This striking image was amongst a mixed lot of prints that I bought at auction and it struck me immediately as a strange choice for a dedications frontispiece!
The crippled ex-soldier begging looks angry to me – and who can blame him? He has lost a leg in the service of his country and has ended up in rags on the street having to beg for a living. The details are fascinating – the straw padding for his stump, the remains of his uniform jacket, the layers of clothing his torn stocking reveals.
I was also intrigued by the verse at the bottom –
Some write for pleasure, some for spite;
But want of Money makes me Write.
What was the book – and why the almost pointed dedication to the ‘Tradesmen of Lancashire; More Particularly of Manchester.’ Was it debts to these tradesmen that made the author write?
By searching for the inscription I found a British Museum entry for an uncoloured version from “Edward Orme’s “The passions humorously delineated…” (based on John Collier [pseud.: Tim Bobbins]’s “Human Passions delineated”, 1773).” With that I was able to find the whole book on-line in the Wellcome Library, including the twenty-five plates which show a range of emotions – anger, grief, contentment etc.
But who was Tim Bobbin, other than , apparently, John Collier? This is his self-portrait – an extraordinary, self-mocking, image that does not seem at first glance
John Collier by himself.
to be an 18th century man at all, until you realise that his close-cropped hair was to go under a wig.
John Collier, who liked to style himself ‘the Lancashire Hogarth’ – presumably with tongue in cheek – was born in Urmstone in Lancashire in 1708 and became a schoolteacher in Milnrow in Rochdale. He married, had nine children, and unsurprisingly needed extra money, so he began to write satirical poetry in Lancashire dialect. A View of the Lancashire Dialect, or, Tummus and Mary, published in 1746, is considered to be the first significant example of the dialect in print.
Human Passions Delineated came out in 1773 and my plate is from the colourised version which was published by Edward Orme in 1810.
Collier died in 1786 and was buried in St Chad’s churchyard, Rochdale. His own epitaph, written twenty minutes before he died, “Jack of all trades…left to lie i’th dark” joined other humorous inscriptions that he had written for stones in the churchyard – I assume as commissions. He certainly must have been interesting, to put it politely, as a teacher, a parent and a husband!
Sir Walter Scott led a campaign to have his grave restored in 1792. He was held in such esteem that a thousand people donated one pound each and a stone and iron railing were installed.
Jane Austen's London 