men. They were disgraced because their Master's son played the fiddle for a living. But I could not afford to consider their opinions.
Ramage knew nothing about my other place, or his entreaties would have been more fervent. I had but one answer, however. I could not give up the only work that I cared for, even to be reconciled to my father. Why, I was born for music. Shall a man fly in the face of Providence, and scorn the gifts with which he is endowed?
My other place was none other than second fiddle, Tom Shirley being the first fiddle, of the Dog and Duck.
I have mentioned the Pleasure Gardens south of the River. There are, as Londoners know very well, a great many such gardens, all alike in most respects. That is to say, there is in every one of them an avenue or walk, lined by trees which at night are festooned by thousands of lights in coloured glass lamps hanging from tree to tree. There is also in most a piece of water with swans or ducks upon it, and all round it arbours where the company take tea or punch or wine. There is a tavern where drink may be had: suppers are served in the evening: there is a floor for dancing in the open air with a place for the band; and there is a Long Room with an organ at one end where the company promenade and listen, and where on hot nights the band and the singers perform. In many gardens there is also a bowling-green: there is sometimes a swimming bath, and in most there is a chalybeate spring the water of which is warranted to cure anything, but especially rheumatism, gout, and the King's evil.
Every one of these gardens employs an orchestra, and engages the services of singers. The number of musicians employed is therefore considerable. There are certainly in the south of London alone more than a dozen Gardens large enough to have a band. Beside the Dog and Duck, there are the Temple of Flora: the Lambeth Wells: the Cumberland Gardens: Vauxhall Gardens: Bermondsey Spa: St. Helena Gardens: Finch's Grotto: Cupid's Gardens: Restoration Spring Gardens – is not that twelve? And there are more. So that it is not difficult for a young man who can play any instrument tolerably to get a place in the orchestra of some Garden.
One would not choose such a position if Fortune gave one a choice. At the Dog and Duck there are visitors to whose pleasure we should be ashamed of ministering: people whose proper place is the House of Correction or Bridewell: they are allowed to attend these gardens with friends who should also be denied entrance: they make the company noisy and disorderly. We gave them music that was a great deal better than they deserved: it was thrown away upon the majority: we gave them songs that were innocent and tender – Tom Shirley wrote and composed them himself: we also had to give them other songs more suited to their gross and grovelling tastes.
It was part of Tom's humour to speak of the audience at the Dog and Duck as the most polite, fashionable, and aristocratic assembly in the world. He declared that their taste in music was excellent: their attention that of a connoisseur: and their appreciation of his own songs all that he could desire. I asked him once how he reconciled these things with their delight in the comic songs which were also provided for them. 'The aristocracy,' he said, 'must from time to time, unbend: they must from time to time, laugh: they laugh and they unbend when we give them a song to which in their more polite moments they would refuse to listen.' I knew very well that the company was chiefly composed of deboshed profligates: prentices who daily robbed their masters in order to come to the gardens: young gentlemen from the country; prodigal sons from the Temple and Lincoln's Inn; and tradesmen who were dissipating their capital. If good music was played they talked and laughed: at the singing of good songs they walked about or left the open platform for the dark lanes of the garden. 'You are lucky, Will,' said Tom. 'To play for such an audience brings good luck, with name and fame and riches.'
It brought me fifteen shillings a week. And as for name and fame I never heard of either.
I did not propose to write my own history, but that of a woman to whom you have already seen me conversing. Yet my own history must be understood before hers can be related. You have been told how for my obstinate adherence to music I was turned out of my father's house: how I found a refuge: how I earned my livelihood by playing the fiddle. Now, before I come to the events which connected my fortunes with those of the lady whom I call my mistress – and that with my wife's consent – I must tell one or two events which befell me. The first of them was my courtship and my marriage. In the courtship there was no obstacle: the course of true love ran smoothly: in my marriage there were no regrets: no discords: always a full deep current of affection on both sides. A simple, plain story, in which nothing happened, so far: would to Heaven that nothing had happened, afterwards.
When a young man and girl live under the same roof: when they share the same interests: when they have the same affections – Alice herself could not love her brother more than I did: when the home is happy in spite of poverty and its restrictions: when the hearts of the two go out to each other spontaneously, then the time must come when they will resolve upon becoming brother and sister or declared and open lovers.
When I think of this time, this truly happy time, I sometimes feel as if we were too hurried over it. I sat beside Alice every morning at breakfast and at dinner: I played to her: I composed songs for her: I even wrote verses for the music – I have some of them still, and really, though I do not pretend to be a poet, there are things in them which I admire. Poets always speak of the warblers in the grove: so did I. Love, which rhymes to grove, always burns and flames – did so in my verses. As to the rhymes, I abolished the first and third, which was a great relief. Without the necessity of rhyming one could easily become a poet.
I say that the situation being so pleasant and so happy, I might have prolonged it: but there comes a time when a man must take the last step. The uncertainty is sweet. Can she love me? Will she perhaps say nay? Yet the pleasing pain, the charming smart, the raptured flames – I quote from my own verses which were really like many that I have seen used in songs – become in time too much: one must perforce go on to secure the happiness beyond.
In the morning, when the weather was fine, we would walk abroad among the fields and gardens that lie stretched out behind the river bank: some of them are pretty gardens, each with its hedge and bushes filled with flowers in the summer: garden houses stand about here and there: windmills vary the landskip: the lanes are shaded by trees: at the end of one is a great stone barn, formerly part of King Richard's Palace, of which not another stone is left. Beside the river are Lambeth Palace and Lambeth Church with a few fishermen's cottages. Over this rural place we strayed at our will, now among the lanes; picking wild flowers; recalling scraps of songs; listening to the skylark, while the fresh breeze coming up the river with the tide fanned Alice's cheek and heightened the soft colour which was one of her charms. Sometimes we left the fields and walked along the high Embankment watching the laden barges slowly going up or down and the sailing tilt-boats bound for Richmond: or the fishermen in mid-stream with their nets: or the wherries plying with their fares and the swans: admiring, in a word, the life and animation of the river at Westminster and above it. Chiefly, however, Alice loved the fields, where in the morning we were always alone save for a gardener here and there at work. Since the life that she saw around her was such as she saw – made up of debtors' prisons, noisy duck-hunters, prize-fighters and drunken profligates, what wonder if she loved to linger where she was apart from the vileness of men and women? To meditate: to muse: to sing all alone, for my companionship counted nothing: was her greatest joy. So it has continued: even now she loves to wander alone beneath the trees – they are other trees under another sky – and lift up her voice to Heaven, which answers by giving her thoughts, always new and always holy.
It was in the middle of May, the poet's month, when we were thus roaming in the fields. Alice carried a handful of hawthorn. She sang as she went. Dear Heart! how she sang! Yet I know not what. It was Prayer: it was Praise: it was Adoration: it was Worship: I know not what she sang. The larks were dumb because they could not sing with her.
It was the time of which I have spoken – the time of uncertainty. Never had Alice looked so heavenly sweet: she carried her hat by the strings: her hair fell about her shoulders – fair, soft hair, like silk, with a touch of gold in it: her eyes gazed
