William was nineteen when he ran away.  His good mother packed his boxes for him with such necessaries as she could manage, and sent them after him to Hamburg; but, to the boy’s intense disgust, she forgot to send the copy of “Locke on the Human Understanding.”  What a sturdy deserter we have here, to be sure!  “She, dear woman,” he says plaintively, “knew no other wants than good linen and clothing!” So William Herschel the oboe-player started off alone to earn his living as best he might in the great world of England.  It is strange he should have chosen that, of all European countries; for there alone he was liable to be arrested as a deserter:  but perhaps his twelvemonth’s stay in London may have given him a sense of being at home amongst us which he would have lacked in any other part of Europe.  At any rate, hither he came, and for the next three years picked up a livelihood, we know not how, as many other excellent German bandsmen have done before and since him.  Our information about his early life is very meagre, and at this period we lose sight of him for a while altogether.

About the year 1760, however, we catch another incidental glimpse of the young musician in his adopted country.  By that time, he had found himself once more a regular post as oboist to the Durham militia, then quartered for its muster at Pontefract.  A certain Dr. Miller, an organist at Doncaster, was dining one evening at the officers’ mess; when his host happened to speak to him in high praise of a young German they had in their band, who was really, he said, a most remarkable and spirited performer.  Dr. Miller asked to see (or rather hear) this clever musician; so Herschel was called up, and made to go through a solo for the visitor’s gratification.  The organist was surprised at his admirable execution, and asked him on what terms he was engaged to the Durham militia.  “Only from month to month,” Herschel answered.  “Then leave them at the end of your month,” said Miller, “and come to live with me.  I’m a single man; I think we can manage together; and I’m sure I can get you a better situation.”  Herschel frankly accepted the offer so kindly made, and seems to have lived for much of the next five years with Miller in his little two-roomed cottage at Doncaster.  Here he took pupils and performed in the orchestra at public concerts, always in a very quiet and modest fashion.  He also lived for part of the time with a Mr. Bulman at Leeds, for whom he afterwards generously provided a place as clerk to the Octagon Chapel at Bath.  Indeed, it is a very pleasing trait in William Herschel’s character that to the end he was constantly engaged in finding places for his early friends, as well as for the less energetic or less fortunate members of his own family.