Books › British violin-makers classical and modern; being a biographical and critical dictionary of British makers of the violin from the foundation of the classical school to the end of the nineteenth century, 1904 › scan 308
Scan 308
British violin-makers classical and modern; being a biographical and critical dictionary of British makers of the violin from the foundation of the classical school to the end of the nineteenth century, 1904
8 lines. Read by computer on 3 September 2026. No printed page number was found. See the scan on archive.org.
1The following particulars are culled from the Pembroke County Guardian for Nov. 18, 1899, from an article written some forty years previously:—
3"… When the wishes of Mr. Phillips (the projector of the Smalls lighthouse) were made public, a great many persons sent in designs for a suitable erection to the committee appointed by him to carry out his intentions, but preference was given to the plans of a young man, a musical instrument maker, who was also engaged as its builder.
5"Mr. Henry Whiteside was a native of Liverpool; he was born, it is believed, in Fontenoy Street, in the year 1746, where his parents possessed some houses, and which afterwards became his property. He possessed at an early age a mechanical taste, and was allowed to follow the bent of his inclination at the carpenter's bench. He soon gave his attention—from a love and knowledge of music—to the construction of violins, some of which are now in Pembrokeshire, and considered of great value; afterwards he turned his skill to the building of spinets and upright harpsichords, in which he excelled, as the ones now extant prove. Mr. Whiteside had a brother named Gilbert, who was blind from his birth, and who possessed extraordinary powers as a musician. The desire of Mr. Gilbert Whiteside to alleviate the sufferings of those deprived of sight like himself was so great that he would even seek for, and wait upon them, week after week, and month after month, until he had made them masters of some musical instrument, either as a source of amusement or of income for themselves.
7"At the time Henry Whiteside came to Pembrokeshire to construct the lighthouse, in the summer of 1772, he was a very young man, scarcely twenty-six, and probably—though a resident of such a considerable shipping port as Liverpool was even then—a novice in nautical matters, with which he would eventually have much to do. His undertaking was a sudden transition from the sweet and harmonious sounds of his own musical instruments, to the rough surging of the Atlantic wave, and the discordant howling of a maddened hurricane; and
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