THE OCCUPANTS OF THE PARLOUR――A CONVIVIAL PARTY.
Peace bent his steps in the direction of the bar of the establishment.
As he was proceeding along, a voice shouted out――
“Yer’re beant a goin’ to leave us, sir, be’est thou!”
“No, no, friend,” returned our hero. “I shall join you in a minute or
so.”
“Aye, that be right,” exclaimed the same voice.
Peace went in front of the bar, and said to the landlord――
“I don’t want to go any further to-night. Can I have a bed here?”
“Ah! surely,” answered the host; “for as many nights as thee likes.
The more the merrier.”
“Good. Then that’s settled.”
He returned to the parlour. Over the mantel-piece of this was a
smoke-bleached board, on which was inscribed, in dingy yellow
letters――
When first I came I some did trust,
And did my money lend;
But when I asked for the same
They soon forsook their friend.
Now my cure is no man’s sorrow――
Pay to-day and trust to-morrow.
However a scrawl of chalked hieroglyphics on the bar door proved that
the practice of the publican was less resolute than his professions.
“I think I’ll ha’ another half pint,” said the old man, who had been
called Nat. A little girl, who served the beer and tobacco brought in
the liquor the old man ordered.
“Ye’ve travelled a greatish distance, maybe?” said one of the company
to Peace, glancing at his boots, which were begrimed with mud and
sand.
“Pretty well, as far as that goes. I can’t say exactly how far I’ve
walked, not knowing the ground.”
“Ah! I see. A stranger to these parts.”
“Yes. I’m on a tour.”
“For pleasure?”
“Well, no, not altogether pleasure――business. I’m a picture-frame
maker by trade, and deal in prints and photos. Would you like to see
some of my wares?”
“Ah! that un should,” said several.
“Well, then, so you shall.”
He was about to open his pack when a noise of footsteps was heard
descending the stairs, and in another moment the broad form of Farmer
Wilmot filled the doorway.
“Here, my lads,” said he. “It isn’t often I give you a treat; but as
I’ve sold my whate and got a good price for it, and as, moreover, this
be my son’s birthday, I’ll give ’ee somthing to drink his health.”
He placed several pieces of silver in the girl’s hand, and said――
“Give it ’em out in the sixpenny, my little maid, and then what they
do drink will do ’em good.”
The rustics gave a loud cheer and thanked him again and again for his
generosity.
He appeared to be well known to all present, with the exception of
Peace, who never remembered to have seen him before.
“Good-by, lads, and don’t mek beasts on yourselves. Ale, in
moderation, won’t hurt anyone; but too much on it is good for no man.
Good-night to all.”
And with these words the honest farmer mounted his gray mare, which
was standing at the door of the hostelry, and trotted off in company
with two friends, similarly mounted.
“I be downright glad he’s sold his whate,” said one of the rustics.
“He aint all eyes and ears like some measters, and he knows how to let
a poor man off his first fault.”
“He was one of us once, ye see, sir,” said another, addressing himself
to Peace. “He’s bin taught to eat poor man’s bread and to do poor
man’s work, and he knows what it is as comforts a poor man’s heart. It
is only such as he as pities the poor. The rich and idle don’t pity,
know not what hard work, nor hunger, nor sufferin’s loike.”
“Aye-that be true enough,” said Nat. “He’s as good as gold, an’ his
’art be in the right place.”
“I hope he’ll get home safe and sound,” said Peace; “but I suppose
there aint many robbers about this part?”
“Lord, love ye, no――never a one,” cried several voices.
“You’ve forgotten young Measter Boucher,” quavered the aged Nat. “I be
an old man, but I mind things better nor you do, seemingly. He was a
drivin’ home from Bilstoke Fair, and just as he was agoin’ up a bit of
a hill, with trees on both sides, he felt heavy on his chest, as if he
had a fit comin’ on, only instead of a fit it was a stout rope, which
two men held across the road, and tiddled him over out of his gig. And
when he was down they was on him in a minnit, and plundered him of his
watch and ten yellow sovereigns.”
“That’s the story he went home and told his mother,” said Nell,
scornfully, “but I can pretty well guess how it was. Some of them
flaunting hussies got and colly-fogled him into the booths to dance
with ’em, and while he wer a thinkin’ how pretty he wer a doin’ his
steps, whip! goes his money and watch out of his pocket into theirs.”
This speech was greeted with roars of laughter.
“Ah, Nell, thee beest a knowin’ one,” cried several.
A portion of the beer the farmer had paid for was now brought in by
the little waitress. It was handed round in brown mugs to the company.
The farmer’s health was drunk, also that of his son.
Peace opened his folio of prints, plain and coloured.
Several were spread out upon the table, and regarded with curious and
inquiring eyes by the occupants of the parlour.
Peace had pictures to please persons of different tastes. Some were
bits of rustic scenery, farm-yards, horses ploughing, hay-making;
others consisted of highly-coloured sporting subjects, such as
hunting, ratting, and deer stalking; but, as it would never do for an
itinerant dealer in these commodities to confine himself to one
particular class of art, he had specimens of every conceivable
variety, suitable to persons of opposite tastes; pictures addressed to
persons of a devotional turn of mind formed a large element in his
stock in trade. The Holy Family, the head of our Saviour, together
with three young gentlemen in surplices, casting up their eyes, were
there in abundance; also a young lady clinging to an impossible-looking
cross, her garments dripping with wet, was another. This fine specimen
was called “The Rock of Ages,” the title of the young gentlemen in
surplices being, “We Praise Thee, O Lord.” He had also large photos of
the “Light of the World,” together with a variety of others of a
similar character. These subjects went down with some of his
customers, while others would not honour them with a cursory glance.
One print, entitled the “Labourers’ Best Friends,” was greatly admired
by the frequenters of the “Old Carved Lion.”
The subjects represented were a substantial piece of fat bacon, a
quartern loaf, half a cheese, a foaming tankard of ale, and a clay
pipe.
“Ah, that be summut loike,” exclaimed several, “I call that
wonderfully natural, as real as life itself; I should loike to ha’
that. How much be it, measter?”
“Cheap enough,” answered Peace, “only half-a-crown.”
“Umph, I wish it was in a frame.”
“I’ll undertake to frame any of my prints at cost price.”
“Do un, now?”
“Yes, you can have a frame from a shilling to a sovereign-according to
the quality.”
“I’ll come and sit by you,” said Nell to Peace, “because you are a
clever man, I’m thinking.”
“I am very much flattered, I am sure,” he answered with a smirk.
“So un ought to be,” said another of the company, “it aint many as
Nell condescends to flatter.”
A young peasant and peasantess as Mark Twain would say, making eyes at
one another after the approved fashion, attracted the young woman’s
attention.
“Now I call that a wonderfully well done picture,” said she.
“Do you like it?” asked Peace.
“Yes, very much.”
“Well then I shall beg of you to accept it.”
The girl coloured up, not rightly understanding his meaning.
“What be hesitating about, Nell?” said old Nat, “Don’t ye understand
it’s given to you as a present?”
“Oh, I cannot think of having it without paying for it.”
“But I desire you to do so――nay, I insist,” cried Peace, rolling up
the print in a sheet of paper, and handing it to the young woman.
“Oh, I didn’t mean to beg it of you,” said she.
“I know that――I give it to you of my own free will; so say no more
about it.”
This act of generosity produced a favourable impression on all
present, and Peace became very popular. Several present bespoke
prints, and after the whole of them had been inspected they were
packed up and put aside for the rest of the evening.
The whole of the company then sat down to enjoy themselves, and, to
say the truth, in their homely way they did so, very much more so than
many of their betters.
“Ah, I yoosed to be mighty fond of picturs,” said old Nat, “but, lord,
I don’t seem to ha’ the taste for anything loike I had formerly. When
a man gets old and well nigh worn out he’s not so easily pleased as
the young uns――be he, measter?”
“Well, I suppose not, friend,” returned Peace, “but we shall all get
old and worn out if we live long enough――we ought not to forget that.”
“Now none of your croaking Nat,” said a lusty young fellow. “You’re
good for many years yet. Come, jest give us a song, old man. Nat’s
been a foine singer in his time,” observed the speaker in a whisper to
Peace.
“Oh, I dare say.”
“Fond of music, sir?” enquired another.
“Yes, I’m a bit of a musician myself. If our friend will oblige I’ll
give you a tune or two upon the fiddle.”
This seemed to have a magic effect upon the villagers, who thumped the
tables till the pots and glasses danced on the board.
“Will ’ee, though? Oh, that be grand!” exclaimed several. “Now, Nat,
just mek a beginning.”
“You must excuse me, sir, if I break down,” said the old man,
apologetically; “I aint what I yoosed to be.”
“He’s never satisfied unless he’s telling us that,” cried a voice.
“Come, old man, fire away.”
Old Nat cleared his throat with one or two preliminary ahems, and
then, in a high treble, trolled a nautical ballad――the first verse of
which described the loves of a youth and village maiden, who plighted
their troth under a linden tree; the verse ended with a mournful
refrain, which was as follows:――
Now this ere Jack he was hard-hearted,
Which no true lovyer ought for to be;
And this here Sall he soon desarted,
All for to sail on the salt sea.
The words of the ballad described the anguished feelings of the
forlorn and broken-hearted girl, who wanders about her old haunts in
the village in a half demented state――for never a word does she hear
from her cruel and heartless lover.
There is, it would appear, very good reason for this, for the ship in
which the young man sailed foundered at sea, and Jack was cast upon a
tropical island, where he remained for three years.
At the expiration of that time he was taken on board a passing vessel,
and returned home to find his Sall dead beneath the turf in the
village churchyard.
The pathetic ditty concludes thus. The young sailor is supposed to be
addressing some villagers assembled in the churchyard:――
Says this ere Jack, with deep emotion,
“In this world there’s now no rest for me;
My poor Sall’s heart I’ve surely broken,
All through my sailing on the salt sea.”
It was evident enough that old Nat must have had at one time a sweet
and sympathetic voice, and even in his decline there was something of
it remaining.
Any one who has travelled through the rural districts of England and
paid an occasional visit to old roadside inns cannot fail to have been
struck by the quaint and curious ditties that are trolled by the
villagers.
Many of them are singularly characteristic.
Where these extraordinary specimens of musical composition all come
from――for their name is legion――is perfectly surprising.
In most cases the singers never had a copy of the song they sang; and,
indeed, if they had, they would in all probability have been none the
wiser, seeing that they were quite unable to read the notes.
They learnt it from some one, and he or she learnt it from somebody
else, and so on till the original source of the melody is lost in the
deep “backward abyss of time.”
When we consider with how easy a transition we may pass from the
accents of speaking to diatonic sounds, when we observe how early
children adopt the language of their amusements to measure and melody,
however rude――when we consider how early and universally these
practices take place, there is no avoiding the conclusion that the
idea of music is co-natural with man, and implied in the original
principles of his constitution.
The principles on which it is founded, and the rules by which it is
conducted, constitute a science.
The same maxims when applied to practice form an art; hence its first
and most capital diversion is into speculative and practical music.
Go where you will, and you will see how wonderfully music and song are
blended with the most laborious occupations of humble life, not only
as the natural breathing of cheery thoughts and gladdening hopes,
faiths, and feelings, but as giving nerve, measure, and harmony to the
physical forces of men bending to the most arduous toil.
We will say nothing here of the influence of martial music on the
weary battalions of an army on a forced march.
That illustration would not be apposite to the point we are
considering.
Anyone who has travelled by sea and land, and visited different
countries, must have been struck with the variety――the use and
universality――of the songs of labour.
Who that has crossed the Atlantic, and been awakened at night by the
“Merrily, cheerily,” of that song with which the sailors hoist the
great mainsail to the rising breeze, can ever forget the thrill of
those manly voices?
There they stand in the darkness, with the salt sea spray in their
faces, and the tarred rope in their hands, holding the long and
ponderous yard against the mast, until their rollicking song reaches
the hoisting turn, and all their sinews are strung to the harmony of a
unison to the telling pull.
Everywhere and in all ages, the week-day music of the world has been
the songs of labour by men and women at their toil, and by the birds
of heaven singing to them overhead and around them.
And no ear drinks with richer relish the melodies of these outside
songsters――no home more safe and welcome does the swallow find than
under the eaves of the poor man’s cottage.
Go through the densest courts and lanes of Spitalfields, and see what
a companionship of bird life the silk weavers maintain in their
garrets, even when the loaf is too small for their children.
The papers recently published a touching and beautiful illustration of
the fondness which workingmen show for singing birds.
When the first English lark was taken to Australia by a poor widow,
the stalwart, sunburnt, hard-visaged gold diggers would come down from
their pits on the Sabbath to hear it sing the songs they loved to
listen to at home in their childhood.
An instance still more interesting has been noted lately in connection
with one of the large manufacturing towns in North Wales.
The men, women, and children employed in the factories, not many times
a week heard the lark’s song, or the music of the free birds of
heaven.
These loved the bright air and the green fresh meadows too well to
sing many voluntaries in the smoky atmosphere of the furnace and
factory.
Thus the cheap concerts of these songsters cost the operatives of the
mills long walks beyond the brick and mortar mazes of the town.
But thousands thought them cheap at that price.
“Ah! I mind the time when I sang that very song in this room, more
than twenty years agone,” said Nat.
“Aye――better than that,” said a middle-aged man. “It was on the very
night that Lord Ethalwood lost his son――the last on ’em as was left.
He aint bin the same man since.”
“And who might that be?” enquired Peace.
“Well, his lordship,” returned the other――“the owner of the foine
estate on the top of the hill, called Broxbridge Hall.”
“Ah! a fine place, is it?”
“Yes, surely――a should think it was.”
“Well, never mind about that, his lordship aint half so happy as we
are, I’ll bet a crown,” said another of the company. “Who’s for the
next song? Come, Nelly, can’t you give us something soft and
sentimental, eh?”
“Nay; I must be for getting home,” answered the girl, “an’ leave you
men folks to yourselves.”
She was about to depart, but as Peace had commenced a preliminary
flourish on his violin, she sat down again.
The violinist played a fantasia, introducing a number of popular airs
which seemed to delight his audience amazingly.
When he brought this part of his performance to a close he was
encored.
He then imitated the noises of animals in the farm-yard; this sent the
rustics into perfect ecstacies of delight.
“They had never heard anything so perfectly natural in their born
days”――so they one and all declared.
“Well, thee just does know how to handle the fiddle,” said one.
“And mek it speak like a Christian,” said another.
“It be a gift,” observed another.
Nell now rose to go, but she was not permitted to do so, until she had
favoured the company with a song. In a rich contralto voice she sang
the following:――
I love the shepherd’s artless rhymes,
A shepherd’s joys revealing;
I love the songs of ancient times,
Their notes of simple feeling.
They echoed o’er my native hills
When last I wandered near them,
And now mine ear with rapture thrills
In distant climes to hear them.
When hopes that could the heart entrance,
On airy wings have vanished;
When all the dreams of wild romance
From memory’s page are banished.
Such strains the heart awhile may soothe,
’Mid foreign wilds deserted,
Though all the joys that pleased our youth
Have one by one departed.
Sweet as the dream of former years,
When sleep the eyelids shrouded;
Sweet as the star that oft appears,
When all the rest are clouded.
Sweet as the warbler’s latest strain,
When storms the year have shaded;
Or ling’ring rose that decks the plain
When all the rest have faded.
“Excellent! Admirably sung!” exclaimed Peace. “I’m quite delighted
with your voice and your manner of singing.”
“I must not stop any longer,” said the girl; “I expect I shall catch
it as it is. Good-night to all!”
And with these words she tripped out of the room.
The landlord now entered.
“Ye be making merry to-night, friends,” said he.
“Ah, surely it’s a poor heart as never rejoices. Sit down, Brickett,
we ain’t goin’ to let ee off.”
The host of the “Old Carved Lion” did as he was bid.
“Yo’ve got a bit o’ a musician here, among ye,” he observed with a
merry twinkle in his eye as he glanced at Peace.
“Yes,” said old Nat; “another Paganini――that’s what the gentleman be.”
“How do you know? You never heard Paganini,” returned the landlord.
“Aint I? that’s all you know about it. I remember my poor feyther a
taken me to the theatre when the great fiddler gave a morning
performance, and there was a sight of people there surely――and that be
a few years ago.”
“And what was it loike?”
“Oh, wonderful――never heard anything equal to it. Not but what our
friend here is very good and plays a deal in his style. Any more beer
to come in, Mr. Landlord?”
“Yes, the farmer’s money aint all run out. Will ye ha’ the remainder
in now, or stop till you get it?”
This venerable joke seemed to be relished by the customers.
The beer was brought in, which was relished still more.
“Now, Nat,” said a young fellow. “Here’s a pot o’ beer for ’ee if yell
sing another song. How will ye have it, hob or nob?”
“Hob” is beer placed on the hob to warm; “nob,” beer on the table.
“None of your warm beer for me,” cried Nat. “Dont ’ee know what my
uncle used to say? When my back wont warm my bed, sed he, and when my
belly wont warm my beer, sed he, it’s time I were gone, ’cos I aint no
yoose to the world, and the world aint no yoose to me.”
“That’s a good saying, I don’t doubt, but pitch us a stave, old man.”
“The landlord’s got more staves than any on us here. Ask him.”
“Ah, let’s hear Brickett,” cried several.
“I aint a goin’ to make any fuss about the matter,” said the landlord;
“I’ll do my best.”
“Brayvo, brayvo!”
“So here goes while my head’s hot――
Come where the heather bell,
Child of the Highland dell,
Breathes its coy fragrance o’er moorland and lea;
Gaily the fountain sheen
Leaps from the mountain green,
Come to our Highland home, blithesome and free.
The red grouse is scattering
Dews from her golden wing,
Gemmed with the radiance that heralds the day,
Peace in our Highland vales,
Health in our mountain gales,
Who would not hie to the moorland away?
Come, then; the heather bloom
Woos with its wild perfume.
Fragrant and blithesome thy welcome shall be;
Gaily the fountain sheen
Leaps from the mountain stream,
Come to the home of the moorland and lea.
“That’s something like, Bricket. You’ve sung it better than ever, and
it’s a rattling good ditty,” cried a voice. “Here’s your health, and
long life to ’ee.”
A large amount of “brown October” had been consumed by this time, and
some of the company were giving indications of being nearly “Three
sheets in the wind.”
There had not been such a merry-making at the “Carved Lion” for many a
day; this was attributable in the first place to the liberal supply of
beer furnished by the farmer who had sold his wheat, and in the second
by the presence of Peace, who fraternised with the rustics in a free
and easy manner, which to them was quite charming.
Bricket knew pretty well when his customers had had enough, and he
was, therefore, somewhat anxious for some of them to make a move.
Peace was asked to favour them with a little more music――a request he
at once acceded to. When he had concluded the landlord touched him on
the shoulder, and Peace followed him into the bar parlour.
“They’re a merry set of fellows,” said he, “but it’s almost time for
them to give over for to-night.”
“Certainly,” returned our hero. “I’m quite of your opinion. We’ve had
a very pleasant evening――let it now be brought to a conclusion.”
“They’ll never go away as long as they hear the fiddle going. I know
’em too well for that.”
“Then I wont play any more. Enough is as good as a feast; besides I’m
tired, and shall be glad to get rest.
“I’ll go in and wish ’em good night, and then retire to my bedroom.”
“Don’t do so on my account.”
“No, but I shall upon my own.”
Peace went back into the parlour, and told the company that he needed
repose, and was about to retire; he wished them all good night. There
was a vast amount of shaking of hands, and reiterated expressions of
gratitude and friendship, after which Peace was permitted to take his
leave, with the understanding that he was to join them on the
following evening.
In less than half an hour after he had retired the parlour of the
“Carved Lion” was tenantless.