The first thing after my arrival in Newcastle was to see my old master, and the next to engage my old lodgings at Hatfields, and to fit up a work bench there. I then set to work upon my wood cuts. This, however, was interrupted by other jobs; and the first of the kind was that of engraving a copper plate of the “Theban Harp,” for the Rev. James Murray, for some of his publications.[21] Some of the silversmiths also began to press their jobs upon me. I had not, however, been long at work for myself till proposals were made to me to join in partnership with my late master; and this was brought about by a mutual friend (?) This proposal—which was to set me down at once in a well-established business—I did not relish so warmly as our mutual friend expected. I had formed a plan of working alone, without apprentices, or being interrupted by any one; and I am not certain, at this day, whether I would not have been happier in doing so than in the way I was led to pursue. I had often, in my lonely walks, debated this business over in my mind; but, whether it would have been for the better or the worse, I can now only conjecture. I tried the one plan, and not the other: perhaps each might have had advantages and disadvantages. I should not have experienced the envy and ingratitude of some of my pupils, neither should I, on the contrary, have felt the pride and the pleasure I derived from so many of them having received medals or premiums from the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, and taken the lead, as engravers on wood, in the Metropolis. Notwithstanding this pride and this pleasure, I am inclined to think I should have had—balancing the good against the bad—more pleasure in working alone for myself.
During my absence in London, Mr. Beilby had taken an apprentice with a premium; and, to make us equal, I took my brother John as mine. With him I was extremely happy. He was constantly cheerful, lively, and very active, and my friends were his friends. Mr. Beilby was as well pleased with him as I could possibly be; for, besides his affable temper, he took every kind of work in hand so pleasantly, and so very soon learned to execute it well, that he could not miss giving satisfaction. This he continued to do as long as he was with us; but other parts of his conduct, when he arrived at manhood, was not so well, and gave me great uneasiness; for he got acquainted with companions whom I thought badly of, and my remonstrances respecting them proved in vain. He would not, as he called it, be dictated to by me; but this I persisted in till it made us often quarrel, which was distressing to me, for my regard for him was too deeply rooted ever to think of suffering him to tread in the paths which led to ruin, without endeavouring to prevent it. To the latest day of his life, he repented of having turned a deaf ear to my advice; and as bitterly and sincerely did he acknowledge the slighted obligations he owed me. He rued; and that is as painful a word as any in the English language.
As soon as I thought my brother might be able to work his way in the world,—he having been, I think, about five years with me,—I gave him his liberty, and he set off to London, where, being freed from his former associates, his conduct was all that could be desired, and he was highly respected and esteemed. He was as industrious in London as he had been with us, and had plenty of work to do. He was almost entirely employed by the publishers and booksellers in designing and cutting an endless variety of blocks for them. He was extremely quick at his work, and did it at a very low rate. His too close confinement, however, impaired his health. He revisited Cherryburn, where he did not remain long till he thought himself quite recovered, and he then returned to London, where he continued a few years longer, and where the same kind of confinement affected his health as before. A similar visit to his native air was found necessary; his health was again restored to him; and again he returned to London. He, however, found that he could not pursue the same kind of close confinement, on which account he engaged to teach drawing at the Hornsey Academy, then kept by Mr. Nathaniel Norton, which obliged him to keep a pony to ride backwards and forwards; thus dividing his time between his work-office in London and the school for some years, when his health began again to decline, and he finally left London early in the summer of 1795, and returned once more to the banks of the Tyne. Here he intended to follow the wood engraving for his London friends, and particularly for Wm. Bulmer, for whom he was engaged to execute a number of blocks for the “Fabliaux” or “Tales of Le Grand,” and for “Somerville’s Chace.” Many of the former he had, I believe, finished in London, and had sketched others on the blocks, which he finished at Cherryburn. He had also sketched the designs on the blocks for the “Chace;” and to these I put the finishing hand, after his decease, which happened on the 5th of December, 1795, aged 35 years. The last thing I could do for him was putting up a stone to his memory at the west end of Ovingham Church, where I hope, when my “glass is run out,” to be laid down beside him.
While my brother was my apprentice, he frequently accompanied me on my weekly visits to Cherryburn. He was then a clever, springy youth, and our bounding along together was often compared to the scamperings of a pair of wild colts. These journeys commenced while I was an apprentice. I then mostly went and returned on the same day; but, when I became my own master, for many years—in summer’s heat and winter’s freezing cold—I did not miss a single week. When I was an apprentice, I had a few holydays at Easter and Whitsuntide allowed me, according to promise; and these were wholly employed in angling; but, after the time came when I might do as I pleased, I mostly stopped, when the weather suited, in spring and summer, and spent the Mondays in various streams, at this my favourite—and, indeed, only—diversion. In this I was accompanied by my cheerful associate, “Jack Roe,” with his flies and his tackle; and, when we had got a sufficient number, I returned to Newcastle with my creel well filled with fish, which I divided amongst my friends. With an account of these hungry, stream-wading ramblings, and the days spent in angling, and with a description of the beautiful scenery of water-sides, and the renovating charms which these altogether inspired, a volume might be filled, in imitation of the patriarc............