Haydn, speaking of his art, said, “It consists in taking up a subject and pursuing it.” “Work,” said Mozart, “is my chief pleasure.” Beethoven’s favourite maxim was, “The barriers are not erected which can say to aspiring talents and industry, ‘Thus far and no farther.’” When Moscheles submitted his score of ‘Fidelio’ for the pianoforte to Beethoven, the latter found written at the bottom of the last page, “Finis, with God’s help.” Beethoven immediately wrote underneath, “O man! help thyself!” This was the motto of his artistic life. John Sebastian Bach said of himself, “I was industrious; whoever is equally sedulous, will be equally successful.” But there is no doubt that Bach was born with a passion for music, which formed the mainspring of his industry, and was the true secret of his success. When a mere youth, his elder brother, wishing to turn his abilities in another direction, destroyed a collection of studies which the young Sebastian, being denied candles, had copied by moonlight; proving the strong natural bent of the boy’s genius. Of Meyerbeer, Bayle thus wrote from Milan in 1820:—“He is a man of some talent, but no genius; he lives solitary, working fifteen hours a day at music.” Years passed, and Meyerbeer’s hard work fully brought out his genius, as displayed in his ‘Roberto,’ ‘Huguenots,’ ‘Prophète,’ and other works, confessedly amongst the greatest operas which have been produced in modern times.
Although musical composition is not an art in which Englishmen have as yet greatly distinguished themselves, their energies having for the most part taken other and more practical directions, we are not without native illustrations of the power of perseverance in this special pursuit. Arne was an upholsterer’s son, intended by his father for the legal profession; but his love of music was so great, that he could not be withheld from pursuing it. While engaged in an attorney’s office, his means were very limited, but, to gratify his tastes, he was accustomed to borrow a livery and go into the gallery of the Opera, then appropriated to domestics. Unknown to his father he made great progress with the violin, and the first knowledge his father had of the circumstance was when accidentally calling at the house of a neighbouring gentleman, to his surprise and consternation he found his son playing the leading instrument with a party of musicians. This incident decided the fate of Arne. His father offered no further opposition to his wishes; and the world thereby lost a lawyer, but gained a musician of much taste and delicacy of feeling, who added many valuable works to our stores of English music.
The career of the late William Jackson, author of ‘The Deliverance of Israel,’ an oratorio which has been successfully performed in the principal towns of his native county of York, furnishes an interesting illustration of the triumph of perseverance over difficulties in the pursuit of musical science. He was the son of a miller at Masham, a little town situated in the valley of the Yore, in the north-west corner of Yorkshire. Musical taste seems to have been hereditary in the family, for his father played the fife in the band of the Masham Volunteers, and was a singer in the parish choir. His grandfather also was leading singer and ringer at Masham Church; and one of the boy’s earliest musical treats was to be present at the bell pealing on Sunday mornings. During the service, his wonder was still more excited by the organist’s performance on the barrel-organ, the doors of which were thrown open behind to let the sound fully into the church, by which the stops, pipes, barrels, staples, keyboard, and jacks, were fully exposed, to the wonderment of the little boys sitting in the gallery behind, and to none more than our young musician. At eight years of age he began to play upon his father’s old fife, which, however, would not sound D; but his mother remedied the difficulty by buying for him a one-keyed flute; and shortly after, a gentleman of the neighbourhood presented him with a flute with four silver keys. As the boy made no progress with his “book learning,” being fonder of cricket, fives, and boxing, than of his school lessons—the village schoolmaster giving him up as “a bad job”—his parents sent him off to a school at Pateley Bridge. While there he found congenial society in a club of village choral singers at Brighouse Gate, and with them he learnt the sol-fa-ing gamut on the old English plan. He was thus well drilled in the reading of music, in which he soon became a proficient. His progress astonished the club, and he returned home full of musical ambition. He now learnt to play upon his father’s old piano, but with little melodious result; and he became eager to possess a finger-organ, but had no means of procuring one. About this time, a neighbouring parish clerk had purchased, for an insignificant sum, a small disabled barrel-organ, which had gone the circuit of the northern counties with a show. The clerk tried to revive the tones of the instrument, but failed; at last he bethought him that he would try the skill of young Jackson, who had succeeded in making some alterations and improvements in the hand-organ of the parish church. He accordingly brought it to the lad’s house in a donkey cart, and in a short time the instrument was repaired, and played over its old tunes again, greatly to the owner’s satisfaction.
The thought now haunted the youth that he could make a barrel-organ, and he determined to do so. His father and he set to work, and though without practice in carpentering, yet, by dint of hard labour and after many failures, they at last succeeded; and an organ was constructed which played ten tunes very decently, and the instrument was generally regarded as a marvel in the neighbourhood. Young Jackson was now frequently sent for to repair old church organs, and to put new music upon the barrels which he added to them. All this he accomplished to the satisfaction of his employers, after which he proceeded with the construction of a four-stop finger-organ, adapting to it the keys of an old harpsichord. This he learnt to play upon,—studying ‘Callcott’s Thorough Bass’ in the evening, and working at his trade of a miller during the day; occasionally also tramping about the country as a “cadger,” with an ass and a cart. During summer he worked in the fields, at turnip-time, hay-time, and harvest, but was never without the solace of music in his leisure evening hours. He next tried his hand at musical composition, and twelve of his anthems were shown to the late Mr. Camidge, of York, as “the production of a miller’s lad of fourteen.” Mr. Camidge was pleased with them, marked the objectionable passages, and returned them with the encouraging remark, that they did the youth great credit, and that he must “go on writing.”
A village band having been set on foot at Masham, young Jackson joined it, and was ultimately appointed leader. He played all the instruments by turns, and thus acquired a considerable practical knowledge of his art: he also composed numerous tunes for the band. A new finger-organ having been presented to the parish church, he was appointed the organist. He now gave up his employment as a journeyman miller, and commenced tallow-chandling, still employing his spare hours in the study of music. In 1839 he published his first anthem—‘For joy let fertile valleys sing;’ and in the following year he gained the first prize from the Huddersfield Glee Club, for his ‘Sisters of the Lea.’ His other anthem ‘God be merciful to us,’ and the 103rd Psalm, written for a double chorus and orchestra, are well known. In the midst of these minor works, Jackson proceeded with the composition of his oratorio,—‘The Deliverance of Israel from Babylon.’ His practice was, to jot down a sketch of the ideas as they presented themselves to his mind, and to write them out in score in the evenings, after he had left his work in the candle-shop. His oratorio was published in parts, in the course of 1844–5, and he published the last chorus on his twenty-ninth birthday. The work was exceedingly well received, and has been frequently performed with much success in the northern towns. Mr. Jackson eventually settled as a professor of music at Bradford, where he contributed in no small degree to the cultivation of the musical taste of that town and its neighbourhood. Some years since he had the honour of leading his fine company of Bradford choral singers before Her Majesty at Buckingham Palace; on which occasion, as well as at the Crystal Palace, some choral pieces of his composition, were performed with great effect. [201]
Such is a brief outline of the career of a self-taught musician, whose life affords but another illustration of the power of self-help, and the force of courage and industry in enabling a man to surmount and overcome early difficulties and obstructions of no ordinary kind.
CHAPTER VII.
Industry and the Peerage.
“He either fears his fate too much,
Or his deserts are small,
That dares not put it to the touch,
To gain or lose it all.”—Marquis of Montrose.“He hath put down the mighty from their seats; and exalted them of low degree.”—St. Luke.
We have already referred to some illustrious Commoners raised from humble to elevated positions by the power of application and industry; and we might point to even the Peerage itself as affording equally instructive examples. One reason why the Peerage of England has succeeded so well in holding its own, arises from the fact that, unlike the peerages of other countries, it has been fed, from time to time, by the best industrial blood of the country—the very “liver, heart, and brain of Britain.” Like the fabled Antæus, it has been invigorated and refreshed by touching its mother earth, and mingling with that most ancient order of nobility—the working order.
The blood of all men flows from equally remote sources; and though some are unable to trace their line directly beyond their grandfathers, all are nevertheless justified in placing at the head of their pedigree the great progenitors of the race, as Lord Chesterfield did when he wrote, “Adam de Stanhope—Eve de Stanhope.” No class is ever long stationary. The mighty fall, and the humble are exalted. New families take the place of the old, who disappear among the ranks of the common people. Burke’s ‘Vicissitudes of Families’ strikingly exhibit this rise and fall of families, and show that the misfortunes which overtake the rich and noble are greater in proportion than those which overwhelm the poor. This author points out that of the twenty-five barons selected to enforce the observance of Magna Charta, there is not now in the House of Peers a single male descendant. Civil wars and rebellions ruined many of the old nobility and dispersed their families. Yet their descendants in many cases survive, and are to be found among the ranks of the people. Fuller wrote in his ‘Worthies,’ that “some who justly hold the surnames of Bohuns, Mortimers, and Plantagenets, are hid in the heap of common men.” Thus Burke shows that two of the lineal descendants of the Earl of Kent, sixth son of Edward I., were discovered in a butcher and a toll-gatherer; that the great grandson of Margaret Plantagenet, daughter of the Duke of Clarance, sank to the condition of a cobbler at Newport, in Shropshire; and that among the lineal descendants of the Duke of Gloucester, son of Edward III., was the late sexton of St. George’s, Hanover Square. It is understood that the lineal descendant of Simon de Montfort, England’s premier baron, is a saddler in Tooley Street. One of the descendants of the “Proud Percys,” a claimant of the title of Duke of Northumberland, was a Dublin trunk-maker; and not many years since one of the claimants for the title of Earl of Perth presented himself in the person of a labourer in a Northumberland coal-pit. Hugh Miller, when working as a stone-mason near Edinburgh, was served by a hodman, who was one of the numerous claimants for the earldom of Crauford—all that was wanted to establish his claim being a missing marriage certificate; and while the work was going on, the cry resounded from the walls many times in the day, of—“John, Yearl Crauford, bring us anither hod o’lime.” One of Oliver Cromwell’s great grandsons was a grocer on Snow Hill, and others of his descendants died in great poverty. Many barons of proud names and titles have perished, like the sloth, upon their family tree, after eating up all the leaves; while others have been overtaken by adversities which they have been unable to retrieve, and sunk at last into poverty and obscurity. Such are the mutabilities of rank and fortune.