two of the three ranges of notes.'
"'How intensely interesting! But pray, if you do not take it amiss, my
dear, I learnt that Herr Pedalewsky has only two tuners: one for the
black keys, the other for the white ones.'
"'My dear, that was so in bygone times when he played sometimes a whole
concert on the black keys alone, being 231 variations on Chopin's
_Etude_ on the black keys. But it made such a sad impression that some
nasty critics said his piano was in mourning black; other critics said
that he was paid to do so by Mr Jay of Regent Street.'
"'How excruciatingly interesting! Do you know, my dear, I was told
that Herr Polonorusky plays practically all the time, and even when
he travels he carries with him a dumb piano on which he practises
incessantly.'
"'How touching! I have heard that too, and believed it, until that
atrocious man who writes for the _Bad Times_ destroyed all my
illusions. He said that if Herr Pantyrewsky did that, he would for ever
spoil his touch. Just fancy that! It is not the touch, but the pose of
that languid, Chopinesque profile over a dumb piano in a rattling car
that was so interesting. And now that horrid journalist spoils it all.
Nay, he added that the whole story was deliberately invented by the
artist's manager.'
"'How distressingly interesting! You know, my dear, I will not believe
the story about the manager. I know too much about the wonderful
pianist. I have learnt at Marienbad that he had ten teachers at a time,
one for each of his fingers, and that for five years he lived in a tiny
village in Bavaria, because, don't you see, it was so central for the
ten different cities where his teachers lived. For the thumb he rushed
off to Frankfort on the Maine. There is no town like Frankfort for the
study of the thumb. That's why they make such excellent sausages there
which resemble a thumb to perfection. For the index he went to Rome.
And so forth and so on. It is most marvellous.'
"All during that time," Alcibiades continued, "the pianist was playing
the moonlight sonata of Beethoven. At the end of the piece, the ladies
who had carried on the lively conversation applauded wildly. 'Was
it not marvellous?' said one to the other. 'Oh--delightful!' was the
answer.
"So ended the concert. On leaving my seat I met Mrs Blazing.
"'_O mon cher_,' she said, 'why do all these women pretend to enjoy
music? They very well know that not one of them cares for it in the
least. I frankly admit that music to me is the anarchy of air, the
French Revolution of sounds, acoustic bankruptcy. All our lives we have
been taught to suppress our emotions, and to consider it ungenteel
to express them in any way whatever. We were told that we must hide
and suppress them--which we have done so successfully that after some
time we resemble to a nicety the famous safe of Madame Humbert. And
then, in flagrant contradiction to all this genteel education, we are
supposed to accept with joy the moanings, cries, sobs, sighs, and other
unsuppressed emotions of some middle-class Dutchman or Teuton dished up
to us in the form of a sonata. It is too absurd for words.
"'If that lower-middle-class Dutchman Beethoven (or as my Cynthia
calls him: "_Bête au vent_") wants to exhale his moral distress and
sentimental indigestion, let him do so by all means, but in a lonely
room. Why does he interfere with the even tenor of our well-varnished
life? If my charming Japanese china figures, or my pretty girls and
shepherds in _vieux Saxe_ suddenly began to roar out their sentiments,
I should have them destroyed or sold without any further ado. Why
should I accept such roarings from an ugly, beer-drinking, unmannered
Teuton? Why, I ask you?'
"'Music is the art of poor nations and poor classes. Outside a few
Jews, no great musician came from among the rich classes; and Jews
are socially impoverished. I can understand the attraction of ditties
nursed in the music halls. They fan one with a gentle breeze of
light tones, and here and there tickle a nerve or two. But what on
earth shall we do with such _plesiosauri_ as the monsters they call
symphonies, in which fifty or sixty instruments go amuck in fifty
different ways? The flute tries to serpentine round the bassoon in
order to instil in it drops of deadly poison; the violins gallop
recklessly _à la_ Mazeppa against and over the violas and 'celli, while
the brass darts forth glowing bombs falling with cruelty into the
finest flower-beds of oboes and harps. It is simply the hoax of the
century. Would you at Athens ever have endured such a pandemonium?'
"'You are quite right, _ma très charmante dame_,' I said, 'we never
had such music and we should have little cared for it. Our way of
making symphonies was to write epics, crowded with persons, divine and
human, and with events and incidents of all colours and shades. The
Continental nations have lost the epic creativeness proper, and must
therefore write epics in sound. Just as your languages do not allow you
to write very strictly metred poetry such as we have written without
impairing the fire and glamour of poetry, and the only way left for you
of imitating the severe metres of Archilochus, Alcæus or Sappho is in
the form of musical canons, fugues, or other counterpointed music. It
seems to me that you English have not done much by way of music epics,
because, like ourselves, you were busily engaged in writing epics of
quite a different kind: the epic of your Empire. The nations that have
written musical epics, did do so at a time when these were the only
epics they could write,--the symphony of Empire being refused them.'
"'I see,' said Mrs Blazing. 'You mean to say that our Mozarts and
Beethovens are Lord Chatham, Clive, Nelson and Wellington?'
"'In a manner, yes. Few nations, if any, can excel both in arts and in
Empire-making, and had you English been able to hold in your imperial
power considerable parts of Europe, say, of France, Germany or Spain,
you would never have had either Walter Scott or Byron, Shelley or
Tennyson. For the efforts required to conquer and hold European
territory would have taxed all your strength so severely that no
resources would have been left for conquests in the realm of the arts
and literature.
"'This is why the Romans, who conquered, not coloured races, but the
mightiest white nations, could never write either great epics or great
dramas. They wrote only one epic, one drama of first and to this day
unparalleled magnitude: the Roman Empire. I meant to do a similar thing
for Athens, but I failed. I now know why. My real enemies were not in
the camp of my political adversaries, but in the theatre of Dionysus
and in the schools of the philosophers. Do not, therefore, _ma chère
amie_, begrudge the Germans their great musicians. They are really very
great, and not even your greatest minds surpass, perhaps do not even
equal them. Your consolation may be in this, that the Germans too will
soon cease writing music worth the hearing. They now want to write
quite different epics. And no nation can write two sorts of epics at a
time.'
"'I am so glad to hear you say so,' said Mrs Blazing. 'It relieves me
of a _corvée_ that I hitherto considered to be a patriotic duty. I
mean, I will henceforth never attend the representations of the new
school of _soi-disant_ English music. Inwardly I never liked it; it
always appeared to me like an Englishwoman who tries to imitate the
_grâce_ and _verve_ of a Parisian woman, with all her easy gestures,
vivacious conversation, and delicate coquetry. It will not do.
"'We English women do not shine in movement; our sphere is repose. We
may be troublesome, but never _troublante_.
"'Even so is English academic music. And I now see why it must be so.
It is not in us, because another force takes its place. Like all people
we like to shine in that wherein we are most deficient, and the other
day I was present at a scene that could hardly be more painful. At the
house of a rich and highly distinguished city man I met the famous Sir
Somebody Hangar, the composer. The question arose who was the greatest
musician? Thereupon Sir Somebody, looking up to the beautiful ceiling
of the room, exclaimed dreamily: "Music is of _very_ recent origin...."
One of the gentlemen present then asked Sir Somebody whether he had
ever heard the reply given to that question by the great Gounod? Sir
Somebody contemptuously uttered: "Gounod? It is not worth hearing." I
was indignant, and pointedly asked the gentleman to tell us Gounod's
reply. The gentleman, looking at Sir Somebody with a curious smile,
related:
"'Gounod, on being asked who in his opinion was the greatest musician,
said: "When I was a boy of twenty, I said: _moi_. Ten years later I
said: _moi et Mozart_. Again ten years later I said: _Mozart et moi_.
And now I say: _Mozart_."'
"This reply," said Alcibiades, "has Attic perfume in it. Having
suffered so much, as I have, at the hands of musicians in my time, when
dramatic writers were as much musicians as dramatists, I have in my
Olympian leisure carefully inquired into the real causes of the rise of
modern music.
"'You said a few moments ago, _ma très spirituelle dame_, that
music is the art of poor classes. There is this much truth in that,
that modern music has indeed been almost entirely in the hands of
middle-class people. This being so, everything depends on the nature
and dispositions of the middle class in a given country. In England,
for instance, the middle class is totally different from that of
France or that of South Germany, the home of German music. The English
middle class is cold, dry, _gaffeur_ to the extreme, afflicted with a
veritable rage for outward respectability, unsufferably formalist, and
deeply convinced of its social inferiority. In such a class nothing
remotely resembling German or French music can ever possibly arise.
Such a class furnishes excellent business men, and reliable sergeants
to the officers of imperial work. But music can no more grow out of it
than can a rose out of a poker.
"'This middle class is the result of British Imperialism, and this is
how Imperialism has prevented and will, as long as it lasts, always
prevent the rise of really fine music in the higher sense of the term.
This is also why we Hellenes never achieved greater results in music.
Like the English, or the Americans, we never had a real _bourgeoisie_,
or the only possible foster-earth of great music. However,
_bourgeoisie_ is only a historic phenomenon, one that is destined to
disappear, and with it will disappear all music. Mr Richard Strauss is
singing its dirge.'"
When Alcibiades had finished his entertaining tale of women and
music in England, the gods and heroes congratulated him warmly, and
Zeus ordered that, under the direction of Mozart, all the nymphs and
goddesses of the forests and seas shall sing one of the motets of Bach.
This they did, and all Venice was filled with the magic songs, which
were as pure as those produced by the nymph Echo in the Baptistry at
Pisa. All the palaces and the churches of Venice seemed to listen with
melancholy pleasure, and St Mark's hesitated to sound the hour lest the
spell should be broken. When the motet was ended, the gods and heroes
rose and disappeared in the heavens.
THE FIFTH NIGHT
CÆSAR ON THE HOUSE OF COMMONS
On the fifth night the gods and heroes assembled in the city of Rome.
Their meeting-place was the Forum. The eternal city lay dormant
around them, and Zeus, who had for the time recalled into existence
the magnificent temple built in his honour, which used to adorn the
incomparable centre of Roman might and splendour, sat in front of it,
surrounded by the Flamines and the last Pontifex Maximus aided by the
last Vestal Virgins. On the _via sacra_ there was an unending flow of
thronging Romans and Greeks, and Cicero was seen talking with great
animation with Julius Cæsar, while Augustus seemed to chide Tacitus
with mild irony. Cornelius Scipio Africanus was deeply engaged in a
conversation with Pericles, and Marcus Antistius Labeo discussed law
with Plato. From afar the wind brought the sounds of the bells of the
Vatican, at the hearing of which all conversation stopped; and when
a few minutes later a choir intoned a hymn in a neighbouring church,
the Pontifex and the Flamines veiled their heads in dumb resignation,
and the Vestal Virgins looked up to Zeus as if imploring him for help.
A pause followed. But soon the moon rose over the majestic Palatine
hill; the Graces performed a soulful dance, and finally Zeus asked
Caius Julius Cæsar to entertain them with his experiences during his
third travel in England which, as he said, he had, in addition to his
two landings during his mortal life, recently made after nearly two
thousand years.
Cæsar, standing near the house of the Senate of ancient Rome, thus
addressed the divine Assembly:
"It is, O Jupiter and all the other gods and heroes, a singular
pleasure and honour to me to address you on a topic so important and
interesting. When I arrived in England for the third time (--I started
from Dunkerque to avoid giving offence to the 112 scholars who have,
each to his complete satisfaction, proved 112 different spots on the
French coast between Boulogne and Calais wherefrom I am supposed to
have started for England in my mortal time--) I was received by no
wilder tribe than a few customs officials, who asked me whether I had
any cigars in my toga. On my denying it, they searched me, and finding
none they let me go. Two hours later I arrived in London, which I found
ugly beyond words. I can understand that you, O Canova, cried on seeing
it. What struck me most was its surprising silence, which contrasted
very strongly with the noise of Rome, or Paris. I mentioned this to a
casual acquaintance, who stared at me in despair, exclaiming: 'Silence,
sir? Why, the noises of London drive half of us to madness. Here, take
that (--he handed me a bunch of printed papers--) read it carefully
and join us.' On looking into the papers I found that they contained
a prospectus of a vast 'Society for the Abatement of Street-Noises in
London.'
"This made me somewhat thoughtful. It was quite clear to me that the
unattractiveness of London is owing chiefly to its lack of animation,
to its silence. I soon found out that silence is the dominating
institution of that country. To talk is to infringe the principal law
of their language. They want to see their language noiselessly, and
not to hear it. Hence they constantly read printed language on wooden
paper, in a wooden style, on wooden matters. This they call 'the
daily Press.' I met one of the chief writers on their most popular
paper, and he assured me that the editor solemnly warns each of his
contributors not to indulge in any attempt at _esprit_ or brilliancy of
any sort; for, should he do so, the editor would be forced to dismiss
him forthwith. All that the contributor is allowed to do is to make
startling headlines, such as:
'Delicious puddings made out of wood.'
'New aqueducts full of milk for the people.'
'Discovery of wireless telegraphy among the
ancient Egyptians.'
'Discovery of the pin-cushion to Cleopatra's
needles.'
'Trunk murder: a man assassinates his widow.'
That same editor, on my asking him why he allowed such crying
stupidities in the headlines, and nothing but the most platitudinous
stuff in the body of the article, gave me the following answer:
"'My dear sir, our public has nerves but no intellect. Hence we work
for sudden, rapid shocks to their nerves, and no fatigue to their
intellect. They not only do not think; they do not want to think.
They are practically convinced that thinking is the perdition of
all common-sense. Just let me give you an example. There is among
the younger writers one whose mind is singularly suggestive and
nimble. He really has something to say, and can say it well. However,
unfortunately, he says it in what are, apparently, contradictory and
circuitous terms. This my readers cannot grasp; it fatigues them. They
complain of that man's writings as being "heavy," "hard to follow."
This is the consequence of the vogue of music halls. One may say that
the popular University of this country, where the average man gets most
of his ideas from, is the music hall. What, then, can we editors do
better than imitate the style and substance of the music hall? Shocks
to the nerves--and no fatigue to the intellect. _Voilà!_'
* * * * *
"On my way home I met Columbus. He told me, and no man ever spoke with
more solid right, that he was the greatest benefactor to England. But
for him, who by discovering the New World placed England in the very
centre of the intelligent and wealthy nations, while formerly England
was somewhere on the 'other end of all the world'; but for him, he
said, England could never have had her unique leverage. 'You, Cæsar,'
he added, 'discovered England, as the Vikings discovered America; I did
not discover it, I made it. But would you believe me that thousands
and thousands of Englishmen have scarcely ever heard my name? They
constantly talk of their race as born to rule. But what would they
have ruled without me? The ponds in Lincolnshire. You wonder at their
tongue-tiedness. I will tell you what it means. The English are neither
talkers nor thinkers; they are almost exclusively men of action; or
used to be. They have no intellectual initiative. They have started
neither the Renascence, nor the Great Discoveries of my time, nor the
Reformation, or the three greatest factors in the formation of modern
Europe. All this was first started by us Italians. We can both talk
and think and create; but we are not good at actions. The English are
good only at action. This is the be-all and end-all of their history.
Have you ever seen their Parliament? Do not omit attending it. You will
there learn something that no other Assembly can teach you. It rarely
contains a great orator, for oratory is of little use in an Assembly
with an iron party discipline, and with members every one of whom is
amenable to no argument that has not had the august privilege of being
born in his own mind. And since his mind brings forth none, he moves in
a vicious circle!'
"'Would you not,' I asked Columbus, 'accompany me to the House of
Commons?'
"'Readily,' said the great Genoese. And next day we repaired to the
'first club of the country.'
* * * * *
"The hall was curiously unfit for the business of a national Assembly.
It is neither large, nor light enough. The acoustics are fair, but
superfluous. For, who cares very much what any member other than
himself is saying? In the midst there is a porter's lodge, in which
sits a gentleman in the attire of the eighteenth century. This, as
behoves a conservative Roman, did not meet with my disapproval.
The only objection I made was that in my opinion he ought to have
been clothed in all the various costumes in use since Magna Charta.
The English, and the rest of the little ones, in utter contrast to
ourselves, constantly vary their dress. We preferred to vary our inner
selves.
"The subject of discussion, or rather of a score or so of monologues,
was one of which in my time I have had the amplest experience. They
proposed to give weekly a certain sum of money to anyone of their
citizens who on reaching his seventieth year had arrived at the end
of his financial tether. In my day I had given away millions to
the populace, and my imperial successors had gone even very much
further. The common people was thereby demoralised as is everybody,
even parents, who accepts, year in year out, free gifts from a third
person or his children. Being demoralised, such a recipient of
donations becomes inevitably the most cruel enemy of his donor. Nothing
contributed more to the downfall of Rome. A nation must consist of free
and financially independent citizens, or it loses its most precious
asset. How frequently, O Pericles, have you said to me, how much you
regretted having introduced the same injurious donations into Athens.
But this is the melancholy truth of all history: one learns from
history one thing only, to wit, that no statesman has ever learned
anything from history.
"In the midst of my sad reflections I could yet not help being amused
by the speech of one member of the governing party, who belonged to
that formidable mixture of faddists, formalists, cocksure-ists, and
moral precisians who have in this country an influence that we should
not have given to the members of the most exalted among the Roman
patricians. Much as they are laughed at, they yet have the power of
striking dread into the public and instilling hesitation into the
feeble nerves of statesmen. The name of the orator in question was, if
I am right, Harold Gox. He said:
"'Mr Speaker, it is with a satisfaction and self-complacency new even
to me that I beg to submit my remarks on a subject than which there is
no greater one; a subject, sir, that has no predicate except that of
immensity; an immensity, sir, that exceeds infinitude itself; and last
not least, an infinitude vaster than all other infinitudes: a moral
infinity. This country, sir, was built up by morals and righteousness.
Righteousness, I say, sir; and I will repeat it: righteousness. How did
we come by our Empire? By righteousness. How did our colonists occupy
vast continents? By righteousness. What was the guiding principle even
of our national debt? Righteousness, in that we contracted it mainly
by paying the foreigner to help us in beating our immoral enemies.
Righteousness is the A and the Z of our glorious polity.
"'We cannot help being righteous; it is in us, over us, beside,
beneath, and all through us. We have sometimes tried to be unrighteous;
but, sir, we could not. It is not given to us, and we have only what is
given to us.
"'Well then, sir, if that be so, as it undoubtedly is, beyond the
shadow of a doubt; then I venture to say that any person that opposes
the present bill of Old Age Pensions cannot but be an enemy of England,
in that he is an enemy of righteousness.
"'What indeed, sir, can be fairer, juster, and more equitable than that
they who have laboriously saved up a few sovereigns, should share them
with those that have done everything in their power to have none?
"'Where there is nothing, there is death. Can a country introduce
death as a regular constituent organ of its life? What in that case
would righteousness do? She would blush green with shame, sir. Nothing
would remain for her but to leave this country and to go to Germany or
Turkey. Could we allow such a disaster? Would it not be necessary to
hold or haul her back by ropes, strings, or any other instrument of our
party machinery?
"'Just, pray, represent to yourself, sir, or to any other person, the
actualities of the case. Here is a man of seventy. It is a noble feat
of honourable perseverance to reach that age. It is, I make bold to
submit, an evident proof of the favour and countenance of The Principle
of All RIGHTEOUSNESS that the man was allowed to proceed so far.
"'He has worked all such days of his long life as he did not spend in
reverential contemplation of the works of the Almighty. Who can blame
him for that?
"'I go much further: who can possibly blame him for having focussed his
attention rather on the liquid than on the solid bodies of Creation?
"'Each man has his own way of saying prayers.
"'Now, after having thus spent a long life in what has at all times
been considered the essence of life; or as the ancient Romans used to
formulate it, after having acted upon the noble doctrine of _ora et
labora_ (pray and work), he finds himself landed, or rather stranded
in the wilderness of penury. Sir, such a state of things is untenable,
unbearable, and unrighteous.
"'I know full well that people who have never given righteousness the
slightest chance persist in repeating the old fallacy, that a labourer
ought to save up for a rainy day. But, pray, sir, is it not perfectly
clear that this principle is of Egyptian origin, and comes therefore
from a country where there is no rain?