Christopher And The Clockmakers Part 30

"Among the first; and undeniably one of the best and most important of them. Oh, of course there were other men--some of them excellent. But we know less about them because they left no such long trail of clocks behind as the Willards did. Gawen Brown was a splendid workman; and so was Avery, who in 1726 made the clock for the Old North church. Then there was Benjamin Bagnall, who located in Charlestown about 1712 and remained there almost thirty years. His two sons, Benjamin and Samuel, also went into the clockmaking business and did very commendable work.

In addition there were the Munroes of Concord--Daniel and Nathaniel; and Samuel Whiting, Nate's partner; not to mention the Popes, Robert and Joseph; and Daniel Balch of Newburyport. All these men were well established in or near Boston either before 1800 or shortly after that date."

"Evidently the Ma.s.sachusetts people must have known what time it was,"

grinned Christopher.

"If they didn't it was their own fault," returned his companion, "for this list probably represents only a part of those engaged in the business. A good many more, like our friend, John Bailey, moved to small inland villages where they modestly plied their trade, selling their wares to only a limited circle of purchasers. Of these scattered craftsmen we have, as I told you, scant information. It is merely when we chance upon their names in early town records or a clock turns up to testify to their knowledge of their craft that we have tidings of them.

But with the Willards it was different. They have left behind them a collection of clocks that speaks in no mistakable terms for their skill and industry."

"How many of these Willards were there?" Christopher demanded.

"Well, old Benjamin, the father, who was located in Framingham somewhere about the year 1716, had twelve children and three of these--Benjamin, Junior, Simon, and Aaron all became crackajack clockmakers, especially Simon. The family, I take it, went to Grafton, a small town near Worcester, later on. At any rate Benjamin, Junior, was born there. We afterward hear of him in Lexington and are told that in 1771 he moved from there to Roxbury. In this latter spot he himself set up a shop; but he must still have maintained another one at Grafton, his birthplace, where apprentices in the meantime carried on a part of his business, for his clocks bear three different markings--Grafton, Lexington, and Roxbury. He turned out excellent long-case clocks as well as some musical ones, and many of these survive him. He died in Baltimore in 1803. Aaron, and his son Aaron, Junior (who entered his father's shop in 1823), also made fine long-case clocks with bra.s.s works that found ready sale."

"And Simon?"

"Ah, the story of Simon and his deeds would fill a book. He was the flower of the family, so far, anyway, as clockmaking went. His handiwork cannot be surpa.s.sed," exclaimed McPhearson with enthusiasm. "People are liable to a.s.sociate him only with the banjo clock that bears his name; but in reality he made clocks of every imaginable description--long-case clocks, tower clocks, gallery clocks, shelf clocks. He was a born clock lover if ever there was one! He was, moreover, a marvelous man who up to the end of his long life was active and useful. Even after he became very old he fought to conceal the limitations age brought and remain cheerful and independent. A wonderful example of l.u.s.ty manhood, truly!

In the first place you must remember he started out on his career with the same meager equipment that hampered all the early clockmakers. A file, drill and hammer were practically the only tools he possessed.

Neither you nor I would think it possible to construct so delicate a mechanism as a clock with so few articles to work with. We should insist that we needed and _must have_ this thing, that thing, and the other thing to use, and then we probably should not be able to produce a clock that would go--let alone one that would keep accurate time. But you did not hear Simon Willard doing any fussing. There was nothing of the whiner about him. The fact that he was obliged to import bra.s.s from England, hammer it down to the thickness necessary, file it until it was smooth, and then polish it by hand did not daunt him. A more persistent, painstaking, conscientious clockmaker never lived. What marvel that he scorned to advertise? While others cried their products, he simply pasted in the back of each of his clocks the few modest facts he wished to announce and let his work go out to speak for itself."

"_Ask the man who owns one!_" put in Christopher, quoting a well-known and modern advertis.e.m.e.nt.

"Exactly!" agreed McPhearson. "Anybody that produces an A1 commodity hardly needs to bark about it. People find out what goods are worth.

This, evidently, was Simon Willard's theory. You see he knew his trade from A to Z, having been apprenticed to his older brother Benjamin when only a small boy. The tale is that when barely thirteen years old he made a grandfather clock that was in every respect better than that of his master."

"Gee! Why, I am--"

"You are older than that already and could not make a clock, eh?"

interrupted the Scotchman with quick understanding. "Neither could I, and I am many times your age. But life was different in the olden days.

Boys learned trades very early and went to work at them. Many a lad, for example, was sent to sea by the time he was ten or twelve. Hence the fact that Simon Willard was apprenticed when so young was in no way remarkable. But that he should thus early have outranked his teacher is significant. We are not surprised, in consequence, to hear that it was not long before he branched out for himself and opened a shop at Grafton where he began to construct clocks."

"He must still have been pretty youthful," ventured Christopher.

"I imagine he was. Nevertheless he married and settled down to his career, starting in to make both shelf and long-case varieties. These he completed during the snowy season when the roads were bad and then, as soon as summer came and it was possible to get about on horseback, he and his brother, Aaron, used to travel about and sell the winter's output. Aaron peddled the goods along the south edge of the Ma.s.sachusetts coast and Simon went north, sometimes even as far as Maine."

"But I should think clocks would have been ruined if jolted about on horseback!" objected Christopher.

"I don't think it could have been ideal for their health," laughed McPhearson. "But it was the best method of distribution the age afforded and Simon Willard did not scorn so humble a beginning. He remained in Grafton until some time between 1777 and 1780 and then as his wife died he moved to Roxbury and at what is now Number 2196 Washington Street opened a shop. In the meantime he had done quite a lot of experimenting and had arrived at the conclusion he would in future center his energy on making only church clocks, hall clocks and turret clocks. Therefore from that date on these were the styles he chiefly manufactured.

Probably it would have been no small surprise to him had he known that the banjo clock he patented about 1802 and dubbed an _improved timepiece_ would be the one to come down through history bearing his name."

"I wouldn't mind having it bear mine," smiled the boy, as he glanced toward the beautiful old Willard lying so ignominiously on its back on McPhearson's workbench. "I like all these bra.s.s tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs. Besides, the picture of the sea fight painted on the gla.s.s door is jolly."

"Evidently Willard thought sea fights jolly, too, for he generally selected them as decoration for his clocks. I have heard there were two men in Roxbury who painted all his gla.s.s for him; one of them did lacy patterns of conventional design, and the other did naval battles. This fact helps us some in identifying genuine Willards. Of course the decoration could be copied by others; but add to it other hallmarks typical and now well-known and a true Willard can usually be detected.

For instance, it is said on good authority that no real Willard clock is ever surmounted by a bra.s.s eagle. We often see the design on old clocks that purport to be Willards; but Simon Willard, his descendants attest, never used a decoration so elaborate. Instead he preferred simple things such as a bra.s.s acorn or one carved from wood; a gilt ball, or combination of ball and spear-head. But the eagle he never patronized."

"Maybe he didn't know how to make a bra.s.s eagle and couldn't find anybody who did," suggested Christopher.

"Possibly. To make an eagle would be quite an undertaking if you didn't know just how to set about it," acquiesced McPhearson. "At any rate Simon let eagles alone. Another device characteristic of his clocks, along with these two patterns of gla.s.s and the decoration on top, was the catch that kept the doors tightly closed. It was a pet scheme of his to make use of a sort of clasp that could only be opened with the clock key. This he resorted to in order to prevent the doors from jarring open and admitting the dirt; and also that children might not be able to meddle with the works or hands. He had a great many small children himself and had perhaps learned from experience the pranks little people were likely to perpetrate. Besides these several trademarks there are in addition various ingenious tricks that belonged to Willard and to n.o.body else. These a trained clockmaker instantly recognizes--the use of bra.s.s pins to hold the dial in place, for one thing. So, you see, when a banjo clock comes your way there are various methods by which its genuineness can be tested. They cannot, perhaps, be rated as infallible but they do help in identification."

"It is a pity Simon Willard did not sign his clocks as artists sign their pictures. Then there would have been no discussion about them,"

said Christopher.

"Willard did mark his later clocks," answered McPhearson. "Possibly in his early days it did not occur to him that it was worth while."

"Well, anyhow, I can hunt for the Willard tags--the queer catch on the door; the acorns, b.a.l.l.s, or spearheads; and the painted lace or the naval battles."

At the final phrase the Scotchman smiled whimsically.

"It is funny Willard should have been so keen on sea fights," remarked he, "for as a matter of fact he was anything but a fighter. Undoubtedly it was the Revolution and the War of 1812 that stimulated the picturing of such scenes and made them popular. Had war been left to dear peace-loving old Simon Willard there would not have been much shooting, for he hated the very sight of a gun. One of his relatives declares that although like other loyal citizens he turned out at Lexington on the famous nineteenth of April and marched to Roxbury with Captain Kimball's company he often humorously a.s.serted afterward that the musket he carried had no lock on it. The omission, however, did not appear to trouble him; on the contrary, it rather pleased him. Once, in later life, he one day picked up a gun that unexpectedly went off with such a bang that it knocked him down and as a result he could never be tempted into touching firearms of any description. The argument that they were not loaded had no effect whatsoever.

"No matter," he would say. "The durn thing may go off just the same."

Christopher laughed merrily.

"It was sometime between 1777 and 1780, as I told you, that Simon Willard came to Roxbury. But before he focused his entire attention on clocks he invented a clock-jack, and in 1784 with the approval of John Hanc.o.c.k, the General Court of Ma.s.sachusetts granted him the exclusive right to make and sell the device."

"And what, pray, is a clock-jack?" interrogated Christopher.

"Ah, it is easily seen you did not live in early colonial days," smiled McPhearson. "A clock-jack, sonny, is a contrivance for roasting meat."

"Roasting meat!" repeated the lad incredulously. "But what had a man of Willard's genius to do with roasting meat?"

"Perhaps a good deal," the Scotchman answered. "He was the father of a big family, remember, and no doubt, like all good husbands, bore his share of the domestic burden. A man with eleven children must have been forced to turn his shoulder to the wheel in many a domestic crisis, for n.o.body kept servants at that time. Evidently either Willard himself had encountered the dilemmas of cooking or he had seen others struggle with them, and this, no doubt, was what led him to invent the ingenious article of which I have told you."

"But you haven't told me," was Christopher's quick protest.

"Why, so I haven't! Well, in the far-away days of our forefathers food was cooked neither in ranges nor in gas stoves. Instead it was cooked before the big open fire. A piece of meat, for example, was suspended by a chain from the mantelpiece and some member of the family was detailed to whirl it round and round until it was roasted evenly and cooked through. Now such an operation was a great nuisance, for no matter what you wished to do you must keep your mind on that roast lest it burn on one side and be ruined. If the mother of the house was washing dishes, cooking, or taking care of the baby, she had to stop every few moments and turn the meat around. And if she was too much occupied to do it, like as not the father was routed out of his shop, and told to have an eye on the beef.

"Willard himself may frequently have been forced to drop his tools and, since his children were young and motherless, attend to this bothersome duty. For fathers played a more intimate part in the homes of that generation than they do now. At any rate he was certainly familiar with the problems that entered into the cooking of the family dinner--just how heavy and clumsy were the big, awkward clock-jacks imported from England, how costly they were, and all. So he took the matter in hand and invented a clock-jack that was much better than the imported one.

Not only did it spin the meat around when wound up, but it was enclosed in a bra.s.s cover that kept in the heat and juices. It is probable that the invention furnished inspiration for somebody else for presently the covered tin baker made its appearance and Willard abandoned making clock-jacks and turned his energy toward timekeepers instead."

"Do you mean to say he made his clocks at home?"

"At first he did. His house was a tiny dwelling, too. Just how he and his many children contrived to find places to sleep is a mystery. Some of the youngsters were tucked away in trundle beds, you may be sure. Out behind the kitchen was a sort of woodshed, and it was in this primitive location that Mr. Willard made his clocks."

"Not big clocks!"

"Yes, indeed."

"But I should think he would have been compelled to have more room."

"I fancy his quarters were not ideal and were pretty cramped. He could have got on well enough had he been making shelf clocks that vibrated only half-seconds, like those of Eli Terry; but he had given up making those when he left Grafton. Therefore when it came to testing out his big turret clocks, he had to cut a hole in the floor in order to give their long pendulums room to swing."

"That was a stunt!"

"It simply proves that a determined man will find a way," McPhearson declared. "Simon Willard was not a person who allowed circ.u.mstances to master him. Lack of tools, limitations of s.p.a.ce, the utter absence of all those aids we should now deem indispensable--none of these obstacles deterred him from making clocks that have seldom been outranked."

"A bully good sport, wasn't he!" exclaimed Christopher.

"A sport in the best sense," agreed McPhearson. "As a humble member of his craft I take off my hat to him. It was in 1801 that he made his first banjo clock--a clock that, as he a.s.serted, could be hung on the wall and stood no risk of being knocked off or moved about as a shelf clock did. The patent for this article bore the autographs of President Jefferson and James Madison, who was at the time Secretary of State. The same year Willard made a clock for the United States Senate Chamber and went to Washington to a.s.sure himself that it was properly put up and also explain how it should be cared for. This clock, unfortunately, was ruined when the British burned the Capitol; nevertheless, Willard's journey hither was not in vain, for while in the city he made the personal acquaintance of President Jefferson and the two men, both of them interested in mechanics, formed a lifelong friendship. In fact, it was through Jefferson that Willard received the order to make a large clock for the University of Virginia."