Self Help by Samuel Smiles (desktop ebook reader txt) 📖

>order to guard it against rust, I was accustomed to rub over the

graven parts with oil. But on examining the plate after one of

such intervals, I found that the oil had become a dark sticky

substance extremely difficult to get out. I tried to pick it out

with a needle, but found that it would almost take as much time as

to engrave the parts afresh. I was in great despair at this, but

at length hit upon the expedient of boiling it in water containing

soda, and afterwards rubbing the engraved parts with a tooth-brush;

and to my delight found the plan succeeded perfectly. My greatest

difficulties now over, patience and perseverance were all that were

needed to bring my labours to a successful issue. I had neither

advice nor assistance from any one in finishing the plate. If,

therefore, the work possess any merit, I can claim it as my own;

and if in its accomplishment I have contributed to show what can be

done by persevering industry and determination, it is all the

honour I wish to lay claim to.”

 

It would be beside our purpose to enter upon any criticism of “The

Forge” as an engraving; its merits having been already fully

recognised by the art journals. The execution of the work occupied

Sharples’s leisure evening hours during a period of five years; and

it was only when he took the plate to the printer that he for the

first time saw an engraved plate produced by any other man. To

this unvarnished picture of industry and genius, we add one other

trait, and it is a domestic one. “I have been married seven

years,” says he, “and during that time my greatest pleasure, after

I have finished my daily labour at the foundry, has been to resume

my pencil or graver, frequently until a late hour of the evening,

my wife meanwhile sitting by my side and reading to me from some

interesting book,”—a simple but beautiful testimony to the

thorough common sense as well as the genuine right-heartedness of

this most interesting and deserving workman.

 

The same industry and application which we have found to be

necessary in order to acquire excellence in painting and sculpture,

are equally required in the sister art of music—the one being the

poetry of form and colour, the other of the sounds of nature.

Handel was an indefatigable and constant worker; he was never cast

down by defeat, but his energy seemed to increase the more that

adversity struck him. When a prey to his mortifications as an

insolvent debtor, he did not give way for a moment, but in one year

produced his ‘Saul,’ ‘Israel,’ the music for Dryden’s ‘Ode,’ his

‘Twelve Grand Concertos,’ and the opera of ‘Jupiter in Argos,’

among the finest of his works. As his biographer says of him, “He

braved everything, and, by his unaided self, accomplished the work

of twelve men.”

 

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,’ ‘Prophete,’ 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. {22}

 

Such is a brief outline of the career of a self-taught musician,

whose life affords but another illustration of the power