The Champagne Standard Part 13

The printed page is undoubtedly long-suffering, but it is silent. It is of course true that to be an author, nothing is necessary but a sheet of paper and a pencil, but I defy the most energetic author to read his work to ears that refuse to hear. Now with music it is different, one simply _can't_ get away from it, because cruel inventions--I do not think I am exaggerating?--have brought its exercise within reach, I will not say of the poor only, for the thumping of the rich and great is equally horrid, but of the mistaken poor.

I do not urge that the infant mind, in the process of being cultivated, should be turned to literature, for it is bad enough already owing to benevolent publishers who, in the praiseworthy desire not to allow any light to be hidden under a bushel, emulate each other in trying to illuminate the world with farthing tallow-dips! It would, indeed, be ghastly to listen to the literary outpourings of every infant one met, and equally ghastly never to be able to flee from the rendering of masters of literature as interpreted by the intellect of three years up.

Thank heaven, we are spared this in literature if not in music, but, I ask, if we must have a fine art to trifle with, why not take to painting? Painting is _so_ inoffensive.

It was the English who, before they became so musical, dallied for a while with painting. There was a time, if we may believe those biographers of manners, the novelists, when all England sketched, and so gave vent to all its superabundant emotion in paint. There was no landscape safe from the emotional Englishwoman. Instead of strumming false notes on the hotel piano she went out with a paint-box and sketched the uncomplaining landscape. At any rate the long-suffering landscape made no sound.

It cannot be denied that one suffers less from a bad picture than from a bad anything else, the agony also is short, nor is it necessary in the process of painting to inflict pain. Painting is an exceedingly silent art, and its results are easily disposed of as wedding presents, because the recipient cannot possibly rebel.

There is, also, that delightful alternative of decorating one's house with one's own immortal works. I was recently shown a lovely picture gallery entirely hung with the work of its owner. I emerged from the experience smiling and quite calm. Now what would have been my condition had the good lady insisted on reciting to me eighty of her poems (there were eighty pictures), or, more harrowing still, had she insisted on playing to me eighty compositions of her own, or even eighty compositions of others, with stiff and reluctant hands? For which reason I maintain that painting is the most inoffensive of the arts and deserves to be encouraged.

But seriously, why should every child be taught to play the instrument quite irrespective of its having any talent or taste for music? Why in the world, where martyrdom is usually the price of living, should a select little army of martyrs suffer a double martyrdom? Why draw them by the hairs of their inoffensive heads to the piano-stool and make, as it were, at one fell swoop, two martyrs, the one at the piano and the wretch who, on the other side of the wall, gives the lie to Congreve, who mistakenly declared that "Music has charms to soothe a savage breast"? Had Congreve lived now he would have hesitated to make so rash a statement.

In Congreve's day the piano, the greatest instrument of torture of modern times, had not been evolved. Its ancestor, the spinet, tinkled plaintively away under its breath like a musical mosquito with a cold on its chest, and was--alas, how happily!--within reach of only the few. In those days, when its feeble tinkle was a mere whisper, house-walls were made of such stupendous thickness that not even the turmoil of a modern orchestra in the next room could have penetrated.

But now, in these unhappy days, when every family is obliged to have a piano or be despised, and when in apartment-houses each floor quivers to a piano of its own, the architect and contractor--a terrible combination for evil!--have conspired together to erect walls like tissue paper, behind which the hara.s.sed householder cowers, mercilessly exposed to musical scales as practised on an instrument powerful enough to have cast down the walls of Jericho. And here he vainly seeks for a peaceful retreat from the noise of cabs, 'buses, motors, traction-engines, electric trams, and all the other ear-splitting sounds which, apparently, follow in the relentless march of progress.

It is very appalling to consider that at this very moment the children of the entire civilised world are, with few exceptions, engaged in playing false notes on a variety of musical instruments. It is not too much to say that in this respect the uncivilised have a colossal advantage over the civilised.

In a certain familiar oratorio innumerable pages and much time are taken up in an endless reiteration of the words, "All we like sheep." I beg to ask if the worthy sopranos, altos, tenors and the rest, ever did realise the profound truth of that over-repeated and rather monotonous statement? We _are_ all like sheep! We do what our neighbours do; we think what they think and we wear what they wear. In fact, we are tailor-made inside and out; no, we are worse than tailor-made, we are ready-tailor-made, for we are made by the gross.

If there is a thing the world shudders at and resents it is originality.

If a human being cannot be cla.s.sified as belonging to a certain cut of trousers, coat or waistcoats, let him beware, for he is a misfit human being, and we all know the cheap end of all misfits! It is as embarra.s.sing to have anything obtrusive in one's mental make-up as in one's physical. Happy is he who is on a dead level!

One would like to offer up a meek plea for originality were one not aware how unpopular it would be. To be original is only next worse thing to being a genius. We do resign ourselves to sporadic cases of genius, but a world peopled by genius (for we all know what that is akin to) is more than we could stand. It is about the same with originality. So the next time we sing "All we like sheep," let us consider well the meaning of these inspiring but misunderstood words, and greatly rejoice.

This train of thought is the result of my landlady's little boy, separated from me only by a thin lath part.i.tion of a wall, playing five-finger exercises in halting rhythm and with innumerable false notes. The instrument is one in which the flight of years has left a tone like a discontented nutmeg-grater. If the little boy had the legs of a centipede and played his chosen instrument with these instead of two dingy little hands, he could not perpetrate more false notes.

The number of false notes that can be evolved through the medium of eight fingers and two thumbs is simply appalling! The little boy, a pale child in a long pinafore and big white ears, hates his chosen instrument as much as I do, and so we meet on a level of mutual affliction. I loathe hearing him, and he hates his instrument; now, in the name of good common sense, why must he be offered up as a sacrifice?

His mother is a poor woman, and the tinkling cottage piano with the plaited faded-green front represents the chops and many other wholesome things she has not eaten, and what she allows the young lady in third-floor back, who takes her board out in piano lessons, is a serious sacrifice. Now, I ask, what for?

Why is all the world playing an unnecessary piano?

Marriage has a fatal effect on music. For some occult reason as soon as a girl is married, the piano--the grave of so much money and time--retires out of active life, and swathed in "art draperies,"

burdened by vases, cabinet photographs and imitation "curios," serves less as a musical instrument than a warning. But like all warnings it pa.s.ses unheeded, for no sooner are the next generation's legs long enough to dangle between the key-board and the pedals, than the echoes awaken to the same old false notes that serve no purpose unless an hour of daily martyrdom over a tear-splashed key-board is an excellent preparation for the trials of life.

Music, as it is taught, is not so much a fine art as a bad habit. Alas, we have got into the habit of learning to play the piano, and the bad habit of playing on the violin is fatally on the increase. Seriously now: why? Because it is considered both uncultivated and quite unfashionable not to be fond of music or to pretend to be. Why? The answer, "All we like sheep."

I know of only one man who has the courage to say that he hates music.

It is his misfortune, not his fault, and without doubt there is something wrong about his inner ear. Still, I always wonder why his frank and honest confession is received with a kind of pitying contempt, as if he had writ himself down to be both a brute-beast and a heathen.

Love music, and for some unexplained reason you at once have a profound scorn for all such as do not. My friend who hates music understands and loves both pictures and poetry, and, goodness knows, there are plenty who do not! And yet I have never heard him inveigh against those who love neither. Yes, music may be a divine art, but it is certainly not a charitable art.

Even as long as one can remember, the study of music and the making of musical instruments have been terribly on the increase. Mediocrity, that might do excellent work in other fields, strums away at the piano or scratches away at the violin, or with quavering voice sings those songs which have inspired the poet to write:

I am saddest when I sing, And so are those who hear me!

The world is full of music schools, that turn out thousands of young musicians every year, who take to music instead of dressmaking or plumbing or any other useful employment, and these are let loose on a foolish world and proceed in turn to make martyrs of the defenceless infants of our land. And it is curious, too, and instructive to observe, considering the vast sums of money and the amount of time spent in the pursuit of music, how rarely one can find any one who plays or sings well enough to give even a little pleasure.

The possible reason may be that the standard of mediocrity has become so terribly high! For the halting amateur of to-day might have served as a Paderewski of the past. Our ears have grown hopelessly fastidious.

No more is the afternoon caller regaled with _The Happy Farmer_, as performed by the talented child of the house, and listened to with real pleasure by unsophisticated grandparents. We know too much to listen to the talented child, and as for the talented child it generally developes into a young person who has nervous prostration at the mere idea of playing before anyone. For what purpose, then, these hours of five-finger agony and those enormous bills which might have been paid for so much better results?

Then, too, consider the awful compet.i.tion to which the present votary of music is subjected--pitted, as it were, against the pianola, the aeolian, the gramophone, and the other countless mechanical devices, which so successfully prove that human ingenuity can create everything but a soul. Wet blankets they are to all musical aspiration, for what musical aspiration can successfully compete against steel fingers without nerves?

I do not think one would feel so acutely about the matter if music were a silent art, and if it did not represent such a waste of money and energy which, turned to other uses, might have been of such value.

Let us have the courage to say, when it is the truth, that we dislike music. It is nothing to boast of, but neither is it a crime nor a disgrace. If your blessed Sammy bedews the piano keys with tears of anguish, and if, after a time, you discover that his soul is not amenable to the poetry of sound, then earn the fervid grat.i.tude of your neighbour on the other side of that jerry-built wall, and release the young sufferer.

Be merciful!

_A Domestic Danger_

There are certain times of the year when the shops, the acute arbiters of fashion, send broadcast those entrancing picture-books which advise the wavering woman what to buy, what to wear, and how to wear it; and every year the lovely creatures portrayed grow more lovely. Once my dream was to be a queen in a black velvet garment, that hid my pinafore, and a spiky crown--the kind as old as fairy stories. While waiting for the real article I practised with a bed sheet and crowned myself with a bra.s.s jardiniere that leaked, but was very imposing, though upside down.

I have had other aspirations since, and my very last has just come by a discontented postman because it would not go into the letter-box.

One goes through all stages of dreams until one comes to the conclusion, but that is always very late in life, that one must resign oneself to the inevitable; even science cannot turn one's nose down, when nature has turned it up, and no longing for five feet ten will help one whom nature has finished off at five feet two, though shops have been known to succeed where nature and science have failed, and it is owing mainly to them that this is the age of tall women. Why the men do not keep pace is partly a physiological riddle and partly because the shops are not interested in mere men. But it is a common sight these days to see a great blonde G.o.ddess with gigantic feet and hands, which she takes no trouble to conceal, having in tow a little man just tall enough to tickle her shoulder with his moustache. It is perhaps a merciful dispensation of Divine Providence that extremes not only meet, but evidently like to meet.

Yes, one's ideals in the process of living change. However, one feels convinced that the feminine ideal is always connected with clothes, and whatever the Venus of Milo may be to men I am quite sure that with her generous waist and rudimentary costume she has never been the ideal of a feminine dreamer. It is not so much the impropriety of having on few clothes that disturbs the female mind as it is the having on no real nice clothes. The old ideals are getting so dreadfully old-fashioned! A Greek G.o.ddess at an afternoon tea would have nothing in common with the new ideal but her height; her ample waist and her heroic simplicity would be out of it in an age which is trying to live up to the new standard of beauty as set by those infallible connoisseurs--the dry-goods stores. The enchanting books which these send out at the beginning of each season represent as nothing else the world's ideal of perfect feminine beauty. I will not discuss men's beauty, because a more gifted pen than mine has been at quite unnecessary pains to increase their already alarming vanity. But I must confess that now my own standard of womanly loveliness veers like a weather-c.o.c.k to the wind, as I study the pictorial production commercial generosity stuffs into my letter-box. Once I wanted to be a queen with a real crown, now I want to be just like the beauteous creature on that paper cover.

Once I thought to be perfectly beautiful was to be broad at the shoulders and pinched at the knees; then it was the other way about.

Finally I was educated--literature helped the delusion--to think that to be acceptable one had to be a tiny thing stopping just where "his" manly heart throbbed. I have seen shopworn feminine articles left over from that bygone season, and how ridiculous they do look!

I am sorry these days for a short girl, for the man with the throbbing heart is always on the look-out for a young giantess, into whose lovely eyes he can only gaze by standing on a step-ladder.

Yes, I really want to look just like that enchanting creature who gazes at me from the book Mr. Whiteley, in his subtle study of my weak mind, sent me yesterday. Who is the divine original? Apart from wearing such beautiful clothes, what has she done to be so perfectly lovely? She cannot be less than seven feet tall, and crowned by a dream of a hat.

Her eyes are so big and brown and trustful, and her mouth is the traditional rosebud, while her nose--a feature to which in real life nature is usually most unkind--is so small that fashions for pocket-handkerchiefs must soon go out. Her shoulders are so broad, and yet her waist is so attenuated, that I wonder if--well--if she has any organs, or does she rise superior to organs? I ask in the spirit of serious inquiry, for I should not like to be misunderstood. And then when it comes to that which society, in its exquisite propriety, blushes to mention, I do believe that under those frilly petticoats, Nature, ever considerate and bountiful to her, has provided her with telescopic stilts, and not the other thing. At least that is the only explanation I have ever found for her divine length! So what wonder if one sits at one's dressmaker's day in and day out, while that patient woman produces volume after volume representing perfect beauty combined with perfect taste, that the average woman is crushed at the impossibility of reaching such a standard of perfection?

If I were a man, my only aim in life would be to find the original of that superb creature, and lay at her feet my heart, my life and my purse. The last is very necessary, for she needs all those innumerable and fascinating things with which Mr. Whiteley, Mr. Harrod, Mr. Barker, and all the rest of those well-meaning but cruel tempters fill up the pages of their catalogues. These catalogues are really a biography in pictures, in which the beautiful She is shown to the world from the most intimate undress up, and in every phase she is lovely and dignified. Her perfect propriety in "combinations"--for which occasion she evidently discards stilts!--her _svelte_ and sinuous grace in corsets, while in petticoats one hardly knows which to admire most, her frills or her bland unconsciousness, and as for her dresses, from the one in which she is thrillingly pictured as pouring out a slow cup of coffee, she cannot fail to arouse in each the jealousy of the most generous of her s.e.x.

Her characteristics are always dignity, vacancy, and a smile not always appropriate to the occasion, I am free to confess, for I have seen her smile, by mistake of course, in the heaviest of widow's weeds. But perhaps that was because her head is always supremely unconscious of what the rest of her is doing. It is the unconsciousness of a great artist who is attending strictly to business; for she has not even a touch of vulgar feminine coquetry.

If she fascinates the weak-minded man who idly turns the leaves of the fashion-book, it is in spite of herself. When she stands confessed in, say, corsets--an att.i.tude which must be trying in the cold eye of the public--she does not look embarra.s.sed, she only looks dignified. She is, in fact, the direct modern descendant of the Vestal Virgins who sacrificed their beauty to religion, only she sacrifices her beauty to business. The comfort for a tired man to come home to her placid, well-dressed society! That she never loses her temper her exquisitely dressed head amply proves, for you can't lose your temper and preserve the serenity of your back hair! The rapture of a man and a father to come home to his perfectly dressed, silent infant which smiles sweetly from the latest thing in lace cribs, while She bends over him in a toilette which expresses as nothing else can maternal solicitude combined with perfect taste.

Then to see her play tennis, unflushed, unruffled, with her adorable hair still intact; skipping with such ladylike activity, and always smiling. What rapture for a loving man! The delight of golfing with her and her numerous sisters--such a family resemblance!--unexcited, ladylike, the linen collar about her swan like throat never wilted, but a monument to some celestial laundress, and delivering her strokes into the landscape with that inconsequential feebleness which men love, say what they will.

Then, too, to see her listening, in full dress, to the touching strains of the pianola, as performed by a soul-inspired being in the last thing in party frocks and a flower-crowned _coiffure_, is a study of controlled emotion. She _is_ moved, but too much emotion might ruffle what the poetry of commerce has so sweetly named her "transformation."

So she controls her feelings, and looks with calm and thoughtful eyes at the back of the "artiste's" marvellous toilette, and possibly wonders, to the strains of the "Largo" of Handel, how she got into her "creation." But that is a dead and awful secret only known to Mr. Harrod or possibly to Messrs. Derry and Toms.

How many a time have I watched her in a paper-garden-party mingling with other lovely beings of her own s.e.x, for her sense of propriety never allows her to mingle with those gallant gentlemen in frock-coats and evening dress we admire in the tailors' windows. The landscape is--if I may say so--of a most ladylike nature. Mud is absent, for the fair beings meander about in a landscape which nature has apparently cleaned with a tooth-brush. I suppose their need for amus.e.m.e.nt is amply satisfied with staring at their lovely sisters or offering them fans or bouquets--for I have rarely seen them do anything else, though once the artist who portrayed them became dramatic, and introduced two young things of their kind playing at battledore and shuttlec.o.c.k in the background.

The greatest innovation was when She was pictured as pouring tea in a baronial hall. The exquisite grace with which she "poured" was a lesson, though I had a terrible doubt as to whether there was anything in that perfect teapot. She wore a tea-gown which was the last "cry" in fluffiness, and the friends about her were gorgeous, in att.i.tudes which did more justice to their toilettes than their manners, for the way they turned their flat backs on each other might, in other society, have given offence. Another innovation in the picture was a perfect footman, a perfect page-boy, and a perfect butler, a n.o.ble being like an Archbishop, but much more serious. It was well that no other mere man was present even on paper, for the combination of loveliness was overpowering.

Ah, yes, indeed, if the usual run of mothers and wives were like these, then would there need to be no outcry against the selfish bachelor who refuses to marry. Instead, the bachelor in his five hundred horse-power motor, defying speed limit, palpitating with eagerness, would fly to lay himself at her exquisitely shod feet. For what does man care for beauty unadorned! As for intellect, well, intellect has never been in it!