions in a year. It was said of her that she roused the admiration of Fox and Johnson, the envy of Rogers and Wordsworth, and the jealousy of Goldsmith; Scott declared she made a poet of him; Brougham eulogised her in the House of Lords, and Mrs Oliphant has paid her a beautiful tribute in her Literary History of England.