The Coachboy's Portrait
In the country house of Erddig, near Wrexham hangs the portrait of a servant. His identity is disputed, but he is thought to be a member of the household of John Mellor, a London-based lawyer who was the owner of the house in the early Eighteenth Century.
The portrait (right, copyright The National Trust, Erddig) shows a black man usually known as "John Mellor's Coachboy".
This information comes from the poem that accompanies the portrait. The poem was written by Philip Yorke, who owned Erddig in the later Eighteenth Century. He commissioned a series of portraits of the servants of the house. Recent analysis dates the clothing that the man is wearing to Yorke's time rather than Mellor's.
The man may have been born a slave, but it is not known how he came to be in Mellor's household. Mellor was not involved in the slave trade and the servant was paid. In the 1719 accounts a man listed only as "the black" is paid £5 (the equivalent of nearly £600 today).
He may also have been a Christian. In 1721 the rector of nearby Marchwiel mentions a man referred to only as "his Black" (referring to Mellor's brother-in-law), being sent to him for christening. But is it the same man? Indeed, did he have a name - John Hanby?
It is now thought that the poem in the top right of the portrait may be a later addition by Philip Yorke. Investigation has uncovered that there may be a name hidden behind the added poem - the name John Hanby. Is that our man? Unless more information is discovered in some forgotten archive, we may never know.
Yorke's poem in the portrait reads:
Of the Condition of this Negre
Our information is but megre;
However here, he was a dweller,
And blew the horn for Master Meller.
Here, too he dy'd, but when or how,
Can scarcely be remember'd now,
But that to Marchwiel he was sent,
And had good Christian interment.
Pray Heav'n may stand his present friend,
Where black, or white, distinctions.end.
For sure on this side of the grave,
They are too strong, tw'ixt Lord & Slave.
Here also liv'd a dingy brother,
Who play'd together with the other,
But, of him, yet longer rotten,
Every particular's forgotten,
Save that like Tweedle-Tum & dee,
These but in notes, could e'er agree,
In all things else, as they do tell ye,
We're just like Handel and Corelli.
O had it been in their life's course
T'have met with Massa Wilberforce,
They wou'd in this alone, have join'd,
And been together of a mind,
Have raised their Horns to one high tune,
And blown his Merits, to the Moon.
