THEIR PATRONS AND PAYMASTERS.

even, his persistent paymasters.

43

And it is easy

to see that something may be said for him. But with regard to those who pay him, and who encourage his once-a-week visits, if not oftener, all the year round, notwithstanding their full knowledge of the distress his grinding inflicts on some next

66

times at the balls in London, between 1812 and 1815. Music is a strange thing." In some such mood does Violet, in the story bearing that name, give way to the associations conjured up to her mind by " Portrait Charmant," when that air is struck up by a street organ-boy. In our busy moments we have so contemned the tiresome Italian boy, with his one tune. . . . But in the time of sorrow, of inactive sorrow, if such an air as 'Portrait Charmant' be heard mingling with the vulgar street sounds, it will strike you as it never did before, and in listening to the notes you find it is somehow taking a gentle revenge for all the contumely you have cast upon its hackneyed sounds in days gone by." Chacun à son gout. The time of sorrow is the last the present annotator would choose for hearing a street organ grind any air whatsoever. At the best of times, to him, the best of barrelorgans is tolerable in no other sense than Dogberry's of not to be endured.

Never was the simplicity of good old Colonel Newcome more remarkably or perhaps less winsomely displayed, than when, ever anxious to procure amusement for his darling Rosey, then confined to her couch, he asked whether she would not like a barrel-organ grinding fifty or sixty favourite pieces, which a bearer could turn; such an instrument as the " very fine one" Windus, of his regiment, "who loved music exceedingly," had out to Barrackpore in the year 1810, and relays of barrels by each ship with all the new tunes from Europe.

44

THE MAN WITH THE TORTURE-BOX.

door neighbour,-what can be said for them? what may not be said of them? Granted, that there are in existence cantankerous folk, cross-grained and acidulous exceedingly, who oppose all street "music" because it gives pleasure to some one else, and they have no notion of letting any one be pleased if they can help it. But is it fair, is it within the range of common justice, common good feeling, or indeed common sense, to impute indiscriminately to every objector to barrel-organ-grinders and brass bandsmen this extravagant malice of motive? In ninetynine cases out of a hundred the suffering is real, and very frequently it is intense. Iron constitutions that boast themselves innocent of nerves, unconscious of a nervous system,-'tis a thousand pities they cannot realize something of the nervous agitation, the absolute physical derangement, the prolonged mental discomposure, all due to the man with his torture-box under their window. Why should not I and my children have it, if we like it, and we do like it, cries your robust neighbour. But he and his children can very much better bear with a privation of that very odd pleasure, than you can bear with the pain. A neighbour should show himself neighbourly. Will nothing less than a brain fever convince him that grinding may be torture to some nerves? Nothing at all, probably, will convince him that the hater of organ-grinding

can like music. One may apply to the imperfect sympathy between these twain, what the host says to Julia, and what Julia answers, in The Two Gentlemen of Verona:

“Host. I perceive you delight not in music.

Jul. Not a whit, when it jars so."

And how it does jar, that creak of the torturebox of pipes and foul wind! It taxes one's humanity to feel humane towards the dirty agents of all this foul play, albeit while (in Mrs. Browning's words) "the organ's grinding, the grinder's face is dry and vacant of even woe." Dr. O. W. Holmes has a rap at the breed, including the hurdy-gurdy monsters, as

"Vagrants, whose arts

Have caged some devil in their mad machine,*

Which grinding, squeaks, with husky groans between.”

All thanks to every scribe who utters a like protest, however casually expressed, against the grinders; for every little helps, or ought to help. To the author of Land at Last, for instance, for his side-thrust (in passing) at “the grinding of the

As a machine, Father Prout quarrelled with the barrelorgan,-complaining that the old ballad-singers, blind fiddlers, and pipers, had been forced to give place to a mere piece of machinery, which superseded all intelligence and interest in the player.

2

46

THE ORGAN FIEND.

horrible organ which is murdering Ah, che la morte' beneath my window." To the author of Half a Million of Money, for an onslaught against "the inevitable street-organ-that 'most miraculous organ,' which can no more be silenced than the voice of murder itself."* To the author of Twice Round the Clock, for his fling at the "Italian organ-grinder, hirsute, sunburnt, and saucy," who grinds airs from the Trovatore six times over, follows with a selection from the Traviata, repeated half a dozen times, finishes with the Old Hundredth, and then begins again. To one of Blackwood's most favoured poets, too early dead, (perhaps the organ-fiend" helped to kill him,) who recorded once among the pleasures of memory the fact that "The Organ-fiend was wanting there.

Not till the Peace had closed our quarrels
Could slaughter that machine devise,
(Made from his useless musket-barrels)
To slay us 'mid our London Cries.

"Why did not Martin in his Act

Insert some punishment to suit
This crime of being hourly rack'd

To death by some melodious Brute?

* "And which in Transpontia hath its chosen home. The oldest inhabitant of Brudenell Terrace confessed to never having known the hour of any day (except Sunday) when some native of Parma or Lucca was not to be heard grinding his slow length along from number one to number twentyour."-Chap. I.

SUFFERERS' PROTESTS.

From ten at morn to twelve at night
His instrument the Savage plies,
From him alone there's no respite,

Since 'tis the Victim, here, that cries.

"Macaulay! Talfourd! Smythe! Lord John!*
If ever yet your studies brown

This pest has broken in upon,

Arise, and put the Monster down.

By all distracted students feel,

When sense crash'd into nonsense dies
Beneath that ruthless ORGAN'S wheel,
We call! O hear our London Cries!"

47

A Saturday Reviewer can name no native nuisance to compare with that inflicted by itinerant musicians on those who have "no soul for popular Italian music." He assumes that there is a class of our fellow-citizens who love to steep their senses in the eccentric melodies ground out of tortured music-chests by able-bodied Piedmontese. He knows too well that there is another class, the softness of whose hearts is only surpassed by that of their heads, who, compassionating the sorrows of the victims of a cruel system, do their best to make it perpetual by subsidizing it. But he submitsand with grateful earnestness we enforce the plea —that a certain consideration should be shown for intelligible differences of taste; that even assuming the harmonies of the organ to be the music of the

*This appeal was penned in 1849.