"Peace, woman. He shall be poor, I say. Happy lad! He shall be poor. He shall never have money in a stocking, and he shall never want any. He shall live like the sparrows, from day to day, fed by the bounty of the Lord."
"Who loveth the Dog and Duck," said his wife.
The husband frowned. "To sum up, Will, thy lot shall be the happiest that the world can give. What?" He lifted his hand and his eyes grew brighter. "For the musician the curse of labour is remitted: for him there is no longing after riches: for him there is no flattery of great men: for him there is no meanness; for him there are no base arts: for him there is no wriggling: for him there are no back stairs: for him there is no patron.--In a word, Will, the musician is the only free man in the world."
"In the Rules, you mean, my dear." This was his wife"s correction.
"Will," said Alice, "shall you really become like Tom?"
"Truly, Alice, if I can."
"Wife," said Tom. "Will shall stay with us. He can sleep in the garret.
We must find a mattress somewhere."
"Nay, but I must pay my footing. See, Tom. I have five guineas." I showed this mine of wealth. He took one and gave it to his wife.
"Aha!" he laughed. "Buy him a mattress and a blanket, wife. And this evening we will have a bowl of punch. Will, we shall fare like Kings and like the Great ones of the Earth."
CHAPTER III
A WAY TO LIVE
I think that Tom Shirley was the most good-natured man in the whole world: the most ready to do anything he could for anybody: always cheerful: always happy: partly, I suppose, because he looked at everything through spectacles of imagination. He joined, however, to his pa.s.sion for music another which belonged to a lower world: namely, for punch. Yet he was not an intemperate man: he showed neither purple cheeks, nor a double chin, nor a swollen neck, nor a rubicund nose--all of which were common sights on Change and in the streets of London. The reason why he displayed no signs of drink was that he could seldom gratify his pa.s.sion for punch by reason of his poverty, and that in eating, which, I believe, also contributes its share to the puffing out of the neck and the painting of the nose, such as may be seen on Change, he was always as moderate, although he thought every meal a feast, as became his slender means.
I do not know how he got into the King"s Bench, but the thing is so easy that one marvels that so many are able to keep out. They put him in and kept him there for a time, when he was enabled to obtain the privilege of the Rules. He was, as he boasted, always rich, because he thought he was rich. His wife took from him, every week, the whole of his wages, otherwise he would have given them away.
At one o"clock Alice laid the cloth and we had dinner. Tom lifted the knife and fork and held it over the cold boiled beef as if fearing to mar that delicate dish by a false or clumsy cut. "Is there anything," he said, "more delicious to the palate than cold boiled beef? It must be cut delicately and with judgment--with judgment, Will." He proceeded to exercise judgment. There was a cabbage on the table. "This delicacy," he said, "is actually grown for us--for us--in the gardens of Lambeth Marsh. Remark the crispness of it: there is a solid heart for you: there is colour: there is flavour." All this was, I remember, the grossest flattery. "Oat cake," he said, breaking a piece. "Some, I believe, prefer wheaten bread. They do wrong. Viands must not be judged by their cost but by their fitness to others on the table, and by the season.
Remember, Will, that with cold boiled beef, oat cake is your only eating." He poured out some beer into a gla.s.s and held it up to the light. "Watch the sparkles: hear the humming: strong October this"--it was the most common small beer--"have a care, Will, have a care." And so on, turning the simple meal into a banquet.
His wife and sister received these extravagances without a smile. They were used to them. The latter, at least, believed that they were the simple truth. The poor girl was innocently proud of her humble home, this cottage on St. George"s Fields, within the Rules.
After dinner, we talked. As the subject was Music Tom was somewhat carried away; yet there was method in his madness.
"I said, lad, that there would be no Art if there were no necessity.
"Tis Poverty alone makes men became musicians and painters and poets.
Where can you find a rich man who was ever a great artist? I am no scholar, but I have asked scholars this question, and they agree with me that riches destroy Art. Hardly may Dives become even a Connoisseur. He may become a general or a statesman: we do not take all from him: we leave him something--but not the best--that we keep for ourselves--we keep Art for ourselves. As for a rich merchant becoming a musician or a painter--it is impossible: one laughs at the very thought."
"Well, that danger is gone, Tom, so far as I am concerned."
"Ay. The reason I take it, is that Art demands the whole man--not a bit of him--the whole man--all his soul, all his mind, all his thoughts, all his strength. You must give all that to music, Will."
"I ask nothing better."
"Another reason is that Art raises a man"s thoughts to a higher level than is wanted for Trade. It is impossible for a man"s mind to soar or to sink according as he thinks of art or trade. You will remember, Will, for your comfort, that your mind is raised above the City."
"I will remember."
"Well, then, let us think about what is best to be done."
He pondered a little. Then he smiled.
"Put pride in pocket, Will. Now what would you like?"
"To write great music."
"A worthy ambition. It has been my own. It is not for me to say whether my songs, which are nightly sung at the Dog and Duck, are great music or not. Posterity may judge. Lad, it is one thing to love music--and another thing to compose it. The latter is given to few: the former to many. It may be that it is thy gift. But I know not. Meantime, we must live."
"I will do anything."
"Again--put pride in pocket. Now there is a riverside tavern at Bermondsey. It is a place for sailors and their Dolls. A rough and coa.r.s.e place it is, at best. They want a fiddler from six o"clock till ten every night, and later on Sat.u.r.days."
I heard with a shiver. To play in a sailors" tavern! It was my father"s prophecy.
"Everybody must begin, Will. What? A sailors" tavern is no place for the son of a City merchant, is it? But that is gone. Thou art now n.o.body"s son--a child of the gutter--the world is thine oyster--free of all ties--with neither brother nor cousin to say thee nay. Lucky dog! What?
We must make a beginning--I say--in the gutter."
His eyes twinkled and smiled, and I perceived without being told that he meant to try my courage. So, with a rueful countenance and a foolish sense of shame, I consented to sit in the corner of a sanded room in a common riverside tavern and to make music for common sailors and their sweethearts.
"Why," said Tom, "that is well. And now, my lad, remember. There are no better judges of a fiddle than sailors. They love their music as they love their lobscouse, hot and strong and plenty. Give it elbow, Will.
They are not for fine fingering or for cunning strokes and effects--they like the tune to come out full and sweet. They will be thy masters. As for dancing, they like the time to be marked as well as the tune. Find out how they like to take it. There is one time for a hornpipe and another for a jig. As for pay----"
I will not complete the sentence. For such as myself there must be a Day of Small Things. But one need not confess how very small these things have been.
Thus it was that I found an Asylum--a City of Refuge--in the Rules of the King"s Bench, when I was turned out by my own people. And in this way I became that despised and contemptible object, a Common Fiddler. I played, not without glory, every night, to a company as low as could be found. At least, I thought so at the time. Later on, it is true, I found a lower company still. And I dare say there are a.s.semblies of men and women even lower. My fellows, at least, were honest, and their companions were, at least, what the men had made them.
We settled the business that very afternoon, walking over to Bermondsey.
The landlord said I was very young, but if I could fiddle he did not mind that, only it must be remembered in the pay. So I was engaged to begin the next day. In the evening I went with Tom to the Dog and Duck where he played first fiddle in the Orchestra, and sat in the musicians" gallery. About this place more anon. At twelve o"clock the music ceased and I walked home with Tom. I remember, it was then a fine clear night in September: the wind blew chill across the marshes: it had come up with the flow of the river: the moon was riding high: a strange elation possessed my soul: for my independence was beginning: four guineas in my pocket: and a place with so many shillings a week to live upon: nothing to do but to work at music: and to live with the best-hearted man in the whole world.
We got home. Alice had gone to bed. Tom"s wife was sitting up for us, the bowl of punch was ready for us, not too big a bowl, because Tom"s weakness where punch was concerned was well known. He drank my success in one gla.s.s: my future operas and oratorios in the second: my joyful independence in the third: and my happy release in the fourth. That finished the bowl and we went to bed.
CHAPTER IV
LOVE AND MUSIC
You need not be told how I lived for the next three or four years. I took what came. Pride remained in pocket. I fiddled a wedding-party to church and home again. I fiddled the Company of Fellowship Porters through the streets when they held their yearly feast. I fiddled for sailors; I fiddled at beanfeasts; I fiddled for Free Masons; I fiddled in taverns; I fiddled here and there and everywhere, quite unconcerned, even though I was playing in the gallery of a City company"s hall, and actually saw my cousin sitting in state among the guests at the feast below, and knew that he saw me and rejoiced at the sight, in his ignorance of the consolations of music.
Nothing in those days came amiss to me. One who makes music for his livelihood has no cause to be ashamed of playing for anyone. It does not seem an occupation such as one would choose, to spend the evening in a chair, stuck in a corner out of the way, in a stinking room, for rough fellows to dance hornpipes: the work does not lift up the soul to the level which Tom Shirley claimed for the musician. But this was only the pot-boiling work. I had the mornings to myself, when I could practise and attempt composition. Besides, at eighteen, the present, if one belongs to a calling which has a career, is of very little importance: the real life lies before: the boy lives for the future. I was going, in those days, to be a great composer like Handel. I was going to write oratorios such as his: majestic, where majesty was wanted: tender, where love and pity must be depicted: devout, where piety was called for. I would write, besides, in my ambition, such things as were written by Purcell and Arne: anthems for the church: songs and madrigals and rounds and catches such as those with which my patron Tom Shirley delighted his world.
The profession of music is one which can only be followed by those who have the gift of music. That is the definition of any Art: it can only be followed by those who have the gift of that Art. In any other calling a man may serve after a fashion, who hath not been called thereto. Many men, for example, are divines who have neither learning nor eloquence nor--the Lord help them!--religion. Many lawyers have no love for the law. Many merchants hate the counting-house. But in music no one can serve at all unless he is a musician born. He who, without the gift, would try to enter the profession breaks down at the outset, seeing that he cannot even learn to play an instrument with feeling, ease, or judgment. Nay, there are distinct ranks of music, to each of which one is raised by Nature, as much as by study. Thus, you have at the bottom, the rank and file, namely, those who can play a single instrument: next, those who can compose and make simple music for songs, in which all that is wanted is a tuneful and spirited air with an ordinary accompaniment: next those who understand harmony and can make music of a higher character, such as anthems, part-songs, and so forth. Lastly, you have the composer in whose brains lies the knowledge of every instrument in the orchestra. He is the King of musicians: from him come the n.o.ble oratorios which delight our age and lift our souls to Heaven: from him come the ma.s.ses which are sung--I have the scores of several--in Cathedrals of Roman Catholic countries. It is not for an Englishman to admire aught that belongs to Rome: but we must at least concede to the Roman Catholic the possession of n.o.ble music.
This, then, was my ambition. For four years I continued to live with my friend Tom Shirley. I held no communication with my father or any of my own people. None of them made any attempt at reconciliation. I believe they were honestly ashamed of me. The new friends I made were good and faithful: musical people have ever kindly hearts, and are loyal to each other: they do not backbite: there is no room for envy where one man plays the fiddle and another the cornet: we are all a company of brothers.