Early Years
Parkes was born in Canley, Warwickshire (now a suburb of Coventry), England and christened in the nearby village of Stoneleigh. His father, Thomas Parkes, was a small-scale tenant farmer. Of his mother, little is known, although when she died in 1842, Parkes would say of her that he felt as if a portion of this world's beauty was lost to him forever. He received little schooling, and at an early age was working on a rope-walk for four pence a day. His next work was in a brickyard, and later on he tells us he "was breaking stones on the Queen's highway with hardly enough clothing to protect me from the cold". He was then apprenticed to John Holding, a bone and ivory turner at Birmingham, and probably about the year 1832 joined the Birmingham political union. Between that year and 1838 he was associated with the political movements that were then endeavouring to better the conditions endured by the working classes.
He was steadily educating himself, too, by reading assiduously, including the works of the British poets. In 1835, he addressed some verses, afterwards included in his first volume of poems, to Clarinda Varney, the daughter of a local butler. On 11 July 1836 he married Clarinda Varney and went to live in a single room. Parkes commenced business on his own account in Birmingham and had a bitter struggle to make ends meet.
Read more about this topic: Henry Parkes
Famous quotes containing the words early years, early and/or years:
“Even today . . . experts, usually male, tell women how to be mothers and warn them that they should not have children if they have any intention of leaving their side in their early years. . . . Children don’t need parents’ full-time attendance or attention at any stage of their development. Many people will help take care of their needs, depending on who their parents are and how they chose to fulfill their roles.”
—Stella Chess (20th century)
“Long before I wrote stories, I listened for stories. Listening for them is something more acute than listening to them. I suppose it’s an early form of participation in what goes on. Listening children know stories are there. When their elders sit and begin, children are just waiting and hoping for one to come out, like a mouse from its hole.”
—Eudora Welty (b. 1909)
“I had lived over twenty years without the legal right to be alone one hour M to have the exclusive use of one foot of space M to receive an unopened letter, or to preserve a line of manuscript “from sharp and sly inspection.””
—Jane Grey Swisshelm (1815–1884)