Atlantic Classics — Text and Context

re only five minutes in which to catch the train; but in thirty seconds we had unearthed a genuine piece of chamber music. Hallelujah! it was the finale of the first Beethoven trio!

Suddenly the oil of joy curdled to mourning. The thing was an arrangement for piano solo! We left hurriedly when the proprietor began assuring us that the original effect would be secured if the piano was doubled in the treble by the violin and in the bass by the 'cello.

This piano solo was the nearest approach to chamber music that a thorough search and research revealed in the island of Trinacria. But afterwards, recollecting the misadventure in tranquility, we concluded that it was as absurd to look for chamber music in Sicily as to look for 'Die Wacht am Rhein' among the idylls of Theocritus.

SCENE: a city composed of one department store and three houses, on the forbidding shores of Newfoundland.

TIME: one of those times when a fellow needs a friend,--when he's in a stern, strange land on pleasure bent--and has to have a check cashed. I don't know why it is that one always runs out of ready money in Newfoundland. Perhaps because salmon flies are such fleeting creatures of a day that you must send many postal orders to St. Johns for more. Perhaps because the customs officials at Port au Basques make you deposit so much duty on your fishing tackle. At any rate, there I was penniless, with the burly storekeeper scowling in a savage manner at my check and not knowing at all whether to take a chance on it. Finally he thought he wouldn't, but conceded that I might spend a night under his roof, as there was really nowhere else to go.

At this pass something made me think of music. Perhaps it was the parlor piano which, when new, back in the stone age, had probably been in tune. I inquired whether there were any other instruments. The wreckage of a violin was produced. With two pieces of string and a table fork I set up the prostrate sound-post. I glued together the bridge and put it in position. The technique of the angler proved helpful in splicing together some strange-looking strings. The A was eked out with a piece of salmon leader, while an old mandolin yielded a wire E.

When all was at last ready, a fresh difficulty occurred to me. The violin was an instrument which I had never learned to play! But necessity is the mother of pretension. I thought of that check. And placing the small fiddle carefully between my knees, I pretended that it was a 'cello.

So the daughter of the house seated herself at the relic of the stone age, and we had a concert. Newfoundland appeared not to be over-finicky in the matter of pitch and tone-quality. And how it did enjoy music! As the audience was of Scotch-English-Irish descent, we rendered equal parts of 'Comin' Through the Rye,' 'God Save the King,' and 'Kathleen Mavourneen.' Then the proprietor requested the Sextette from _Lucia_. While it was forthcoming he toyed furtively with his bandana. When it ceased he encored it with all his might. Then he slipped out storewards and presently returned with the fattest, blackest, most formidable-looking cigar I ever saw, which he gravely proffered me.

'We like' he remarked in his quaint idiom, 'to hear music at scattered times.' He was trying to affect indifference. But his gruff voice shook, and I knew then that music hath charms to cash the savage check.

This essay has rambled on an unconscionable while. The shades of editorial night are already descending; and still I have not yet described one of those unexpected and perfect orgies of chamber music,--one of those little earthly paradises full of

Soul-satisfying strains--alas! too few,--

which true fiddlers errant hope to find in each new place they visit, but which usually keep well in advance of them, like the foot of the rainbow.