Michael D.Heath-Caldwell M.Arch.

1796

Margaret Skerrett (ne Caldwell) - 46/47

Anne Caldwell of Nantwich  -  37/38 

Elizabeth Caldwell (Bessy) of Nantwich - 29/30 - sisters of James Caldwell

Hannah Stamford of Linley Wood - 42/43 - Elizabeth Caldwell's sister (1753-1832

James Caldwell of Linley Wood – aged 36 going on 36/37. 

Elizabeth Caldwell of Linley Wood – aged 41/42 

Hannah Caldwell (later Roscoe) – aged 10/11 

Stamford Caldwell – aged 9/10 

Mary Caldwell – aged 8/9 

Anne Marsh-Caldwell – aged 4/5 

Margaret Emma Caldwell (later Holland) – aged 4/5 

Catherine L. Caldwell – aged 1/2 

[Page heading 1796]

[Transcribers note: Some entries on this page are simply numbered 1, 2, 3, etc I have rendered this as 1st. 2nd. 3rd etc in order that the days stand out. Where a day of the week has been given I have included it as given.]

Diary of James Caldwell

Saturday April, 9^th 1796

Returned from Chester.

Sunday 10^th April 1796

At home. Sunday. Mr Blunt came in the Evening. Conversation on Catholicism. Excellency of that of the Church of England maintained by W. B. Chiefly on the ground of the precision & clearness with which it enforces the moral duties. This the chief thing for Children. Idea of God merely a matter of faith. But g. if such a Catholicism as Houghton's not preferable, by giving more comprehensive ideas of the Deity, declared from his Works &c. & thinly filling the mind with more sublime ideas of his powers & Goodness & by that means, hither his passing it for the observance of his Laws.

Monday 11^th April 1796

At home. Unwell. Winds cold. north & north west. Turned two Cows out into the Croft at the Farm. One cost £8.8.[8 guineas] the other £6.7.6.

12th, 13th, 14th: April 1796

At home. Unwell.

15^th April 1796

Hannah set off to Birmingham

16^th April 1796

Set Soot upon some of the Rushes in the Meadow. Agreed with Stringer for the Chimnies at 2 Guin. Pr. Annum.To be swept as often as required.

NB. The rushes were not mown before the Soot set on. Observe carefully the result of this process.

Sunday 17^th April 1796:

Monday 18^th April 1796

Newcastle Concert. Returned home. Turned 12 Sheep & 4 lambs into the Large field.

Tuesday 19^th April 1796

Engaged with Mr Tomlinson previous to the general Meeting

[Rest of page cut off]

Page 115

[by deduction this is part of the entry for Friday, 22nd April]

its members the opponents of Mazarine, were called Frondeurs. As every thing was of late, a la ballon; so soon after that distinction was adopted Bread, Hats, Gloves, Handkerchiefs, Fans, Trimmings, -  every article, in short, of use of luxury, was made a la mode de la Fronde.

De Bitz; Memoirs, Eng. translation. Vol 1. p. 437

Saturday 23th April 1796

At home. Mr Blunt came to dinner. Walked in the afternoon to Alsager, to see the improvement in the Meadows. Fine Evening.

Sunday 24^th April 1796

Read one of Pyles Sermons. Plain, rational discourses well adapted for the use of families.

Monday 25^th April 1796

At Newcastle & Burslem. Met Mr E. Mayor at the Calter place by appointment & also called upon Mr Poole. Long conversation relative to his affairs & the reference with Mr Edleston. Returned home to dinner. Mr Blunt came in the Evening accompanied by Mr Bent. Conversation on Mrs Blunt's case. Comsumption & its proper treatment. The high system strongly recommended by Mr Bent. Bark, animal food & nourishing diet not excluding a little ale or wine to be taken whenever the fever off, & the patient felt an inclination for food. Not to consider any symptoms as marks of fever except chilliness & succeeding heat. Emetics to be taken every morning on waking. From 6 to 20 grains of Ipecacuanha [root of a S. American shrub used as an emetic or purgative] as the patient finds requisite so as to procure gentle vomiting once or twice. The exercises of swinging to be taken moderately. Beneficial by accustomising the patient to currents of air & thereby preventing the liability to be affected by changes.

Tuesday 26^th April 1796

At home. Mrs Blunt began the system recommended by Mr Bent. Much better in the Evening. Mr Wood dined. Mr Blunt came in the Evening. Turned Changeling & the roan horse out for four or five hours. Fine day. Warm & dry.

May 1796

Taxes on Manufactures particularly injurious by requiring a larger Capital to be employed: By exposing the Secrets of the Manufacture in the collection of the tax - and by giving the less scrupulous or such as practice any fraud or coercion in respect to the payment of the Tax an advantage over the honest & fair Trader.

Wedgwood Archives

WM 1565. Collection of letters from Josiah Wedgwood to James Caldwell.

18 August 1796

Letter from Josiah Wedgwood to James Caldwell

Memoirs of Anne Marsh-Caldwell

1796

I was in my press bed, and was awakened by a bustle; a little baby brought to the nursery fire and all the maids busy about it – it was, as I thought, born wrapped in flannel, for sure, it was just born and in flannel it was. I thought it came out of a drawer… I then had not the slightest idea of religion or a Creator; it was my Mother’s method that the subject should never be mentioned to her children till she herself mentioned it solemnly to them. Being a forward child, she told me at what she considered an early age, 5. That must have been the year after Fanny’s birth… I remember this circumstance of the flannel occasioning a little speculation in my mind; I thought how good it was of God that children should be born in flannel as Fanny had been.

The next morning I find myself with all my sisters and my brother in the laundry, a room underground communicating by a flight of steps at the top of which is a door into the hall. It has a long dresser – above the dresser a long window-seat – I must have been a very short child – afterwards I was obliged to content myself with the dresser…

We were dismal enough shut up here by ourselves lest we should disturb Mamma – but we began to play, I suppose, and make a noise, for I see Papa come to the top of the stairs and in what seemed to me a voice of thunder command us and threaten us to be still…

Then somebody comes and says we may come up one by one and kiss Mamma and see the baby – and I creep up into Mamma’s room, which is all beautifully neat and nice. She is lying on the inner side of the bed, and we steal round and kiss her; and there is a tent-bed in the room besides, and near her sits dear Mrs Low with the little baby in her lap. Dear Mrs Low, how I loved her; she was gentle and soft, so unlike most of the people we had about us – and she used to give us “Whigs” – as the spongey bars were called with which they fed the baby – it was fed with thick boiled milk and whigs out of a silver boat – and it wore cambric robes which were pinned in little plaits down in front every time it was dressed – and it wore a stay-piece of tape which coming from the front of its cap was fastened to its robes for fear its head should tumble off, I supposed.

(Baby –Frances Caldwell – 1796 – 1801)

I remember no more of this event except creeping to Mamma’s door in an afternoon and saying softly “Mamma, are you asleep?” Sometimes she would say “Yes!” then I crept softly away. Sometimes she would say “No!” then I went in. such was my simplicity that when I heard her laugh and tell this story to Miss Willet, I could not perceive where the point lay. Then I remember her dining in the breakfast-room – a nice little table set out for her on which chicken and nice things were put – I could not understand why.

I must be now, I think, that Fanny and Louisa were innoculated – I remember Mr Sheret (Skerrett), a very diminutive, fussy little man marked with the small-pox, was the apothecary. My parents thought him clever – and I think he must have been very clever – by what I can now recollect of medical events, that is, in proportion to the medical knowledge of those days, which must have been far inferior to the present – though they, I suspect, possessed some medical secrets that are now lost. He was my Uncle Sheret’s brother; his name was Robert.

My Uncle’s brother was General Sheret. He had run away and enlisted, and they had then, I believe, bought him a commission. He distinguished himself some years after. George III gave him the regiment of the Durham Fencibles – he had no interest. I have often heard my father tell the story; Mr Pitt had a friend – Mr Dundas had a friend, and I don’t know who besides, and George III said “What has Sheret had? Nobody remembers Sheret – he shall have it.”

He had married a Miss Byrne, a young lady of good family in Ireland, and had one son, John Byrne Sheret, who died of fever; of them more hereafter… I ought to have put among my Newcastle recollections a dim one of a dinner with my Uncle and Aunt Sheret. General Sheret was present – he was also marked with the small-pox; Mrs Sheret wore a bonnet.

There was a tall rosy-faced handsome youth standing with his hand on the back of his chair – this was John, afterwards General John Sheret (Skerrett). Old General Sheret distinguished himself much in the Irish rebellion and is mentioned with much praise in Gordon’s History. I remember one passage, the pride and delight of dear Uncle Sheret; “The conduct of General Sheret on this occasion saved the day – and in my opinion, Ireland” says the historian.

But to return .. The breakfast parlour at Linley Wood was a small square room with two windows with high broad window-seats on which we could sit, stand, or build our different edifices – the paper was a lively green trellis pattern, the mantlepiece a high old-fashioned marble piece of stone finished with a cockle-shell sculptured in the middle. The chairs are rush-bottomed with painted green backs, the curtains are of chinze flowered in a trailing pattern with green leaves and red berries, drawn up by strings in festoons.

When these curtains were washed the green washed out, leaving blue leaves, the red berries retaining their colour. Then there were two days of delight – no school on painting days. The curtains were spread upon the table in the breakfast-room – and a great dish of sap-green and gamboge – for I remember there were little yellow flowers that washed out too – and then my Mother and all of us set to and painted away replacing the green and yellow all over the curtains. Sometimes my father would stroll in and paint a bit too. Such was our simple life…

It must have been before my mother parted with Mrs Low that I set out upon a very grand expedition to my imagination – probably to get me out of the way of the small-pox nursing – as, though I remember the invitation perfectly well, I have not the slightest recollection of the illness. I will mention here seeing little Emma, one day when my mother was dining in the breakfast-room, come running in, all red and shamefaced and crying. She had crept into the parlour to hear Mr Alcock and Eliza at the music lesson and had been suddenly discovered. The child at that age showed great love of music. She could only have been three years old…

I was to go to Nantwich on horseback before James Dean, who was a sort of groom-gardener and out-of-doors man, a simple good-natured fellow in a brownish coloured suit. I was placed upon a little soft silken kind of rug before him upon a great bay cart-horse. I had two whigs given me by Mrs Low to eat upon the road, and away we went.

Linley Wood stands upon a small hill in a sort of bay formed by the circle of the last Staffordshire hills as they break into the plain of Cheshire. The house, which I will describe a little further on, commands this plain of Cheshire till it terminates in the Peckforton Hills and Beeston Castle, where the towering Welsh mountains may be seen rising range after range till they are lost in the blue and misty distance.

Cheshire, covered with trees, is beautiful to look upon and a composition of Claude’s could scarcely combine more beautiful effects than were at this time presented in middle distance. Swallowmore Wood and Prospect Bank formed a striking foreground, then came a line of wood in the Alsager Banks as I believe it is called, interspersed with farm houses, terminating on the Lake of Oak, a mere.

Behind this, in long lines, the woods of Crewe, through which at this time, on a clear day and with a favourable position of the sun, the houses might be seen, red and white. The old tower of Barthomley Church terminated this on the left behind the woods of Crewe. Willaston Wood and the tower of Nantwich Church might be distinguished standing distinct against the steamy grey of yet farther distance, and to this point we were bound…

Can I leave this lovely view of churches, woods, waters, mansions, villages, pastures, farms, rising delicately under the hills? As a very young child I remember I used to think it was such a scene that was described in The Allegro, of which when a very little girl I learned a good deal for my own amusement in the nursery..

“Straight mine eye hath caught new pleasures

While the country round it measures

Shallow brooks and rivers wide;

Towers and battlements it sees

Bosom’d high in tufted trees,”

To Nantwich James Dean and I were to make our way – it might be about twelve miles. He had never been to Nantwich in his life, and I was to be his guide when we arrived and tell him which was my Uncle’s house. It was a Sunday morning and a pleasant one, and we soon plunged into the deep Cheshire lanes, and very soon lost ourselves.

All I remember however was our stopping at a large Cheshire farm house with a green and high trees – just such a scene as one sees in Bewick – and James Dean calling to a woman who opened one of the Cheshire transom windows as they were called – (lattices with small panes square or diamond shaped set in lead) – and in shrill tones directed us.

And then we jogged on to little purpose – till in a broad black road we met a countryman on a rough horse, who in answer to James’ question “Is this the way to Nantwich?” cries “No road direct to Nantwich.” I do not recollect that I felt the least afraid or daunted - I considered about the probable way and gave my advice just as I should do now. It does not seem to me that my intellect or character were the least of a different sort from what they are now – the first is enlarged rather than strengthened  - the latter weakened rather by the course of life… The frank open courageous little girl is no more.

At last we reached Nantwich and I was to point out my Grand-Mamma’s well known house, now inhabited by my Uncle Sheret – an old Cheshire wooden house painted black and white I recollected it to be, with a tree trained against the parlour window – of that I was positive.

So James and I trotted up and down the street enquiring in vain at every black and white house, and there were many. At last James, by some reasoning I could not discover, determined that a house covered over with new plaister of a sort of grey colour must be my Uncle’s. In vain I remonstrated – there he stopped, and my Uncle’s it was. My good uncle, it is needless to say, having taken a lease of this house and garden from my father for his own and his wife’s life, was busy beautifying, altering and improving.

A nice tall cleanly woman with stiff stays, open gown, quilted petticoat and mob cap lifted me from my horse and I was led into the well known kitchen and sat down by the fire – feeling very lonely, for everybody was a Church or chapel.

I recollect I crept into the garden and peeped at James Dean and the horse as they passed slowly up the croft, as it was called – meaning a road between my Uncles’ garden hedge and the hedge of the adjoining garden, which led to the stables. I had my whig in my hand which I had not eaten. James Dean, who was a very good natured round faced country man – exactly of the cut of face and figure which stands in old pictures as “country bumpkin” I looked upon as a very dear friend.

Eventually they all began to come in from Church and chapel. Aunt Bessy and her friends the Howards and Garnetts, a young, talking, gay looking set of smart young men and women; Aunt Bessy tall, slender and beautiful to my eyes, in a sort of lawn or muslin gown striped in delicate pink and with brown flowers, a pretty little hat over her beautiful curling hair and large blue eyes. I have no distinct recollection of any other figure. I attached myself immediately to this pretty pink gown, and though shy and uneasy and lonely walked away with her through the crofts to Dysart Buildings.

Dysart Buildings was a row consisting of nine houses, lately built by Lord Dysart; they were of bright cheerful fresh brick, with stone windowsills white and fair, pretty doors with round lights over them – each house of three storeys, a window on each side of the door, three windows above and three windows, smaller and square over that. In front, a wide gravel walk, then a grass plot, then a privet hedge and rails, then a little paved road, and then the magnificent old bowling green belonging to the town and sundry gardens; the view terminated by the back of houses in the Hospital Street.

And on the right of the bowling green being on the left of the front, the magnificent ancient church of Nantwich in its large church-yard, its ancient tottering school-house standing by it and a few aged trees at one end, and backed by a magnificent privet hedge, in the centre of which was a high boarded door through which one could not get a peep, and which to me was the most mysterious thing in the world.

I wondered and wondered what could be behind it. The noises of a town were heard; people and dogs often came through it… It opened upon some fields which lay at the back of the Beam (?) Street. But it was all vague, mysterious and strange to me, this world in which I found myself – poor little thing, wondering and watching and feeling quite alone.

There was little caressing and kissing in those times – at least I got little; I never remember sitting either on my father’s or my mother’s knee – there were too many above or below for me to get much attention. And now I was arrived at Nantwich there was no kissing or fondling or being made much of. Perhaps it was better, perhaps it was worse – who knows? I learned to be cheerful and dependant upon myself, to be quite patient and expect nothing. I was good and cheerful, and, I believe, till I was 14 or 15, when I got a little spoilt, - the most honest-hearted, reasonable, affectionate, frank and sturdy little being that could exist.

Aunt Bessy and Aunt Anne were now living in my Uncle’s house in Dysart Building; my Uncle and Aunt Sheret had exchanged for the more important mansion in the Hospital Street. These worthy Aunts had come into their little fortunes, something less than two thousand pounds apiece, not quite two hundred a year between them; and my Aunt, a woman of the most clear and excellent head and the noblest character in the whole world, had arranged her plans and begun that life of honourable and gentlewoman-like independence upon small means which she persevered in to the end – through all the difficult years of the French War-years when wheat was 120 shillings, and ten per cent taken in property tax at one fell swoop out of their little income; many years after did this high spirited and righteous woman tell me that she never turned the year without being “something in hand – a few shillings contents me, Anne, but something in hand it must be” – They had no bills!

The household consisted of Hannah a girl to “do the all-work” under Hannah; a little girl, a mere child. Hannah cooked the dinner, carried it up and waited at table in her blue and white bed-gown, black quilted petticoat, stout leather shoes with buckles, black stockings, hair turned over in a roll in front and mob cap. She was housemaid, nurse, everything. The girl answered the door, ran errands and did under work.

The first evening when we sat down to tea it was at a little square table, the tea set out upon a wooden tea-tray ornimented with a key-pattern border, of which I now find the pattern must have come from China, being exactly like the trays with delicate borders I saw in Chinese drawings of furniture, which I saw last year at the India House… Well, I observed they neither of them took sugar – it had been retrenched as an article of luxury. This shows how closely their means had been calculated and how they adopted the wise way of curtailing the number of their indulgences, in order to be generous and liberal in the things they allowed themselves, and most generous, hospitable, liberal and handsome were their proceedings in every way, God bless them for it…

I do not remember many things that happened during this visit, but I will persevere in my plan and put down just what I find inscribed in my memory and how I find it; it will be a series of little rude detached pictures of the life and feelings of a child of four years old.

Near the bowling green stood a sort of tavern for the refreshment of the bowlers. Against the side wall facing my Aunt Anne’s window there was a board in which was inscribed in large gold letters

“Miller, Dealer in foreign and British Spirits Etc.” This board was a perpetual exercise for my powers of observation, investigation and reasoning; Cuvier spelling out the characters of the ancient world with its fossil bones was never more persevering or more intent than I.

Day after day did I first endeavour to decypher and then to comprehend the mysterious characters – “Millor dealer Brush Fang and –” was all I could make out – what could Brush and Fang signify? My good Aunt Anne was wearied to death with the incessant efforts to spell out and the repetition aloud of the words. She never thought of taking the simple means of explaining to the enquiring little mind what the words really were or what they meant. She gave me a check – I perceived that what I did was tiresome, perhaps naughty. I held my peace and remained in distress – but perhaps this twilight, this darkness, favours the growth of the imagination more than the simple clear explanations of the present day. It seems as if we were fated to lose something wherever we gain much, and the great progress of the understanding has perhaps enfeebled the imagination.

These checks, however, I am sure were bad in their efforts – a certain timidity, uncertainty an awkwardness in my relations with others exists to this day in some degree; they distorted and enfeebled a character normally simple, frank, confiding and courageous. I shall have to note some other or these small checks which influenced permanently my most impressionable and sensitive disposition.

It was at this visit that the simplicity and downrightness of the poor little child were shewn by an annecdote often repeated and laughed at by my good Aunt Anne…

“Anne” said she, “go up into my room and you will see a pair of shoes.”

Up I went and came down again

“Yes, Aunt Anne – they are there.”

They used to send me into the kitchen to ask for coals, etc. I would say “Hannah, they want coals.” My Aunts would call out “Who are ‘they?’ - The Cat or the dog?”

I passed all my ingenuity to discover what this meant – “they” never explained to me that it was more polite to use the substantive.

My dear mother was never in the habit of treating children in this way, she was always direct and plain – and I preferred a box upon the ear, which modes of education of the day allowed, very much to this sort of unintelligible sarcasm.

I was standing in the little kitchen door one day; Aunt Bessy called me; I answered “What?” I was found fault with for saying that, and told to say “What do you say?” – and “What say?” was my answer hereafter whensoever I was called and in every conversation when I had not heard what was said to me. I was laughed at for my “What do you say?” after I was 18, and then for the first time discovered people did not say so, but “I beg your pardon,” or something of that sort when they gave a person the trouble of repeating a sentence.

I was singularly obtuse in everything relating to conventional manners… my “What say?” nonsense was impressed upon my imagination by some delicious potatoes. Aunt Bessy was frying them over the fire and she gave me a taste. I thought them exquisite and have never forgotten them. My taste was then sensitive to an extraordinary degree – a bit of buttered toast, a little morsel of cold beef, appeared to me most delicious.

That sense soon lost its excessive sensibility – is it common to childhood? If so, what temptations must it lay them under… Or was it a consequence of the extreme simplicity amounting to asceticism with which we were bred?… Dry bread – milk – very tasteless rice puddings and plain roast meat – butter in all its forms forbidden as if it were poisonous  - meat only allowed in certain quantities… As for wine, many, many years was it before I could endure the taste of it. It seemed to me as wonderful to see people drink wine by choice as it would now to see them quaffing tincture of Rhubarb or Senna tea. A glass of sweet cowslip wine on birthdays was allowed, and we thought that good.

For cakes – for many, many years a queen-cake apiece which our good Aunt Sheret used to present on every visit to Linley Wood was a magnificent present, hoarded and nibbled as if it had been a pound-cake to the children of this day. One almond comfit was a delicious treat; a few buns with currents in them, a little ginger-bread, was our usual regale, and very little of that.

My taste in gardening was as simple and as easily contented. The way to my Aunt Anne’s garden lay through a little paved yard, and in one corner, behind a little gate, there was always a little heap of earth, the result of the scrupulous sweepings of Hannah’s little handmaid. Over the little walk here was my domain; it was about a foot long and six inches wide. Here I planted a honeysuckle and such bits of flowers and laboured happy and contented from day to day. My only trouble was that my estate was subject to change; it increased one day and diminished the next and my plans and plantings were perpetually obstructed.

How touching does it seem to one now – no one troubling to provide it with a better estate. How much contented simplicity, how much true freedom of mind was the little being acquiring! But this want of observation and sympathy with its wants and its wishes isolated the little creature – separated one generation from another, left the feelings of love and gratitude undeveloped and produced on both sides a certain want of tenderness, which is a great fault in imperfect civilisation.

I remember sitting with Hannah one Sunday by her kitchen fire, sewing a bit of muslin – and her telling me I must be sent to “The round-house” if I sewed on a Sunday. I implicitly believed to this terrible round-house I should go, so laid down my work. I never saw the round-house to this day – was the prison of the town a little round tower?

At No.9 Dysart Buildings there was a bow window, as it was the termination of the row. It jutted into a garden – how I longed to go into that paradise! There was a canal in the garden and a willow tree hanging at one end. How beautiful and like fairy gardens it seemed… But I never did get in – I believe I was 20 before I ever got into that garden and then it was quite a pleasure, so intensely had I longed after it… Two young girls – great girls I thought them – they might be 12 or 13, lived with the lady at No.9. One appeared to me nothing remarkable, but the other was to my eyes like an angel from heaven. She was a handsome girl – but she had long golden hair waving in curls down to her shoulders – she had an affectation of shaking her head as if to shake back this flood of gold. I thought it gloriously beautiful. I was proud to speak to this angel.

One day I was sent out by myself to run about the gravel walk in front of the house. My angel and her sister were out too, so when I was called in I asked them in to tea. I soon perceived I had done something amiss – my Aunts did not want these two girls and, I believe, did not exactly like them, so after they were gone I was told not to ask anybody in without leave. Shortly after I was walking with Maria Grant, a little girl near my own age. When we came to the door I did not dare ask her in, so I banged the door in her face. Aunt Bessy came to the door and was horrified at my rudeness – “How could I be so rude?” Alas, I was beginning to find the world incomprehensible already. Maria Grant was the child of an intimate friend – but I was not told of exceptions to general rules… I am not sure whether these events happened at this visit or the next – but this I know, my organ of hospitality received a shock and a disarrangement from which it never recovered for tens of years – I had a sort of nervous difficulty about asking people in…

Another day I was sent to Cheerbrook with Hannah to fetch some cream. Cheerbrook was a farm house about a mile from the town. The good woman at the farm made much of me, shewed me her pretty garden, gave me two apples and a cake – which I ate. When I came home my Aunt Anne called me very greedy – and made me read a story about a greedy bear. My ideas were all in confusion again. Was I to save and carry away part when anything good was given me?

In these tender years and acting upon so very sensitive and observing a child, all these shocks did great mischief and produced a feeling of fear, awkwardness and shyness that I shall never lose…

Letter to

James Caldwell Esq.

Linley Wood

Newcastle

Sir,

I am directed by the Lord Lieutenant to inform you, that your appointment of Deputy Lieutenant for this County, has been executed, and is now deposited in the Clerk of the Peace’s Office in Stafford. It is necessary to observe, that you should within six months take the oaths, and subscribe the declaration, as directed by the 13^th Section of the Militia Act of 26^th of this present Majesty, unless you have already complied with those forms.

I am, Sir

Your very obedient

And humble Servant,

Thomas Hinckley

Stafford, 22^nd Nov 1796

Memoirs of Anne Marsh-Caldwell

Now, as a dream, an immense bustle swells in my memory – preparation for Christmas. At Christmas my father, mother, Aunt Stamford and all the children spent a fortnight at Nantwich – excellent and delightful custom.

The party was divided between the two houses of the Hospital Street and Dysart Buildings; my maiden Aunt Stamford always went to the maiden Aunts, where she had the “best rooms,” a room small and almost filled with a handsome four-post bed with pink flowered curtains, a small mahogany chest of drawers, dressing with a glass and a muslin petticoat toilette flounced round the table, where my dear Aunt Stamford put all her property, for she always travelled with clothes provision for a year – a dozen pairs of  shoes, lest an occasion should present where one would be a little too good and another too bad – gowns, gloves, ribbons, caps, all on the  same principle of what might possibly be wanted and not what possibly done without – and she was neat and exact to excess.

But she is a character that must be drawn in full, and why not now? She was a middle aged woman with lively dark eyes, a sharp nose, thin lips and a chin rather underhung, of sprightly parts and an excellent woman – but she wanted the understanding, the humour and above all the heart, of my mother. She had, I should think, little real feeling in her youth. Age produced this effect upon her; indeed, so sweet, gentle and innocent did she become before ere she died that it is with something like remorse I trace the lively, high spirited and rather high tempered woman of this period.

She had a large fortune according to our ideas, from £600 to £800 a year – for several legacies and inheritances dropping in raised my mother’s and her portions in the course of time to £20,000. She lived with my father and mother at Newcastle, where I have the dimmest possible recollection of her – a smart figure with a black hat and feathers in a room literally lined with boxes – or sitting in the saloon (as the drawing-room was called) playing duets on the harpsichord with Eliza – they were duets we should now give to a child of six or seven years old – taken from the opera of Artaxerxes, then in high vogue – the simple notes yet ring in my ear and delight me. Children’s ears were perhaps better formed by these simple airs than by the elaborate productions of our day.

When she came to Linley Wood she had a couple of rooms upstairs at the end of a passage, or rather corridor with rails to the best stairs – and which, as it led to nothing else, was called “My Aunt’s passage.” These she fitted up, and her manner of doing so and her various tastes have perhaps more contributed to my formation and more favourably operated upon my mind and happiness than almost any circumstances of my life. And indeed with me the benefit ends not – my children are reaping it in the taste for nature and art which, cultivated in me, descends to them – and which will, I trust, ensure the happiness of their lives, if they remain single, as it certainly did of her.

A love of order in all its branches great and small seems to have been the predominant character of her mind – displayed in all its branches from the economy of her fortune to the neatness of her night-cap border – a dislike of waste without the slightest approach to covetousness, which sometimes shewed itself in an odd contrast with her habitual generosity and liberality; a love of the beautiful which was self-cultivated and was therefore very simple in its modes of expression; a love of science which, likewise self cultivated, shewed itself in a general curiosity after everything relating to science and natural history, without, however, any attempt at reaching a refined classification – was perhaps the production of her day. For when she received what little scientific culture she ever enjoyed, Air, Earth, Fire and Water were still the four elements – and mineralogy, whatever progress it had made among the learned world, was still a sealed book to the multitude. Geology was unknown; choncology, her favourite pursuit, despised. Still her mind, true to its instincts, picked up what it could – and found its happiness even in this imperfect development.

Her bedroom was a sanctuary; a neatness almost approaching coldness distinguished it. She had no passions and little sensibility, but very great goodness. I should doubt whether the firey shaft of Cupid ever touched her heart – she moved on in maiden contemplation fancy free. She had neither the weaknesses nor the tendernesses of her sex, (Till, as I have said, she grew old, when a most touching and affecting tenderness succeeded to the slight coldness of her youth). Perhaps the happy life she enjoyed was owing to this freedom from weakness and passion – in this respect she continued in her girlhood. She was not like my mother. My mother was the woman complete – strong in courage, intrepid in danger – firm to her own purposes, dis-interested interested, lively, witty, humerous – but melting to love and glowing with tenderness for the husband of her heart and the children of her bosom. We had a story to that effect; my father, a remarkably handsome man – (he was like Fulk Greville in his youth) - was riding down a lane separated by a hedge from the garden at Allerton, Mr Pott’s, where my Mother and my Aunt, the two Miss Stamfords, were. “What a handsome young man!” cries my Mother. “He has a very handsome horse.” Says my Aunt.

She was indeed a true Amazon in this respect – she had a perfect passion for horsemanship, fearing nothing, riding everything. She kept two handsome horses in those days, Rustic and Changeling. They appeared to my infant eyes more noble and more vast than an elephant would now. Rustic I had little acquaintance with – he lived to extreme old age, and long after he had ceased to be capable of the least work – and when existence was too painful for it to be humane to suffer it to continue, he was shot – a day of deep mourning, above all to my good Aunt. He was indeed a beautiful high spirited creature, a hunter and a bright bay, gentle and generous, though too spirited to be curbed but by a daring hand. Mounted upon her beautiful horse, her black hat and feathers on her head, her well cut habit, her blue silk waistcoat, her habit-shirt like snow, with beautiful saddle and white reins with tassles, she was a picture still remembered by the old servants of the house.

To ride Changeling was my brother Stamford’s highest boyish ambition – the crowning laurel – the forlorn hope  - the post of honourable danger…

She was very rich for us, as I have said, so her rooms and everything in her dress and appointments were on a scale of luxury and elegance which my Father and Mother with their seven children could not pretend to attain to. Simple were the luxury and the elegance that she and we thought so fine. But to the imagination comparison is everything – and it can be raised by the uncommon, however simple its forms, and it matters little the how provided admiration and taste be excited.

Her bedroom – what we should now think a little place, 19 feet square perhaps – all the paint was of a most scrupulous whiteness as was the paper  - a bedside carpet of green reached about 4 feet on every side of her large four post bed, hung with a chintz where stripes of roses, red, blue and yellow with green leaves, made a very gay appearance. A fringe of her own knotting and weaving and a cornice of her own painting completed the fittings; sheets of the finest texture and white as the driven snow covered it and a beautiful counterpain as white, with little knots in patterns laid over all. The curtains of this bed were never drawn – in the day they lay neatly folded upon the bolster, at night they were the same regularity folded and laid over the foot of the bed. To touch them with one’s hand would have been the greatest offence.

When she went on a journey they were all folded and pinned up with the most scrupulous care – and often remained so for weeks in the coldest weather, to the terror of such of her companions as feared catching cold – a fear she despised. Hardihood was one of her cardinal virtues – a virtue she possessed in the highest degree.

She disliked delicacy of constitution and looked upon it as a kind of vice – except in a few persons privileged with her to be delicate, of course. I was not one of these. By the side of the great bed was a sweet pretty little tent bed with mahogany rails round and hangings to correspond; one of the children slept in this, another with her.

A very handsome mahogany wardrobe of a sort of wood veined and clouded which I think could not properly be mahogany, filled one side of the room – it contained a centre and two wings and was finished at the top with a scroll of carved woodwork. It had shelves and cupboards at top and drawers beneath. Here were deposited her treasures – like Queen Elizabeth in more things than one she loved dress and rich clothes and loved to keep and possess them.

She loved her clothes almost too well to wear them. She had perhaps thirty pairs of shoes at once – from the hasped and embroidered sandal of her youth to the black high-heeled shoe with a tassel of sewing-silk finished with a little silver buckle in the centre of the day I now speak of – or rather that was gone out lately, Aunt Stamford alone retaining the fashion – to raise her, for she always seemed rather annoyed at being so little a woman. And the lively pit-a-pat of her peg heels used to sound about the house while others were in bed in a morning…  This wardrobe was, and is, to me a sealed book; rarely did I see it opened – what it contained I do not even know – she left her wardrobe and all within it to her favourite niece – and it was opened and the contents dispersed when I was far away…

By the wardrobe stood a pair of mahogany steps for her library – by that a closet where her dressing gown and sundry little articles were kept, such as garden gloves, tools, baskets etc. then came the fire, surmounted by a wooden mantelpiece painted white, over which hung several medallions of the Wedgewood blue and white in gilt frames; Apollo leaning on a tripod in the centre, medallions of Mr Wedgewood, Mr Bentley, Louis the 16^th, and I think Washington was the fourth – surrounded it.

On each side hung the portraits of my father and mother by Wright of Derby – my father a very remarkably well painted picture of this beautiful young man. My mother was not the least like her as I remember her. (2020 - Now in JJ's possession. Copies in MDHC's possession)

In a recess answering to the closet, the “raisin cupboard,” a mahogany wardrobe of the old fashion, doors panneled in mahogany and glass lined with green silk – drawers beneath – the upper one what was called the secretary drawer, divided into all sorts of little compartments to keep treasures in – the delight of my childish eyes and curiosity.

Above, the shelves of the wardrobe were covered with jars, pots, bottles – a few medicine, but more chymical matters – for she loved chymistry and was always burning her fingers with one experiment or another… Then there were spirits of salt to clean her shells with, and jars of tamarinds - the only sweetmeat she ever used to buy – all packed as close as possible in a little space; at the bottom a pound of Smyrna raisins whence the name “raisin cupboard.”

Eliza every night laid out six little heaps contained each six raisins, on the ledge over the secretary drawer. Every morning those who slept with her and those who did not, came as soon as they were dressed down my Aunt’s passage, quietly, for fear of disturbing Papa, gave her a kiss and took our raisins; a very simple device by which she exacted without compulsion this little dutiful attendance she loved so entirely, more than without a little consideration may perhaps be apparent…

Memoirs of Anne Marsh-Caldwell

1796.

This year is remarkable to me, as I was then first taught religion – It was a maxim of my Mother that children should not hear the name of God until they were in some degree capable of comprehending and loving it. She thought a more awful sense of divine things would be thus created. I long thought so – but once mentioning this idea of my Mother’s to a lady and saying she did not wish her children to hear the name of God till they could understand it  - she said she wished her children never to remember the time when they were without the idea of God. Which is best?

My brother Stamford always speaks of the strong impression produced on his mind by my Mother first solemnly mentioning the subject to him at Conway, I do not know whether my own experience is for or against – I used the other method with my own children – they seem very religious. Perhaps any method is equally good. Method implies care, thought, preparation, anxiety – anything is better than leaving children to the chapter of accidents in a careless way – or, in an equally careless way, following a routine without reflection or examination.

My Mother and I were equally right, because equally anxious, she in one method, I in another… We were forbidden to mention the name of God to those uninitiated. When I was five, my Mother, thinking me a forward child, broke the silence, which was kept with Emma till she was six. My Mother in the twilight evening and in the silence of her own apartment first mentioned the awful Name to my astonished and delighted mind. I wish I had a clearer recollection of it – all I now remember is how my mind used to ponder and work upon the subject. One particular day I recollect standing by my Aunt’s dressing table in deep rumination – the picture, even to her white pincushion is before me brightly – the subject of my rumination also – but I cannot very well recollect how I was considering it – I used to want to see God. Once I lay in my little bed at Nantwich gazing on the flying clouds on a gusty morning – I saw one that looked like the figure of a tall Being reposing on the clouds and slowly sailing away. I thought, Could this be God?

When once told of these things we were allowed to go to Chapel. My Father and Mother were Unitarian dissenters and they did not choose to go to Church. They had “Chapel” in their own home. My beautiful and dignified Father had drawn up for his own use a little service which every Sunday at eleven o’clock he read to his assembled servants and family. He was a very young man, a very handsome man, a very clever man and a very much flattered man, the cynosure of his circle – but he had had a very religious education, and religion was to him a very interesting subject. He differed from the Church – and in those days dissenters did not carelessly – some say liberally – (Which is it?) – attend a worship in which they did not believe.

The name of the Trinity was like an idolatrous name to them – of human invention – an idol, in short. I was brought up to look upon it with a sort of horror. I do not do so now – I have learned to look upon all these terms as but clothes (cloathes), as Taylor says – different coverings for the same idea – and therefore I cannot attach the same importance to dissent which I probably should have done had I lived half a century earlier – but I reverence my Father for having a Chapel of his own and for, young as he was, taking pains to teach his family himself.

His service was his own composition. It is yet in existence in M.S. laid in the quarto Bible he used – at least I hope so. It began with an address, I think, or with a few selected sentences from the Bible – the address was afterwards laid aside – I cannot remember it; some of the texts I do. “Let the wicked forsake his way and the unrighteous man his thoughts and let him return unto the Lord and He will pour mercy upon him; and to our God, for He will abundantly pardon.” “Have I any pleasure that the wicked should die, saith the Lord, and not that he should return unto his righteousness and live?”… I think one of the Psalms of David opened the service, read by my Father with his sweet sonorous voice – then came one of Esfield’s (?) prayer, then a psalm was sung – Eliza played the pianoforte and all the congregation sang aloud. We had but two tunes, the beautiful One Hundredth and one other whose name I forget – my Father could never be persuaded to have any others. Different psalms of Watts’ were sung to them suited to the metre.

Then came the sermon – then the other Psalm – then a parting prayer, that God would bless all sorts and conditions of men, especially those who are in any kind of affliction or distress – for the King’s Majesty and religious minister; ending by the Lord’s Prayer – a blessing – and the congregation dispersed. This was the way we sat; the bow of the dining room had three windows – in the centre a table, in the two others two sweet little black horsehair sofas, chairs in the piers.

On one of these sofas, the right hand one, my Mother had her seat, by her, on the same sofa, the youngest child yet admitted to the House of God – and this child had a particular Bible – a red and gold one with a clear print – to read the Psalms. Watt’s Psalms were laid to every seat. My Aunt sat against a pier on the opposite side of the room – I think she had her set place too; the rest of the children and any guests that might be in the house ranged on the chairs round the bow – in the centre the dining table, my Father’s chair with back to the fire side; (Sketch diagram of the dining room is to be found in the original M.S. at this place) – his mahogany desk on the table, his Bible prayers and Watts’ Psalm. At the lower end of the room, a circle of chairs, where sat all the servants, both household and those belonging to the farm – at the head my Aunt’s maid, always a rather fine lady – then the cook, nurse, housemaid, kitchen maid – Betty Rigby and her daughters from the farm among them; the Butler or footman (more properly groom) and farm servants finished the row.

The men servants were increased afterwards by the addition of a manservant for my Aunt and an under footman, and the groom became a coachman. The cook and kitchenmaid came Sunday and Sunday by turns – so did the nurse and housemaid as long as there were little ones. When service was over we used on fine summer days to run out into the garden in our white frocks, fluttering about for the short half hour till dinner.

My Mother used to assemble us about 4 or 5 o’clock – and we used to learn and repeat hymns and give an account of the sermon – later in life we used to go to Church in the afternoon – but in these early days my Father and Mother seem to have been more strict in their dissent; we very rarely went to Church; I can remember going as a very little child for once in a way to Talke Chapel and being set to stand upon the seat to look about me during the sermon, of which I did not understand a word.

The chapel was very small and no fine dressed people to be seen in it, so I thought it very dull; to look at a picture of three cherubins’ heads painted in an oval in the centre of the ceiling was my only consolation.

I liked to go to Lawton Church – for it had not then been repaired and was a curious ancient stone church with the ivy which garlanded the outside creeping in through the window and adorning the inside too – and the Lawton pew was there too and it was an amusing place – and I liked to go to Alsager Church, which stood in the centre of the wild heath covered with heath, bluebells and wild flowers, and was newly ornamented with (stucco?) on the outside and prettily finished within and, as I thought, most lovely…

But to return; tea came about 5 o’clock  - we children went to supper in the Laundry, a room under ground; cold and dark, where by the light of one candle, which made distress visible, we found a large round wooden tray on which were basins of milk and pieces of bread. We ate merrily and in haste and scampered back to light and fire and the parlour.

After tea the bell was rung for prayers – the table was again set with the Bible and Enfield’s prayers – and my Father, whose voice and reading were the most beautiful I ever heard, read a chapter and then a prayer. My Father had a few favourite chapters which he read and re-read – I used to think at one time this was a pity, as it limited the instruction – but I have since thought that this reading and re-reading impressed what was read on the memory – his favourite chapters are mine for life; to this day they form part of my mental possessions – had he diffused the instruction more perhaps none would have stuck so fast.

If this is a benefit to me, how much a greater benefit to the more unenlightened part of his audience to have at least some of these blessed words indelibly impressed upon the memory – The Sermon on the Mount – the Prodigal Son, the parable of The Talents, the Good Samaritan – the wise and foolish virgins – Dives and Lazarus were what in this way my infant ear received and was formed upon – how did my heart melt with tenderness at the one sinner that repented being the object of so much tender joy – for I knew already what was sin.

My Mother after prayers went to her own room and placed in her arm chair by the window in summer, by the pale twilight, in winter by one candle, heard us our prayers. We knelt down by that sacred bed of our parents, buried our little heads in the counterpane and repeated the simple artless prayers she taught us, beginning at the eldest and ending with the last little member admitted to this pure and simple church. When this was said, some ran away – some, and I was often one, crept to this gentle Mother’s side and in this still hour had sweet communion with her – beautiful custom, which I have endeavoured as far as I could to perpetuate to my children – but have never enjoyed the stillness and composure of my Mother’s chamber in that large house looking to this pretty quiet garden – to that dark waving wood – but the traditional custom I have handed down – and hope it will be passed down to those who follow me – it is a sweet and pious one.

Traditional customs must be one thing that gives value to a long descent if in a virtuous family; this accumulation as it were of virtuous customs and habits. We all generally stole away and then my Mother was always left along, sitting in the twilight in her chair. As a child I could not understand why; doubtless it was to prayer and meditation.

My Father used to walk about in summer in his field or on the Terrace, and never disturb her. Then she used to come down sweetly composed. Then the children went to bed – and “goose” (May one take this cryptic “goose” as returning to “Mrs Turner’s Cautionary Tales for Children” “Mamma, why may’nt I, when we dine Eat good roast goose and drink White Wine?” “Because, my dear, it is not right To spoil the youthful appetite, a piece of mutton, it roasted or boiled, Is far better for a child.”) – that is, for all but the poor children!

A plentiful supper of all sorts of good things; cold meat, a hot dish, new potatoes, artichokes, pies, custards – a meal that in the scanty housekeeping of our present day we should think a very handsome one, a dinner. Expenses differ – I lay out so much more for dressing my children and so much less in the table than was done then. (Mrs Marsh, like her own parents, had a family of six girls and one son.) Provisions, I imagine, were at that time cheap – the heavy taxation and the rise in price of bread after the scarcity of 1801 very much diminished this lavish house-keeping…

The more I have since mingled with the world, the more I think my parents and relations were remarkable people. There seems to me to have been so much mind about them – so much imagination, so much warm and generous sentiment, so much striving after high and noble things. My Father, the son of a Nantwich tradesman – but that man a dissenter and a Scotchman – was one of the most remarkable men I ever saw – and most especially remarkable for a dignity of manner and aspect which I never equalled, which had its effect upon everyone and imposed respect.

He was universally treated by his own relations, by his wife’s relations, able men of much larger fortune than his own, by the world in general, by his servants, by his children, with a deference and respect which neither his fortune nor his station in life entitled him to. He was regarded with reverence and treated with distinction in his county; by the gentry; as I have said, among his relations.

It was the natural effect of a fine genious – most delicate sentiments, most refined sensibilities and a brave courageous manly heart which never forsook him. Most emminently high spirited and brave was he. He was a tall man and remarkably beautiful in every season of life. I remember him young, about 4 or 5 and thirty – his beautiful fair hair, his delicate complexion, his blue, beautiful eyes – his high nose and sweet expressive mouth – fine forehead and most elegant person and bearing – he had every personal beauty except fine teeth and small feet. He had the foot of a Scotchman – long and thin; he had poor teeth, his ill health when young had destroyed them.

He had never been at a school even, except for a very short time. How he got his education I scarcely know – but such minds as his educate themselves. The father of Pindlebury Haughton had some share in his instruction – Pindlebury Haughton himself –a genious as rare as his own in a different way – seemed by emulation to show him up.

These young men used to read and recite Shakespear together and Comus ect – till they became two of the most beautiful readers that ever I heard – I thought use and partiality made me so fond of my father’s reading and recitation, for there was a something displeasing to me in the recitation of everyone else, even the best actors – till I heard Mrs Siddons. I was satisfied, it was like my Father’s which proves my taste did not deceive me.

My Father was fond of reading. As soon as the winter evenings set in, after tea, about five or six o’clock, the table was drawn to the fire in the little breakfast room with two candles, my Father one the one end with feet to the fire – my Mother next to him, my Aunt and all the rest of us round the table at our works. Two tallow candles in old plated sticks, the favourite greyhound on the hearth; and so my Father in his beautiful voice read Pope’s Stories, Milton, Thompson, Shakespear, Robertson, The Illiad (?).

He only read the classical authors and no great variety it will be seen – of them, but thus my taste and ear were formed. I was very little indeed when he read Homer and could not understand much of it – but my childish fancy was filled with the images of Olympia – and my love of mythology which I had as a child and a love of classical imagery which I still possess perhaps was thus formed.

On Saturday night when Stamford came home – but this was later – my Father read to us Mrs Radcliffe’s novels – The Mysteries of Udolpho – The Italien – The Romance of the Forest – Madame D’Arblay’s three novels. This was exquisite enjoyment to have very Saturday night – the whole week to dwell upon and wonder at the mysteries and horrors – the effect upon the imagination was most rousing, the happiness extreme. Fond as we were of Nature, winter was to us more delightful than Summer – winter with all its hardships, the cold laundry where we had supper, the frosty walks to the farm – the shivering bedrooms – chilblanes – sore ears – what mattered it? We had the warm domestic hearth, the bright fire blazing with local coal which sparkled and crackled like a torch- we had “Udolpho” on Saturday night.

How far beyond all the world has ever been able on me to bestow! How gladly would I have possessed the same for my children – but what a reverse of destiny! No home, no plan – A London life of pride and elegance, then a hidious ruin, which scattered all our hopes and left me and Arthur to make a miserable patchwork of life – without system and without prospects – and striving to live on little, to save and to retrench as we could. And here, at the end of two and twenty years am I, in a hired apartment at Boulogne – without liberty, home or husband – my children, thank God, not covertly longing for the past… And this is all we have made of life – Alas! We hoped better things when we started together, but circumstances have been too strong for us…

Staffordshire Advertiser

Saturday 3 December 1796

Staffordshire Potteries

We whose Names are subscribed, being Manufacturers of Earthen Ware in the Staffordshire Pottiers, having seen certain printed Resolutions of a Meeting of Manufacturers, held at the Town Hall in Hanley, on Friday the 4th Day of November, 1796, relative to the Propoted Commercial Canal, expressing it to be resolved without dissenting voice, amongst various other Thaings: "That this Scheme ought to have the most decided Support of the Trade at large, and that as soon as the Bill is brought before Parliament, a petition be presented, stating the Case of the Manufacturers, and praying to be heard by Council in favour of the Bill,"  think it incumbent upon us thus publicly to declare our disapprobation of, and dissent from such Resolution, and that we do not consider ourselves in any degree bound thereby, nor will we share in any expense to be incurred in consequence thereof,

Josian Wedgwood,

Thomas Byerley,

Josiah Spode Sen.,

John Blackwell,

Benj. Godwin,

Thomas Minton,

Isaac Leigh,

Josiphiah Wedgwood,

Joseph Adams,

James Caldwell,

Theophilus Smith,

John Wood,

John Robinson,

H. Henshall, Rob.

Williamson,

Enoch Wood,

John Davenport,

John Breeze,

John Rogers,

George Rogers,

Edward Gerrard,

Lewis Heath,

John Gilbert,

Edward Bourne Jun.,

William Dawson,

John Baddeley,

William Adams,

Thomas Wedgwood,

J.E. Poole,

Thomas Shrigley,

Walter Daniel,

Thomas Rhodes,

William Benton,

Ralph Baddeley,

Edm. Baddeley,

Joseph Smith,

James Robinson,

Rob. Robison,

Abraham Smith,

Thomas Wolfe,

John Mare. 

15 November 1796

Staffordshire Sentinel?
23 June 1796
To the Printer
of the Staffordshire AdvertiserSir,

Considering myself as indispensibly called upon by the Gentleman's answer, which appeared in your Paper of the last week, on the subject of the Caldon Canal Bill, to state as distinctly and explicitly as I am able, the grounds on which I took the liberty of addressing myself to the Gentleman, and of intruding upon the public, I must, however reluctantly, request the favour of you to insert the few following observations in your next Advertiser, and which will conclude my interference, on this disagreeable occasion.

On reference to the names (1) and characters, of the respectable individuals, composing the Committee,by whom the concerns of the Grand Trunk Canal, have for the last Thirty Years been conducted, as well as on a fair enquiry into the principles on which they have acted, and the manner in which they have fulfilled, the arduous duties of that troublesome, but important Office; I cheerfullly submit myself, to the judgment of the public, and of the County of Stafford in particular, how far the injurious and opprobious language that has been lately applied to the Grand Trunk Canal Company, did or did not, justly call, for that animadvertion, which I have bestowed upon it.


To admit in forming such judgment, I only beg leave to refer, to the expressions, contained in Sir William Pulteney's speech, as reported in the Sun of the 24th March last; and the subsequent paragraph, inserted in the same paper of the 14th May last.

Whether these expressions do, or do not, amount to a scandalous and shameful libel, (which, however ingraciously the Gentleman may have endeavoured to take advantage of my terms, is certainly not the question between us), they undenisably prove, an attempt to have been made, by means of falsehood and misrepresentation, to prejudice and injure, in the good opinion and confidence of the public, a numerous and respectable body of Proprietors of a great and useful undertaking; formed also into a trading company, and in which latter capacity, their concerns are numerous, extensive, and important.

How such attacks as these are to be denominated, and whether they can, in any case whatever, be deemed warrantable; whether, on the contrary, they must not necessarily and justly excite the indignation, awaken the suspicion, and incur the censure of all liberal and reflecting men, and whether even on a principle of common safety, they ought not to be taken notice of, and exposed, I willingly refer to the candour, consideration, and justice of the Gentleman himself.

As to the astonishment, which the Gentleman is pleased to express, at no notice being taken of a speech, made before Easter, and when it was fresh in memory, till after Whitsuntide, and on the eve of a General Election, I shall only take the liberty to state the simple facts, and leave the public to draw their own conclusions.

Soon after the appearance of the speech in question, Sir William Pulteney, with the greatest candour, ingenuousness and liberality, intimated to a Gentleman about the House of Commons, who is concerned for the Grand Trunk Company, not only his disapprobation of the report of his speech, but that he should consider of the Notice, which it would be proper for him to take of it. 

With a reciprocal, and becoming delicacy, therefore, the Company waited till at length a paragraph appeared in the public papers, and amongst others, in the Sun itself, of the 13th May, protesting to be upon authority, (which authority, was no less than that of Sir WIlliam Pulteney himself, approved also by the Speaker of the House of Commons,) and declaring the report of the speech, which had appeared in that, and other papers, to be "incorrect and erroneous," adding, " that the expressions said to have been used, containing imputations upon the Grand Trunk Canal Company, were never used, or intended to have been used, by that Gentleman." 

Here the matter might, and ought to have rested. But in the very succeeding paper, namely the Sun of the 14th May, the publishers inserted another paragraph, expressing their belief of the speech having been (made?) "correctly reported, notwithstanding the assertion of the Agent to the Grand Trunk Company, advertised in this paper of yesterday." 

On this indecent contradiction attracting attention, and being pointed out to me, I thought it requisite to the cause of truth, as well as in justice to all the parties concerned (inserted list) that some enquiry should take place; and, however unequal to the task, I took the liberty of troubling the Gentleman with the letter which appeared in your former paper. 

This, I was the more led to do, as the Gentleman had, in the first instance, and without our being in any previous habits of correspondence, done me the honour to write to me, on the subject of the Caldon and Commercial Canals, had particularly to refer me to the speech in question. 

It was not till after waiting nearly a fortnight, without a reply, or intimation of an intended reply, that I permitted my letter to be made public.

In respect to the answer, stated to have been given by the publishers of the Sun, to the enquiry mader after the person who inserted the account of the speech, namely, that they were equally ready to insert a paragraph to contradict it, I leave it to the good sense of the public to determine, whether this was a fair, satifactory explanation, such as the occasion required, or anything better than a mere evasion and concealment. 

If this conduct be referred to an honourable principle of delicacy and secrecy in a printer, how came it to pass, that in the paragraph of the 14th May, "the Agent to the Grand Trunk Company" is unreservedly given up to the public, as the asserter and advertiser of what the p;ublishers, however rashly and mistakenly, thought proper to consider, and treat, as a falsehood.

In respect of what is stated by the Gentleman, that "the report of the speech to which he referred me did not then appear to him to be exaggerated," I shall only beg to remark, that Sir William Pulteney has himself thought it so exaggerated and improper, as to go the length of authorizing a contradiction of it in the public papers, and I very sincerely regret, that from any possible cause whatever, a speech, so "impressively" delivered, should have made so different an impression, on the mind of the Gentleman, or of any one else who heard it, from what the Honourable and truly respectable Speaker himself intended.

I must be permitted, also, to observe; that the insertion in a public paper, of an anonymous account of a parliamentary debate, on a private bill, and its being paid for as an advertisment, were in themselves circumstances of much suspicion, and such as might, perhaps, reasonably excite a surmise, (to use the Gentleman's own expression) of "something more than meets the ear" and of "design" beyond fair  and ordinary information. 

As to what has been so industriously, and intended only to defeat the Scheme of the Grand Commercial Canal, it is sufficient to observe here, that the Bill had been in contemplation, long before such scheme was known to  the Proprietors of the Grand Trunk Canal, or communicated to the Public. 

For myself, I can truly say, that when I gave me assent to the Bill, no such intention entered into my imagination, and that I approved ofit because I understood, that it had been requested by the inhabitants of the Town of Leek, and I believed, that by affording an additional supply of water to the Grand Trunk Canal, it would ensure the use of that Navigation to the Pottery, in the dry season of the year, when it is known to be occasionally short of water, and consequently productive of much inconvenience.

In respect to the general question of the Grand Commerical Canal, which the Gentleman seems so zealously and earnestly to urge, as it is foreign to the present point, and the discussion of it in a Newspaper, would probably be as little suitable to the inclination or avocationsof the Gentleman, as to my own, I purposely avoid entering at large into it here. 

How far, however, the increased commerce of the country,really requires a board navigation, in addition to the present Grand Trunk Canan; and will find employment, for the proposed wide boats, as well as for those now in use (2) - How far,"a vast increase of Tonnage" to arise "from a Noble Marquis's vast lime works in Shropshire" can by any person, acquainted with the situation of these works, be "impartially" taken into account - Where "the vast tract of Country" lies, "replete with Manufactures, (3) Coals and Limestones," deprived of the benefit of Water Carriage from "an avowed and governing principle of a great company to shut out who they please (4)" - 

Whether the distresses of the Potteries, in respect of coals, may not be remedied, and the accommodation of their Trade, in respect to the conveyance of Good, &c,be effected, in a much more easy, certain, and expeditious manner, than by incurring all the expence, hazards, injuries to land-owners, and other difficulties, and inconveniences, necessarily attending the completion of a broad Canal of 60 Miles in extent, passing through such a country as this - 

Whether the communciation of the Canal, with other countries affording a great demand for coals there is, or is not danger, of its becoming the means of taking more of that important article out of the Potteries, than it will bring in; particularly when it is considered how much it will be the interest of the undertakers, from the differenceof tonnage, arising upon a home or a distant consumption, to encourage by every possible means, the latter, in preference to the former - Whether the Grand Trunk Company are, or are not, at this time, actually about "to give with a liberal hand to the Potters in genearl (5) "those advantages, which the Gentleman himself requires, and which, (however erroneously) he represents Mr Wedgwood, and four or five fortunate Manufacturers, to have hitherto falsely enjoyed  - 

And whether it is not better that by the acquisition to the Grand Trunk, of the supply of water proposed by the Caldon Canal Bill, one good and certain Navigation, open even in the driest seasons of the year, should at all events be ensured; than, that by a division of the water" and an additional broad Canal being made, on either the one or the other, of the Gentleman's principles of "elevation or depression," the much more than possible, but destructive consequence should be hazarded of the Pottery and the Public, being left in the Summer months, without any Navigation at all - are points, together with a variety of others that might be added which instead of presuming to decide upon, by hasty and confident opinions, I hope that I may be thought intitled, respectfully to submit , as matters for serious consideration and careful enquiry,and on which I am only desirous, that the public mind, should be faithfullyand correctly informed. 

On the fair and actual result of such enquiries as these - on solid, impartial information  - not on general, declamatory assertion, or exaggerated and illusiory statements, must, and does depend, the question of the expediency of the project, of the Grand Commercial Canal,and here, Sir, I gladly, and I trust properly leave it.

If, before I conclude I may be permitted to speak, it will only be to observe, that independent of those sentiments of attachment and esteem, which I shall never cease to entertain towards the Staffordshire Potteries, and which, I trust that I have never failed to manifest, whenever it has been thought, that any little exertions or abilities of mine could be useful, my interest, when properly weighed and understood, will most assuredly be found to be inseparably connected with theirs. 

And my wish is, that the project of the Grand Commercial Canal, in common with any other, professing to have for its object, the good of the Manufactures and Commerce of this country, (how speculative or exceptionable soever it may to me appear) may be coolly investigated, and dispassionately considered, by men of superior judgment, and better information than myself, in order that its merits may be justly appreciated, and the public mind completely satisfied, as to the reasonable probability, of its being eventually attended, with any adequate utitlity to the community, or benefit to the undertakers.

To prevent hasty, premature opinion, and to preserve that unprejudiced temper of mind, so essential in enquiries after truth, by giving a check to misrepresentation, violence, and invective, was one of the great motives which induced me to trouble the public with my former letter; and I hope, that it will be candidly considered and admitted, as my apology for that, which you now receive from,

Sir Your obediant humble servant,
James Caldwell,

Linley Wood, 23 June 1796

(1)
The following is a list of the Gentlemen who compose the present Committee,and  - - of whom have acted many years, viz.

Marquis of Stafford, Lord Harrowby, Lord Granvill Leverson Gower, William Egerton Esq., M.P., Thomas Anson Esq., M.P., James Falconer D.D., Rev. John Bill, Thomas Gilbert, John Fletcher, John Sneyd, John Daniel, Moreton (Wuthwise?), Richard Bailye, John Sparrow, Charles Bill, John Phillips, Wm. Stevenson, John Hollinshead, Henry Webb, Esqs., and Mr Thomas Salt.

Some years ago it was thought expedient (?) in order to facilitate the transactions of (business?) to appoint a Select Committee, - -of thes Gentlemen, who are  - - --of the General Committee. The proceedings of the Select Committee are laid before the general Committe, who meet generally about once a month, and the whole are  - - - recieved by a General Assembly of the Proprietors, and by them formally ratified on  - - .

(2)

In a printed paper, now lying before me, being the first that I saw in circulation relative to the Grand Commercial Canal, and which was, I think, in the month of September last, there is contained the following assertion, and which is given to the public as one of the principal reasons for that project, viz. "That the increasing trade of the Potteries is at present in so flourishing  a state, as not only fully to employ the Boats at present in use, but also the proposed wide boats." - A wide boat, it will be observed, is about double the burthen of a narrow one. 

Now being a little in the habit of enquiring for myself, before I form my opinions, particularly in respect to the advantages likely to result from Navigation Projects, I have taken the trouble to enquire into this, and I find, that the whole trade of the Potteries, including the raw matierals, such as clay, flint, lead, &c., and the goods when manufactured, would not find employement for one half of the narrow boats now acutally in the service of the Grand Trunk Company alone, exclusive of all those belonging to the other Carriers on the Canals.

Such exaggerated statements as these, may serve to excite a spirit of speculation, but I must be permitted to observe, that they may also be attended with very serious and injurious consequences to Manufacturers, and such an intelligent and reflecting men will easily understand without my being explicit here.

(3).

Except the Potteries,and the Iron-works in their neighbourhood, what Manufactory of consequence is there on the whole line of the proposed Canal, from its Juntion wiht the Ashby-de-la-Zouch Canal till it reaches Shropshire. 

How for the Potteries, and the iron works of Apedale, Silverdale, and Partridge Nest,can be said to render a country of sixty miles in extent , replete with manufactures, I want the multiplying powers of the Imagination of a Canal Projector to discover. 

As to ----, excepting those belonging to the Gentleman, what others are there, that may not be easily be brought into the Potteries, without the scheme of the Grand Commercial Canal? 

If the Gentleman's mines are of such great value, as they are not more than five or six miles from one part of the Potteries, a propery communication one should think might be obtained, and I heartily and sincerely wish that he was accommodated, especially if the sale to the Potteries be his object.

(4)
If by this he means, that the Grand Trunk Company have objected to their Canal being cut into, in order to prevent the hard, and well-earned fruits of many years risque and labour, from being transferred to other Projectors, without any adequate utility to the public, I ask, whether on any fair and reasonable principle whatever,or consistently(?) with the regard due to private property, such a  - - - can be expected or required, or will ever be compelled by the legislature. 

(5)
Before he Gentleman urges the Company to give he should enquire whether the Potteries are disposed to recieve,from their hand, the proposed advantages, and whether attempts have not been made to induce them to refuse accepting of any accommodation whatever from the Company,in order to found an argument in favour of the Grand Commercial Canal.

For the purose of casting an odium upon the accommodation which the Company are now about to render to the Pottery, it has been suggested, that they proceed from fear, occasioned by the new scheme. 

The observation is no less invidious than it is unfounded, and favours, I fear, rather the false spirit, than of true  wisdom. But be it far from fear or assertion,What matters it! Provided the opportunity be embraced, and the country served.

It has been suggested that in return for these accommodations, the Potteries would be expected to engage in an opposition to the Commerical Canal. I never heard of such a thing myself; nor do I believe, that it was ever proposed or thought of. 

Has such a proposal been made to me,I should have objected toit then, as I would do now, to any engagement whatever, that might preclude the exercise of my judgment and better information, upon any matter affecting the welfare of the Staffordshire Potteries,and much more, upon a project so extensive in its consequences, and so crude and little understood in itself, as that of the Grand Commercial Canal. 

What situation, indeed can to men of sense and spirit be more irksome than that of ultimately finding themselves under engagements, which they can neither abide by without folly, nor retract from without (displeasure?)