Part 7
Best of all, his voice, that one talent which removed him from common men, was there in all its pristine fullness. He spoke in the manner of his kind; in that accent which owns no shire, city, or clan, and yet is heard in all the market places in the land. His very whispered confidences were enough to stir the old bones in the neighbouring churchyard. The crowd, trying to appear sophisticated, was held and mastered by the voice that was trumpeting, cajoling, mocking, within the space of one mighty breath, and yet still went sounding on, dropping manna by the way. Unknowingly he was a passionate votary of the art that has now nearly forsaken the pulpit and the council chamber. We, his audience, stifled all doubts, and waited, promise-crammed.
There was little or no alteration in his methods. Whether they have been designed, once for all, by some Master Psychologist of cheap-jacks, or are the result of accumulated experience, a secret tradition passed from generation to generation of genial tricksters, I cannot say; but these methods, like the human nature on which they are based, do not change much. As before, he had not come among us to make money. With passionate emphasis, he declared that he was not a profiteer (a new note, this), but had been sent down here by the well-known firm of Mumble-Mumble to smash profiteering. He would teach us the meaning of the word Lib-er-al-ity--that is how he mouthed it, with splendid significance. And then he proceeded in the time-old fashion.
From some half-a-dozen persons nearest the stall, he borrowed a few coppers, promising to return the loan with the addition of a ‘small present.’ These people, becoming sharers in the business, naturally do not care to go away, and thus, by this simple trick, whatever may happen he has about him at least the nucleus of a crowd. Then, flourishing several mysterious packages before our eyes, he asked us to bid for them. ‘Any gentleman got the pluck,’ he demanded, with the dispassionate earnestness of a god, ‘any gentleman got the courage to offer me a Silver Shilling for this?’ Any gentleman showing the necessary public spirit was given the article in question, and his money, his Silver Shilling, was handed back to him. Nor did our friend spoil his acts of munificence by the manner of giving; every package was divested of its numerous wrappings before it was handed over to the lucky man; the contents were exposed to the public view, and described in a style that ‘Ouida’ would have envied. Our minds reeled before this riotous splendour of gold and jewels. Sometimes, in a frenzy of reckless generosity, he would pile up a heap of articles, and, with a magnificent sense of the dramatic, would cry: ‘Here’s number One! And here’s number Two! And here’s another one, making number Three! And another one, making number Four!’--working up to a climax that left us gasping. Then, after being extraordinarily bountiful to one person, he would pretend to answer a perfectly imaginary charge of confederacy from some member of the crowd, looking all the while very sternly at no one in particular. ‘One of a click (_i.e._ clique) is ‘e?’ he would roar. ‘One of the click! Do I know yer, Mister? Never seen yer before. I’ll show yer whether ‘e’s one of the click! I’ll show yer!’ And being apparently stung by this vile taunt, he would lash himself into a fury, and proceed to squander his glittering wares even still more wildly. I left him with the sweat running down his face, his hair all rumpled and his collar a wreck; yet he was still undaunted, giving away gold watches with the magnificent air of an Eastern Emperor.
I, for one, welcome the cheap-jack because his presence in our midst proves that there is still a little poetry left in the race. For all his machinations are based on a certain notion which the experience of this world proves to be a fallacy, and which is yet as old as the hills and as little to be despised. It is the fine old notion that it is possible, somehow or other, to get something for nothing; and it was not born of this world. When we have entirely forsaken the idea, then we are lost indeed, for it comes from the depths of our primal innocence, and has about it the last lingering scent of the Garden of Eden.
HOLIDAY NOTES FROM THE COAST OF BOHEMIA
A friend of mine, who is a great traveller, has just put into my hands a letter that should be interesting to those who have not yet decided where to go for their holidays and are looking for fresh fields. This letter came from an old acquaintance of his, one Autolycus, an amusing fellow, who boasts that he has been a courtier and in his time worn ‘three-pile’ velvet. As a correspondent he is not to be taken too seriously, but the substance of his letter is engaging, and can be given here. He says that he can remember the time when the coast of Bohemia, his adopted land, was nothing but a desert country, but now, under the genial sway of Prince Florizel and his lovely Perdita, all is changed: the place is blossoming into a sea-bound garden; the sunlit woods and sands, the sweet air, and the good company to be found there are attracting visitors from countries near and far; and villas and hostels are springing up everywhere to lodge the host of new residents and guests. The coming season promises well, and our correspondent, himself the owner now of a large hostel, admits that he is thriving, and well on his way to ‘three-pile’ again.
Being an arrant gossip, Autolycus soon learns all the news of the place, and any scraps that he misses his friend and barber, Figaro, can usually supply to him. He makes it plain that there is no lack of good company, for he mentions scores of familiar names, of which only a few can find a place here. Some of the visitors who spent last winter there have now left the district: a lively talkative couple from Padua, Benedick and Beatrice, have departed for the country house of their friends Katherina and Petruchio; a certain Major Pendennis has now returned to London, where, we understand, he is a notable figure; Senor Gil Blas has gone to relate his adventures elsewhere; and Master Touchstone, a friend of Autolycus and a fellow of some wit, has now left for the Forest of Arden, where he intends to pass an idle summer with his patrons, now Sir Orlando and Lady Rosalind de Boys. Such visitors as these, with others who have gone, will no doubt be missed, but the loss is more than made up by the crowd of new arrivals.
Prince Florizel has now opened his new Summer Palace, and is entertaining a great company. Almost the first group of guests to arrive was a gay party from Illyria, including the Duke and his Duchess Viola, Sebastian and Olivia, and that witty fellow Feste, whose strange songs are now heard throughout the land. Sir Toby and his friend, Sir Andrew Aguecheek, are not staying with the party at the palace, but are lodging with Autolycus, where there are cakes and ale and catches in plenty. A new tutor has been engaged for the Royal children, but little is known of him; he is thought to be a Scotsman, and has been heard muttering ‘Prodeegious’ on his infrequent walks abroad. Next month there comes to the palace a famous Spanish knight, who is said to have suffered strangely from the persecutions of enchanters. Some will have it that his squire, one Sancho Panza, is better worth a hearing than the knight himself.
Here and there along the coast the sea has been steadily encroaching upon the land, and the Prince has decided to fortify these places by the building of embankments and other devices. The work has now begun, under the direction of two experts, Captain Toby Shandy and the Baron of Bradwardine. Another famous martial figure has been added to the list by the arrival of Captain Dugald Dalgetty, who now commands the Bohemian Marine Horse, in the place of Bobadil--lately cashiered.
There is certainly no lack of amusements now that the season has begun, for there are dances and pageants in the open air and indoor entertainments for the occasional rainy evenings. Next month will see the opening of the new Royal Theatre, which will be under the management of that renowned impresario Mr. Vincent Crummles. There, a professional company--including, I believe, the ‘infant phenomenon’--will perform. But this is not the only dramatic enterprise, for an Artisan’s Amateur Dramatic Society has just been formed. The leading spirit in this venture is a recent settler on these shores, one Bottom, a weaver, who is said to have had long and valuable experience as an amateur performer. Nor should it be hard to please those who prefer graver and more edifying diversion. It appears that, only two weeks ago, a lecture on the ‘Golden Cadence of Poesy’ was given by Holofernes, the schoolmaster, and was well received. Unfortunately, according to report, the audience was a very small one, there being only seven people present, and that is including Master Slender, who fell asleep almost at the beginning. Some contribution will certainly be made to solid learning at the debate, upon some antiquarian question, between Jonathan Oldbuck, Esquire, and Samuel Pickwick, Esquire, P.P.C. This takes place early next month, and Justice Shallow will be in the chair. The prospect of hearing this debate alone is surely enough to draw any right-minded man, who is free to travel, across half the world.
There have been so many English visitors, of late, to this part of the kingdom that special arrangements have been made for the benefit of their bodies and souls; a small English church and a large English tavern have been built within a short distance of the sea. This year there are two pastors doing duty at the church, the Rev. Dr. Primrose and Parson Adams, both of whom have been fervent in denouncing from the pulpit the evils of the world; indeed, Dr. Primrose caused quite a stir with his ‘Folly of Cosmogony.’ The tavern has been named the New Boar’s Head, and the hostess is Mistress Quickly, late of Eastcheap, London. Autolycus writes that it is a rowdy house, but this can be set down to professional jealousy and his ignorance of the persons concerned. The best room is now occupied by Sir John Falstaff, who is reported to be a man of some substance; and the house is becoming renowned for good talk and the drinking of ‘healths five fathoms deep.’
It is unfortunate that one of Sir John’s followers has got himself into trouble with the constables. The latter were recently appointed by the Prince to look after the watch, and are from Messina, where everyone knows Dogberry and Verges. So far, they have only made one arrest, and that was of Pistol, Sir John’s Ancient. It seems that he, Ancient Pistol, being full of sack, encountered the constables and expressed himself in Cambyses’ vein, calling Dogberry a ‘dung-hill cur,’ and Verges ‘a recreant coward base.’ This led to his arrest and confinement, where he will remain for the time being, unless the justices are willing to accept Bardolph as security....
But I have dwelt long enough on the wonders of this delectable unrivalled resort. If some of my statements above are disbelieved, or in any way questioned, I can only refer to my original authority, Autolycus, who said long ago, in answer to a similar charge: ‘Why should I carry lies abroad?’
ON A MOUTH-ORGAN
FOR the past half hour, someone, probably a small boy, has been playing a mouth-organ underneath my window. I know of no person under this roof peculiarly susceptible to the sound of a mouth-organ, so that I cannot think that the unknown musician is serenading. He is probably a small boy who is simply hanging about, after the fashion of his mysterious tribe, and whiling away the time with a little music. Why he should choose a raw day like this on which to do nothing but slide his lips over the cold metal of a mouth-organ must remain a mystery to me; but I have long realised that unfathomable motives may be hidden away behind the puckered face and uncouth gestures of small boyhood.
I have not been able to recognise any of the tunes, or the snatches of tunes, which have come floating up to my window. Possibly they are all unknown to me. But I think it is more likely that they are old acquaintances, coming in such a questionable shape that my ear cannot find any familiar cadence; they have been transmuted by the mouth-organ into something rich and strange; for your mouth-organ is one of the great alchemists among musical instruments and leaves no tune as it finds it.
It has been pointed out that whatever material Dickens used, however rich and varied it might be, it was always mysteriously transformed into the Dickens substance, lengths of which he cut off and called Novels. It seems to me that the mouth-organ, though a mechanical agent, has something of this strange power of transformation; whatever is played upon it seems to come out all of a piece; whatever might be the original character of the tunes, gay, fantastical, meditative, stirring, as their sounds are filtered through the little square holes of the instrument, their character changes, and they all become more or less alike. ‘Rule, Britannia!’ ‘Annie Laurie,’ and the latest ditty of the music-halls somehow or other lose their individuality and flow into one endless lament, one lugubrious strain, that might very well go on for ever.
For this reason, the sound of a mouth-organ has always succeeded in depressing me. It must have been invented by an incorrigible pessimist, who sought to create a musical instrument that would give to every tune, no matter how lively, some touch of his own hopeless view of life; and probably the only time that he laughed was when he realised that he could leave this thing as a legacy to the world. I have never played a mouth-organ, because I know that my own native optimism would not be strong enough to resist the baneful influence of the music it makes. To hear it now and again is more than enough for me.
To one who is filled with the joy of life--a small boy, for example--such hopeless strains may prove only invigorating, may serve as a wholesome check upon his ebullient spirits, like the skeleton at the Egyptian feasts. But to most of us weaker brethren, frail in spirit, music that is unillumined by even a glimmer of hope is intolerable.
For the past half hour, I have been trying to concentrate all my attention upon some fairly cheerful matter, and I have failed. It has been impossible to keep out the sound of this mouth-organ. Its formless, unknown, unending tune, only fit for bewailing a ruined world, has gradually invaded my room, penetrated through the ear into my brain, and coloured or discoloured all the thoughts there. There is in it no trace of that noble sadness which great music, like great poetry, so often brings with it; the mouth-organ knows nothing of ‘divine despair.’ It seems to whimper before ‘the heavy and the weary weight of all this unintelligible world.’
‘Oh de-ar!’ I seem to hear it crying, ‘No hope for yo-ou and yo-ours; Me-eser-able world! Oh de-ear!’ It has brought with it a fog of depression; my spirits have been sinking lower and lower; and under the influence of this evil mangler of good, heartening tunes I have begun to think that life is not worth living.
Most music worthy of the name has such beauty that it will either raise us to a kind of ecstasy or give us a feeling of vague sadness, which some delicate persons prefer to wild joy. Sir Thomas Browne, you remember, has something to say on this point, in a passage that can never become hackneyed no matter how many times it is quoted: ‘Whosoever is harmonically composed delights in harmony; which makes me much distrust the symmetry of those heads which declaim against all church music. For myself, not only from my obedience, but my particular genius, I do embrace it; for even that vulgar and tavern-music, which makes one man merry, another mad, strikes in me a deep fit of devotion, and a profound contemplation of the first composer.’
But these mouth-organ strains will make a man neither mad nor merry, nor yet strike in him a deep fit of devotion; but if his ear is like mine, they will make him sink into depression and dye his world a ghastly blue.
It is curious that certain other popular musical instruments seem to have the same characteristics as the mouth-organ. The concertina and the accordion, good friends of the sailor, the lonely Colonist, and rough, kindly fellows the world over, seem to me to possess the same power of transforming all the tunes played upon them into one long wail. I have read about their ‘lively strains,’ but I have never heard them. The sound of a concertina a quarter of a mile away is enough to shake my optimism. An average accordion could turn the Sword Theme from ‘Siegfried’ into a plea for suicide. A flageolet or a tin-whistle has not such a shattering effect; nevertheless, both of them can only give a tune a certain subdued air, which is certainly preferable to the depressing alchemy of the other instruments, but which certainly does not make for liveliness.
The bagpipe, which has been so long the companion of the lonely folk of northern moors and glens, can produce at times a certain rousing martial strain, but, even then, a wailing air creeps into the music like a Scotch mist. Its very reels and strathspeys, which ought to be jolly enough, only sound to me like elaborate complaints against life; their transitory snatches of gaiety are obviously forced. At all other times, the bagpipe is frankly pessimistic, and laments its very existence.
There is probably some technical reason why these instruments produce such doleful tones. Perhaps our sophisticated ears rebel against their peculiar harmonies and discords. But it is certainly curious that mouth-organs, concertinas, tin-whistles, and the rest, so beloved of simple people, should be intolerable to so many of us. Is it that we have no miseries to express in sound? Or is it that our optimism is so brittle that we dare not submit it to the onslaught of this strange music? I do not know.
All that I do know is that at the present moment I am sitting in my armchair before a bright fire, depressed beyond belief by the sound that floats through my window; while outside, in the cold, there stands a small boy, holding a mouth-organ in his numbed hands and bravely sliding his lips over the cold metallic edges of the thing; and by this time he is probably as gay as I am miserable.
AN APOLOGY FOR BAD PIANISTS
Ignoring those musical labourers who are paid so much per hour, at cinemas and dance-halls, to make some sort of rhythmical sound, all pianists, I think, may be divided into four classes. There are, first, the great soloists, the masters, Paderewski, Pachmann, and the rest, who would seem to have conquered all difficulties. With them the piano, a dead thing of wires and hammers, becomes a delicately responsive organism; its hammers are extra muscles, and its strings added nerves, running and leaping to obey every fleeting impulse; their playing is as saturated with personality as their gait or speech. Not so with the members of the second class, which is, to my mind, a dubious fraternity. They may be called the serious amateurs. Very often they take expensive lessons from some professor, who undertakes to ‘finish them off.’ But they never are finished off. The sign and mark of the serious amateur is that he practises assiduously some piece of music, maybe a Chopin study or a Brahms sonata, until he has it by heart; after which he assembles a number of friends (or, more often, new acquaintances), squashes their attempts at conversation, and, amid a tense silence, begins to play--or, as he would say, ‘interpret’--his laboured solo. The fourth class consists of odd strummers, vampers and thumpers; young ladies who play waltzes and old ladies who play hymns; cigarette-in-mouth youths with a bang-and-rattle style of performance; all inexorable, tormenting noise-makers, from those who persist in riveting--rather than playing--Rachmaninoff’s C sharp minor Prelude to those who buy Sunday newspapers in order that they may pick out with one finger the tune of a comic song. All such are the enemies of peace and harmony, and as they cannot be ignored in any other place, here they can be quickly dismissed with all the more pleasure.
It remains now to say something of the third class of pianists, which, if it were reduced to such straits, could count me among its members. To write at some length of one’s own class after perfunctorily dismissing others may seem to savour of egotism, but the truth is, we--I speak fraternally--have been so much maligned and misunderstood up to now, we have endured so many taunts in silence, that we have a right to be heard before we are finally and irrevocably condemned.
It is only on the score of technique, the mere rule of thumb business, that we stand below the serious amateurs; we belong to a higher order of beings and have grander souls; in spirit we come nearer to the great masters. The motives of the serious amateur are not above suspicion. In his assiduous practice, his limited repertoire, his studied semi-public style of performance, is there not a suggestion of vanity? Is his conscious parade of skill, taken along with his fear of unknown works, the mark of a selfless devotion to music, and music alone? I doubt it.
But our motives are certainly above suspicion. Music has no servants more disinterested, for not only do we gather no garlands in her service, but daily, for her sake, we risk making fools of ourselves, than which there can be no greater test of pure devotion. We, too, are the desperate venturers among pianists; every time that we seat ourselves at the keyboard we are leading a forlorn hope; and, whether we fall by the way or chance to come through unscathed, the only reward we can hope for is a kindly glance from the goddess of harmony.
It is hardly necessary to dwell on the fact that our execution is faulty, that we are humanly liable to make mistakes, seeing that our weaknesses have been for years the butt of musical pedants and small souls. In the dim past we received some sort of instruction, perhaps a few years’ lessons, but being bright children with wills of our own we saw no use in labouring at scales and arpeggios, at the tepid compositions of Czerny, when there were balls to throw, stones to kick, and penny dreadfuls to be devoured. An unlocked door or an open window--and we escaped from the wretched drudgery, thus showing early that eager zest of life which still marks our clan.
Now, it is enthusiasm alone that carries us through. Our performance of any ‘piece of average difficulty’ (as the publishers say) is nothing short of a series of miracles. As we peer at the music and urge our fingers to scurry over the keys, horrid gulfs yawn before us, great rocks come crashing down, the thick undergrowth is full of pitfalls and mantraps, but we are not to be deterred. Though we do not know what notes are coming next, or what fingers we shall use, if the music says _presto_, then _presto_ it must be; the spirit of the tune must be set free, however its flesh may be lacerated. So we swing up the dizzy arpeggios as a hunted mountaineer might leap from crag to crag; we come down a run of demi-semi-quavers with the blind confidence of men trying to shoot the rapids of Niagara. Only the stout-hearted and great of soul can undertake these perilous but magnificent ventures.