Page:The Strand Magazine (Volume 2).djvu/442

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GEORGE TINWORTH AND HIS WORK.
445

tion of his father; but he was still a wheelwright. About this time his father died, and the young doctor of broken-down vehicles, as we may call him, in order to support his mother had to work still harder at a trade which grew more and more distasteful. He made a bare thirty shillings a week, and modest as were his requirements it would have been strange if more congenial employment could not be found to yield him as much.


Waiting for the head of John the Baptist.

Mr. Sparkes, ever his good friend, kept a sharp look-out for an opportunity of enabling him to change his vocation. The opportunity came at last in the revival of art manufactures, which took place in England as the result of the Paris Exhibition of 1867. Amongst those who profited most by the revival was Mr. (now Sir) Henry Doulton. To send his pottery forth to the world as something more than mere earthenware was his object, and Mr. Sparkes rightly concluded that the man to assist Mr. Doulton was his young pupil. Mr. Doulton gladly gave him thirty shillings a week to start with. After touching up pottery moulds for a time, Tinworth was allowed to exercise his powers of