FROM BENCH TO BATON.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXIX, Issue 107, 27 June 1911, Page 6

FROM BENCH TO BATON.

THE SHEFFIELD CHOIR’S GREAT CONDUCTOR. DR. COWARD AND HIS METIER. Few people who have witnessed Dr. Coward conducting the Sheffield Choir at any of the concerts during the triumphal ■to'ur- of this great musical orgamsal ion could realise that he started' life at the tender ago of eight years in a Sheffield cutlery mill. But it was thus early iu life that young Henry Coward, who was destined to become one of the greatestfactors in making oratorio music such a groat and world-wide success, started out to toil for his daily bread. Dr. Coward was not even a musician'by training, although it is almost aisuredly true that the bump of music in his make-up was always a. much more important factor than the bump that has to do with applied mechanics or with general commerce. His father didn’t mean him to bo a lover of music, and concluded when little Henry was yet unbrecchod, that the boy’s life, should lie along the lines that had been followed by “t’owd man.” Such new-fangled ideas ’as wanting to be a musician-, and havinga head for clefs and staves, never entered into the elder man’s scheme, of things, and so he who is such a power in matters musical to-day, was started on the road towards being a cutler.

CHILD-LABOUR. When Dr. Coward was a boy, .child-, labour in the- factories and mills of England’s north and midlands was a by-word. To-day it would be a reproach. But “other times, other, methods,” and a great deal of the.terrible practice 'of what was really babe-slavery has been wiped out. Dr. Coward could tell you pitiful stories of . the sad lives of the little) ones,--as bare of mind as they were bare of'-foot;' toddling 'Hay by day, week in and week out the whole year round to work. It sounds almost ironical to say that these tiny morsels of humanity had tp.'g£> out to take their place in the ‘‘dust-brown ranks, of toil, the legions of the shops.” “I don’t like to boast of my early life,” said Dr. Coward, speaking to a “Sun” reprosttlfifcive There was a twinkle in his eye as he added: “But you, out. here, know all about the musical side of me, and as you think it would be interesting fin *tbe people to hear of my \vj)i;k-a-] clay life, I will tell you. “It was. all very prosaic. --L.ATA only eight or nine years of ago when 1 was apprenticed, under my father, in Wolsteiiliolme’s shops) If &>* learn the whole of the cutler* lir.axfe,: and I learned it. My indentures were for 12 years Fancy that! Fancy any enlightened Sydney _ boy binding himself [id any master' tor that of time! But 1 did—or at least myl parents did it for me And— l suppose I can say it—l pride myself I mddc mysolf a good workman 1 was complimented on my ability, and T daresay that if I wore to take charge of a cutlery works to-day I could make just as good a showing as most men I knew everything about the manufacture and sale; of cutlery from A to /, and 1 have won many prizes for the knives and things I, made .... “No, it was not a tedious lire, at , least, at first, although it was a strenuous one. But somehow there was always the musical germ in mo, and long before I was out of my time I wanted to be a musician. I had tbo ‘bee in mv bonnet.’ 1 remember .how ray dea'i- rather tried to dissuade me, a lid lio\v nearly everybody else supported him with their advice to me not to make a fool of myself. “One day—l was still only a youth —old George Wolstonholme, then the head of the firm, came through the workshop, and-causally be made a remark to me, as a Yorkshire, employer often Will to a Yorkshire employee. ■ MY PLEASURE IS MUSIC. •

“He said, ‘Well, young man, ■ and what is your pleasure?’ 1 suppose I misunderstood him. ■ Anyhow, I did not give him the-answer lie expected. I said, ‘My pleasure is music, sir.' Ho only growled at me and said something in his plain, blunt way, about me going to the devil. And over, after that ho, with others, did all they could to turn me from the path I had, in thought, planned out for myself. But it. was no use. I went right through all the branches of the work, and was finishing and polishing off my business career when I came of age. Then, as soon as I got out of my bonds. I chucked it all. They wore bonds that chafed. At that period I daresay I did not act in a very levclhoaded mnnner. The prospects for me in the cutlery trade were good, very I daresay 1-could have been of a department. But I did not want that. “For ’several years music had been gaining a bigger and bigger hold of me. I. had been educating myself, too, in other, ways. As far as musical education' -from any professional sourcor went, I only had two or three months of it, and that \yas in a tonic sol-fa class;' The test of my musical training has been absolutely self-acquired. “Well, to make a long story short, whcmT.'ilefti'tho shops I went in for school-teaching, became a headmaster, and kept that position, in a board school*—similar to your State schools—for fifteen years. In eighteen months I rose from piim'l teacher to the top of the tree. Then I was a grammar school,master. The rest you know. Music has boon my Alpha and Omega, and there is nothing I love so much.” Dr. Coward speaks appreciatively uf the old firm, and a little pocket-knife •hat he drew from his pocket as lie was talking bears the mark and the words “IXL Wolstenholme.” That and his household cutlery in his English homo is Wolstcnholme’s, and ho will tell you,, that the best music, and the best knives Still coihe from Shci-.YA'-Vu 1