A man grinding a hand-organ in the street is doubtless a sturdy beggar
soliciting alms. A band of men blowing simultaneously into brass
instruments, with a brazen pretence of making music, is probably like
steam-whistles and church-bells and the cries of newspaper extras and
of itinerant peddlers of many wares--a noisy nuisance. Yet the old
cries of London, although doubtless strident and disturbing, have a
certain romantic charm of association and tradition. Like the Tower
and Billingsgate and Wapping Old Stairs, they were parts of very
London, and London was less London when they ceased.
Were those old cries of the story-book, like the interpreted voices of
the church-bells--
"Kettles and pans,
Says the bell of St. Ann's;
Apples and lemons,
Says the bell of St. Clement's,"--
altogether shameless and exasperating noises? Were they not the same
voices that called Whittington to turn again? Was not the deep bay of
St. Paul's heard when Nelson, the old sea-dog, died? Could the music
of the bells be spared from the story of London more than that of the
cries? Is the milkman who announces the arrival of the morning's milk
with a "barbaric yawp," like that in which Mr. Whitman is supposed to
celebrate his own personality, a sturdy beggar? He would certainly
resent the imputation. He is a merchant who sells a desirable
commodity. Shall he be adjudged a nuisance?
But Signor Raffaello da Perugia, who produces opera airs upon a
portable organ, with Don Whiskerando, who mounts with agility to the
parlor window to receive the consideration in his feathered cap, is he
not also a merchant who sells music to you in selected varieties, the
latest popular songs and tunes of the theatre, the waltz of last
year's ball-room? Must he be accounted a sturdy beggar because you
happen not to be in immediate want of his wares? Or the band of which
we were speaking, which arrives at the hour when the master of the
house returns from his office, and performs a serenade of welcome as
he greets the circle from which he has been absent since breakfast,
shall it be denied the pleasure of heightening the pleasure of others?
Are not the taxes of these Jem Baggses, these wandering minstrels, the
"only rates uninvidious in the levy, ungrudged in the assessment?"
Where the intent is so unequivocally kindly, is it not gross and
unfeeling to suggest in the modest orchestra a questionable chord, a
cracked reed, a cornet out of tune? Why so insistent, so scrupulously
exigent? Are you never out of tune, good sir? Your chords, say in the
domestic concert, are they always finely harmonious, and your own reed
never cracked? Why so eager to cast the first stone? Yonder trombone
may have its weaknesses--who of us, pray, is without? Has tolerance
gone out with astrology? "He had his faults," said the Reverend Bland
Sudds yesterday in a funeral discourse upon the Honorable Richard
Turpin--"he had his faults, yes, for he was human." But if a man may
falter, shall we not forgive to a trombone even a half-note? If Turpin
may be respectfully lamented with indulgent hope, shall a hesitating
horn be doomed to "the all-sweeping besom of societarian reformation?"
While Eugenio was making the grand tour he loitered in Venice and
lingered in Naples, wandering to Paestum, feasting in the orange
groves of Sorrento, and penetrating the Blue Grotto at Capri. In
Venice the songs of the country, in Naples the barcarolles, made his
memory as he came away a thicket of singing-birds. Those ever-renewed
snatches and remembered refrains of songs, Venetian and Neapolitan,
like a sponge passed over a Giorgione, brought out the mellow richness
of Italy, and as he paced Broadway and hummed a tender melody, he
walked where Vittoria Colonna had trod, and heard the faint beat of
oars upon moonlit Como. One morning, hard at work in his chamber,
where only the confused roar of the city was audible, a strain rose
high and clear above it all, with a soft, pathetic, penetrating
urgency, "So' marinaro di questa marina," and, all else forgotten, he
was once more rocking on Italian waters, and the red-capped
fisher-boys filled the air with song.
He ran down, and into the street, and around the block, and, lo!
Signor Raffaello was the fond magician. He was turning the crank of
his heavy organ, and Don Whiskerando, feathered cap in hand, was
climbing the balcony of the drawing-room windows, and Signor Raffaello
was raising his eyes towards the upper windows to see if haply some
child or nurse attended. Eugenio dropped more than a penny into the
ready hand of the signore, and was gone before the swarthy magician
could make out his benefactor. Eugenio gained his room, and with
sympathetic intelligence the signore, playing out the College
Hornpipe, once more touched the stop of "So' marinaro," and renewed
the happy spell.
It is not fine music, that of the hand-organ and the street bands; it
is indeed too oft a cracked and spavined pleasure. Doubtless it is
justly classified as one of the street noises, and street noises are
probably nuisances to be abated. But strolling in the eastern quarters
of the city, beyond the domain of the Academy and the Metropolitan
Opera-house and the halls of Steinway and Chickering, have you never
seen an eager and ragged little rabble happily watching Don
Whiskerando, while their elders are plainly pleased for a moment with
that tuneful noise? The fruit is not wholly sound, but it is far from
rotten. The music is poor, but the pleasure is unquestionable.
Possibly the "Gotterdammerung," and even Siegfried's "Tod," would pass
these people unmarked, like the wind. They cannot hold those mighty
measures. But they are receptive of these little tunes. In a life of
not much enjoyment this brings them some pleasure. Shall it be stopped
altogether? It is the business of these peddlers of tunes to wander.
They will move on if you do not want them. But must they also move
away from those who do want them?
If there be too much noise in the streets, might not some other form
of noise have been first silenced than that of the street musicians?
There are the factory whistles and the church-bells. For the necessity
of the first something may be said. But the heavy clangor of the bells
is doubtless more than a discomfort to many, and it is wholly useless,
while the music of the organs and the bands is a pleasure. Do the
Aldermen, like Homer, sometimes nod? Sometimes, for an inadvertent
hour, do the finer instincts of public spirit flag in those civic
bosoms? What evil genius, hostile to the enjoyment of the people,
persuaded them? Did the city fathers for one ill-starred moment forget
their Tacitus, and silence the street music unmindful of those words,
so familiar to them in their hours of classic relaxation--_Solitudinem
faciunt, pacem appellant_?