Hopkins and Rimbault book

[Colin Pykett]

My wife has bought me an 1870 edition of Hopkins and Rimbault's well known book on organs.  I have been looking for this edition for a long time because, among other things, it's the first of theirs which describes early Victorian electric actions (pre-Hope-Jones) and it's nice to have the original material to hand.

It's interesting in another and quite unexpected way as well.  On the flyleaf one can just discern the name and address of the original owner.  Written in almost completely faded but beautiful copper plate handwriting, he was "Matthew Dickie Junior, Brook House, Offerton Road, Stockport near Manchester, December 1871".  (Put in quotes because that's what he wrote).   Though very neat, the writing is large and has a slightly laboured and juvenile appearance about it.  This suggests he was not much more than a lad at the time and that he probably received the book as a Christmas present, but twenty years or so later he was apparently a wealthy mill owner (Litton Mill) which he perhaps inherited from his father.  Readily-available records have a lot to say about him from about that time onwards, yet he seems to have stuck with his "Matthew Dickie, Junior" appellation for a long time, even using it as his telegraphic address.

I find provenance such as this adds immeasurably to the fascination of the actual books themselves, even though they are purchased for their contents rather than simply as collectors' items.  In this case, as Matthew the mill owner was possibly (probably?) a local organist, I wonder whether he took a trip across the Mersey c. 1890 when Hope-Jones's first and famous organ at St John's, Birkenhead was bruited abroad in the Stockport area?  As the number who flocked to see it was apparently measured by the thousand, it seems the assumption might be warranted.

Colin Pykett

[revtonynewnham]

Hi Sounds interesting - someone else I know found a cpy of the same book with family connections for them.  As you say, this sort of thing add interest. 

Every Blessing

Tony

[Colin Pykett]

An aspect of the said Hopkins & Rimbault book, at least this second (1870) edition, is how incredibly useful it is in some ways even today.  In this respect it is considerably ahead of Sumner's more recent 'The Organ' of a century later in my view.  Although he apparently attempted something similar to H&R (and with hindsight I'm not quite sure why), I now find his book disappointingly superficial.  Without doubt, I'm afraid it is also peppered with errors, prejudice and misunderstandings.  Admittedly, at the time I came across it as a teenager in the 1960's, it seemed more wonderful than sliced bread.  But now, being definitely older and (very arguably) a bit wiser, H&R's treatise seems more scholarly and crammed full of details that would have been long lost had it not been for them, and Sumner relied heavily on it by merely repeating them.  Examples are data arising from first hand inspections of a huge number of organs both here and abroad, most of which are now lost to us.  Among much else, details of their pipe scales long before Normal Scaling came about in the 1920's makes for fascinating reading.

But if there is one thing which the book unintentionally hammers home, it is how difficult it was to design and build organs when hand blowing was the norm.  It was merely another aspect of more general everyday life in the days when little got done that couldn't be done via sheer muscle power, and it is so easy to forget that today.  Some years ago I visited a church in Wiltshire whose organ was electrically blown.  But it also had a blowing handle, so I asked if I could try blowing it manually while someone else played.  Although it was a small organ, the experience nearly flattened me after a few minutes!  The more one goes into it, the more one realises how the whole issue of organ blowing is actually a case study in social history.  For example, there were usually groups of people ranging from old ladies to young lads always hanging around church porches for centuries past, just waiting for someone to turn up to play the organ so they could earn a penny or two.  Scuffles would sometimes break out to get to the blowing handle first!  There is even an extant photo of some really old women outside Notre Dame cathedral in Paris as late as the 1920's (they did not get an electric blower there until 1923, and then only thanks to funds raised here in the UK).  An unbelievable sight.

But the ramifications of manual blowing go beyond simply raising the wind.  Until hydraulic, steam, town gas or electric blowing became readily available, there was nothing to drive a dynamo for an electric action either (the dynamo had long been available but obviously could not often be employed for organ purposes for this reason).  Hence the need to rely on batteries, with all the ensuing problems.  Many early electric actions would have been much better had this problem not existed.

And for a parting shot, this edition of H&R devotes a whole chapter to "Joy's Patent Hydraulic Engine", widely used for organ blowing in areas which had high pressure water.  It even tells us how much water would have been used for different sizes of organ, how much it would have cost, and how to store and use the waste water effectively.  This is a fascinating eye-opener in itself by discussing issues long lost to us now.  It reminds me that very high pressure water (around 1000 psi; domestic mains are around 60 psi) was still available in cities such as London until about the 1970's, and used for working lifts (elevators) etc.  I can recall small London hotels that had hydraulic lifts, and very quiet and fast they were too.  Interestingly, the mains piping they used is now apparently taken over by fibre optic communication cables which have been blown into them using compressed air.  Not many people will realise the historical link to organ blowing in all this!

Colin Pykett

[revtonynewnham]

Hi

I play an organ that's still hand blown a couple of times a year - and in that case it's not too hard going - I wonder if the feeders on the one you tried were leaking or had faulty valves?  The other hand blown organs that I've had dealings with also weren't too strenuous - although I did find the Wingfield organ (reconstruction of a Medieval organ) quite hard going - you have to lift the tops of the feeders - OK for a single piece, but a bit much for 3 consecutive items in a recital!

Laurence Elvin wrote a book devoted to the history of organ blowing - it makes fascination reading (although I don't have a copy, I found it in the library many many years ago).

Hydraulic blowing motors were quite common around here - the 3m Laycock & bannister in the old church building here was originally water-blown, and I gather from the organist that the blowing plant survived in the church cellars until the building was demolished.  It fell out of favour when demand for water meant that the mains pressure became unreliable - and costs went up!  An interesting case was the L&B organ at Bolton Abbey - that was blown by water obtained from the nearby River Wharfe.

Cowling Hill Baptist Church (Hand blown still) - http://www.npor.org.uk/cgi-bin/Rsearch.cgi?Fn=Rsearch&rec_index=D04625
Heaton Baptist (previous organ) - http://www.npor.org.uk/cgi-bin/Rsearch.cgi?Fn=Rsearch&rec_index=N07194

Bolton Abbey -  http://www.npor.org.uk/cgi-bin/Rsearch.cgi?Fn=Rsearch&rec_index=N07003

Every Blessing

Tony