Perhaps the pleasantest of all the out-door accessories of a London
life are the strains of fugitive music which one hears in the quiet
by-streets or suburban highways--strains born of the skill of some of
our wandering artists, who, with flute, violin, harp, or brazen tube
of various shape and designation, make the brick-walls of the busy
city responsive with the echoes of harmony. Many a time and oft have
we lingered entranced by the witchery of some street Orpheus,
forgetful, not merely of all the troubles of existence, but of
existence itself, until the strain had ceased, and silence aroused us
to the matter-of-fact world of business. One blind fiddler, we know
him well, with face upturned towards the sky, has stood a public
benefactor any day these twenty years, and we know not how much
longer, to receive the substantial homage of the music-loving million.
But that he is scarcely old enough, he might have been the identical
Oxford-Street Orpheus of Wordsworth:--
'His station is there; and he works on the crowd,
He sways them with harmony merry and loud;
He fills with his power all their hearts to the brim--
Was aught ever heard like his fiddle and him?'
Decidedly not--there is nothing to match it; and so thinks 'the
one-pennied boy' who spares him his one penny, and deems it well
bestowed. Then there are the harpers, with their smooth
French-horn-breathing and piccola-piping comrades, who at the soothing
hour of twilight affect the tranquil and retired paved courts or snug
enclosures far from the roar and rumble of chariot-wheels, where,
clustered round with lads and lasses released from the toils of the
day, they dispense romance and sentiment, and harmonious cadences, in
exchange for copper compliments and the well-merited applause of fit
audiences, though few. Again, there are the valorous brass-bands of
the young Germans, who blow such spirit-stirring appeals from their
travel-worn and battered tubes--to say nothing of the thousand
performers of solos and duets, who, wherever there is the chance of a
moment's hearing, are ready to attempt their seductions upon our ears
to the prejudice of our pockets. All these we must pass over with this
brief mention upon the present occasion; our business being with their
numerous antitheses and would-be rivals--the incarnate nuisances who
fill the air with discordant and fragmentary mutilations and
distortions of heaven-born melody, to the distraction of educated ears
and the perversion of the popular taste.
'Music by handle,' as it has been facetiously termed, forms our
present subject. This kind of harmony, which is not too often
deserving of the name, still constitutes, notwithstanding the large
amount of indisputable talent which derives its support from the
gratuitous contributions of the public, by far the larger portion of
the peripatetic minstrelsy of the metropolis. It would appear that
these grinders of music, with some few exceptions which we shall
notice as we proceed, are distinguished from their praiseworthy
exemplars, the musicians, by one remarkable, and to them perhaps very
comfortable characteristic. Like the exquisite Charles Lamb--if his
curious confession was not a literary myth--they have ears, but no
ear, though they would hardly be brought to acknowledge the fact so
candidly as he did. They may be divided, so far as our observation
goes, into the following classes:--1. Hand-organists; 2.
Monkey-organists; 3. Handbarrow-organists; 4. Handcart-organists; 5.
Horse-and-cart-organists; 6. Blindbird-organists; 7. Piano-grinders;
8. Flageolet-organists and pianists; 9. Hurdy-gurdy players.
1. The hand-organist is most frequently a Frenchman of the
departments, nearly always a foreigner. If his instrument be good for
anything, and he have a talent for forming a connection, he will be
found to have his regular rounds, and may be met with any hour in the
week at the same spot he occupied at that hour on the week previous.
But a man so circumstanced is at the head of the vagabond profession,
the major part of whom wander at their own sweet will wherever chance
may guide. The hand-organ which they lug about varies in value from
L.10 to L.150--at least, this last-named sum was the cost of a
first-rate instrument thirty years ago, such as were borne about by
the street-organists of Bath, Cheltenham, and the fashionable
watering-places, and the grinders of the West End of London at that
period, when musical talent was much less common than it is now. We
have seen a contract for repairs to one of these instruments,
including a new stop and new barrels, amounting to the liberal sum of
L.75: it belonged to a man who had grown so impudent in prosperity, as
to incur the penalty of seven years' banishment from the town in which
he turned his handle, for the offence of thrashing a young nobleman,
who stood between him and his auditors too near for his sense of
dignity. Since the invention of the metal reed, however, which, under
various modifications and combinations, supplies the sole utterance of
the harmonicon, celestina, seraphina, colophon, accordian, concertina,
&c. &c. and which does away with the necessity for pipes, the street
hand-organ has assumed a different and infinitely worse character.
Some of them yet remain what the old Puritans called 'boxes of
whistles'--that is, they are all pipes; but many of them might with
equal propriety be called 'boxes of Jews-harps,' being all reeds, or
rather vibrating metal tongues--and more still are of a mixed
character, having pipes for the upper notes, and metal reeds for the
bass. The effect is a succession of sudden hoarse brays as an
accompaniment to a soft melody, suggesting the idea of a duet between
Titania and Bottom. But this is far from the worst of it. The
profession of hand-organist having of late years miserably declined,
being in fact at present the next grade above mendicancy, the element
of cheapness has, per force, been studied in the manufacture of the
instrument. The barrels of some are so villainously pricked that the
time is altogether broken, the ear is assailed with a minim in the
place of a quaver, and _vice versâ_--and occasionally, as a matter of
convenience, a bar is left out, or even one is repeated, in utter
disregard of suffering humanity. But what is worse still, these metal
reeds, which are the most untunable things in the whole range of
sound-producing material, are constantly, from contact with fog and
moisture, getting out of order; and howl dolorously as they will in
token of their ailments, their half-starved guardian, who will grind
half an hour for a penny, cannot afford to medicate their pains, even
if he is aware of them, which, judging from his placid composure
during the most infamous combination of discords, is very much to be
questioned.[1]
2. The monkey-organist is generally a native of Switzerland or the
Tyrol. He carries a worn-out, doctored, and flannel-swathed
instrument, under the weight of which, being but a youth, or very
rarely an adult, he staggers slowly along, with outstretched back and
bended knees. On the top of his old organ sits a monkey, or sometimes
a marmoset, to whose queer face and queerer tricks, he trusts for
compensating the defective quality of his music. He dresses his
shivering brute in a red jacket and a cloth cap; and, when he can, he
teaches him to grind the organ, to the music of which he will himself
dance wearily. He wears an everlasting smile upon his countenance,
indicative of humour, natural and not assumed for the occasion: and
though he invariably unites the profession of a beggar with that of
monkey-master and musician, he has evidently no faith in a melancholy
face, and does not think it absolutely necessary to make you
thoroughly miserable in order to excite your charity. He will leave
his monkey grinding away on a door-step, and follow you with a
grinning face for a hundred yards or more, singing in a kind of
recitative: 'Date qualche cosa, signer! per amor di Dio, eccellenza,
date qualche cosa!' If you comply with his request, his voluble thanks
are too rapid for your comprehension; and if you refuse, he laughs
merrily in your face as he turns away to rejoin his friend and
coadjutor. He is a favourite subject with the young artists about
town, especially if he is very good-looking, or, better still,
excessively ugly; and he picks up many a shilling for sitting,
standing, or sprawling on the ground, as a model in the studio. It
sometimes happens that he has no organ--his monkey being his only
stock in trade. When the monkey dies--and one sees by their melancholy
comicalities, and cautious and painful grimaces, that the poor brutes
are destined to a short time of it--he takes up with white mice, or,
lacking these, constructs a dancing-doll, which, with the aid of a
short plank with an upright at one end, to which is attached a cord
passing through the body of the doll, and fastened to his right leg,
he keeps constantly on the jig, to the music of a tuneless
tin-whistle, bought for a penny, and a very primitive parchment tabor,
manufactured by himself. These shifts he resorts to in the hope of
retaining his independence and personal freedom--failing to succeed in
which, he is driven, as a last resource, to the comfortless drudgery
of piano-grinding, which we shall have to notice in its turn.
3. The handbarrow-organist is not uncommonly some lazy Irishman, if he
be not a sickly Savoyard, who has mounted his organ upon a handbarrow
of light and somewhat peculiar construction, for the sake of
facilitating the task of locomotion. From the nature of his equipage,
he is not given to grinding so perpetually as his heavily-burdened
brethren. He cannot of course grind, as they occasionally do, as he
travels along, so he pursues a different system of tactics. He walks
leisurely along the quiet ways, turning his eyes constantly to the
right and left, on the look-out for a promising opening. The sight of
a group of children at a parlour-window brings him into your front
garden, where he establishes his instrument with all the deliberation
of a proprietor of the premises. He is pretty sure to begin his
performance in the middle of a tune, with a hiccoughing kind of sound,
as though the pipes were gasping for breath. He puts a sudden period
to his questionable harmony the very instant he gets his penny, having
a notion, which is tolerably correct, that you pay him for his silence
and not for his sounds. In spite of his discordant gurglings and
squealings, he is welcomed by the nursery-maids and their infant
tribes of little sturdy rogues in petticoats, who flock eagerly round
him, and purchase the luxury of a half-penny grind, which they perform
_con amore_, seated on the top of his machine. If, when your front
garden is thus invaded, you insist upon his decamping without a fee,
he shews his estimate of the peace and quietness you desiderate by his
unwillingness to retire, which, however, he at length consents to do,
though not without a muttered remonstrance, delivered with the air of
an injured man. He generally contrives to house himself as night draws
on in some dingy taproom, appertaining to the lowest class of
Tom-and-Jerry shops, where, for a few coppers and 'a few beer,' he
will ring all the changes on his instrument twenty times over, until
he and his admiring auditors are ejected at midnight by the
police-fearing landlord.
4. The handcart-organists are a race of a very different and more
enterprising character, and of much more lofty and varied pretensions.
They generally travel in firms of two, three, or even four partners,
drawing the cart by turns. Their equipage consists of an organ of very
complicated construction, containing, besides a deal of very
marvellous machinery within its entrails, a collection of bells,
drums, triangles, gongs, and cymbals, in addition to the usual
quantity of pipes and metal-reeds that go to make up the travelling
organ. The music they play is of a species which it is not very easy
to describe, as it is not once in a hundred times that a stranger can
detect the melody through the clash and clangor of the gross amount of
brass, steel, and bell-metal put in vibration by the machinery. This,
however, is of very little consequence, as it is not the music in
particular which forms the principal attraction: if it serve to call a
crowd together, that is sufficient for their purpose; and it is for
this reason, we imagine, that the effect of the whole is contrived to
resemble, as it very closely does, the hum and jangle of Greenwich
Fair when heard of an Easter Monday from the summit of the Observatory
Hill. No, the main attraction is essentially dramatic. In front of the
great chest of heterogeneous sounds there is a stage about five or six
feet in width, four in height, and perhaps eighteen inches or two feet
in depth. Upon this are a variety of figures, about fourteen inches
long, gorgeously arrayed in crimson, purple, emerald-green, blue, and
orange draperies, and loaded with gold and tinsel, and sparkling
stones and spangles, all doubled in splendour by the reflection of a
mirror in the background. The figures, set in motion by the same
machinery which grinds the incomprehensible overture, perform a drama
equally incomprehensible. At the left-hand corner is Daniel in the
lion's den, the lion opening his mouth in six-eight time, and an angel
with outspread wings, but securely transfixed through the loins by a
revolving brass pivot, shutting it again to the same lively movement.
To the right of Daniel is the Grand Turk, seated in his divan, and
brandishing a dagger over a prostrate slave, who only ventures to rise
when the dagger is withdrawn. Next to him is Nebuchadnezzar on all
fours, eating painted grass, with a huge gold crown on his head, which
he bobs for a bite every other bar. In the right-hand corner is a sort
of cavern, the abode of some supernatural and mysterious being of the
fiend or vampire school, who gives an occasional fitful start, and
turns an ominous-looking green glass-eye out upon the spectators. All
these are in the background. In the front of the stage stands
Napoleon, wearing a long sword and cocked hat, and the conventional
gray smalls--his hand of course stuck in his breast. At his right are
Tippoo Saib and his sons, and at his left, Queen Victoria and Prince
Albert. After a score or so of bars, the measure of the music suddenly
alters--Daniel's guardian angel flies off--the prophet and the lion
lie down to sleep together--the Grand Turk sinks into the arms of the
death-doomed slave. Nebuchadnezzar falls prostrate on the ground, and
the fiend in the gloomy cavern whips suddenly round and glares with
his green eye, as if watching for a spring upon the front row of
actors, who have now taken up their cue and commenced their
performance. Napoleon, Tippoo Saib, and Queen Victoria, dance a
three-handed reel, to the admiration of Prince Albert and a group of
lords and ladies in waiting, who nod their heads approvingly--when
br'r'r! crack! bang! at a tremendous crash of gongs and grumbling of
bass-notes, the fiend in the corner rushes forth from his lair with a
portentous howl. Away, neck or nothing, flies Napoleon, and Tippoo
scampers after him, followed by the terrified attendants; but lo! at
the precise nick of time, Queen Victoria draws a long sword from
beneath her stays, while up jumps the devouring beast from the den of
the prophet, and like a true British lion--as he doubtless was all the
while--flies at the throat of the fiend, straight as an arrow to its
mark. Then follows a roar of applause from the discriminating
spectators, amidst which the curtain falls, and, with an extra
flourish of music, the collection of copper coin commences. This is
always a favourite spectacle with the multitude, who never bother
themselves about such trifles as anachronisms and unities; and the
only difficulty the managers have to overcome in order to insure a
remunerative exhibition, is that of finding a quiet locality, which
shall yet be sufficiently frequented to insure them an audience. There
are equipages of this description of very various pretensions and
perfection, but they all combine the allurements of music and the
drama in a greater or less degree.
5. The horse-and-cart-organists are a race of enterprising
speculators, who, relying upon the popular penchant for music, have
undertaken to supply the demand by wholesale. It is impossible by mere
description to impart an adequate idea of the truly appalling and
tremendous character of their performances. Their machines are some of
them vast structures, which, mounted upon stout wheels, and drawn by a
couple of serviceable horses, might be mistaken for wild-beast vans.
They are crammed choke-full with every known mechanical contrivance
for the production of ear-stunning noises. Wherever they burst forth
into utterance, the whole parish is instantly admonished of their
whereabouts, and, with the natural instinct of John Bull for a row--no
matter how it originates--forth rushes the crowd to enjoy the
dissonance. The piercing notes of a score of shrill fifes, the squall
of as many clarions, the hoarse bray of a legion of tin trumpets, the
angry and fitful snort of a brigade of rugged bassoons, the
unintermitting rattle of a dozen or more deafening drums, the clang of
bells firing in peals, the boom of gongs, with the sepulchral roar of
some unknown contrivance for bass, so deep that you might almost count
the vibrations of each note--these are a few of the components of the
horse-and-cart-organ, the sum-total of which it is impossible to add
up. Compared to the vicinity of a first-rater in full blow, the inside
of a menagerie at feeding-time would be a paradise of tranquillity and
repose. The rattle and rumble of carts and carriages, which drive the
professors and possessors of milder music to the side-streets and
suburbs, sink into insignificance when these cataracts of uproar begin
to peal forth; and their owners would have no occasion to seek an
appropriate spot for their volcanic eruptions, were it not that the
police, watchful against accident, have warned them from the principal
thoroughfares, where serious consequences have already ensued through
the panic occasioned to horses from the continuous explosion of such
unwonted sounds. In fact, an honourable member of the Commons' House
of Parliament made a motion in the House, towards the close of the
last session, for the immediate prohibition of these monster
nuisances, and quoted several cases of alarm and danger to life of
which they had been the originating cause. These formidable erections
are for the most part the property and handiwork of the men who travel
with them, and who must levy a pretty heavy contribution on the public
to defray their expenses. They perform entire overtures and long
concerted pieces, being furnished with spiral barrels, and might
probably produce a tolerable effect at the distance of a mile or
so--at least we never heard one yet without incontinently wishing it a
mile off. By a piece of particular ill-fortune, we came one day upon
one undergoing the ceremony of tuning, on a piece of waste-ground at
the back of Coldbath Prison. The deplorable wail of those tortured
pipes and reeds, and the short savage grunt of the bass mystery,
haunted us, a perpetual day-and-night-mare, for a month. We could not
help noticing, however, that the jauntily-dressed fellow, whose
fingers were covered with showy rings, and ears hung with long drops,
who performed the operation, managed it with consummate skill, and
with an ear for that sort of music most marvellously discriminating.
6. Blind bird-organists. Though most blind persons either naturally
possess or soon acquire an ear for music, there are yet numbers who,
from the want of it or from some other cause, never make any
proficiency as performers on an instrument. Blindness, too, is often
accompanied with some other disability, which disqualifies its victims
for learning such trades as they might otherwise be taught. Hence
many, rather than remain in the workhouse, take to grinding music in
the streets. Here we are struck with one remarkable fact: the
Irishman, the Frenchman, the Italian, or the Savoyard, at least so
soon as he is a man, and able to lug it about, is provided with an
instrument with which he can make a noise in the world, and prefer his
clamorous claim for a recompense; while the poor blind Englishman has
nothing but a diminutive box of dilapidated whistles, which you may
pass fifty times without hearing it, let him grind as hard as he will.
It is generally nothing more than an old worn-out bird-organ, in all
likelihood charitably bestowed by some compassionate Poll
Sweedlepipes, who has already used it up in the education of his
bull-finches. The reason, we opine, must be that the major part, if
not the whole, of the peripatetic instruments of the metropolis are
the property of speculators, who let them out on hire, and that the
blind man, not being considered an eligible customer, is precluded
from the advantage of their use. However this may be, the poor blind
grinder is almost invariably found furnished as we have described him,
jammed up in some cranny or corner in a third-rate locality, where,
having opened or taken off the top of his box, that the curious
spectator may behold the mystery of his too quiet music--the revolving
barrel, the sobbing bellows, and the twelve leaden and ten wooden
pipes--he turns his monotonous handle throughout the live-long day, in
the all but vain appeal for the commiseration of his fellows. This is
really a melancholy spectacle, and one which we would gladly miss
altogether in our casual rounds.
7. The piano-grinders are by far the most numerous of the
handle-turning fraternity. The instrument they carry about with them
is familiar to the dwellers in most of the towns in England. It is a
miniature cabinet-piano, without the keys or finger-board, and is
played by similar mechanical means to that which gives utterance to
the hand-organ; but of course it requires no bellows. There is one
thing to be said in favour of these instruments--they do not make much
noise, and consequently are no very great nuisance individually. The
worst thing against them is the fact, that they are never in tune, and
therefore never worth the hearing. After grinding for twelve or
fourteen hours a day for four or five years, they become perfect
abominations; and luckless is the fate of the poor little stranger
condemned to perpetual companionship with a villainous machine, whose
every tone is the cause of offence to those whose charity he must
awaken into exercise, or go without a meal. These instruments are
known to be the property of certain extensive proprietors in the city,
some of whom have hundreds of them grinding daily in every quarter of
the town. Some few are let out on hire--the best at a shilling a day;
the old and worn-out ones as low as two or three pence; but the great
majority of them are ground by young Italians shipped to this country
for the especial purpose by the owners of the instruments. These
descendants of the ancient Romans figure in Britain in a very
different plight from that of their renowned ancestors. They may be
encountered in troops sallying forth from the filthy purlieus of
Leather Lane, at about nine or ten in the morning, each with his
awkward burden strapped to his back, and supporting his steps with a
stout staff, which also serves to support the instrument when playing.
Each one has his appointed beat, and he is bound to bring home a
certain prescribed sum to entitle him to a share in the hot supper
prepared for the evening meal. We have more than once, when startled
by the sound of the everlasting piano within an hour of midnight,
questioned the belated grinder, and invariably received for answer,
that he had not yet been able to collect the sum required of him.
Still there can be no doubt that some of them contrive to save money;
inasmuch as we occasionally see an active fellow set up on his own
account, and furnished with an instrument immensely superior to those
of his less prosperous compatriots. So great is the number of these
wandering Italian pianists, that their condition has attracted the
attention of their more wealthy countrymen, who, in conjunction with a
party of benevolent English gentlemen, have set on foot an association
for the express purpose of imparting instruction to poor Italians of
all grades, of whom the vagabond musicians form the largest section.
It is easy to recognise the rule adopted in the distribution of the
instruments among the grinders: the stoutest fellow, or he who can
take the best care of it, gets the best piano; while the shattered and
rickety machine goes to the urchin of ten or twelve, who can scarcely
drag it a hundred yards without resting. It is to be supposed that the
instruments are all rated according to their quality. There is at this
moment wandering about the streets of London a singular and pitiable
object, whose wretched lot must be known to hundreds of thousands, and
who affords in his own person good evidence of the strictness of the
rule above alluded to, as well as of the rigour with which the trade
is carried on. We refer to a ragged, shirtless, and harmlessly insane
Italian lad, who, under the guardianship of one of the piano-mongers,
is driven forth daily into the streets, carrying a blackened and
gutted, old piano-case, in which two strings only of the original
scale remain unbroken. The poor unwashed innocent transports himself
as quickly as possible to the genteelest neighbourhood he can find,
and with all the enthusiasm of a Jullien, commences his monotonous
grind. Three turns of the handle, and the all but defunct instrument
ejaculates 'tink;' six more inaudible turns, and then the responding
string answers 'tank.' 'Tink--tank' is the sum-total of his
performance, to any defects in which he is as insensible as a blind
man is to colour. As a matter of course, he gets ill-treated, mobbed,
pushed about, and upset by the blackguard scamps about town; and were
it not for the police, who have rescued him times without number from
the hands of his persecutors, he would long ere now have been reduced
to as complete a ruin as his instrument. In one respect, he is indeed
already worse off than the dilapidated piano: he is dumb as well as
silly, and can only utter one sound--a cry of alarm of singular
intensity; this cry forms the climax of pleasure to the wretches who
dog his steps, and this, unmoved by his silent tears and woful looks,
they goad him to shriek forth for their express gratification. We have
stumbled upon him at near eleven at night, grinding away with all his
might in a storm of wind and rain, perfectly unconscious of either,
and evidently delighted at his unusual freedom from interruption.
8. Flageolet-organists and pianists. It is a pleasure to award praise
where praise is due, and it may be accorded to this class of grinders,
who are, to our minds, the elite of the profession. We stated above
that some of the piano-grinders contrive, notwithstanding their
difficult position, to save money and set up for themselves. It is
inevitable that the faculty of music must be innate with some of these
wandering pianists, and it is but natural that these should succeed
the best, and be the first to improve their condition. The instrument
which combines a flageolet-stop with a piano is generally found in the
possession of young fellows who, by dint of a persevering and savage
economy, have saved sufficient funds to procure it. Indeed, in common
hands, it would be of less use than the commonest instrument, because
it requires frequent--more than daily--tuning, and would therefore be
of no advantage to a man with no ear. Unless the strings were in
strict unison with the pipes, the discordance would be unbearable, and
as this in the open air can hardly be the case for many hours
together, they have to be rectified many times in the course of a
week. As might be reasonably supposed, these instruments are
comparatively few. When set to slow melodies, the flageolet taking the
air, and the piano a well-arranged accompaniment, the effect is really
charming, and, there is little reason to doubt, is found as profitable
to the producer as it is pleasing to the hearer. They are to be met
with chiefly at the west end of the town, and on summer evenings
beneath the lawyers' windows in the neighbourhood of some of the Inns
of Court.
9. The hurdy-gurdy player. We have placed this genius last, because,
though essentially a most horrid grinder, he, too, is in some sort a
performer. In London, there may be said to be two classes of
them--little hopping, skipping, jumping, reeling Savoyard or Swiss
urchins, who dance and sing, and grind and play, doing, like Cæsar,
four things at once, and whom you expect every moment to see rolling
on the pavement, but who continue, like so many kittens, to pitch on
their feet at last, notwithstanding all their antics--and men with
sallow complexions, large dark eyes, and silver ear-rings, who stand
erect and tranquil, and confer a dignity, not to say a grace, even
upon the performance of the hurdy-gurdy. The boys for the most part do
not play any regular tune, having but few keys to their instruments,
often not even a complete octave. The better instruments of the adult
performers have a scale of an octave and a half, and sometimes two
octaves, and they perform melodies and even harmonies with something
like precision, and with an effect which, to give it its due praise,
supplies a very tolerable caricature of the Scotch bagpipes. These
gentry are not much in favour either with the genuine lovers of music
or the lovers of quiet, and they know the fact perfectly well. They
hang about the crowded haunts of the common people, and find their
harvest in a vulgar jollification, or an extempore 'hop' at the door
of a suburban public-house on a summer night. There are a few
old-women performers on this hybrid machine, one of whom is familiar
to the public through the dissemination of her _vera effigies_ in a
contemporary print.
The above are all the grinders which observation has enabled us to
identify as capable of classification. The reader may, if he likes,
suppose them to be the metropolitan representatives of the nine
Muses--and that, in fact, in some sort they are, seeing that they are
the embodiments to a certain extent of the musical tastes of a section
at least of the inhabitants of London; though, if we are asked which
is Melpomene? which is Thalia? &c. &c. we must adopt the reply of the
showman to the child who asked which was the lion and which was the
dog, and received for answer: 'Whichever you like, my little dear.'
With respect to all these grinders, one thing is remarkable: they are
all, with the exception of a small savour of Irishmen, foreigners.
Scarcely one Englishman, not one Scot, will be found among the whole
tribe; and this fact is as welcome to us as it is singular, because it
speaks volumes in favour of the national propensity, of which we have
reason to be proud, to be ever doing something, producing something,
applying labour to its legitimate purpose, and not turning another
man's handle to grind the wind. Yet there is, alas! a scattered and
characteristic tribe of vagabond English music-grinders, and to these
we must turn a moment's attention ere we finally close the list.
We must call them, for we know no more appropriate name,
cripple-grinders. It is impossible to carry one's explorations very
far through the various districts of London without coming upon one or
more samples of this unfortunate tribe. Commerce maims and mutilates
her victims as effectually as war, though not in equal numbers; and
men and lads without arms, or without legs, or without either, and men
doubled up and distorted, and blasted blind and hideous with
gunpowder, who have yet had the misfortune to escape death, are left
without limbs or eyesight, often with shattered intellects, to fight
the battle of life, at fearful odds. Had they been reduced to a like
miserable condition while engaged in killing their fellow-creatures on
the field of battle or on the deck of carnage, a grateful country
would have housed them in a palace, and abundantly supplied their
every want; but they were merely employed in procuring the necessaries
of life for their fellows in the mine or the factory, and as nobody
owes them any gratitude for that, they must do what they can. And
behold what they do: they descend, being fit for nothing else, to the
level of the foreign music-grinder, and, mounted on a kind of
bed-carriage, are drawn about the streets of London by their wives or
children; being furnished with a blatant hand-organ of last century's
manufacture, whose ear-torturing growl draws the attention of the
public to their woful plight, they extort that charity which would
else fail to find them out. If there be something gratifying in the
fact, that this is the only class of Britons who follow such an
inglorious profession, there is nothing very flattering in the
consideration, that even these are compelled to it by inexorable
necessity.