VII.
THOMAS EDWARD, SHOEMAKER.
It is the object of this volume to set forth the lives of working men
who through industry, perseverance, and high principle have raised
themselves by their own exertions from humble beginnings. Raised
themselves! Yes; but to what? Not merely, let us hope, to wealth and
position, not merely to worldly respect and high office, but to some
conspicuous field of real usefulness to their fellow men. Those whose
lives we have hitherto examined did so raise themselves by their own
strenuous energy and self-education. Either, like Garfield and Franklin,
they served the State zealously in peace or war; or else, like
Stephenson and Telford, they improved human life by their inventions and
engineering works; or, again, like Herschel and Fraunhofer, they added
to the wide field of scientific knowledge; or finally, like Millet and
Gibson, they beautified the world with their noble and inspiring
artistic productions. But in every one of these cases, the men whose
lives we have been here considering did actually rise, sooner or later,
from the class of labourers into some other class socially and
monetarily superior to it. Though they did great good in other ways to
others, they did still as a matter of fact succeed themselves in
quitting the rank in which they were born, and rising to some other rank
more or less completely above it.
Now, it will be clear to everybody that so long as our present social
arrangements exist, it must be impossible for the vast mass of labouring
men ever to do anything of the sort. It is to be desired, indeed, that
every labouring man should by industry and thrift secure independence in
the end for himself and his family; but however much that may be the
case, it will still rest certain that the vast mass of men will
necessarily remain workers to the last; and that no attempt to raise
individual working men above their own class into the professional or
mercantile classes can ever greatly benefit the working masses as a
whole. What is most of all desirable is that the condition, the aims;
and the tastes of working men, as working men, should be raised and
bettered; that without necessarily going outside their own ranks, they
should become more prudent, more thrifty, better educated, and wider-
minded than many of their predecessors have been in the past. Under such
circumstances, it is surely well to set before ourselves some examples
of working men who, while still remaining members of their own class,
have in the truest and best sense "raised themselves" so as to attain
the respect and admiration of others whether their equals or superiors
in the artificial scale. Dr. Smiles, who has done much to illustrate the
history of the picked men among the labouring orders, has chosen two or
three lives of such a sort for investigation, and from them we may
select a single one as an example of a working man's career rendered
conspicuous by qualities other than those that usually secure external
success.
Thomas Edward, associate of the Linnean Society, though a Scotchman all
his life long, was accidentally born (so to speak) at Gosport, near
Portsmouth, on Christmas Day, 1814. His father was in the Fifeshire
militia and in those warlike days, when almost all the regulars were on
the Continent, fighting Napoleon, militia regiments used to be ordered
about the country from one place to another, to watch the coast or mount
guard over the French prisoners, in the most unaccountable fashion. So
it happened, oddly enough, that Thomas Edward, a Scotchman of the
Scotch, was born close under the big forts of Portsmouth harbour.
After Waterloo, however, the Fifeshire regiment was sent home again; and
the militia being before long disbanded, John Edward, our hero's father,
went to live at Aberdeen, where he plied his poor trade of a hand-loom
linen weaver for many years. It was on the green at Aberdeen, surrounded
by small labourers' cottages, that Thomas Edward passed his early days.
From his babyhood, almost, the boy had a strong love for all the
beasties he saw everywhere around him; a fondness for birds and animals,
and a habit of taming them which can seldom be acquired, but which seems
with some people to come instinctively by nature. While Tam was still
quite a child, he loved to wander by himself out into the country, along
the green banks of the Dee, or among the tidal islands at the mouth of
the river, overgrown by waving seaweeds, and fringed with great white
bunches of blossoming scurvy-grass. He loved to hunt for crabs and sea-
anemones beside the ebbing channels, or to watch the jelly-fish left
high and dry upon the shore by the retreating water. Already, in his
simple way, the little ragged bare-footed Scotch laddie was at heart a
born naturalist.
Very soon, Tam was not content with looking at the "venomous beasts," as
the neighbours called them, but he must needs begin to bring them home,
and set up a small aquarium and zoological garden on his own account.
All was fish that came to Tam's net: tadpoles, newts, and stickleback
from the ponds, beetles from the dung-heaps, green crabs from the sea-
shore--nay, even in time such larger prizes as hedgehogs, moles, and
nestfuls of birds. Nothing delighted him so much as to be out in the
fields, hunting for and taming these his natural pets.
Unfortunately, Tam's father and mother did not share the boy's passion
for nature, and instead of encouraging him in pursuing his inborn taste,
they scolded him and punished him bitterly for bringing home the nasty
creatures. But nothing could win away Tam from the love of the beasties;
and in the end, he had his own way, and lived all his life, as he
himself afterwards beautifully put it, "a fool to nature." Too often,
unhappily, fathers and mothers thus try to check the best impulses in
their children, under mistaken notions of right, and especially is this
the case in many instances as regards the love of nature. Children are
constantly chidden for taking an interest in the beautiful works of
creation, and so have their first intelligent inquiries and aspirations
chilled at once; when a little care and sympathy would get rid of the
unpleasantness of having white mice or lizards crawling about the house,
without putting a stop to the young beginner's longing for more
knowledge of the wonderful and beautiful world in whose midst he lives.
When Tam was nearly five years old, he was sent to school, chiefly no
doubt to get him out of the way; but Scotch schools for the children of
the working classes were in those days very rough hard places, where the
taws or leather strap was still regarded as the chief instrument of
education. Little Edward was not a child to be restrained by that
particular form of discipline; and after he had had two or three serious
tussles with his instructors, he was at last so cruelly beaten by one of
his masters that he refused to return, and his parents, who were
themselves by no means lacking in old Scotch severity, upheld him in his
determination. He had picked up reading by this time, and now for a
while he was left alone to hunt about to his heart's content among his
favourite fields and meadows. But by the time he was six years old, he
felt he ought to be going to work, brave little mortal that he was; and
as his father and mother thought so too, the poor wee mite was sent to
join his elder brother in working at a tobacco factory in the town, at
the wages of fourteen-pence a week. So, for the next two years, little
Tam waited upon a spinner (as the workers are called) and began life in
earnest as a working man. At the end of two years, however, the
brothers heard that better wages were being given, a couple of miles
away, at Grandholm, up the river Don. So off the lads tramped, one fast-
day (a recognized Scotch institution), to ask the manager of the
Grandholm factory if he could give them employment. They told nobody of
their intention, but trudged away on their own account; and when they
came back and told their parents what they had done, the father was not
very well satisfied with the proposal, because he thought it too far for
so small a boy as Tam to walk every day to and from his work. Tam,
however, was very anxious to go, not only on account of the increased
wages, but also (though this was a secret) because of the beautiful
woods and crags round Grandholm, through which he hoped to wander during
the short dinner hour. In the end, John Edward gave way, and the boys
were allowed to follow their own fancy in going to the new factory.
It was very hard work; the hours were from six in the morning till eight
at night, for there was no Factory Act then to guard the interest of
helpless children; so the boys had to be up at four in the morning, and
were seldom home again till nine at night. In winter, the snow lies long
and deep on those chilly Aberdeenshire roads, and the east winds from
the German Ocean blow cold and cutting up the narrow valley of the Don;
and it was dreary work toiling along them in the dark of morning or of
night in bleak and cheerless December weather. Still, Tam liked it on
the whole extremely well. His wages were now three shillings a week; and
then, twice a day in summer, there was the beautiful walk to and fro
along the leafy high-road. "People may say of factories what they
please," Edward wrote much later, "but I liked this factory. It was a
happy time for me whilst I remained there. The woods were easy of access
during our meal-hours. What lots of nests! What insects, wild flowers,
and plants, the like of which I had never seen before." The boy revelled
in the beauty of the birds and beasts he saw here, and he retained a
delightful recollection of them throughout his whole after life.
This happy time, however, was not to last for ever. When young Edward
was eleven years old, his father took him away from Grandholm, and
apprenticed him to a working shoemaker. The apprenticeship was to go on
for six years; the wages to begin at eighteen-pence a week; and the
hours, too sadly long, to be from six in the morning till nine at night.
Tam's master, one Charles Begg, was a drunken London workman, who had
wandered gradually north; a good shoemaker, but a quarrelsome, rowdy
fellow, loving nothing on earth so much as a round with his fists on the
slightest provocation. From this unpromising teacher, Edward took his
first lessons in the useful art of shoemaking; and though he learned
fast--for he was not slothful in business--he would have learned faster,
no doubt, but for his employer's very drunken and careless ways. When
Begg came home from the public-house, much the worse for whisky, he
would first beat Tam, and then proceed upstairs to beat his wife. For
three years young Edward lived under this intolerable tyranny, till he
could stand it no longer. At last, Begg beat and ill-treated him so
terribly that Tam refused outright to complete his apprenticeship. Begg
was afraid to compel him to do so--doubtless fearing to expose his ill-
usage of the lad. So Tam went to a new master, a kindly man, with whom
he worked in future far more happily.
The boy now began to make himself a little botanical garden in the back
yard of his mother's house--a piece of waste ground covered with
rubbish, such as one often sees behind the poorer class of cottages in
towns. Tam determined to alter all that, so he piled up all the stones
into a small rockery, dug up the plot, manured it, and filled it with
wild and garden flowers. The wild flowers, of course, he found in the
woods and hedgerows around him; but the cultivated kinds he got in a
very ingenious fashion, by visiting all the rubbish heaps of the
neighbourhood, on which garden refuse was usually piled. A good many
roots and plants can generally be found in such places, and by digging
them up, Tam was soon able to make himself a number of bright and lively
beds. Such self-help in natural history always lay very much in Edward's
way.
At the same time, young Edward was now beginning to feel the desire for
knowing something more about the beasts and birds of which he was so
fond. He used to go in all his spare moments among the shops in the
town, to look at the pictures in the windows, especially the pictures of
animals; and though his earnings were still small, he bought a book
whenever he was able to afford one. In those days cheap papers for the
people were only just beginning to come into existence; and Tam, who was
now eighteen, bought the first number of the _Penny Magazine_, an
excellent journal of that time, which he liked so much that he continued
to take in the succeeding numbers. Some of the papers in it were about
natural history, and these, of course, particularly delighted the young
man's heart. He also bought the _Weekly Visitor_, which he read
through over and over again.
In 1831, when Tam was still eighteen, he enlisted in the Aberdeenshire
militia, and during his brief period of service an amusing circumstance
occurred which well displays the almost irresistible character of
Edward's love of nature. While he was drilling with the awkward squad
one morning, a butterfly of a kind that he had never seen before
happened to flit in front of him as he stood in the ranks. It was a
beautiful large brown butterfly, and Edward was so fascinated by its
appearance that he entirely forgot, in a moment, where he was and what
he was doing. Without a second's thought, he darted wildly out of the
ranks, and rushed after the butterfly, cap in hand. It led him a pretty
chase, over sandhills and shore, for five minutes. He was just on the
point of catching it at last, when he suddenly felt a heavy hand laid
upon his shoulder, and looking round, he saw the corporal of the company
and several soldiers come to arrest him. Such a serious offence against
military discipline might have cost him dear indeed, for corporals have
little sympathy with butterfly hunting; but luckily for Edward, as he
was crossing the parade ground under arrest, he happened to meet an
officer walking with some ladies. The officer asked the nature of his
offence, and when the ladies heard what it was they were so much
interested in such a strange creature as a butterfly-loving militiaman,
that they interceded for him, and finally begged him off his expected
punishment. The story shows us what sort of stuff Edward was really made
of. He felt so deep an interest in all the beautiful living creatures
around him for their own sake, that he could hardly restrain his
feelings even under the most untoward circumstances.
When Edward was twenty, he removed from Aberdeen to Banff, where he
worked as a journeyman for a new master. The hours were very long, but
by taking advantage of the summer evenings, he was still able to hunt
for his beloved birds, caterpillars, and butterflies. Still, the low
wages in the trade discouraged him much, and he almost made up his mind
to save money and emigrate to America. But one small accident alone
prevented him from carrying out this purpose. Like a good many other
young men, the naturalist shoemaker fell in love. Not only so, but his
falling in love took practical shape a little later in his getting
married; and at twenty-three, the lonely butterfly hunter brought back a
suitable young wife to his little home. The marriage was a very happy
one. Mrs. Edward not only loved her husband deeply, but showed him
sympathy in his favourite pursuits, and knew how to appreciate his
sterling worth. Long afterwards she said, that though many of her
neighbours could not understand her husband's strange behaviour, she had
always felt how much better it was to have one who spent his spare time
on the study of nature than one who spent it on the public-house.
As soon as Edward got a home of his own, he began to make a regular
collection of all the animals and plants in Banffshire. This was a
difficult thing for him to do, for he knew little of books, and had
access to very few, so that he couldn't even find out the names of all
the creatures he caught and preserved. But, though he didn't always know
what they were called, he did know their natures and habits and all
about them; and such first-hand knowledge in natural history is really
the rarest and the most valuable of all. He saw little of his fellow-
workmen. They were usually a drunken, careless lot; Edward was sober and
thoughtful, and had other things to think of than those that they cared
to talk about with one another. But he went out much into the fields,
with invincible determination, having made up his mind that he would get
to know all about the plants and beasties, however much the knowledge
might cost him.
For this object, he bought a rusty old gun for four-and-sixpence, and
invested in a few boxes and bottles for catching insects. His working
hours were from six in the morning till nine at night, and for that long
day he always worked hard to support his wife, and (when they came) his
children. He had therefore only the night hours between nine and six to
do all his collecting. Any other man, almost, would have given up the
attempt as hopeless; but Edward resolved never to waste a single moment
or a single penny, and by care and indomitable energy he succeeded in
making his wished-for collection. Sometimes he was out tramping the
whole night; sometimes he slept anyhow, under a hedge or haystack;
sometimes he took up temporary quarters in a barn, an outhouse, or a
ruined castle. But night after night he went on collecting, whenever he
was able; and he watched the habits and manners of the fox, the badger,
the otter, the weasel, the stoat, the pole-cat, and many other regular
night-roamers as no one else, in all probability, had ever before
watched them in the whole world.
Sometimes he suffered terrible disappointments, due directly or
indirectly to his great poverty. Once, he took all his cases of insects,
containing nine hundred and sixteen specimens, and representing the work
of four years, up to his garret to keep them there till he was able to
glaze them. When he came to take them down again he found to his horror
that rats had got at the boxes, eaten almost every insect in the whole
collection, and left nothing behind but the bare pins, with a few
scattered legs, wings, and bodies, sticking amongst them. Most men would
have been so disgusted with this miserable end to so much labour, that
they would have given up moth hunting for ever. But Edward was made of
different stuff. He went to work again as zealously as ever, and in four
years more, he had got most of the beetles, flies, and chafers as
carefully collected as before.
By the year 1845, Edward had gathered together about two thousand
specimens of beasts, birds, and insects found in the neighbourhood of
his own town of Banff. He made the cases to hold them himself, and did
it so neatly that, in the case of his shells, each kind had even a
separate little compartment all of its own. And now he unfortunately
began to think of making money by exhibiting his small museum. If only
he could get a few pounds to help him in buying books, materials,
perhaps even a microscope, to help him in prosecuting his scientific
work, what a magnificent thing that would be for him! Filled with this
grand idea, he took a room in the Trades Hall at Banff, and exhibited
his collection during a local fair. A good many people came to see it,
and the Banff paper congratulated the poor shoemaker on his energy in
gathering together such a museum of curiosities "without aid, and under
discouraging circumstances which few would have successfully
encountered." He was so far lucky in this first venture that he covered
his expenses and was able even to put away a little money for future
needs. Encouraged by this small triumph, the unwearied naturalist set to
work during the next year, and added several new attractions to his
little show. At the succeeding fair he again exhibited, and made still
mere money out of his speculation. Unhappily, the petty success thus
secured led him to hope he might do even better by moving his collection
to Aberdeen.
To Aberdeen, accordingly, Edward went. He took a shop in the great gay
thoroughfare of that cold northern city--Union Street--and prepared to
receive the world at large, and to get the money for the longed-for
books and the much-desired microscope. Now, Aberdeen is a big, busy,
bustling town; it has plenty of amusements and recreations; it has two
colleges and many learned men of its own; and the people did not care to
come and see the working shoemaker's poor small collection. If he had
been a president of the British Association for the Advancement of
Science, now--some learned knight or baronet come down by special train
from London--the Aberdeen doctors and professors might have rushed to
hear his address; or if he had been a famous music-hall singer or an
imitation negro minstrel, the public at large might have flocked to be
amused and degraded by his parrot-like buffoonery; but as he was only a
working shoemaker from Banff, with a heaven-born instinct for watching
and discovering all the strange beasts and birds of Scotland, and the
ways and thoughts of them, why, of course, respectable Aberdeen, high or
low, would have nothing in particular to say to him. Day after day went
by, and hardly anybody came, till at last poor Edward's heart sank
terribly within him. Even the few who did come were loth to believe that
a working shoemaker could ever have gathered together such a large
collection by his own exertions.
"Do you mean to say," said one of the Aberdeen physicians to Edward,
"that you've maintained your wife and family by working at your trade,
all the while that you've been making this collection?"
"Yes, I do," Edward answered.
"Oh, nonsense!" the doctor said. "How is it possible you could have done
that?"
"By never losing a single minute or part of a minute," was the brave
reply, "that I could by any means improve."
It is wonderful indeed that when once Edward had begun to attract
anybody's attention at all, he and his exhibition should ever have been
allowed to pass so unnoticed in a great, rich, learned city like
Aberdeen. But it only shows how very hard it is for unassuming merit to
push its way; for the Aberdeen people still went unheeding past the shop
in Union Street, till Edward at last began to fear and tremble as to how
he should ever meet the expenses of the exhibition. After the show had
been open four weeks, one black Friday came when Edward never took a
penny the whole day. As he sat there alone and despondent in the empty
room, the postman brought him a letter. It was from his master at Banff.
"Return immediately," it said, "or you will be discharged." What on
earth could he do? He couldn't remove his collection; he couldn't pay
his debt. A few more days passed, and he saw no way out of it. At last,
in blank despair, he offered the whole collection for sale. A gentleman
proposed to pay him the paltry sum of L20 10s for the entire lot, the
slow accumulations of ten long years. It was a miserable and totally
inadequate price, but Edward could get no more. In the depths of his
misery, he accepted it. The gentleman took the collection home, gave it
to his boy, and finally allowed it all, for want of care and attention,
to go to rack and ruin. And so that was the end of ten years of poor
Thomas Edward's unremitting original work in natural history. A sadder
tale of unrequited labour in the cause of science has seldom been
written.
How he ever recovered from such a downfall to all his hopes and
expectations is extraordinary. But the man had a wonderful power of
bearing up against adverse circumstances; and when, after six weeks'
absence, he returned to Banff, ruined and dispirited, he set to work
once more, as best he might, at the old, old trade of shoemaking. He was
obliged to leave his wife and children in Aberdeen, and to tramp himself
on foot to Banff, so that he might earn the necessary money to bring
them back; for the cash he had got for the collection had all gone in
paying expenses. It is almost too sad to relate; and no wonder poor
Edward felt crushed indeed when he got back once more to his lonely
shoemaker's bench and fireless fireside. He was very lonely until his
wife and children came. But when the carrier generously brought them
back free (with that kindliness which the poor so often show to the
poor), and the home was occupied once more, and the fire lighted, he
felt as if life might still be worth living, at least for his wife and
children. So he went back to his trade as heartily as he might, and
worked at it well and successfully. For it is to be noted, that though
Thomas Edward was so assiduous a naturalist and collector, he was the
best hand, too, at making first-class shoes in all Banff. The good
workman is generally the best man at whatever he undertakes. Certainly
the best man is almost always a good workman at his own trade.
But of course he made no more natural history collections? Not a bit of
it. Once a naturalist, always a naturalist. Edward set to work once
more, nothing daunted, and by next spring he was out everywhere with his
gun, exactly as before, replacing the sold collection as fast as ever
his hand was able.
By this time Edward began to make a few good friends. Several
magistrates for the county signed a paper for him, stating that they
knew him to be a naturalist, and no poacher; and on presenting this
paper to the gamekeepers, he was generally allowed to pursue his
researches wherever he liked, and shoot any birds or animals he needed
for his new museum. Soon after his return from Aberdeen, too, he made
the acquaintance of a neighbouring Scotch minister, Mr. Smith of
Monquhitter, who proved a very kind and useful friend to him. Mr. Smith
was a brother naturalist, and he had books--those precious books--which
he lent Edward, freely; and there for the first time the shoemaker
zoologist learned the scientific names of many among the birds and
animals with whose lives and habits he had been so long familiar.
Another thing the good minister did for his shoemaker friend: he
constantly begged him to write to scientific journals the results of his
observations in natural history. At first Edward was very timid; he
didn't like to appear in print; thought his grammar and style wouldn't
be good enough; fought shy of the proposal altogether. But at last
Edward made up his mind to contribute a few notes to the _Banffshire
Journal_, and from that he went on slowly to other papers, until at
last he came to be one of the most valued occasional writers for several
of the leading scientific periodicals in England. Unfortunately, science
doesn't pay. All this work was done for love only; and Edward's only
reward was the pleasure he himself derived from thus jotting down the
facts he had observed about the beautiful creatures he loved so well.
Soon Mr. Smith induced the indefatigable shoemaker to send a few papers
on the birds and beasts to the _Zoologist_. Readers began to
perceive that these contributions were sent by a man of the right sort--
a man who didn't merely read what other men had said about the creatures
in books, but who watched their ways on his own account, and knew all
about their habits and manners in their own homes. Other friends now
began to interest themselves in him; and Edward obtained at last, what
to a man of his tastes must have been almost as much as money or
position--the society of people who could appreciate him, and could
sympathize in all that interested him. Mr. Smith in particular always
treated him, says Dr. Smiles, "as one intelligent man treats another."
The paltry distinctions of artificial rank were all forgotten between
them, and the two naturalists talked together with endless interest
about all those lovely creatures that surround us every one on every
side, but that so very few people comparatively have ever eyes to see or
hearts to understand. It was a very great loss to Edward when Mr. Smith
died, in 1854.
In the year 1858 the untiring shoemaker had gathered his third and last
collection, the finest and best of all. By this time he had become an
expert stuffer of birds, and a good preserver of fish and flowers. But
his health was now beginning to fail. He was forty-four, and he had used
his constitution very severely, going out at nights in cold and wet, and
cheating himself of sleep during the natural hours of rest and
recuperation. Happily, during all these years, he had resisted the
advice of his Scotch labouring friends, to take out whisky with him on
his nightly excursions. He never took a drop of it, at home or abroad.
If he had done so, he himself believed, he could not have stood the
cold, the damp, and the exposure in the way he did. His food was chiefly
oatmeal-cake; his drink was water. "Sometimes, when I could afford it,"
he says, "my wife boiled an egg or two, and these were my only
luxuries." He had a large family, and the task of providing for them was
quite enough for his slender means, without leaving much margin for beer
or whisky.
But the best constitution won't stand privation and exposure for ever.
By-and-by Edward fell ill, and had a fever. He was ill for a month, and
when he came round again the doctor told him that he must at once give
up his nightly wandering. This was a real and serious blow to poor
Edward; it was asking him to give up his one real pleasure and interest
in life. All the happiest moments he had ever known were those which he
had spent in the woods and fields, or among the lonely mountains with
the falcons, and the herons, and the pine-martens, and the ermines. All
this delightful life he was now told he must abandon for ever. Nor was
that all. Illness costs money. While a man is earning nothing, he is
running up a doctor's bill. Edward now saw that he must at last fall
back upon his savings bank, as he rightly called it--his loved and
cherished collection of Banffshire animals. He had to draw upon it
heavily. Forty cases of birds were sold; and Edward now knew that he
would never be able to replace the specimens he had parted with.
Still, his endless patience wasn't yet exhausted. No more of wandering
by night, to be sure, upon moor or fell, gun in hand, chasing the merlin
or the polecat to its hidden lair; no more of long watching after the
snowy owl or the long-tailed titmouse among the frozen winter woods; but
there remained one almost untried field on which Edward could expend his
remaining energy, and in which he was to do better work for science than
in all the rest--the sea.
This new field he began to cultivate in a novel and ingenious way. He
got together all the old broken pails, pots, pans, and kettles he could
find in the neighbourhood, filled them with straw or bits of rag, and
then sank them with a heavy stone into the rocky pools that abound along
that weather-beaten coast. A rope was tied to one end, by which he could
raise them again; and once a month he used to go his rounds to visit
these very primitive but effectual sea-traps. Lots of living things had
meanwhile congregated in the safe nests thus provided for them, and
Edward sorted them all over, taking home with him all the newer or more
valuable specimens. In this way he was enabled to make several additions
to our knowledge of the living things that inhabit the sea off the
north-east coast of Scotland.
The fishermen also helped him not a little, by giving him many rare
kinds of fish or refuse from their nets, which he duly examined and
classified. As a rule, the hardy men who go on the smacks have a
profound contempt for natural history, and will not be tempted, even by
offers of money, to assist those whom they consider as half-daft
gentlefolk in what seems to them a perfectly useless and almost childish
amusement. But it was different with Tam Edward, the strange shoemaker
whom they all knew so well; if _he_ wanted fish or rubbish for his
neat collection in the home-made glass cases, why, of course he could
have them, and welcome. So they brought him rare sandsuckers, and blue-
striped wrasse, and saury pike, and gigantic cuttle-fish, four feet
long, to his heart's content. Edward's daughters were now also old
enough to help him in his scientific studies. They used to watch for the
clearing of the nets, and pick out of the refuse whatever they thought
would interest or please their father. But the fish themselves were
Edward's greatest helpers and assistants. As Dr. Smiles quaintly puts
it, they were the best of all possible dredgers. His daughters used to
secure him as many stomachs as possible, and from their contents he
picked out an immense number of beautiful and valuable specimens. The
bill of fare of the cod alone comprised an incredible variety of small
crabs, shells, shrimps, sea-mice, star-fish, jelly-fish, sea anemones,
eggs, and zoophytes. All these went to swell Edward's new collection of
marine animals.
To identify and name so many small and little-known creatures was a very
difficult task for the poor shoemaker, with so few books, and no
opportunities for visiting museums and learned societies. But his
industry and ingenuity managed to surmount all obstacles. Naturalists
everywhere are very willing to aid and instruct one another; especially
are the highest authorities almost always eager to give every help and
encouragement in their power to local amateurs. Edward used to wait till
he had collected a batch of specimens of a single class or order, and
then he would send them by post to learned men in different parts of the
country, who named them for him, and sent them back with some
information as to their proper place in the classification of the group
to which they belonged. Mr. Spence Bate of Plymouth is the greatest
living authority on crustaceans, such as the lobsters, shrimps, sea-
fleas, and hermit crabs; and to him Edward sent all the queer crawling
things of that description that he found in his original sea-traps. Mr.
Couch, of Polperro in Cornwall, was equally versed in the true backboned
fishes; and to him Edward sent any doubtful midges, or gurnards, or
gobies, or whiffs. So numerous are the animals and plants of the sea-
shore, even in the north of Scotland alone, that if one were to make a
complete list of all Edward's finds it would occupy an entire book
almost as large as this volume.
Naturalists now began to help Edward in another way, the way that he
most needed, by kind presents of books, especially their own writings--a
kind of gift which cost them nothing, but was worth to him a very great
deal. Mr. Newman, the editor of the _Zoologist_ paper, was one of
his most useful correspondents, and gave him several excellent books on
natural history. Mr. Bate made him a still more coveted present--a
microscope, with which he could examine several minute animals, too
small to be looked at by the naked eye. The same good friend also gave
him a little pocket-lens (or magnifying glass) for use on the sea-shore.
As Edward went on, his knowledge increased rapidly, and his discoveries
fully kept pace with it. The wretchedly paid Banff shoemaker was now
corresponding familiarly with half the most eminent men of science in
the kingdom, and was a valued contributor to all the most important
scientific journals. Several new animals which he had discovered were
named in his honour, and frequent references were made to him in printed
works of the first importance. It occurred to Mr. Couch and Mr. Bate,
therefore, both of whom were greatly indebted to the working-man
naturalist for specimens and information, that Edward ought to be
elected a member of some leading scientific society. There is no such
body of greater distinction in the world of science than the Linnean
Society; and of this learned institution Edward was duly elected an
associate in 1866. The honour was one which he had richly deserved, and
which no doubt he fully appreciated.
And yet he was nothing more even now than a working shoemaker, who was
earning not more but less wages even than he once used to do. He had
brought up a large family honestly and respectably; he had paid his way
without running into debt; his children were all growing up; and he had
acquired a wide reputation among naturalists as a thoroughly trustworthy
observer and an original worker in many different fields of botany and
zoology. But his wages were now only eight shillings a week, and his
science had brought him, as many people would say, only the barren
honour of being an associate of the Linnean Society, or the respected
friend of many among the noblest and greatest men of his country. He
began life as a shoemaker, and he remained a shoemaker to the end. "Had
I pursued money," he said, "with half the ardour and perseverance that I
have pursued nature, I have no hesitation in saying that by this time I
should have been a rich man."
In 1876, Dr. Smiles, the historian of so many truly great working men,
attracted by Edward's remarkable and self-sacrificing life, determined
to write the good shoemaker's biography while he was still alive. Edward
himself gave Dr. Smiles full particulars as to his early days and his
later struggles; and that information the genial biographer wove into a
delightful book, from which all the facts here related have been
borrowed. The "Life of a Scotch Naturalist" attracted an immense deal of
attention when it was first published, and led many people, scientific
or otherwise, to feel a deep interest in the man who had thus made
himself poor for the love of nature. The result was such a spontaneous
expression of generous feeling towards Edward that he was enabled to
pass the evening of his days not only in honour, but also in substantial
ease and comfort.
And shall we call such a life as this a failure? Shall we speak of it
carelessly as unsuccessful? Surely not. Edward had lived his life
happily, usefully, and nobly; he had attained the end he set before
himself; he had conquered all his difficulties by his indomitable
resolution; and he lived to see his just reward in the respect and
admiration of all those whose good opinion was worth the having. If he
had toiled and moiled all the best days of his life, at some work,
perhaps, which did not even benefit in any way his fellow-men; if he had
given up all his time to enriching himself anyhow, by fair means or
foul; if he had gathered up a great business by crushing out competition
and absorbing to himself the honest livelihood of a dozen other men; if
he had speculated in stocks and shares, and piled up at last a vast
fortune by doubtful transactions, all the world would have said, in its
unthinking fashion, that Mr. Edward was a wonderfully successful man.
But success in life does not consist in that only, if in that at all.
Edward lived for an aim, and that aim he amply attained. He never
neglected his home duties or his regular work; but in his stray moments
he found time to amass an amount of knowledge which rendered him the
intellectual equal of men whose opportunities and education had been far
more fortunate than his own. The pleasure he found in his work was the
real reward that science gave him. All his life long he had that
pleasure: he saw the fields grow green in spring, the birds build nests
in early summer, the insects flit before his eyes on autumn evenings,
the stoat and hare put on their snow-white coat to his delight in winter
weather. And shall we say that the riches he thus beheld spread ever
before him were any less real or less satisfying to a soul like his than
the mere worldly wealth that other men labour and strive for? Oh no.
Thomas Edward was one of those who work for higher and better ends than
outward show, and verily he had his reward. The monument raised up to
that simple and earnest working shoemaker in the "Life of a Scotch
Naturalist" is one of which any scientific worker in the whole world
might well be proud. In his old age, he had the meed of public
encouragement and public recognition, the one thing that the world at
large can add to a scientific worker's happiness; and his name will be
long remembered hereafter, when those of more pretentious but less
useful labourers are altogether forgotten. How many men whom the world
calls successful might gladly have changed places with that "fool to
nature," the Banffshire shoemaker!
