A Sketch of the Life of George Wilson, the Blackheath Pedestrian/Dedication
DEDICATION.
GENTLEMEN,
UNSKILLED as I am in the language of Dedications, yet, ambitious to present an humble tribute of my profound veneration and respect to those Gentlemen, by the decrees of whose united wisdom and authority, I am propelled to the business of an Author, I feel it my duty to lay at your Reverend and Worshipful feet the first fruits of my humble talents in that way; and to intreat your acceptance of the offering, as a small but sincere token of my respect. From the pen of an untutored man, little can be expected, in point of language, worthy the notice of high-placed patrons. I am but too sensible of my own deficiency in the polished terms of composition and eloquence, to aim at any flights of panegyric worthy to tickle the ears of grave and learned gentlemen, in the exalted situations you so wisely and so worthily fill. To eloquence I have no pretensions. Walking, and not talking, is my humble trade; and had my profession been fighting, I should never have been driven to the necessity of writing, as an alternative to avert the severities of disappointment, resulting from the exertions of your all-powerful authority, by which I was prevented from completing the task I lately undertook, of walking one thousand miles in twenty days, which, had I been permitted to complete, would have brought me the means of directing my poor, but arduous exertions, to a more lucrative and much less laborious calling, at my advanced years, and have enabled me to pay my debts, and to fulfil the duties of a father to four of my children, by rescuing them from the dangers of ill example and vice, and rearing them to honesty and virtue. My ill stars, however, have denied me the happier qualification of a pugilist, which would have secured to me the favour and protection of the great and the fashionable, and perhaps to the mild forbearance even of justicial rigour; I might then have attracted the notice of the Men of the Fancy, as they are called, and have laid my claims to an occasional sprig of those palms and laurels, that have so frequently adorned the brows of the Cribbs and the Molineuxs, the Richmonds and the Gullies, the Dutch Sams and Game Chickens, and all the other men of milling celebrity, who have successively shared the friendship and favours of all ranks, from Princes, Peers, and Parliament-men, down to the coster-mongers of Tothillfields, to their brother amateurs in St. Giles's and Whitechapel; and whose hardy feats have been as proudly recorded in the historic columns of the daily prints, as those of a Wellington, and all his brother heroes, who have reaped such harvests of glory on the Continent, and filled the world with their fame.
I might, then, Gentlemen, have entered the lists at Wormwood Scrubbs, and all the other fields of pugilistic contest; and possibly have challenged the proud honours of Champion of England. Magisterial wisdom might then have blinked at my error: the pacific Quorum might have looked another way; and perhaps some junior members of a certain grave profession, mindful of more juvenile diversions, and the classic pastimes of academic leisure, might have laid aside their pontificials for a day, and taken a sly peep, under the rose, at the proofs of my prowess.
But, alas, gentlemen, the fates who governed my birth, gave a different cast to my destiny, and denied me the more fortunate faculties of the fist. A rustic education, such as it was, joined to the vicissitudes of perverse fortune, led me to cultivate my talents at the wrong end; and instead of directing the cunning of my head to the lucrative profession of a gambler, or the vigour of my hands to the skill of a bruizer, I have unfortunately directed my chief attention to the agility of my legs, which are not black ones, as a very unproductive source of livelihood; but they have sometimes, though indirectly, extricated me from imprisonment and famine.
It never reached my apprehension, however, until chastised by your all-powerful authority, that walking alone on the skirt of a wild heath, remote from the ordinary intercourse of the busy throng, was a violation of public morals, or a breach of the peace. It remained for your united wisdom to enlighten my darkness on this head, and convince me by the significant instrumentality of a warrant, unanimously issued for my apprehension, that I was, though most unknowingly and unintentionally transgressing the law, in presuming to walk on Backheath, even with your leave and promise of protection; for I beg leave to remind you that I had both before I ventured to commence the task. My errror was further confirmed by the circumstance of my being permitted to continue my laborious exertions for fifteen days, without so much as an authentic intimation, that I was doing any thing contrary to law or injurious to the public peace. It was no trial of skill with any rival; I did not publicly announce, except to a few persons in the neighbourhood, the object of my peregrination. I did not influence the public prints to notice me or my efforts. I did not send for the multitude who were pleased to honour me with their attention; and least of all, did I dream that an obscure, forlorn, and insignificant being, like me, could have formed a centre of attraction for the thousands who daily crowded Blackheath, while I was labouring to perform a task, that in its result was to save me from famine, and bring me a few pounds, by what I conceived the most laborious and most harrassing occupation on earth, for twenty successive days. I had heard of the perambulations of the celebrated Captain Barclay, who had won a thousand guineas by walking a thousand miles in a thousand hours. I had the honour of knowing that gentleman, and feel a warm attachment to him as a brother disciple of what I am told has been jocularly termed the peripatetic school. He met no interruption from the Magistrates of the county where he performed his feats. Perhaps I was too presumtuous, in expecting that I might be allowed to perform a similar task in less than half the time. But it was my misfortune to act in a different county from Captain Barclay, and where probably nicer principles of morality and stricter notions of decorum prevail with the custodians of the Peace: for it is quite impossible that I should suppose that Captain Barclay or any other sporting gentleman, who had ventured to walk where I did, would not have been interrupted and apprehended with the same impartiality that I was.
However, gentlemen, bowing with the profoundest deference to the wisdom of your decree, for rescinding the permission and promise of protection you were pleased to concede to my humble application, in the first instance; and presuming there may have been some weighty reasons, probably of state, for the steps you have adopted towards an obscure unit like myself, I must presume they were as correct as they were wise, just, and impartial; and hope that all deluded mortals like myself, who are hard pushed by the influence of her Imperious Mightiness, Necessity, the prolific mother of inventions, to whatever other species of prize feat they may be urged for recruiting their finances, whether prize fighting, prize eating, prize grinning, or prize racing, they may eschew the perils of prize walking in the good county of Kent, at least in that quarter so particularly fortunate in the auspious superintendance of your worships.
Permit me, at the same time, to return my humble thanks to your warships for the lesson of experience and morality your worships have afforded me on the heretofore unsuspected vice of walking, either for the decision of wagers or the procuration of bread; and the example you have shewn, that on an extensive field of action, covered with the booths of itenerant shewmen, tumblers, conjurers, rope-dancers, and gin-sellers, for the attraction of the idle and the dissolute, and this for fifteen successive days, there was not an individual to be found, whom you could view as a possible cause of mischief, or in anywise dangerous to the peace and good order of your county, but a miserable old man of fifty-one displaying, by many a weary mile's walk, that the vigour of youthful agility had not deserted him even at the sun set of life; that he was still able to perform the unparalleled feat of walking a thousand miles in twenty days, and to prove on British Ground, that as Britain had excelled every country on the globe, in every point of competition, so in the humble art of ambulation she had a veteran, who could manifest her superiority, and who could still surpass the famed exertions of a Powell, a Steward, or a Barclay—men whose celebrity have heretofore challenged so much applause.
Gentlemen, I presume not to develope the reasons that have rendered the exertion of your power, towards myself exclusively, a measure of grave wisdom; nor to question the justice and impartiality of issuing your warrant against me individually, while so many others, Showmen, Tumblers, Conjurers, and Gin Sellers, at least equally, as I conceive, attractive of crowds as myself, were allowed to depart in peace and unmolested, with the gainful produce of their trade in their pockets—such things as these are above my vulgar comprehension.
Give me leave to assure your Worships, that the profession of walking, which has rendered me so obnoxious in your grave views, is not altogether a matter of choice; but,as was once said of the blindness of his mare, by a Hibernian fellow-subject, "it is not my fault, but my misfortune." I had much rather ride. Far be it from me to impute any thing to your Worships decree against me, but the most strict impartiality and conscientious views of justice: it is my duty, therefore, in this place, to disclaim all belief to rumours and insinuations of a contrary complexion. For there have been those in your neighbourhood who have had the contumacy to suggest, that had there been any thing of a likelihood that I should fail in my attempt, I should have experienced no interruption to the last moment of the time allotted me.
However, Gentlemen, be the result to my for tunes what they may, the exertions of your resistless authority have given a new turn to my adventures, and forced me to become an Author in the shape of my own Biographer. Wretched historian!—miserable topic! Many, however, of the generous patrons, to whose notice this affair has casually introduced me, and to whom I have told my story, were pleased to think it worth committing to paper, as giving to the curious public some account of an unfortunate man, for whom they have kindly taken an interest, and whom they consider as rather unfairly persecuted. I adopt the friendly suggestion, in the humble hope that this effort may produce, under their protection, some alternative from the cutting disappointment I have experienced, through the prevention to compleat the task I had undertaken.
Many of your Worships, and more especially the reverend members of your bench, will know the moral maxim, that "out of evil often cometh good." And that, therefore, the prohibition of your Worships, no doubt for the best and gravest of purposes, may, though undesignedly, produce to me even more of advantage than your continued permission and promised protection could have effected.
I shall, in such case, consider myself, however, indirectly indebted to you, for every advantage. I am not without hopes, even yet, of finding you reluctant for what is past, making me liberal amends, amongst the number of my subscribers; and I beg leave to subscribe myself, with the profoundest veneration,
Your most humble and devoted Servant,