Street Musicians.
By Gilbert Guerdon.
USIC "hath charms to soothe," we admit, but not all music, and not at all times; and it is this modification of the soothing effects of music that our street minstrels, both vocal and instrumental, seem to be unable, or unwilling, to comprehend.
Yet the street minstrelsy of to-day is nothing like so outrageously annoying and worrying as it was twenty years ago. Occasionally only do we hear one of those wretched old barrel-organs which helped to drive Parliament to pass the Act of 1863. That enactment was intended to minimise, or, at least, to modify, the annoyance caused by the so-called music of the streets, and it has succeeded.
Speaking generally, there are two kinds of street musicians—the tolerable and the intolerable. Amongst the former, we may include the poor fiddler who tells us that when he is "on the job," he manages to scrape together a decent livelihood. After ten years he has become weather hardened, and his long-tailed frock coal serves for winter or summer, with the only variation of being buttoned or unbuttoned. He has his regular patrons, who look out for him about once a week. One old spinster, who lives in a suburban villa, is always "good for a bob" when he plays "I dreamt that I dwelt in marble halls." Now and then you may hear the old girl warbling out the ballad with the window wide open, much to the amusement of the passers-by. A few doors off lives an old sea captain, whose grandson has always to dance a hornpipe when the fiddler comes round, and the old salt immediately sends out hot rum and water, whatever the time of year.
When the fiddler tries a new locality, he begins with, "The Heart Bowed Down," which scarcely ever fails to bring a sympathetic someone to the window. His average daily takings are from four to five shillings. In the autumn he plays himself down to Margate, and gets a mouthful of fresh air, and plenty of "recognition."
It was an accident that made him take to the tin whistle, or the "American flageolet," as he calls it. Bad luck had compelled him to pawn his fiddle, and, till he could raise the money to get it out again, he had recourse to the cheapest instrument he could think of, and that was the penny tin whistle. He certainly does get some capital tone out of it, and, at a distance, it may be mistaken for the piccolo. He did not, however, make much of his playing till he had the whistle soldered on to a tin coffee-pot, in place of the spout. This took immensely, and the coffee-pot brought in more pence than the fiddle, sometimes as much as eight or nine shillings a day.
"The last rose of summer."
Another penny whistler is a blind man, who morning, noon, and night tootles out "The Last Rose of Summer," alternated with a doleful hymn tune. What little money the poor fellow gets is given more out of compassion for his affliction than for any pleasure that his music affords.
Conscious perhaps that his bag-pipes
