INNER QUADRANGLE, GLASGOW COLLEGE.
In the heart of old Glasgow city, not far from the cathedral of St. Mungo, which Knox with difficulty preserved from the fury of the Scotch iconoclasts, stands the venerable University, a curiously black and sombre building, more than 400 years old. Inside the entrance, on the right-hand side, is a stone staircase, guarded by fabulous beasts in stone. The buildings consist of several quadrangles; but there is not much regularity in their design, each part seeming to stand towards the other parts, in a state of independent crookedness and irregularity. There are turrets in the corners of the quadrangles,—turrets with peaked tops, like witches’ caps. In the inner quadrangle, entered from the left-hand side of the outer court, a workshop was found for our mechanician, in which he was securely established by the midsummer of 1757. The apartment appropriated to Watt by the professors is still to be seen in nearly the same rude state in which he left it. It is situated on the first floor of the range of building forming the north-west side of the inner quadrangle, immediately under the gallery of the Natural Philosophy class, with which it communicates. It is lighted by three windows, two of which open into the quadrangle, and the third, at the back, into the Professors’ court. There is a small closet in the corner of the room, where some students have cut their names in the plaster,—date “1713.” The access to the room used to be from the court by a spiral stone staircase; but that entrance is now closed. The apartment is only about twenty feet square; but it served Watt, as it has since served others, for high thinking and noble working.[66]
In addition to his workshop under the Natural Philosophy class, a shop for the sale of his instruments was also appropriated to Watt by the Professors. It formed the ground-floor of the house situated next to the Principal’s Gate, being part of the University Buildings, and was entered directly from the pavement of the High Street. It has been described to us, on the authority of Professor Fleming, as an old house, with a sort of arcade in front, supported on pillars. In making some alterations in the building the pillars were too much weakened, and the house, excepting the basement, had to be taken down. The shop occupied by Watt is the little tenement shown on the right hand of the following engraving; but the lower story of the building has since been altered and repaired, and is now totally different from what it was in Watt’s time.
ISOMETRIC VIEW OF GLASGOW COLLEGE, 1693, FROM SLEYER’S ‘THEATRUM SCOTIÆ.’[67]
Though his wants were few, and he lived on humble fare, Watt found it very difficult to earn a subsistence by his trade. His father sent him remittances from time to time; but the old man had suffered serious losses in his own business, and had become much less able to help his son with money. After a year’s trial, Watt wrote to his father, that “unless it be the Hadley’s instruments there is little to be got by it, as at most other jobs I am obliged to do the most of them myself; and, as it is impossible for one person to be expert at everything, they often cost me more time than they should do.” Of the quadrants, he could make three in a week, with the help of a lad; but the profit upon the three was not more than 40s. The customers for these were very few in number, as seagoing ships with their captains could not yet reach Glasgow.[68]
Failing sufficient customers for his instruments, Watt sent those which he had made to Port Glasgow and Greenock, where his father helped him to dispose of them. He also bethought him of taking a journey to Liverpool and London, for the purpose of obtaining orders for instruments; though, for some reason or other—most probably because he was averse to “pushing,” and detested the chaffering of trade—his contemplated journey was not undertaken. He therefore continued to execute only such orders as came to him, so that his business remained very small. He began to fear that he must give up the trade that would not keep him, and he wrote to his father: “If this business does not succeed, I must fall into some other.” To eke out his income, he took to map and chart selling, and, amongst other things, offered for sale the Map of the River Clyde,[69] originally surveyed by his uncle John.
It is well for the world at large that Watt’s maps and quadrants remained on his hands unsold. The most untoward circumstances in life have often the happiest results. It is not Fortune that is blind, but man. Had his instrument-making business prospered, Watt might have become known as a first-class maker of quadrants, but not as the inventor of the condensing steam-engine. It was because his own special business failed that he was driven to betake himself to other pursuits, and eventually to prosecute the invention on which his fame mainly rests. At first he employed part of his leisure in making chemical and other experiments; but as these yielded him no returns in the shape of money, he was under the necessity of making some sort of article that was in demand, and for which he could find customers. Although he had no ear for music, and scarcely knew one note from another, he followed the example of the old spectacle-maker, his first master, in making fiddles, flutes, and guitars, which met with a readier sale than his quadrants. These articles were what artists call “pot-boilers,” and kept him in funds until a maintenance could be earned by higher-class work. We are informed, through a lady at Glasgow, that her father bought a flute from Watt, who said to him, in selling it: “Woe be to ye, Tam, if you’re no guid luck; for this is the first I’ve sold!”
His friend Dr. Black, probably to furnish him with some profitable employment, asked Watt to make a barrel-organ for him, which he at once proceeded to construct. Watt was not the man to refuse work of any kind requiring the exercise of constructive skill. He first carefully studied the principles of harmony,—making science, in a measure, the substitute for want of ear,[70] and took for his guide the profound but obscure work on ‘Harmonics,’ published by Dr. R. Smith of Cambridge. He next made a model of the instrument; after which he constructed the organ, which, when finished, was considered a great success. About the same time the office-bearers of a Mason’s Lodge in Glasgow sent to ask him if he would undertake to build for them a finger-organ. As he had successfully repaired an instrument of the same kind, besides making the barrel-organ, he readily accepted the order. Watt was always, as he said, dissatisfied with other people’s work, as well as his own; and this habit of his mind made him study to improve upon whatever came before him. Thus, in the process of building this organ, he devised a number of novel expedients, such as a sustained monochord, indicators and regulators of the strength of the blast, means of tuning the instrument according to any system of temperament, with sundry contrivances for improving the efficiency of the stops. The qualities of the organ when finished are said to have elicited the surprise and admiration of musicians.[71]