Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, August, 1880
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In Scotch music are also continually found motives of a rhythm in which the first note has only one-fourth the duration of the second. This is known as the Scotch catch or snap, and evidently originated in the strathspeys, though it is now a distinction of many fine songs, notably so of "Roy's Wife of Aldavalloch."
That these old melodies are the voice of ancient Scotland is proved by the fact that no modern musician has been able to imitate them. Haydn tried to rearrange some of them, and failed, and Geminiani blotted quires of paper in attempting to write a second part to the "Broom o' the Cowdenknowes." No: ere we can add anything to the national music of Scotland we must restore the precise national conditions of which it was the articulate idea.
English music, until the days of the Tudors, was really French: England sang, as all Europe did, the songs of the Troubadours. But the "Chanson de Roland" and the "Complaint of the Châtelain de Courcy" were not English strains, for a national song is a winged fact. France was the legitimate successor of the Troubadours, and many of their oldest songs would serve to-day as airs de vaudeville. The French national music has mostly grown out of civil dissensions and party conflicts. What scenes do the "Carillon," the atrocious "Carmagnole" and the "Marseillaise" bring up! The "Carillon" had been Marie Antoinette's favorite tune: it pursued her from her palace to her prison, startled her on her way to her trial, and was probably the last sound she heard as she lay bound under the guillotine.
When not breathing blood and anarchy French popular music has a wonderful range: it is gallant, mocking, elegant, or full of absolute nonsense and frivolity. In fact, French music has always been so intensely national that it would have been impossible for England to have long borrowed it; and in the days of the Tudors we find English character beginning to explain itself in those admirable tunes and ballads which form a regular and successive declaration of English principles, with their sound piety, broad fun, perfect liberty of speech and capital eating and drinking. They have neither the wailing grief nor the boisterous merriment of Celtic music, and they lack entirely the monotonous tenderness of the Troubadours; but they are full of buoyant, daring independence, and have a certain homeliness which strikes in a very powerful manner some chord in the Anglo-Saxon heart.
The cosmopolitan nature of the German speaks to all the world in his music. Of all national musics it is the grandest and the most developed: we see this in the position it gives to rhythms. National musics with undeveloped rhythms are the speech of people just awakening, while music that has them strongly marked and regularly introduced belongs to people of fully-matured energies. Only in the Jodlers and Landlers of the Tyrolese, Austrian and Swiss mountains is the original Teutonic iambic preserved in its purity. In all other German music every kind of rhythm is met with, no kind being predominant. For the musical language of Germany embraces not only the few octaves of passion, but the whole keyboard of existence. It has preludes, symphonies and sonatas for every phase of life. Nothing smaller than this range would suffice to express the multiform ideas of a people so thoughtful and cosmopolitan. And though by this universal sympathy German music may have lost a purely national life, it is a most sufficing compensation to have gained the power of expressing the ideas of a whole epoch.
Musical taste in America is in progress of formation. We have no national music: we have not even a decided preference for any style. We like Beethoven and Chopin, but we also like Rossini and Donizetti and delight in Lecocq and Sullivan. In no respect is the national pride so utterly forgotten as in music. We give to all schools a fair hearing. The great German masters are household words: the national music of every land is welcome. We have been learning to like Italian opera at an insane cost; we have kindly winked at the follies of opera-bouffe; probably nowhere in the world are the intellectual depths of a German symphony and the passionate declamation of an Italian recitative more thoroughly appreciated. This is the natural musical exposition of our complex and various life. This wondrous variety, which indicates possibilities not yet revealed, pleases us without being always clear to our feelings and intellect. Still, we shall not ask, with the Frenchman, "Sonate, que veux-tu?" We are satisfied with what the present affords, and what new masters shall appear or what new instruments be invented we know not. Always the epochs will have their own interpreter. One hundred years ago who had imagined a Weber or Steinway piano, that piece of furniture with a soul in it?
It has been suggested to me while writing this paper that national melodies are in a great measure influenced by the physical features of the country in which they rise. I think very little so. It is true that the music of all mountainous countries has many points of resemblance, but it is because the people of such countries have strong mental and moral similitudes. Savages are not inspired by the most lovely scenery, and a collection of national airs from different parts of the world would not reveal to us whether they were written in valleys or on mountains or by the sounding seashore.
There are distinct ensigns by which national music may be as promptly detected as a ship by its colors. Spanish airs have in them the rapid twinkling, so to speak, of the guitar; the mountain-melodies of Switzerland recall the open notes of the Alp-horn; the Irish and Scotch musics have their marks as plainly impressed upon them as the physiognomy of the peoples is distinct, and it is nothing to the purpose to say that they have been cleverly imitated: the mark still remains a fact, and is the mysterious specialty that thrills the rich, the poor, the soldier and the churchman, the peasant and the exile. Whatever analogy exists between a country and its music is mainly with the inward character of the people themselves, and is generally too profound to be theorized upon. We only know that at every step we advance in the science of music we are deciphering what is written within us, not transcribing anything from without.
Nor as Americans are we insensible to the value of a national music. The few airs which have any claim to represent us in this capacity have done service that no money can estimate. During the late war wherever the rebel flag was raised it was necessary to silence "Yankee Doodle." Like the "Marseillaise," it was an institution before which its enemies trembled; and when we have produced or annexed something infinitely grander we shall not forget the saucy, free-and-easy, mind-your-own-business melody that carried the nation cheerfully through two great crises.
Amelia E. Barr.MALLSTON'S YOUNGEST
The railroad-village of Fairfield woke up one spring morning and found a clumsy blue car, with a skylight in its roof, standing on the common near the blacksmith-shop. Horses and tongue were already removed, the former being turned into the tavern pasture and the latter stowed in the tavern barn. A small sky-colored ladder led up to the door of this artistic heaven, which remained closed long after a crowd of loungers had gathered around it.
The Fairfield loungers were famously lazy savages, though to the last degree good-natured and obliging. They wore butternut overalls and colored shirts, a few adding the picturesque touch of bright handkerchiefs and broad straw hats: there were a few coats in various stages of rags and grease, and one or two pairs of boots, but the wearers of these put on no airs over the long ankles and sprawling toes which blossomed around them. The whole smoking, stoop-shouldered, ill-scented throng were descendants of that Tennessee and Carolina element which more enterprising Hoosiers deplore, because in every generation it repeats the ignorance and unthrift branded so many years ago into the "poor white" of the South.
Those who could read traced the legend "Photographic Car" on the sides of the vehicle, and with many a rude joke each bantered the other to have his picter took for such purposes as skeerin' stock off the railroad-track or knockin' the crows stiff. Their scuffling and haw-haws waked the occupant of the car, who rose in his bunk and drew the curtain from a window. The boys saw his face and hushed. Raising the window, he scattered a bunch of handbills among them, which set them all to scrambling, and, when they had caught the bills, to struggling with large and small type which announced that an unrivalled photographer would be in that vicinity in a very few days with his beautiful travelling-car, giving everybody an opportunity of securing such tin-types and photographs as only the large cities turned out, and at the lowest possible prices.
Presently the photographer appeared at his own door and looked abroad. The tender spring morning, though it glorified surrounding woods and rich farming-lands, could do little for this dilapidated village, which consisted of one lane of rickety dwellings crossed at right angles by the Peru Railroad, a stern brick building, a wooden elevator and a mill. It was a squalid sight, though the festive season of the year and that glamourous air peculiar to Indiana brooded it. The photographer surveyed his new field with an amused sneer, and descended the steps to go to his breakfast at the tavern, a peak-roofed white frame set among locust trees—the best house on the street. Before it stood that lozenge-shaped sign on a fat post which stands before all country taverns, making a vague, lonesome appeal to the traveller.
The loungers moved in groups on the station-platform, their hands in their pockets and their necks stretched forward, eying the stranger.
Out of the blue distance on the railroad two plumes of steam rose suddenly: then a black object stood up on the track and gave two calls at a crossing. Double-shuffles were danced on the platform, as if the approaching train charged these vagabonds with some of its own strength. It screamed, and bore down upon this dilapidated station to stop for one brief minute, change mail-sacks and gaze pityingly out of its one eye at the howling crew which never failed to greet it there. People in the cars also looked out as if glad they were not stopping, and a few with long checks in their hats, who appeared to be travelling to the earth's ends, were envied by a girl approaching the post-office in the brick block.
She waited near the photographic car until the train passed, her lip curling at this blue van and the pretensions of its owner.
Later she came out of the post-office by a back hall, and, darting a fierce look at Jim Croddy, who ran against her in his performance of the double-shuffle, took her way across the common, crushing her letters in her hand. This time she scarcely looked at the photographic van, but with dilated eyes and set teeth pursued her path into the springing weeds. The photographer, who had returned, looked at her, however, and found her individuality so attractive that he watched her swift step until it took her out of sight within the doorway of a brick residence detached from the village by a meadow and long lawn.
The young man opened his car and prepared for business. His landlady was going to bring her grandchild to be photographed. A locker received his primitive couch, and he further cleared the deck for action by stowing in the back apartment where he prepared his chemicals all remaining litter. Jim Croddy and kindred spirits ventured to look in.
"See here, boys," inquired the photographer, "couldn't one of you get me a bucket of water from somewhere?"
They would all do it. The heartiest and most obliging set of idlers in the world, they almost fought for the pail, and two, taking it between them, cantered to the pump in front of the post-office. The rest were fain to enter, treading each other's bare heels as they tumbled up the steps.
"Don't you want your pictures taken?" inquired the artist, quizzically surveying his shaggy crowd.
"We ain't got no money," replied Bill Stillman, the smallest but readiest-tongued.
"You got money, Bill," retorted Leonard Price, a parchment-colored wisp of nineteen who had recently become a widower.
"I got to git clo'es with it if I hev'. There's Mallston: git him to set for his picter."
Mallston was hooted for as he came across the dewy grass on feet of brawn, shaming puny rustics by his huge physique. The photographer mentally limned him: a bushy, low-browed head and dark, reddish, full-lipped face, bearded; muscle massed upon his arms and tatter-clothed legs; a deep, prominent chest; hands large, black, powerful; the whole man advancing with a lightness which in some barbaric conqueror would have been called dignified grace.
Mallston had nothing to answer for himself. He stood folding his arms and looking in. It was said he had African blood in his veins—barely enough to stain the red of his skin, pinch up his children's hair and give them those mournful, passionate black eyes through which the tragedy of the race always looks. But so vague, so mere a hearsay, was this negro stain, if it existed at all, that he had married a white wife, and moved in society unchallenged by these very fastidious descendants of Carolina and Tennessee.
Mallston's wife had lately added a son to his family. He had two sons before, also two daughters. From any standpoint it seemed an unnecessary addition when the economist considers that he had no means of support except his big-fingered paws, and these, though very willing, depended on chance jobs and days' works given him by other men. In face of these facts the youngest was there as well as the oldest—scarcely seven; the second, scarcely five; and the third and fourth, aged three and a half and two—in his rented house of one room, containing beds in opposite corners, a table and a cooking-stove in front of the fireplace. A generous family and scant provision for it being the mode in Fairfield, however, Mallston may not have seen his desperate position, especially with summer and harvest wages coming. Just now he was out of a job, having finished a ditching contract, and his black, speculative eyes looked anxiously at the photographer.
"Come, clear now!" exclaimed that young man with some authority to his loafers: "I am going to have some sitters."
The landlady and her grandchild were already coming to take advantage of morning sunlight and the domestic lull before dinner. With them came a curious neighbor in ill-made, trailing calico and dejected sun-bonnet, who walked with her hands on her hips and puckered her upper lip, with consciousness of the loss of two front teeth, when she laughed. As they proceeded at a pace regulated by the toddling child, they encountered an old woman with no teeth at all, whose nose and chin leaned very much toward each other: her grizzled hair curled under a still more dejected sun-bonnet, and, setting down a basket of clothes, she stood panting from exertion and wiping her wan face on the bonnet cape.
"I'm a-garn to hick'ry that Bill," she exclaimed weakly. "I tole him to carry me wash-water, and here he is stannin' round thish yer car! George and John's just out, too, and so's Foster. Soon's they git the'r vittles they up and leave me to do the best I kin. Laws! who's garn to pay out money fer fortygraphs? If folks all had to work as hard as I do, they wouldn't have no money fer no such things, so they wouldn't. It 'ud stan' 'em in hand to be savin'."
"Why don't you drive off some yer good-fer-nothin' boys and make 'em do somethin', Mis' Stillman?" bantered the neighbor.
"Well, they've all been a-workin'," relented the mother. "Bill, he's as good a feller to work as ever was if he don't git with a lot of orn'ry boys. Hit hurts Fawt to work stiddy, so it does.—Bill, come here and tote these clo'es home fer me."
Bill came, ruddy and laughing from a scuffle, and walked off with the basket.
"And git the wash-water and make a fire under the kittle," called his mother.
"I'll be apt to," responded Bill.
"Come along into the daguerreyan car, Mis' Stillman," invited the landlady. "You never see the inside o' one, did you?"
"Laws! is that wher' you're garn to? I can't stop but a minute. Hit looks mighty fine. The boys said this feller was drivin' into town last night when meetin' broke. Who's garn to have their picter took?—You, Jane?"
"Me?" replied the neighbor. "Laws! no: I ain't rich."
"Oh, you'll change your minds," drawled the landlady patronizingly, as became a lady of means: "he takes 'em reel cheap."
The photographer met this group at his door and assisted them into the car, from which all his earlier visitors had dispersed except Mallston.
Mallston stood at the steps and watched the landlady's grandchild prepared for a sitting. The rabble had begun their morning business of pitching horseshoes, but his interest was held by that little child—its fresh clothes, rings of black hair and pomegranate coloring. The artist, having placed his camera, was in the farther room preparing his plate. When he came out and was in the act of closing the door he noticed Mallston, and asked, "Do you want a job?"
The barbarian did decidedly.
"Come into the back room, then, and help me."
Mallston went striding through the car, and placed himself in an obedient attitude behind the partition.
"Laws!" exclaimed Mrs. Stillman, standing between the camera, where the artist was burying his head under a black cloth, and the object to be photographed, "when we lived in Bartholomew county—'twas the year after we moved f'm Johnson county—Foster and John they was little fellers then, and I did want the'r picters that bad, so I did. But the'r pap he 'lowed it was a waste o' money. Pore man! he was a mighty hard worker: he'd go a mile'd to make a cent, and then he'd lose it all with bad management, so he would. But I had easy times them days, with everything to my han': I spun and wove all the jeans the men-folks wore, and we milked a dozen cows—"
"Will you please move aside?"
"Git out o' the way, Mis' Stillman: the man can't see through ye."
"Oh!" exclaimed the old woman, jerking herself from the photographer's line of vision, "I didn't go fer to git in the way. But this ain't doin' my washin'," she added, moving toward the entrance. Here, on a little shelf, she found some tiles and brushes, which she took up to examine and hold before the other women, who were seated awaiting the picture-taking. "What's these here things?"
"Artists' materials," replied the photographer, removing his head from under the black cloth, and that from the camera.—"Now, my little man, look straight at the hole in the box, and don't move.—That large brick house—keep perfectly quiet—across the field seems a good point to sketch from. Who lives there?"
"Harbisons," replied the landlady.
"Harbisons, eh? I suppose it was Miss Harbison I saw go past this morning?—Don't move, my little man."
"I do' know," demurred the washer-woman, whose sole recreation in life was the faculty of speech. "I ain't seen Mis' Harbison to town to-day. They's him and her and the boys. Both the boys is away f'm home now. What-fer lookin' woman?"
"It was a young lady in a wide hat."
"Oh, that's Miss Gill: she's some kin to 'em. She's a school-teacher to Bunker Hill or Peru. Laws! I hate to see anybody so proud."
"That's a good boy!" said the photographer. He removed his plate and carried it to the rear room, where he required the assistance of Mallston, who had watched the process with silent interest. Presently reappearing with the dripping negative, which he held for the women to see, he repeated incidentally, "Proud, is she, this Miss Gill?"
"Yes, she is, kind o'," testified the neighbor who was called Jane.—"It's a reel good one, ain't it?"
"If ye take as good as this all the time," cried the pleased landlady, holding off the negative and giving that excited drawl to the terminal word which may distinguish Kentuckians, for she claimed to be one, "every girl in town 'll be comin' after the'r picter-uh!"
"Except the proud Miss Gill."
The landlady, who had a moustache, bristled it over her square mouth: "I never ast much about her. She's kind o' yaller-complected, but some says she's smart. Bill Harbison was smart too, but he's all broke up now. They don't own nothin' but the house and grounds they're livin' in."
"Laws!" poured in the steady washer-woman, "I used to work fer Mis' Harbison when she was well off—I done knit socks and pieced quilts—and she was always liber'l, so she was. When we fust come here he was gittin' down with his last sickness, and we left a good place in Bartholomew county, fer his folks they kep' a-writin', 'Here's the place, Billy: this is wher' you'll find the flitter tree and the honey pond.' And it wasn't never my will, but come we must; and you orto seen Fairfield then. Why, ther' wasn't nothin' but mud, so ther' wasn't.—My soul! if thern don't go Bill, and I know he ain't carried me no wash-water."
The artist helped her down the steps and asked her to come again, which courtesy she distrusted. She 'lowed he was p'tendin'. He throwed his head up like he was big-feelin'. It ruffled her that anybody should be big-feelin' over a pore widder-woman that took in days' washin's, and had a pack o' triflin' boys that et her out o' house and home.
Still, this old woman enjoyed the fruit trees' budding promise as she patted along the railroad, and perhaps some old thrill shot again as a meadow-lark uttered his short, rich madrigal from the weather-darkened fence.
"Ho, Mis' Stillman," called Mallston's wife, standing in her door with the youngest on her arm, "le's go over and see that ther' picter car."
"I done done it," responded the old woman.
By the end of two weeks this photographic car had done good execution on the community. The artist himself appeared friendly, which greatly assisted his trade, openness to familiarity being a prime virtue in all rustic neighborhoods. Every youngster who came to the store after groceries, with a bag slung over the horse's neck in which to carry them, gave pap no peace until means were furnished for a rosy-cheeked tin-type of himself in a pink, green or purple case. The Appledore girls, handsome daughters of a rich farmer, and therefore able to sit for pictures in Kokomo, or even Indianapolis, yet put on all their chains, rings and bracelets and went to the car to test this young photographer's skill. Mrs. Stillman received money from her daughter in Ellwood, together with the written command: "You go and git your fortygraph took fer me, mother: we don't none of us never know what's a-garn to happen." So she removed her black alpaca from its peg on the wall for her adornment, and came also, explaining to the neighbors that Kit sent the money, so she did, and was makin' a pore mouth about not havin' no picter of mother. And having got the picture, she used all her past trials and present misfortunes to save half the price, which she succeeded in doing.
Every day the artist had a few sitters. It was surprising how many of the bilious, bare-legged children who collected to gaze at his framed specimens were brought to be photographed, for most of the villagers were squalidly poor and the farmers were entering their busy season. During this time he had opened the Harbison domicile to himself, being son of a friend who had sat in the State legislature with Mr. Harbison. All Fairfield knew that he went there nearly every day, and that it was not to shoot with the long-bow on the lawn. They had no idea how he loved to lounge from one empty room to another of this picturesque, half-furnished house, and how he was gratified by the fitness of the inhabitants to their abode. He liked to see Miss Gill tuck a bunch of peach-blossoms in her coil of hair, and to feel the quickening influences of spring supplemented by her electricity.
Mrs. Harbison took her earth-loving hands from garden-making and went to show the young people the ferns in the woods. She pulled her sun-bonnet over her eyes and trod out with the solid steps of a woman bred to love the soil under her feet. The photographer sketched along the way, but he finally sat down by Little Wildcat where the water boiled over boulders, and Mrs. Harbison went farther to dig ginseng. There was a joyful hurry of birds all around. That leopard of the Indiana woods, the sycamore, repeated itself in vistas.