Joseph Burton, of Stockport, Lancashire, came, for what reason is unknown, to Cornwall in 1830, and set up a china and glass shop at Bodmin; and married at Launceston a Miss Clemo.
Old Joseph was a sturdy Radical and Nonconformist. He was a vigorous and loud supporter of the Ballot Society, the Liberation Society, and the United Kingdom Alliance. He was also a vehement and “intemperate” teetotaler. He died at Bodmin 19th July, 1876. John was one of a whole string of children, and as the “cloam” shop did not bring in a large profit, and John was one among many, he had to go into life very inefficiently equipped with education. But he had inherited from his father a masterful spirit, and had his own independent views, and it was soon a case between them of flint and steel, and sparks flew out.
John and his brother Joe were sent round the country hawking pots and glass.
“I well remember the 24th December, 1853,” said John Burton. “Myself and brother Joe (who afterwards became a well-known auctioneer) rose at five o’clock in the morning, fed the horse, and made a start at 5.45 a.m. with a wagon-load of goods. The morning was dark, and when we came to Callywith turnpike gate it was closed. We knocked Henry Mark, the toll-keeper, up to let us through. He looked out of the window and at first refused to let us pass until daylight. We firmly told him that we would certainly unhang the gate and pass through without paying the toll. This fetched the old man down, with his long coat, knitted night-cap, with horn lantern in his hand. He opened the gate and told us, ‘You Burtons ought to be poisoned for breaking a man’s rest.’ A lot we cared for his curses. Fairly on the road, we were as happy as sandboys. Having delivered the goods, and fairly on the way home, we stopped at the Jamaica Inn, where the old mail-coaches used to change their horses, to feed our horse, not forgetting ourselves. After giving old Dapper his feed of oats, we went into the inn kitchen, where we ordered a hot meal. The landlady asked, ‘What would you like?’ She suggested a hot squab pie, which she took out of a huge kitchen range well loaded with burning turf, the odour of which increased our appetite considerably. We polished off the pie and pocketed the crust to eat on the moors when homeward bound.”
The Jamaica Inn is in the midst of the Bodmin Moors. In the time of the mail-coaches from London by Exeter to Falmouth it was a house of great repute. But when the trains ran, and coaches were given up, it fell from its high estate, was converted into a temperance house, was far from clean, harboured innumerable fleas, and did little business. Of late it has entirely recovered its credit. It stands nine hundred feet above the sea. There are now there at Bolventor a church and a school. A bleak, wind-swept moor all about it. Dozmare Pool, haunted by Tregeagle, is near by—and in June the meadows around are a sheet of gold from the buttercups. But to return to John Burton’s reminiscences.
“When the landlady came in and saw that we had finished the pie, she looked with amazement towards us.
“’Why, drat you boys, whativer have ‘ee done with the pie?’
“’Why, ate’n, missus. Do’y think us called the horse in to help us, or what?’
“’No,’ she smartly replied, ‘I should ‘a thawt you had the Bodmunt Murlicha (Militia) here to help ‘ee out. I never seed such gluttons in my life.’
“When we asked what we had got to pay, she said, ‘Sixpunce for the crist, threepunce for the suitt, ninepunce for the gibblets, and eightpunce for apples, onions, spice, currants and sugar, and fourpunce for baking ‘un; two dishes of tay, tuppunce; that’ll be two and eightpunce altogether, boys.’
“’All right, missus, here’s the posh.’
“She asked us out of bravado if we could eat any more. We said, ‘Yes, we could do with some Christmas cake.’
“She politely told us that she shouldn’t cut the Christmas cake until the next day. ‘But you can have some zeedy biscays, if you like.’
“’All right.’ And in she brought them, which we also polished off. Afterwards she demanded fourpence for them.
“’All right, missus, the fourpunce charged for baking the pie will pay for the biscuits, so us’ll cry quits,’ which joke the old woman swallowed with a good laugh.”
John Burton proceeds to describe the Christmas merry-making at the inn that night. Jamaica Inn had not then become a temperance hotel. The moormen and farmers came in, the great fire glowed like a furnace. The wind sobbed without, and piped in at the casement—”the souls on the wind,” as it was said, the spirits of unbaptized babes wailing at the windowpane, seeing the fire within, and condemned to wander on the cold blast without.
To the red fire, and to the plentiful libations, songs were sung, among others that very favourite ballad of the “Highwayman”—
I went to London both blythe and gay,My time I squandered in dice and play,Until my funds they fell full low,And on the highway I was forced to go.
Then after an account of how he robbed Lord Mansfield and Lady Golding, of Portman Square—
I shut the door, bade all good night,And rambled to my heart’s delight.
After a career of riot and robbery, the Highwayman at length falls into the toils of Sir John Fielding, who was the first magistrate to take sharp and decisive measures against these pests of society. Then the ballad ends:—
When I am dead, borne to my grave,A gallant funeral may I have;Six highwaymen to carry me,With good broadswords and sweet liberty.
Six blooming maidens to bear my pall;Give them white gloves and pink ribbons all;And when I’m dead they’ll say the truth,I was a wild and a wicked youth.
One of the local characters who was present on that Christmas Eve was Billy Peppermint. As he was overcome with drink, the young Burtons conveyed him from the Jamaica Inn about ten miles, and then turned him out of their conveyance, and propped him up against the railings of a house in Bodmin, as he was quite unable to sustain himself.
That night the carol singers were making their round, and as they came near they piped forth: “When shepherds watched their flocks by night, all seated on the ground, an angel of the Lord appeared, and——”
Whereon Billy roared forth—
When I am dead they’ll say the truth,I was a wild and a wicked youth,
and rolled over and fell prostrate on the ground.
In 1857 an event occurred which altered the direction of John Burton’s activities.
He had been sent along with one of his father’s hawkers named Paul Mewton with a crate of china on his head to S. Columb. On their way they called at Porth, and there Paul complained that he was not well, whereupon a Mr. Stephens, with whom they were doing business, produced a case of spirits and gave first Paul and then John Burton each a glass of very strong grog. Paul could stand it, but not so John, and as he was carrying his basket of “cloam” over a stile he lost his balance, and away went the crate and all its contents, which were shivered to atoms.
This was too much for Mr. Joseph Burton, a rigid teetotaler, and he had words with his son on the immorality of touching fermented liquor, and above all on the consequences of a loss of many shillings’ worth of china.
The stile is still to be seen. On one side is inscribed, “Burton’s Stile, 1857”; on the other is a carving of a gin-bottle, a water-jug, and a glass, with the legend beneath, “The Fall of Man.”
This was the beginning of a series of altercations between John and his father, which led at last to John abandoning his parent, and in 1862 he set up in Falmouth on his own account with thirty shillings in his pocket. As Burton was wont to say of the world into which he had entered on his own account—
‘Tis a very good world for to live in,To lend, or to spend, or to give in;But to beg or to borrow, or get a man’s own,’Tis the very worst world that ever was known.
For some time he earned a living by hawking crockery about in Falmouth. Then, some sailors coming into the harbour brought with them some alligators. Burton spent his money on buying them, and then started out in quest of various herbalists, and disposed of the reptiles to them. A stuffed alligator hanging up in a shop was an object imposing on the imagination of patients.
In 1865 a number of Roman coins were found at Pennance Farm, in S. Budock, and Burton bought these, and then became an antiquary. At this time numerous vessels put in at Falmouth, and the sailors had brought with them parrots, apes, and all sorts of curiosities from foreign parts, and were prepared to sell them for very small sums. Burton bought as far as his profits would allow, and thus he became a curiosity dealer. He secured business premises in Market Street, and began to store them with odds and ends of every description. He rambled about in Cornwall, and his keen eye detected at once a bit of old china, a scrap of carved oak, an odd signboard, a piece of Chippendale furniture, a framed sampler, and he bought everywhere, and stocked his premises. As his business grew he advertised extensively, and gradually but surely built up an extensive business. In curiosities he became a very Whiteley. Any one who desired anything peculiar could apply to John Burton, and John Burton would supply it, if not a genuine antique, yet “made to order,” and indistinguishable from an antique. When there began to be a run on Bristol lustre ware, he was ready with a stock, which went off rapidly. He bought old muskets by the thousand, and sent them abroad to arm savage nations in Africa and Asia.
One day a Scotchman entered his shop and said to Burton, “I am looking out for a man who can sell me three sixpences for a shilling.”
“Then I am the man for you,” said Burton, and produced three defective sixpences.
“I’ll have another shilling’s worth,” said the Scotchman.
“Ah! then I cannot accommodate you; but I can do better—give you a bad shilling for a good one.”
On one occasion the curator of the Edinburgh Museum wrote down to him for the eleventh vertebra of the skeleton of a whale that he had, but which was wanting. By return of post Burton sent him up what he needed.
He had a marvellous memory—remembering all the multifarious items in his shop, though they were continually changing.
When the new Eddystone Lighthouse was erected, he wrote to Trinity House and offered £500 for Smeaton’s lighthouse that had been taken down. This roused a storm of indignation in Plymouth, and ended in that town securing it for £1600, to be erected on the Hoe.
The town of Penryn possessed its old stocks, bearing date 1673. These he bought for £2, and sold them to a Devizes antiquary for a large sum. Then he purchased a haunted house—Trevethan Hall, in Falmouth—but as the ghost could not be turned into money, he pulled the house down and built on its site Mount Edgcumbe Terrace.
During many years a stream of tourists, walking, bicycling, motoring, has circulated round Cornwall, starting from Bideford, careering to the Land’s End, and returning by the south coast to Plymouth, and hardly a tourist thought of visiting Falmouth without going to Burton’s Curiosity Shop and making a purchase there. Indeed, he and his shop were some of the sights of Cornwall. He had by nature great ready wit, and a bluntness of manner which he cultivated, and which gave poignancy to dealings with him. But his bluntness, which was part of the stock-in-trade, was not infrequently carried too far, and became impertinence. He had a real love for his genuine curios, and parted with them reluctantly; and this he allowed to be seen. In this he was wholly unlike the ordinary dealer who presses his wares on the hesitating purchaser. When the present King, then Prince of Wales, visited Falmouth in 1887, the Prince having a cold sent Mr. Cavendish Bentinck to the Curiosity Shop to request that Mr. Burton would send a collection of what was most interesting in his shop for the Prince’s inspection. Upon this he addressed the following letter to the Prince:—
“RESPECTED ALBERT EDWARD.—I much regret to find you are indisposed. If I were to fetch to Kerrisvean a Pickford’s wagon-load of samples it would be utterly impossible to convey the remotest idea of my ponderous conglomeration of curios; but if I could prevail upon Your Royal Highness to go through my shanty, I would give you local wit and humour which would throw you into a state of laughter, and there is every probability it would counteract your cold.—Yours until we meet in the next hotel,
This, which he doubtless thought very smart, was mere insolence. In fact, he had not a large store of “local wit and humour,” and mistook rudeness for fun. But he was often encouraged in this. A lady once entered his shop and said, “You’ve a rum lot of stuff here, old boy; how much do you ask for that pair of vases?”
“Six guineas.”
“I’ll give you five, old fellow.”
“Then, old girl, they are yours. Where shall I send them, and to whom?”
“To the Duchess of ——.”
“Oh! I beg Your Grace’s pardon; I have been too familiar.”
“Not at all. You treated me as I have treated you.”
John Burton was an abstemious man, and believed that by moderate diet and moderation in drinking he would—and any man would—live to the age of a hundred. He had framed for himself a code of rules to ensure a long life.
- Eight hours’ sleep and that on your right side, and sleep with the bedroom window open. Fresh air is essential.
- Do not have your bedstead against the wall, so that the air may circulate about you freely.
- Take a glass of hot water on rising, and a bath at blood temperature, and take exercise before breakfast.
- Eat little meat and see that it be well cooked, and be careful to eat plenty of fat.
- Take plenty of daily exercise in the open air.
- Have no pet animals in your living-room.
- Avoid tea—the tannin turns meat to leather and spoils digestion, but take little or no intoxicant.
- Keep guard against man’s three enemies, the three D’s—Damp, Drains, and impure Drinking water.
- Change of occupation, and frequent, if short, holidays.
- Eat plenty of fruit and vegetables.
- Keep your temper, and keep a cheery mind.
- Limit your ambition to what you can do.
But, notwithstanding these rules, John Burton did not live to a great age. He died of a painful internal disease on May 28th, 1907. He had eight children by his wife. One son, John, has a large earthenware establishment in Falmouth; another—the image of his father in face—carries on the “Old Curiosity Shop.”