Lives of Illustrious Shoemakers

by W. E. Winks

WILLIAM CAREY.

Between the years 1786 and 1789, when William Gifford, just liberated by the generous interference of a friend from the yoke of apprenticeship to a cruel master, was receiving instruction from the Rev. Thomas Smerdon, when Robert Bloomfield, a journeyman shoemaker in London, was preparing in his mind the materials for the “Farmer’s Boy,” and when Samuel Drew, the young shoemaker of St. Austell, was reading “Locke on the Understanding,” and learning to think and reason as a metaphysician, there lived at Moulton in Northamptonshire a poor shoemaker, school-teacher, and village pastor, who was cherishing in his great heart the project of forming a society for the purpose of sending out Christian missionaries to the heathen world. This poor young man, in spite of his obscure position, his meagre social influence, his limited resources, and his lack of early educational advantages, became the originator of the great foreign missionary enterprises which constitute so remarkable a feature in the religious history of this country at the close of the last and the beginning of the present century. He was the first missionary chosen to be sent out by the committee of the society he had been the means of establishing. His field of labor was India, where for more than forty years, “without a visit to England or even a voyage to sea to recruit his strength,” and without losing a vestige of his early enthusiasm for his Christian enterprise, he toiled on at the work of preaching the gospel and translating the Sacred Scriptures. From 1801 to 1830, he was Professor of Oriental Languages in a college founded at Fort William by the Marquis of Wellesley, Governor-General of India. As an Oriental linguist he had few equals in his day, and few have ever exceeded him in the extent and exactitude of his acquaintance with the languages of India. He compiled grammars and dictionaries in Mahratta, Sanskrit, Punjabi, Telugu, Bengali, and Bhotana. But his chief work was the translation of the Scriptures into Bengali and other languages. No less than twenty-four different translations of the Bible were made and edited by him, and passed through the press at Serampore under his supervision. One account speaks of “two hundred thousand Bibles, or portions thereof, in about forty Oriental languages or dialects, besides a great number of tracts and other religious works in various languages;“ and adds that ”a great proportion of the actual literary labor involved in these undertakings was performed” by this prodigious worker. A truly noble life-work was this for any man. It may be questioned if more work of a solid and useful character was ever pressed into one human life. What monarch or ruler of a vast empire, what statesman or judge, what scientific or literary worker, what man of genius in business or the professions, has ever thrown more energy into his life-work or achieved more worthy results for all his toil than this humble shoemaker and village pastor from Northamptonshire, who first gave to the various races of Northern India the Bible in their own language?

No one who is at all familiar with the work of the Christian Church in the present century, will need to be told that we are speaking of the famous pioneer missionary to Bengal, Dr. William Carey. And surely no list of illustrious shoemakers would be complete that did not include the name of this good man. His experience of the “gentle craft” was somewhat extensive. He was bound apprentice to the trade, and afterward worked as,a journeyman for more than twelve years. When he became known to the world, he was often spoken of as “the learned shoemaker.” Indeed, he was not always honored with so respectful a title as this. More often than not he was alluded to as “the cobbler,” and his own strict honesty and modesty of spirit led him to prefer the latter epithet. His humble origin and occupation were sometimes the occasion of an empty sneer on the part of men whose class feeling and religious prejudice prevented their appreciation of his splendid mental gifts and high purpose in life, and who consequently endeavored, but in vain, to bring his grand and Christ-like undertaking into contempt. That famous wit, the Rev. Sydney Smith, sometime prebendary of Bristol and canon of St. Paul’s, tried to set the world laughing at the “consecrated cobbler.” It was a sorry joke, and quite unworthy of a Christian minister, and must have been sorely repented of in after-years. One would have thought that Sydney Smith’s undoubted piety, and natural kindliness of heart, let along his strong bias in favor of all that was liberal in religion and politics, would have saved him from such a cruel and flippant sneer. But wit is a brilliant and dangerous weapon, and few men know how to use it as much as Sydney Smith did without injury to their own reputation or the feelings of other people.

Carey, as we have said, did not object to being called a “cobbler,” although the term did not accurately describe his degree of proficiency in the trade. It was reported in Northamptonshire that he was a poor workman, the neighbors declaring that though he made boots, he “could never make a pair.”[35] In a letter to Dr. Ryland he contradicts this report and says: “The childish story of my shortening a shoe to make it longer is entitled to no credit. I was accounted a very good workman, and recollect Mr. Old keeping a pair of shoes which I had made in his shop as a model of good workmanship.“ He cautiously adds, ”But the best workmen sometimes, from various causes, put bad work out of their hands, and I have no doubt but I did so too.”[36] This is more than likely, for he was subject to long fits of mental abstraction as he sat at the stall:

“His eyes

Were with his heart, and that was far away.”

He pined for the field of missions and chafed against the cruel “bars of circumstance” that kept him in his native land. While engaged in shoemaking, he was so intent on learning Latin, Greek, and Hebrew that he often forgot to fit the shoes to the last. No wonder if shoes were not “a pair,” and were sometimes returned; no wonder that while he became one of the first linguists in the world in his day he was spoken of by his neighbors as nothing more than “a cobbler!” With reference to his poor abilities in the craft a good story is told of the way in which he silenced an officious person whose “false pride in place and blood” had betrayed him into some disparaging remarks about Carey as a shoemaker. His biographer[37] says: “Some thirty years after this period, dining one day with the Governor-General, Lord Hastings, at Barrakpore, a general officer made an impertinent inquiry of one of the aides-de-camp whether Dr. Carey had not once been a shoemaker. He happened to overhear the conversation, and immediately stepped forward and said, “No, sir; only a cobbler!”

In the brief story we have to tell of the life of this remarkable man, we shall, as seems most appropriate to our purpose, confine our remarks almost entirely to the work he accomplished before he ceased to be a shoemaker. His father and grandfather held the position of parish clerk and schoolmaster at Pury, or Paulersbury, in Northamptonshire, where William Carey was born, 17th August, 1761. His only education was received in the village school, and this was very slight and rudimentary; yet it was sufficient to give him a start in the work of educating himself. As a boy he was always fond of reading, and chose such books as referred to natural history. Botany and entomology were favorite subjects. His bedroom was turned into a sort of museum, chiefly remarkable for butterflies and beetles. Of books of travel and accounts of voyages he never seems to have wearied; the history and geography of any country also afforded him special delight. He was a bright, active, good-looking, intelligent boy, by no means a recluse and bookworm, caring nothing for out-door exercise and sports. He was as fond of games as any boy in the village, and as clever at them, and so became a general favorite. His quickness of intellect and perseverance with any hobby he took up often led the neighbors to predict success for him in future life. The perseverance and courage, which were such marked features of his character as a man, were shown in his boyhood by a curious incident. Attempting to climb a tree one day, he fell and broke his leg, and was an invalid for six weeks. As soon as he could crawl to the bottom of the garden, he made his way to the very tree from which he had fallen, climbed to the top of it, and brought down one of the highest branches, which he carried into the house, exclaiming, “There, I knew I would do it!”

At the age of twelve he showed the first signs of a taste and capacity for the acquisition of languages. A copy of Dyche’s Latin Grammar and Vocabulary had come into his hands, and he at once set to work, of his own free will and choice, to study the introductory portion, and to commit all the Latin words, with their meanings, to memory. Such an incident as this was quite enough to show that he was a boy of no common mind, and that he would well repay any outlay that might be made in giving him a classical training. But that was out of the question; the village school could not afford such a training, and anything better, in the shape of grammar-school or college, was not to be had, for his friends were poor and had no patrons to assist them. What he might have done in an university it is idle to suppose. Undoubtedly, he would have distinguished himself, but it may be reasonably doubted whether he would have been led into the path of Christian philanthropy and usefulness which the stress of circumstances at Moulton led him to think and adopt. It must have been painful for his parents, with their sense of the boy’s merits and ambition as a scholar, to see him languishing at home, unable to find sufficient food for his hungry and capacious young mind, while they also were unable to satisfy his passion for books, or send him to a school adequate to his requirements. And doubly painful must it have been for him as for them, when they felt that the time had come for him to learn a trade, and the thought of further schooling must be given up.