Page 22 - James Ward - A Lioness with a Heron

Ward was born in 1769, the third of five children, to James Ward, Sr., a Southwark grocery
manager, and his wife Rachael. Like his elder brother William, James was sent to Merchant
Taylors’ School, but financial difficulties rising in part from his father’s alcoholism cut
short his education. According to Ward, at the age of six he was taken out of school before he had even
learned to read and consigned to a dank cellar where he was put to washing cider bottles in an effort to
help support his family.16 Given the well-documented talent Ward displayed in his later life for
hyperbole and aggressive self-pity, this is probably a slight exaggeration. However, it is true that the
young James grew up a very different child from his elder brother. Denied the education and security
that marked William’s formative years, throughout his entire life Ward retained a bitter sadness over
his lost childhood. However, one very positive thing arose out of this miserable boyhood, which was
to directly inform Ward’s unique genius as an artist. In the absence of both parents and school, the boy
became a ferocious autodidact, eventually teaching himself to read, and later to write, with only minimal
instruction. Consequently, Ward’s intellect and personality were marked by the eccentric intensity of
the self-taught, combined with a fascination for the supernatural. He claimed that as a child he had
access to only a handful of books, consisting of Don Quixote, Pilgrim’s Progress, and the Bible (these
being the only books that remained unsold in the Ward home). While it is true that as an adult Ward
was often reputed to be humourless, superstitious and rigidly religious, literature can only account for
part of his uncompromising artistic temperament; the other part was influenced by his love for and
fascination with the natural world, particularly animals.

In an anecdote about his first trip outside the city as a small boy, Ward described the deep joy and
wonder he felt upon first encountering animals in the countryside. En route to deliver cider in Kent,
Ward and the draymen he was with stayed overnight in a rural inn and, sometime before dawn, he
awoke to strange noises. The little boy, who at this time was no more than seven, ran out onto the
green opposite to investigate the sound and was immediately surrounded by its source: a gaggle of
large, hissing geese. Delighted by the attention of the strange birds, Ward went to play with them;
luckily, the innkeeper saw the boy and snatched him to safety, much to his confusion and
disappointment.17 Here, again, one senses romantic license at work, but the reprieve these trips outside
London offered the boy from the toil, filth, hunger and violence of his childhood must have greatly
affected the young Ward.

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