Introducing Ignatius Sancho

According to his contemporary biographer, Joseph Jekyll, Sancho was born circa 1729 aboard a slave ship crossing the Middle Passage.  His mother died of disease, and his father committed suicide so that he would not have to endure slavery.  Sancho was purchased by three sisters living in Greenwich, who, as he wrote in a 1766 letter, “judged ignorance the best and only security for obedience”; however, their neighbor, the Duke of Montagu, took a fancy to the boy and saw that he learned reading, writing, and music.  He ran away from the sisters and joined the Montagu household, where he was a trusted valet.  When the Duchess of Montagu died, she bequeathed him a year’s salary and an annuity of about thirty pounds.

Sancho had a wild spell during his youth.  His biographer claims he spent his last shilling so that he could watch a performance of Shakespeare’s Richard III, starring David Garrick. (Remember the figurine of David Garrick as Richard III in Bundle 1, “Gallery of Readers”?)

Sancho loved the theater!  Had he not suffered from a speech impediment, he would have pursued an acting career.  Instead, he and his wife, Anne Osborne, opened a grocery store in London.  Writing as he prepared to open shop in 1773, he enthused: “I verily think the happiest part of my life is to come–soap, starch, and blue [detergent], with raisins, figs, &c.–we shall cut a respectable figure–in our printed cards.”  Here’s one of those printed cards:

In addition to running a successful business, he composed music, two plays, and a treatise on musical theory.  Though his plays and treatise do not survive, his music does:

This chapter concludes with a performance of some of his pieces.

Sancho was also a prolific letter writer, whose correspondence with a vast network of public figures, was published in 1782, two years following his death, prefaced by Jekyll’s short biography.  Sancho’s letters provide a rare glimpse into the life of a prosperous black Englishman of the eighteenth century, a successful businessman, a passionate abolitionist, a lover of music and literature, a doting family man, and a keen observer of his time.

A Sampling from Sancho’s Letters:

Sancho was proud of his African descent and repeatedly emphasized that he was a black man.  In this page from some of the only surviving handwritten letters, he declares: “I am sir an Affrican–with two ffs–if you please-& proud am I to be of a country that knows no politicians–nor lawyers…nor Thieves.”

The page below captures the playfulness of Sancho’s writing, with his signature splattering of dashes all through the page.  Sancho’s writing is full of digressions–rather like the writing of Lawrence Sterne, the novelist he so admired.  At the bottom of the page we see him nattering his compliments and expressing his hope only to be distracted by an ink blot (which the publisher duly reproduces) “confound the ink blot! what a blot! Now don’t you dare suppose I was in fault–no, Sir, the pen was diabled–the paper worse, there was concatenation” and on he goes. What is “diabled”? One of Sancho’s many neologisms!  This one from the French word for devil (diable).

Sancho’s best known correspondence was with novelist Lawrence Sterne, whom he urged in 1766 to “give half an hours attention to slavery,” confident that “that subject handled in your own manner, would ease the Yoke of many perhaps occasion a reformation throughout our Islands.”  Sterne responded within the week, sharing the story of the “poor negro-girl” that he incorporated into the final volume of Tristram Shandy and deploring the state of affairs that make it “no uncommon thing … for one half of the world to use the other half of it like brutes, and then endeavor t make ’em so.”

Family Man

One thing that comes through loud and clear from even a casual perusal of Sancho’s letters is his deep and abiding love for his wife and children.  Practically every one of his letters contains some reference to Mrs. Sancho–“Mrs. Sancho sends her best wishes”; “Mrs. Sancho says little–but her moistened eye expresses–that she feels your friendship”; “Mrs. Sancho desires her thanks may be joined with mine.”  To one friend he writes: “Mrs. Sancho would send you some tamarinds [laxatives];–I do not know her reasons;–as I hate contentions, I contradicted not–but shrewdly suspects she thinks you want cooling.”

The following is one of many delightful tributes to friendship and family.

Several years later, Sancho frets as his wife nears the end of a difficult pregnancy.  To one friend he writes on October 4:

On October 16: “Mrs. Sancho smiles in the pains which it has pleased Providence to try her with–and her belief in a better existence is her cordial drop.”  And two days later: “pray God to send my dear Mrs. Sancho safe down and happily up–she makes the chief ingredient of my felicity–whenever my good friend marries–I hope he will find it the same with him.”

Following the birth, on October 20, he heaves a great sigh of relief:

Mentor

To young Jack Wingrave (1757-97), Sancho wrote in 1768:

To another youth:

The keys to success?

Study.  Generosity.  Industry.  Honesty.  Observation.  Kindness.

Yes.

Composer

Sancho’s music performed: