We now know, from his own lips, what is wrong with Dean Inge. Nature
has denied him the sense of music. He can neither sing nor make a
joyful noise. He knows but two tunes, _God Save the King_ and _John
Peel_, and even these he, apparently, only recognises from afar. All
the rest of the universe of harmony is just a jumble of strange
noises to him. The pealing of the organ and the thrilling song of
the choristers convey nothing to his imprisoned soul as he sits in
his stall at St. Paul's. The release of the spirit, that feeling of
getting clear of the encumbering flesh and escaping to a realm where
all the burden and the mystery of this unintelligible world seem like
a rumour from afar, a tale of little meaning, never comes to him.
Let us assume that the escape is an illusion. But what an illusion!
What an experience to have missed! Can we wonder that the Dean is a
sad man and utters mournful sounds?
Perhaps Shakespeare, with his passion for song, overshot the mark
when he said that the man who has not music in his soul
Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils.
But there is a measure of truth in the axiom. We like complete
men--men with all their spiritual limbs as well as all their physical
limbs. We like them to have humour as well as gravity, to be able to
sing as well as sigh, to love work and to love play, and not to be
shut off from any part of the kingdom of the mind. No doubt the Dean
will point out that many very eminent men have shared his affliction,
and we shall be bound to agree that it is dangerous to generalise in
this matter, as in most things. I could conceive him making out a
very good case for the non-musical brotherhood. There is, of course,
the leading instance of that most human and beautiful of spirits,
Charles Lamb, who was even more deficient than the Dean, for he did
not know _God Save the King_. But then, unlike the Dean, he had the
desire to sing. The spirit was there, but it could find no
utterance. He had tried for years, he tells us, to learn _God Save
the King_, humming it to himself in quiet corners and solitary
places, without, according to his friends, coming "within several
quavers of it." No, I do not think, on second thoughts, that we can
allow the Dean to claim St. Charles. He was a trier, like Mr.
Chesterton. No one would suggest that Mr. Chesterton was musical,
but he has the spirit of song in him and in a chorus he is splendid.
He emits an enormous and affable rumble that suggests an elephant
doing a cake-walk, or large lumps of thunder bumping about
irrelevantly in the basement of the harmony.
But the Dean may have Southey. He is surrendered freely and
ungrudgingly. He certainly had no feeling for music and no desire to
feel it. "You are alive to know what follows," he says, describing a
play, "and lo!--down comes the curtain and the fiddles begin their
abominations." The fiddles begin their abominations! Take Bob
Southey out, good Dean, and relieve us of his unctuous presence. And
I am afraid we must let the Dean have Scott, too, though I part with
him with sorrow. "I do not know and cannot utter a note of music,"
wrote Sir Walter; "and complicated harmonies seem to me a babble of
confused though pleasing sounds." Pleasing, you observe. I am not
sure that we cannot snatch Sir Walter from the Dean's clutches after
all. We must part with Tennyson and Ruskin, neither of whom had the
sense of music, and with Macaulay, who could only recognise one
tune--_The Campbells are Coming_. But we cannot let the Dean have
Coleridge, for though he disclaimed any understanding of complicated
harmonies, he admits that he loved to hear Beethoven, and the man who
could appreciate Beethoven a hundred years ago must not go in the
Dean's gloomy galley.
Nor shall old Sam Johnson go there, though he confessed that he was
insensible to the power of music. "I told him," says Boswell, "that
it affected me to such a degree as to agitate my nerves painfully,
producing in my mind alternate sensations of pathetic dejection, so
that I was ready to shed tears, and of daring resolution, so that I
was inclined to rush into the thickest part of the battle. 'Sir,'
said he, 'I should never hear it if it made me such a fool.'" But I
claim Samuel on the ground that during the tour in the Hebrides he
heard with rapt attention the performance of the _Lament of the
Scalded Cat_, and still more because at Ashbourne he listened
patiently to a great number of tunes on the fiddle, and desired to
have _Let ambition fire thy mind_ played over again. It is a small
thing, I own--a trivial ground on which to claim him. I have never
heard _Let ambition fire thy mind_, but the incident shows that
Johnson had the root of the matter in him. Would the Dean, or Bob
Southey, have asked to have _Let ambition fire thy mind_ played over
again? Would they have listened with rapt attention to _The Lament
of the Scalded Cat_? Not they.
But even in the case of the Dean there is one pale, watery gleam of
light in the general gloom. He knows _John Peel_. In his sombre
heart that jolly song perhaps wakens some latent emotion of joy. It
may be that with that key to the prison he might yet be rescued from
his dungeon and turned into a happier man. Why should not the choir
of St. Paul's try to convert him? Let them step across the
Churchyard at night to the Dean's recess and ask in resonant chorus--
D'ye ken John Peel wi' his coat so grey?
D'ye ken John Peel at the break of day?
D'ye ken John Peel when he's far, far away
With his hounds and his horn in the morning?
and go on asking until the Dean comes to the window with the
response--
Yes, I ken John Peel, and Ruby too.
Ranter and Ringwood, Bellman and True,
From a find to a check, from a check to a view.
From a view to a death in the morning.
And now, gentlemen, the chorus, if you please-- all together:
For the sound of his horn called me from my bed, etc.
It would be a great night in St. Paul's Churchyard, and it might do
the Dean good. And we should all rejoice to hear him make a joyful
noise for a change, even though it could not be called music.