Lives of Illustrious Shoemakers

by W. E. Winks

“My dear D’Israeli,—I send you Mr. Cooper, a Chartist, red-hot from Stafford jail. But don’t be frightened; he won’t bite you. He has written a poem and a romance, and thinks he can cut out ‘Coningsby’ and ‘Sybil.’ Help him if you can, and oblige yours, T. S. Duncombe.”

It is gratifying to read of the kindness with which the shrewd statesman, then a Tory of the Tories, received the “red-hot radical.” “I wish I had seen you before I finished my last novel,“ said he; ”my heroine Sybil is a Chartist.” With the kindly help of Douglas Jerrold the “Purgatory” was at length published by Jeremiah How, Fleet Street, who undertook to bear the cost and risk of printing. It came out in September, 1845, and the five hundred copies of the first edition were sold off before Christmas. Cooper now began to write for Douglas Jerrold’s “Shilling Magazine.” The volume of tales called “Wise Saws,” etc., and a short poem, “The Baron’s Yule Feast,” were issued about the same time. The “Purgatory of Suicides” had been dedicated, without leave asked, to Thomas Carlyle, to whom the author sent a copy, and from whom he received in acknowledgment a characteristic letter, in which, among other kind and wise things, that greatest of all the literary men of his age said, “I have looked into your poem, and find indisputable traces of genius in it—a dark Titanic energy struggling there, for which we hope there will be clearer daylight by and by;” and along with the letter came a copy of “Past and Present,” with Carlyle’s autograph. In 1846 Cooper was at work on Douglas Jerrold’s weekly paper, visiting the Midland and Northern Counties as a sort of commissioner, and writing articles on the “Condition of the People of England.” Passing through the Lake District, he called on Wordsworth, and was most kindly received by the “majestic old man.” Great, however, was the Chartist’s amazement to hear the “Tory” Wordsworth say with reference to the Chartist movement, “You were right; I have always said the people were right in what they asked; but you went the wrong way to get it.” On his return to London, Cooper engaged to lecture on Sunday evenings at South Place, Finsbury Square, and continued the work of public lecturer for the next eight years. During this time he lectured through the winter for various political and socialist societies in several large halls in London, such as the John Street Institution and the “Hall of Science,” City Road, and filled up the time during the summer by lecturing tours throughout the kingdom. He had now become a sceptic, i.e. doubter, and confined himself in his lectures exclusively to secular topics, political or literary. The misery he had witnessed in Leicester and the Potteries, the failure of all his efforts to benefit the suffering poor, and the long imprisonment he had endured as a disinterested champion of their cause, had sorely shaken his faith in Divine Providence and driven him to the verge of downright atheism, but only to the verge: he declares that he was never an atheist, nor ever “proclaimed blank atheism in his public teaching.”[67] Yet it must be confessed he went far in this direction. The worst period of his life in this respect was the winter of 1848-49, when, having become a disciple of Strauss, he engaged to give a series of lectures on Sunday evenings in the “Hall of Science” on the teachings of the “Leben Jesu.” He says: “There is no part of my teaching as a public lecturer that I regret so deeply as this. It would rejoice my heart indeed if I could obliterate those lectures from the realm of fact.”[68] But for the most part his addresses were on purely literary or historical subjects, and marvellous indeed was the versatility and extent of learning they displayed. The enumeration of topics alone would occupy several pages. Every one of the chief English poets and their poems, the history of every European country, the lives of great reformers, statesmen, generals, inventors, discoverers, men of science, musicians, ancient philosophers and modern philanthropists, negro slavery, taxation, national debt, the age of chivalry, the Middle Ages, wrongs of Poland, the Gypsies, ancient Egypt, astronomy, geology, natural history, the vegetable kingdom—these and scores of other topics were treated during these years of lecturing life in London and the provinces. In addition to these duties he had other cares and toils. In 1848-49 he edited a weekly paper called the Plain Speaker, and in the following year Cooper’s Journal. His “Triumph of Perseverance” appeared in 1849, “Alderman Ralph” and “The Family Feud,” two novels, in 1853 and 1855 respectively.

Returning from a lecturing tour at the end of 1855, he was conscious of a great and vital change which had for some time been going on within his mind, and when he attempted to recommence his work at the City Hall in January, 1856, he found it impossible to go on along the old lines. On a certain memorable night, when announced to speak on “Sweden and the Swedes,” he could not utter a word. He turned pale as death, and as the audience sat gazing and wondering what could have come to the bold and fluent speaker, whose tongue was ready on every theme, his pent-up feelings at length found vent. He told the people he could lecture on Sweden, but must relieve his conscience, for he could suppress conviction no longer. He then declared that he had been insisting on the duty of morality for years, but there had been this radical defect in his teachings, that he had “neglected to teach the right foundation for morals—the existence of a Divine moral Governor.”[69] In the storm which followed he challenged them to bring the best sceptics they could muster in the metropolis, and he would meet them in debate on the being of God and the argument for a future state. He kept his promise, and for four nights maintained his ground against Robert Cooper[70] and others in the City Hall and the John Street Institute.

But though the battle was fought out bravely in public, he had yet another conflict to wage and win ere his mind enjoyed rest and peace in the faith of a true Christian. In this conflict he received valuable aid from the Rev. Charles Kingsley,[71] and his old friend and relative, Dr. Jobson. Through the kind interest of the Rev. F. D. Maurice, W. E. Foster, M.P., and W. F. Cowper, President of the Board of Health, Cooper obtained employment for two years under Government as a copyist of letters. Returning to the City Hall, he now began a series of Sunday-evening lectures on Theism, and advancing stage by stage, he took up such themes as the Moral Government of God, Man’s Moral Nature, the Soul and a Future State, Evidences of Christianity, Atonement, Faith, Repentance, etc. But his return to the truth of Christ and Christianity was gradual, though sure. As he says, “I had been twelve years a sceptic; and it was not until fully two years had been devoted to hard reading and thinking that I could conscientiously and truly say, I am again a Christian, even nominally.” Saved in an extraordinary manner from death by a railway accident as he was travelling to Bradford on the 10th May, 1858, he finally and fully resolved to dedicate his powers to the service of God, saying within himself as he stood looking on the mournful sight of the ruined train and the dead and wounded lying around, “Oh, take my life, which Thou hast graciously kept, and let it be devoted to Thee. I have again entered Thy service; let me never more leave it, but live only to spread Thy truth!”

He began at once not only to lecture on the evidences of Christianity, but to preach, and received many solicitations to join different religious societies. Dr. Hook of Leeds generously offered him an appointment as head of a band of Scripture-readers, with freedom to go out on his own mission as a speaker when he pleased. This offer he declined, with grateful thanks to the worthy vicar. In the spring of the following year he decided to join the Baptist denomination, and writes, “Reflection made me a Baptist in conviction, and on Whitsunday, 1859, my old and dear friend, Joseph Foulkes Winks, immersed me in baptism in Friar Lane Chapel, Leicester.”

From that time to the present—twenty-two years—Thomas Cooper has devoted his great powers to the work of preaching and lecturing on the evidences of the Christian religion. The energy and ability displayed in this noble work by the veteran orator have been remarkable. For months together he has been known to travel long distances by rail, and lecture four or five times in the week, and preach three times on Sunday. After a two hours’ lecture he was wont, during the first few years of this period, to recite the first two or three books of Milton’s “Paradise Lost.” Few, if any, that ever heard his preaching can forget its rich spirituality of tone and delightful purity and simplicity of style. The lectures it is hard to describe without seeming to exaggerate their rare merits. The best testimony to their worth has been given by the hundreds of thousands who have come together to listen to them as delivered in all the chief towns of England, Scotland, and Wales for more than twenty years, and by their rapid and extensive sale when published. Crowded with facts of history or science which are clearly arranged and pressed into the service of logical argument, delivered extemporaneously in language of the truest and homeliest Saxon type, and often marked by passages of great eloquence, these lectures may be taken as ideals of what popular lectures on religious evidences should be. Of his present employment, Thomas Cooper, writing in 1872, says, in his own simple fashion: “My work is indeed a happy work. Sunday is now a day of heaven to me. I feel that to preach ‘the unsearchable riches of Christ’ is the most exalted and ennobling work in which a human creature can be engaged. And believing that I am performing the work of duty—that I am right—my employment of lecturing on the ‘Evidences of Natural and Revealed Religion,’ from week to week, fills me with the consoling reflection that my life is not being spent in vain, much less spent in evil.” Happy close of a strangely eventful and checkered life! May the stalwart old laborer of seventy-five be spared to scatter many a handful of the seeds of truth before he hears the summons which shall end his labors.

We have spoken, in the title of this chapter, of Thomas Cooper as “The self-educated shoemaker who reared his own monument.” This sketch cannot be closed more appropriately than by giving the titles of the works published during the last eight years—the stones which form the chief part of that monument:

The Bridge of History over the Gulf of Time (1872), twentieth thousand.

Plain Pulpit-Talk (1872), third edition.