"Les grands Dieux savent seuls si l'âme est immortelle, Mais le juste travaille à leur oeuvre éternelle."
My birthplace.--My father and mother.--Circumstances of their marriage.--Their short married life.--Birth of their child.--Death of my mother.--Her character and habits.--My father as a widower.--Dulness of his life.--Its degradation.
I was born at Laneside near Shaw, which is now a manufacturing town of some importance about two miles from Oldham in Lancashire, and about four miles from Rochdale in the same county.
Laneside is a small estate with some houses and a little cotton-mill upon it, which belonged to my maternal grandfather. The house is of stone, with a roof of stone slate such as is usual in those parts, and it faces the road, from which it is separated by a little enclosure, that may be called a garden if you will. When I was a child, there were two or three poplar trees in that enclosure before the house; but trees do not prosper there, and now there is probably not one on the whole estate. One end of the house (which is rather long for its height and depth) abuts against the hill, and close behind it is the cotton-mill which my grandfather worked, with no great profit to himself or advantage to his descendants. I have mentioned a road that passes the house; it is steep, narrow, and inconvenient. It leads up to an elevated tract of the most dreary country that can be imagined, but there are one or two fields on the Laneside estate, above the stone-quarry, from which there is a good view in the direction of Rochdale.
I never knew my grandfather Cocker, but have heard that he was a lively and vigorous man, who enjoyed life very heartily in his way. He married a Miss Crompton, who had a little property and was descended from the De Cromptons of Crompton Hall. I am not aware that she had any family pride, but, like most people in that neighborhood, she had a great appreciation of the value of money, and when she was left alone with her daughter, in consequence of Philip Cocker's premature death, she was more inclined to favor wealthy than impecunious suitors. My father had come to Shaw as a young attorney some time before he asked for Anne Cocker in marriage. He had very little to recommend him except a fine person, great physical strength, and fifteen quarterings. He had a reputation for rather dissolute habits, was a good horseman, an excellent shot, looked very well in a ball-room, and these, I believe, were all his advantages, save an unhappy faculty for shining in such masculine company as he could find in a Lancashire village in the days of George IV. Money he had none, except what he earned in his profession, at one time rather a good income.