Yorkshire Almanac Painter Joseph Farington feels overcharged by his Ripon landlord

7 September 1801: Painter Joseph Farington feels overcharged by his Ripon landlord

Joseph Farington. 1923. The Farington Diary, Vol. 1 (July 13, 1793, to August 24, 1802). Ed. James Greig. London: Hutchinson and Co. Get it:

Unedited excerpt

If an excerpt is used in the book, it will be shorter, edited and, where applicable, translated.

September 7.—On settling the Bill we found Mr. Fairgray, the Landlord had charged us 3s. each for each days Dinner which being more than we understood to be customary, we remonstrated with him upon it, but He said, it was in consequence of our eating no Suppers otherways He shd. have charged only 2s 6d.—He surprised us by saying He pays for grouse 8 shillings a brace.—He told us He had been waiter at the Green dragon at Harrogate,—that the Landlord paid 365 guineas for the House including 40 acres of Land,—that in the Season for Company coming the receipts were {60 a day & upwards.—He said for His Inn at Ripon He pays 200 guineas a year.—After some conversation we parted in good humour having paid him his demand. At Ripon there are 3 Banks, small as the townis. I enquired who were the Bankers & was told that the most substantial of them is esteemed to be worth abt. £700 a year.

Order the book:

Subscribe to the free daily email:

To facilitate reading, the spelling and punctuation of elderly excerpts have generally been modernised, and distracting excision scars concealed. My selections, translations, and editions are copyright.

Comment

Something to say? Get in touch

Comment

Something to say? Get in touch

6 December 1794: London painter Joseph Farington gets gossip from a pupil about colleague William Hodges’ visit to Walter Fawkes at Farnley Hall, some years before Fawkes met Turner

20 June 1795: The London painter Joseph Farington hears from a solicitor the details of the slavery-financed will of Edwin Lascelles, 1st Baron Harewood and builder of Harewood House

27 August 1801: The London painter Joseph Farington reconnoitres Leeds’s public cultural facilities

29 August 1801: Painter Joseph Farington visits Harewood House

7 September 1801: Painter Joseph Farington hears about corn speculation and the price of day labour from an intelligent farmer at Kirkbymoorside

8 September 1801: Painter Joseph Farington hears of food price inflation at Catterick Bridge

20 January 1536: Thomas Cromwell’s dissolvers of monasteries, Richard Layton and Thomas Legh, report allegations of whoring and theft by William Thirsk, Abbot of Fountains

7 February 2018: On Twitter, Terry Robinson of Fleetwood (Lancs) discovers the true origin of Yorkshire tea

29 June 1876: Uplifted, Harrogate parish church awaits the monstrous £1,800 Schulze organ from Thomas Stuart Kennedy’s Meanwood Towers, Leeds

Order the book:

Subscribe to the free daily email:

Comment

The organ was still too big for the church, and – “following a dispute with the vicar” – went to St Bartholomew’s Church, Armley in 1879. Here is coverage of one of its early outings there (Leeds Mercury 1879/08/30).

The “enormous price” of £1.8K (£175K in July 2023) is from a normally reliable source (Wangemann 1895). However, the “specially-built iron organ-house” seems wrong – all other sources say it was wooden – and the date of removal to Harrogate given is actually that to Armley.

Why the concentration of Schulze organs in northern England? I guess new wealth required new organs, and there was organ envy between local capitalists. The Musical Standard alludes to Kennedy (my emphasis) at the end of this piece about an even more expensive organ:

M. Cavaillé Coll, the eminent organ builder at Paris, has just completed a magnificent chamber organ for Mr. Hopwood, of Bracewell, near Leeds. The instrument has been opened at the factory of the builder, and will, we understand, be shortly removed to its destination. The proportions of the organ may be judged from the fact that its cost is about £3,000. There is a 32-feet pipe on the pedals. The total number of pipes in the organ is 2,252 distributed over forty-four registers. The case is of oak, of Gothic design, elaborately carved. There appears to be considerable rivalry among the private gentlemen of Leeds for the possession of first-class organs. Some time ago we stated that Herr Schulze was engaged in the erection of a large organ for one of the local bankers (Musical Standard 1870/04/18).

But a huge organ strikes me as a minivan in the mad discussion of minivan vs SUV psychology (who needs either?):

Sport utility buyers tend to be more restless, more sybaritic, less social people who are “self-oriented,” to use the automakers’ words, and who have strong conscious or subconscious fears of crime. Minivan buyers tend to be more self-confident and more “other-oriented” – more involved with family, friends and their communities (Bradsher 2000/07/17).

Speaking of Dr Freud, Kennedy was also proud of his clock.

Clifford Allbutt recounts the organ’s genesis:

In the year 1866 I was climbing in Switzerland with my old friend and frequent travelling companion, Mr. T. S. Kennedy, of Meanwood, near Leeds. He had a great love for Bach and the organ, and had often heard us talking about Schulze. At the end of a month’s beautiful weather we had climbed to our heart’s content, and Christian and Ulrich Aimer had to leave us for other engagements.

While at breakfast we were talking of our plans. Kennedy suddenly exclaimed, “Let us go and see Schulze”. The proposal was promptly adopted; we paid our bills and set out by rail for Coburg, whence we took a carriage to Paulinzelle. At that time Pugin the younger was building a house for Mr. Kennedy at Meanwood. Kennedy was himself no performer, but as Mrs. Kennedy was a good musician and pianist, and was taking up organ-playing with enthusiasm and success, it had been decided that an organ should be built for the new home.

In the same lovely weather we drove through the uplands and woodlands of Thuringia till we arrived on a certain hill-top whence we looked down upon a village in a dale not very far from Weimar; a little way out of the village beside a stream running down from a glen in the Schwarzburg we saw the organ works of the brothers Schulze, whose father had been an organ builder there before them. In a rustic building with a small water-wheel, little more than a roomy carpenter’s shop, we were fortunate enough to find the artist at home; he had just returned from the completion of the large organ at Soest, in Westphalia. The personal staff seemed to consist only of Edmund himself, his brother, the carpenter and cabinet-maker, a labourer or two, and a clever, gamesome, and rather uncanny black poodle who became the father of a line of black poodles which afterwards under such names as Styx, Pluto, Charon, and so forth, was known long and well in our village. Edmund was a little below middle height, a slightly built, iron-grey, rather pallid man with the slight stoop that one often sees in craftsmen. He was also rather flat-chested, and his aspect suggested a liability to the pulmonary disease which later brought his beneficent life to a premature end.

The weather was still delightful, and we passed an idyllic two days with this simple-hearted and gifted family in their beautiful home; some hours we spent with them on the hills, some in the humming shop by the little beck, but all in the spirit of the organ and its great masters. Of these, Edmund Schulze was one of the chief as an organ creator. He always denied any skill as an organist, and would never do more than wander prettily on the keys to test his pipes and buildup, and this usually when out of hearing. In the shop was the carcase and some of the flue work for an order in hand. On this frame and amid its pipes he would chat with us by the hour; but the desired secret, the secret of genius, the magical touch of mind, ear, and finger, remained incommunicable.

In these happy hours decisions were soon made. Schulze & Sons were to build a four-manual organ for Meanwood, but on a scale too big for the house. Pugin the younger was therefore to build a tabernacle for the organ near by. The specification and other conditions were practically settled; Schulze was to have a free hand, except as regarded the reeds. Kennedy wished to have the flue-work from Schulze, but the reeds from Cavaille-Coll, and to this condition Schulze neither made nor signified any objection whatever. He spoke with admiration of Cavaille-Coll’s work, and quite understood Kennedy’s desire to get the reeds from him. So we were to see Cavaille-Coll in Paris on the way back.

(Rolleston 1929)

Allbutt on the organ’s inauguration by Samuel Sebastian Wesley.

Something to say? Get in touch