Self Help by Samuel Smiles (desktop ebook reader txt) 📖

up, and heaved into the furnace. The

enamel had not melted yet! There remained the shelving. Another

noise of the wrenching of timber was heard within the house; and

the shelves were torn down and hurled after the furniture into the

fire. Wife and children then rushed from the house, and went

frantically through the town, calling out that poor Palissy had

gone mad, and was breaking up his very furniture for firewood! {10}

 

For an entire month his shirt had not been off his back, and he was

utterly worn out—wasted with toil, anxiety, watching, and want of

food. He was in debt, and seemed on the verge of ruin. But he had

at length mastered the secret; for the last great burst of heat had

melted the enamel. The common brown household jars, when taken out

of the furnace after it had become cool, were found covered with a

white glaze! For this he could endure reproach, contumely, and

scorn, and wait patiently for the opportunity of putting his

discovery into practice as better days came round.

 

Palissy next hired a potter to make some earthen vessels after

designs which he furnished; while he himself proceeded to model

some medallions in clay for the purpose of enamelling them. But

how to maintain himself and his family until the wares were made

and ready for sale? Fortunately there remained one man in Saintes

who still believed in the integrity, if not in the judgment, of

Palissy—an innkeeper, who agreed to feed and lodge him for six

months, while he went on with his manufacture. As for the working

potter whom he had hired, Palissy soon found that he could not pay

him the stipulated wages. Having already stripped his dwelling, he

could but strip himself; and he accordingly parted with some of his

clothes to the potter, in part payment of the wages which he owed

him.

 

Palissy next erected an improved furnace, but he was so unfortunate

as to build part of the inside with flints. When it was heated,

these flints cracked and burst, and the spiculae were scattered

over the pieces of pottery, sticking to them. Though the enamel

came out right, the work was irretrievably spoilt, and thus six

more months’ labour was lost. Persons were found willing to buy

the articles at a low price, notwithstanding the injury they had

sustained; but Palissy would not sell them, considering that to

have done so would be to “decry and abate his honour;” and so he

broke in pieces the entire batch. “Nevertheless,” says he, “hope

continued to inspire me, and I held on manfully; sometimes, when

visitors called, I entertained them with pleasantry, while I was

really sad at heart… . Worst of all the sufferings I had to

endure, were the mockeries and persecutions of those of my own

household, who were so unreasonable as to expect me to execute work

without the means of doing so. For years my furnaces were without

any covering or protection, and while attending them I have been

for nights at the mercy of the wind and the rain, without help or

consolation, save it might be the wailing of cats on the one side

and the howling of dogs on the other. Sometimes the tempest would

beat so furiously against the furnaces that I was compelled to

leave them and seek shelter within doors. Drenched by rain, and in

no better plight than if I had been dragged through mire, I have

gone to lie down at midnight or at daybreak, stumbling into the

house without a light, and reeling from one side to another as if I

had been drunken, but really weary with watching and filled with

sorrow at the loss of my labour after such long toiling. But alas!

my home proved no refuge; for, drenched and besmeared as I was, I

found in my chamber a second persecution worse than the first,

which makes me even now marvel that I was not utterly consumed by

my many sorrows.”

 

At this stage of his affairs, Palissy became melancholy and almost

hopeless, and seems to have all but broken down. He wandered

gloomily about the fields near Saintes, his clothes hanging in

tatters, and himself worn to a skeleton. In a curious passage in

his writings he describes how that the calves of his legs had

disappeared and were no longer able with the help of garters to

hold up his stockings, which fell about his heels when he walked.

{11} The family continued to reproach him for his recklessness,

and his neighbours cried shame upon him for his obstinate folly.

So he returned for a time to his former calling; and after about a

year’s diligent labour, during which he earned bread for his

household and somewhat recovered his character among his

neighbours, he again resumed his darling enterprise. But though he

had already spent about ten years in the search for the enamel, it

cost him nearly eight more years of experimental plodding before he

perfected his invention. He gradually learnt dexterity and

certainty of result by experience, gathering practical knowledge

out of many failures. Every mishap was a fresh lesson to him,

teaching him something new about the nature of enamels, the

qualities of argillaceous earths, the tempering of clays, and the

construction and management of furnaces.

 

At last, after about sixteen years’ labour, Palissy took heart and

called himself Potter. These sixteen years had been his term of

apprenticeship to the art; during which he had wholly to teach

himself, beginning at the very beginning. He was now able to sell

his wares and thereby maintain his family in comfort. But he never

rested satisfied with what he had accomplished. He proceeded from

one step of improvement to another; always aiming at the greatest

perfection possible. He studied natural objects for patterns, and

with such success that the great Buffon spoke of him as “so great a

naturalist as Nature only can produce.” His ornamental pieces are

now regarded as rare gems in the cabinets of virtuosi, and sell at

almost fabulous prices. {12} The ornaments on them are for the

most part accurate models from life, of wild animals, lizards, and

plants, found in the fields about Saintes, and tastefully combined

as ornaments into the texture of a plate or vase. When Palissy had

reached the height of his art he styled himself “Ouvrier de Terre

et Inventeur des Rustics Figulines.”

 

We have not, however, come to an end of the sufferings of Palissy,

respecting which a few words remain to be said. Being a

Protestant, at a time when religious persecution waxed hot in the

south of France, and expressing his views without fear, he was

regarded as a dangerous heretic. His enemies having informed

against him, his house at Saintes was entered by the officers of

“justice,” and his workshop was thrown open to the rabble, who

entered and smashed his pottery, while he himself was hurried off

by night and cast into a dungeon at Bordeaux, to wait his turn at

the stake or the scaffold. He was condemned to be burnt; but a

powerful noble, the Constable de Montmorency, interposed to save

his life—not because he had any special regard for Palissy or his

religion, but because no other artist could be found capable of

executing the enamelled pavement for his magnificent chateau then

in course of erection at Ecouen, about four leagues from Paris. By

his influence an edict was issued appointing Palissy Inventor of

Rustic Figulines to the King and to the Constable, which had the

effect of immediately removing him from the jurisdiction of

Bourdeaux. He was accordingly liberated, and returned to his home

at Saintes only to find it devastated and broken up. His workshop

was open to the sky, and his works lay in ruins. Shaking the dust

of Saintes from his feet he left the place never to return to it,

and removed to Paris to carry on the works ordered of him by the

Constable and the Queen Mother, being lodged in the Tuileries {13}

while so occupied.

 

Besides carrying on the manufacture of pottery, with the aid of his

two sons, Palissy, during the latter part of his life, wrote and

published several books on the potter’s art, with a view to the

instruction of his countrymen, and in order that they might avoid

the many mistakes which he himself had made. He also wrote on

agriculture, on fortification, and natural history, on which latter

subject he even delivered lectures to a limited number of persons.

He waged war against astrology, alchemy, witchcraft, and like

impostures. This stirred up against him many enemies, who pointed

the finger at him as a heretic, and he was again arrested for his

religion and imprisoned in the Bastille. He was now an old man of

seventy-eight, trembling on the verge of the grave, but his spirit

was as brave as ever. He was threatened with death unless he

recanted; but he was as obstinate in holding to his religion as he

had been in hunting out the secret of the enamel. The king, Henry

III., even went to see him in prison to induce him to abjure his

faith. “My good man,” said the King, “you have now served my

mother and myself for forty-five years. We have put up with your

adhering to your religion amidst fires and massacres: now I am so

pressed by the Guise party as well as by my own people, that I am

constrained to leave you in the hands of your enemies, and to-morrow you will be burnt unless you become converted.” “Sire,”

answered the unconquerable old man, “I am ready to give my life for

the glory of God. You have said many times that you have pity on

me; and now I have pity on you, who have pronounced the words I

AM CONSTRAINED! It is not spoken like a king, sire; it is what

you, and those who constrain you, the Guisards and all your people,

can never effect upon me, for I know how to die.” {14} Palissy did

indeed die shortly after, a martyr, though not at the stake. He

died in the Bastille, after enduring about a year’s imprisonment,—

there peacefully terminating a life distinguished for heroic

labour, extraordinary endurance, inflexible rectitude, and the

exhibition of many rare and noble virtues. {15}

 

The life of John Frederick Bottgher, the inventor of hard

porcelain, presents a remarkable contrast to that of Palissy;

though it also contains many points of singular and almost romantic

interest. Bottgher was born at Schleiz, in the Voightland, in

1685, and at twelve years of age was placed apprentice with an

apothecary at Berlin. He seems to have been early fascinated by

chemistry, and occupied most of his leisure in making experiments.

These for the most part tended in one direction—the art of

converting common on metals into gold. At the end of several

years, Bottgher pretended to have discovered the universal solvent

of the alchemists, and professed that he had made gold by its

means. He exhibited its powers before his master, the apothecary

Zorn, and by some trick or other succeeded in making him and

several other witnesses believe that he had actually converted

copper into gold.

 

The news spread abroad that the apothecary’s apprentice had

discovered the grand secret, and crowds collected about the shop to

get a sight of the wonderful young “gold-cook.” The king himself

expressed a wish to see and converse with him, and when Frederick

I. was presented with a piece of the gold pretended to have been

converted from copper, he was so dazzled with the prospect of

securing an infinite quantity of it—Prussia being then in great

straits for money—that he determined to secure Bottgher and employ

him to make gold for him within the strong