# The Story of the Flute/Chapter 17

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CHAPTER XVII.
FLUTE IN ENGLISH LITERATURE—POET FLAUTISTS.
Early English references—Chaucer—Flute and fife in Shakespeare—In the early dramatists—In the poets—References to the qualities of the flute—Epithets applied to it—Cowper—Longfellow—Other poets—Prose references—In modern novelists—Dickens—A weird flute story—Flute in American authors—Sidney Lanier—Other literary flautists—Legends.
The earliest mention of the flute that I can find occursEarly English References in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales (c. 1386). In the Prologue to that work, the gay young squire is described as singing or “floytynge” all the day. In The House of Fame, iii., 130 (c. 1394), the poet speaks of "many thousand times twelve"
and he mentions three ancient flute-players by name—Atiteris [? Tityrus], Proserus [? Pronomus], and "Marcia that lost her skyn" (Dante in his Paradise, 1, 13-27, had already turned Marsyas into a woman). Again in the Romaunt of the Rose (c. 1400), "floytes" and ​"flowtours" are mentioned, and one named Wicked Tongue is said to have played discordantly. "Floutys ful of armonie" are mentioned by Lydgate (c. 1406), and Caxton, writing about 1483, names the flute several times. In Dunbar's early Scottish poem, The Flyting of Dunbar and Kennedy (c. 1504) we find "Tak thee a fidall or a floyt to jeist." Skelton in his Vox Populi (c. 1529) has a quaint proverbial expression "They may go blow their flute"—i.e., whistle for something. The flute is frequently included in the lists of instruments which occur in our early poets. In several cases "flutes" are named as distinct from "recorders," e.g. Hollands' Pliny, v. 1 (1601), "the flute and single pipe or recorder" (see also p. 34, ante).
Shakespeare mentions both the flute and recorder, and also the fife. I need not here refer to the famous passage about the recorder in Hamlet (iii. 2). The flute is named twice in Antony and Cleopatra: inThe Flute and Fife in Shake- speare act ii., 7, 137, flutes, drums, and trumpets are mentioned, and in the description of Cleopatra's barge (ii., 2, 199)—"The oars were silver, which, to the tune of flutes, kept stroke"—(which is taken almost verbatim from North's Plutarch, c. 1580: Plutarch's word is αὐλόν, which North translates "flutes").
Shakespeare always refers to the fife along with the drum: "I have known when there was no music with him but the drum and fife" (Much Ado Abont Nothing, ii., 3, 14); "The trumpets, sackbuts, psalteries and fifes, tabors and cymbals and the shouting Romans, make the sun ​dance" (Coriolanus v., 4, 52),—a passage recalling Nebuchadnezzar's band; "The spirit-stirring drum, the ear-piercing fife" (Othello, iii., 3, 352), and in The Merchant of Venice (ii., 5, 29), "the drum and the vile squeaking of the wry-neck't fife." The epithet "wry-neck't" probably refers to the neck of the player="wry-necked fifer"; as Barnaby Rich in his "Irish Hubbub" (Aphorisms, 1618) says, "a fife is a wry-neck't musician, for he always looks away from his instrument," and the footman in Overbury's Characters (1614) "with a wry neck falls to tuning his instrument."
The fife is mentioned by Holinshed (1577), by King James 1st in Chorus Venetus (c. 1600); and frequently in our early dramatists (almost always along with the drum). In Cartwright's Ordinary, ii., 1 (1651), a military character comparing dishes of food to militaryThe Fife and Flute in the Early Dramatists instruments has a fat collar of brawn served for a drum, and "a well-grown lamprey for a fife"; a curious allusion to the alleged derivation of the word "flute", just as Browne in Britannia's Pastorals says a little stiffened lamprey's skin served the fairies for a flute. Sackville's Gorboduc (1561) mentions flutes and drums ​(iii. v.). The dramatists seldom mention the "flute." It occurs in the morality play Mankind (c. 1475) and in the "Banns" prefixed to the Chester miracle plays for 1600. In the fifteen volumes of Dodsley's Old Plays, I only find it named once (The True Trojans, 1633, where it is rhymed with "lute"). It is mentioned once in Beaumont and Fletcher (Monsieur Thomas). Jonson never mentions it in any regular play, but it occurs in several of his masques, in one of which (World in the Moon) he also speaks of a flute-case. Nor can I find it in any play by Randolph, Massinger, Marlowe, Chapman, T. Heywood, Middleton, Kyd, or Greene (who all mention the fife), Dekker, Ford, Peele, Webster, Wycherley, Vanbrugh, Congreve, or Farquhar. Lyly naturally has it in his Midas (1592). Gaiscoyne's Jocasta (1566) mentions fifes and drums, and has a stage direction that the flutes should play a very doleful noise during the dumb shows. There is a similar direction in Marston's Sophonisha (1606), and in that author's Antonio and Mellida (1602) we have a stage direction, "The still flutes sound a mournful cynet"—probably low-pitched flutes are intended. He also speaks of "a noise (i.e. small band) of flutes" in his Dutch Courtesan (1605). The amorous Don Antonio in Dryden's Don Sebastian (ii. 2) plays the flute, and in Thomas Shadwell's Squire of Alsatia. (ii. 1) a song is accompanied by "two flutes and a thro' bass."
Patie in Ramsey's Gentle Shepherd plays the flute. Wordsworth's Ruth cheers herself in her lonelinessIn the Poets with a flute made of hemlock stalk, and in The Prelude (viii.) mention is made of the shepherd's sprightly fife; but the poet more usually refers to "the fife of war" (ib., vi.), and twice speaks of "the thrill of fifes." Wordsworth did not himself play—he says "I whose breath would labour at the flute in vain" (Epis. to Beaumont)—but one of his boyish playmates was a flautist (Prelude, ii.), and in one of his sonnets he refers to the playing of a friend.
How beautifully does Keats address the "happy melodist unwearied, for ever piping songs for ever new," depicted on a Grecian urn playing a double flute:—
In Endymion he speaks of "ebon-tippéd flutes." Shelley also refers to the double-flute (Unfinished Drama), and in his Prometheus Unbound speaks of "a lake-surrounding flute," whose sounds o'erflow the listener's brain, so sweet that joy is almost pain.
Poetic reference is very frequently made to the ​softness and sweetness of the flute: as Austin Dobson daintily sings—
Its power over the passions (more especially love) is alluded to in Dryden's oft-quoted lines (set to appropriate music by Handel)—
and in Alexander's Feast, where he mentions Timotheus and his breathing flute, who could swellReferences to the qualities of the flute the soul to rage or kindle soft desire, and raise a mortal to the skies. This varied power of the flute over the feelings and emotions is frequently referred to. According to Thomas Gordon Hake (1809) it has a like power over animals—
Prior in his Pleasure speaks of the softening effect of the flute on other instruments, and Addison mentions the flute as mellowing the sharper sounds of the violin. ​Lewis Morris declares "The flute is sweet to Gods and men." Poets have termed it "mellow," "melodious,"Epithets applied to the flute "softening," "soft and tender," "peaceful," "amorous," "soul-delighting," "charming," "warbling," "wailing," "melancholy," "lonely." In Paradise Lost, Satan's army moves to "The Dorian mood of flutes and soft recorders." Milton elsewhere speaks of the "oaten flute" of Lycidas and the "jocund flute" of Comus. Browne in his Pastorals (iii. 1) has a "hollow, heavy flute." Swinburne in Songs before Sunrise has "the fierce flute." Surely no epithet could be less appropriate!
Cowper evidently regarded the flute as an instrument of effeminacy and wantonness (see The Timepiece, 260,Cowper and Longfellow and The Progress of Error, 133); he considered that Mrs. Throckmorton's bull-finch could "all the sounds express of flageolet or flute." The songs of birds and the notes of the flute are frequently compared. Longfellow in The Masque of Pandora calls birds "feathered flute-players," and in The Spanish Student says the fife has "a cheerful, soul-stirring sound, that soars up to my lady's window like the song of a swallow." In Hiawatha the gentle Chibiabos, best of all musicians, plays on "Flutes so musical and mellow," and Pau-Puk-Keewis dances his mystic dance to the sound of flutes. In his Divine Tragedy Longfellow introduces the "flute-players" at the death of the daughter of Jairus. The poet has here anticipated the revisers of the Bible; they have substituted "the flute-players" ​for "the minstrels" of the authorised version (Matthew, ix. 23). In Revelations (xviii. 22) the revised version again reads "flute-players" where the authorised version read "pipers." The only instance of the word "flute" in the authorised version is in the account of Nebuchadnezzar's orchestra in Daniel, iii. (where pan-pipes or else a double flute is intended), but in I. Kings (i. 40) the word "pipes" has a marginal reading "flutes."
Browning's references to the instrument are somewhat contemptuous. He speaks of a "fife-shriek," and of a candlestick-maker blowing his brainsOther Poets into a flute (Shop), and in Up at a Villa he has "bang-whang-whang goes the drum, tootle-te-tootle the fife," which recalls the delicious description of the tuning of the orchestra in Smith's Rejected Addresses—
The fascination of rhyming "flute" with "lute" seems irresistible; it occurs in innumerable instances. One of the latest is in Oscar Wilde's Ballad of Reading Gaol, ii. g. Tennyson says, "Knaves are men that lute and flute fantastic tenderness" (The Princess, iv.).
Leigh Hunt in The Fancy Concert has a somewhat similar passage beginning "Flageolets one by one, and flutes blowing more fast." Robert L. Stevenson was very fond of playing his flute "to tune up his ideas," and refers to it several times in the New Arabian Nights ​and elsewhere. In one of his poems he describes how "Aye the gauger played the flute." Stevenson also wrote some very curious verses entitled an autobiographical reminiscence, "To Theobald Böhm, Flautist (inventor of the fingering which bears his name)." I quote a few lines.
The poet proceeds to tell how Böhm, having sold his soul to the fiend in exchange for the flute, found he could not play it. Apparently Stevenson did not like the Böhm system.
Addison in one of his most whimsical and charmingProse References papers in The Tatler (No. 157) compares ladies to various musical instruments; here is his description of the lady who resembled a flute, by which probably he meant a recorder:— "The person who pleased me most was a flute, an instrument that, without any great compass, has something exquisitely sweet and soft in its sound; it lulls and soothes the ear, and fills it with such a gentle kind of melody as keeps the mind awake without startling it, and raises a most agreeable passion between transport and indolence. In short, the music of the flute is the conversation of a mild and amiable woman, that has nothing in it very elevated, or at the same time anything mean or trivial." ​In the end he suggests a marriage between the flute and the lute.
Oliver Goldsmith as a youth used to play the flute accompanied by Miss Contarine on the harpsichord. He himself tells us he was but an indifferent performer, and when insulted he used to relieve his feelings by blowing into it "with a kind of desperate, mechanical vehemence." During his wanderings over Europe in 1755 he more or less supported himself by means of his flute. He recalls in The Traveller how he "lipped his flute in France." Under the name of George Primrose in The Vicar of Wakefield he describes how—
"Whenever I approached a peasant's house [in France] towards nightfall, I played one of my most merry tunes, and that procured me not only a lodging, but subsistence for the next day. I once or twice attempted to play for people of fashion, but they always thought my performance odious, and never rewarded me even with a trifle."
An American writer has said that the fable of the playing of Marsyas teaches us how to treat young men who play on the flute, and certainly severalFlute in Modern Novelists modern novelists seem to regard the instrument chiefly as a subject of ridicule. They dwell principally upon its melancholy aspect. Dickens is the chief offender in this respect, but his humour excuses him. How delightful is the description of Mr. Mell, the mild schoolmaster (the assistant-master in Thackeray's Doctor Birch also plays the German flute) in David Copperfield, "a gaunt, sallow young man with hollow cheeks," who carried his flute in three ​pieces in his tail-coat pocket, and used at night to blow it until it seemed that he would gradually blow his whole being into the large hole at the top, and ooze away at the keys!—
"There never can have been anybody in the world who played worse. He made the most dismal sounds I have ever heard produced by any means, natural or artificial. . . . The influence of the strain upon me was first to make me think of all my sorrows until I could hardly keep my tears back; then to take away my appetite; and lastly to make me so sleepy that I couldn't keep my eyes open."
Then, again, the description of Dick Swiveller (Old Curiosity Shop), who, hearing that Sophy Wackles was lost to him for ever, took to flute-playing as "a good, sound, dismal occupation," and for the greater part of the night lay on his back, half in and half out of bed, with a small oblong music book, endeavouring to play "Away with Melancholy" very slowly, and repeating one note a great many times before he could find the next, thereby maddening the inhabitants of all the surrounding houses. No wonder he received notice to quit next morning. As Goethe says, "There is scarcely a more melancholy suffering to be undergone than what is forced on us by the neighbourhood of an incipient player on the flute or violin." The young gentleman at Mrs. Todgers' musical party (Martin Chusslewit) blows his melancholy into a flute: "he didn't blow much out of it, but that was all the better."
So, too, Bulwer Lytton in What Will He Do With It? speaks of Dick Fairfield as "the cleverest boy at the school, who unluckily took to the flute and unfitted ​himself for the present century," a sentiment which was embodied in the ancient Greek proverb. "To flute-players, nature gave brains, there's no doubt: But alas! 'tis in vain, for they soon blow them out." Readers of Mrs. Ward's Robert Elsmere will remember the description of the duet played by the Rev. Mr. Mayhew and Miss Banks:—
"After an adagio opening in which the flute and piano were at magnificent cross-purposes from the beginning, the two instruments plunged into an allegro very long and very fast, which became ultimately a desperate race between the competing performers for the final chord. . . . The shriller and the wilder grew the flute, and the greater the exertion of the dark Hercules performing on it, the fiercer grew the pace of the piano. . . Crash came the last chord, and the poor flute nearly half a page behind was left shrilly hanging in mid-air, forsaken, and companionless, an object of derision to gods and men."
Very frequently the novelist's flautist belongs to the Church, generally of the type of little Mr. Sweeting in Charlotte Bronte's Shirley (c. 7), who always carried about the pieces of his flute in his pocket. As its "squeaking and gasping notes" are mentioned, we gather he was not much of a performer. Another flute-playing curate (Mr. Baily) occurs in G. M. Fenn's This Man's Wife.
Pearson's Magazine for May, 1903, contains a remarkable story entitled The Flautist by J. H. Yoxall, M.P. It relates how a drunken flautist in the band at the Alcazar Restaurant saw a German flute hanging in the window of a slop-shop, which, when he took it in his hand, felt warm and flexible, almost ​alive. Finding that it produced a magnificent tone, he purchased it, whereupon his playing improved so marvellouslyA Weird Flute Story that he got an engagement at the Queen's Hall. Coming home very drunk one night, he staggered out of bed at two o'clock in the morning and took the flute out of its case to have a look at it. For the life of him, he could not get it back into its case. In drunken frenzy he seized it by the end and dashed it against the edge of the chest of drawers, again and again. "He cursed it, loosed it, and it seemed to spring at him; like a warm, flexible, snaky cord it clipped his throat. . . A rustle, a rattle, a thick breath, a triumphant hiss. The flautist gasped, and fell backward against the dingy bed;" where the next morning he was found dead with a mark on his throat.
American writers often mention the flute. There is a pathetic story "The Flute-player" in Harper's Magazine,The Flute in American Authors May, 1908, which tells of a blind flautist, who played a tiny flute "half pipe, half reed," for coppers in an archway; it has, however, no special reference to the flute. But in Mr. James L. Allen's Flute and Viol, we find a charming portrait of an old Kentucky parson, whose "shy divinity" was his flute, which was hung by a blue ribbon above the meagre top shelf of books. "The older he grew and the more patient and dreamy his grey eyes, always the more and more devotedly he blew his little friend." He used to play late at night before going to bed, till he almost fell asleep. "They ​were airs of heavenly sweetness. . . His long out-stretched legs relaxed their tension, his feet fell over side-wise on the hearthstone, his eyes closed, his head sank on his shoulder. Still he managed to hold on to his flute, faintly puffing a few notes at greater intervals, until at last by the dropping of the flute from his hands or the sudden rolling of his big head backward, he would awaken with a violent jerk. The next minute he would be asleep in bed."
Mr. H. Clay Wysham has written some amusing lines entitled That Amateur Flute:—
Scribner's Magazine, October 1800, contains a somewhat mystical poem, "The Flute," too long to quote fully—
[The flautist then plays a quiet measure.]
[He then plays a martial measure.]
Louisa N. Alcott has written a pretty poem on Thoreau's flute, telling how after his death—
Of a similar character is Bayard Taylor's Greeting to Sidney Lanier—
Sidney Lanier (1842-81) was one of the most brilliant flautists of America, and also a poet of no mean rank—he has been termed "an American Rossetti." He ​was a tall, handsome man, born in Macon, Georgia, and descended from the Huguenot family of famous musicians (including several flautists) in the service of Charles I. and Charles II. of England. OnSidney Lanier the outbreak of the war between North and South, Lanier enlisted in the Confederate Army, and he took part in several battles. When taken prisoner he hid his flute up his sleeve, and by its means gained the favour of his gaolers. In 1874 he joined the Peabody orchestra in Baltimore, and devoted himself to music and literature, becoming Professor of English in the John Hopkins University. Lanier composed music to several of his own poems, and wrote a novel and several important works on literary subjects. He is said to have produced strange violin effects from his flute.
A commemoration of Lanier was held in the John Hopkins University in February 1888, at which the poet's flute and a roll of his MS. music were hung on a bronze bust of the poet. A little memorial volume was published to commemorate this event.
Another poet-flautist, Richard Yates Sturges, born in Birmingham in 1843, and known as "The Flute ofOther Literary Flautists of Flutes," attained very considerable tone and technique. He died in Bristol in June 1910 Sturges was an enthusiastic Dante student. His poems are of very decided merit. Terschak set some of them to music, and dedicated his flute piece "Die Flammen von Surachani" ​to Sturges. Denmark has also produced a poet-flautist and novelist in the person of Sten. Stenson Blicher (1782-1848).
The classical tales of Minerva, Pan, Syrinz, Apollo, and Marsyas are often alluded to by English poets and dramatists; amongst others by LydgateLegends connected with the Flute (who makes Pan's instrument a bagpipe), by Spenser, by Kyd, by Campion, by the author of Lingua, by Cowper, by Mrs. Browning, by Matthew Arnold. Heywood gives a comic version, and Lyly has a most amusing comedy on Midas. In O'Hara's burlesque of the same name Apollo's instrument is the guitar and Pan's is the bagpipe.
The following modern Greek legend is said to have been derived from Asia Minor:—
A great king had a son who was a fine flute-player but very shy and a woman-hater. His father, wishing him to marry, ships him off to a foreign court to select a wife from amongst the princesses. The ship is wrecked, but the prince is carried by the waves to a beautiful island. Here he exchanges clothes with a poor fisherman and sets out for the palace of the king of the island, where he obtains employment as a stable-boy In the evening he plays so enchantingly upon his flute that even the nightingales stop their singing to listen. The king's daughter hears him play and persuades her father to make him her music-master. Perceiving that the princess loves him, he discloses to her that he is a king's son, and ere long they are happily married.
​Another curious flute story is current in Greece:—A boy to whom some superhuman being has given a flute, goes with it to the public market-place, where a quantity of crockery is for sale. He begins to play, whereupon all the pots, jugs, and basins begin to fly about in the air and are all broken to pieces. He also compels a priest to dance among thorns, which hurt his feet terribly. (Griechische und Albanïsche Märchen.)
A Hindu fairy tale relates how Seventee Bai, the daughter of a Rajah, dresses herself up as a boy and starts out in search of adventures. She meets Hera, an enchantress, who, supposing her to be a man, falls desperately in love with her. Seventee alleges that before marrying Hera she must perform an important mission. The enchantress gives her a little golden flute, telling her whenever she is in need of assistance to go into the forest and play it, promising that before the sound ceases she (Hera) will appear. The maid puts the flute in the folds of her dress and whenever she is in a difficulty she plays on it, whereupon Hera always appears, swinging in a silver tree. (Frere, Old Deccan Days.)
The legend of the Invisible Flute-player is current amongst the peasants of several parts of Germany. He usually haunts a particular house, playing sometimes in one room, sometimes in another. In some versions he visits a whole district. Whenever the inhabitants name or whistle a few bars of a certain tune, it is at once played by the invisible flautist. When the milkmaid in the dairy takes an apple in her ​hand and offers it to him if he plays a tune for her, the apple vanishes at once and the music begins. In the end the invisible player becomes rather a nuisance, playing practical jokes, breaking windows, and creating general confusion. He even snatches away the food at meals and then jeeringly plays his flute in a corner. Finally he is driven away by means of rhyming incantations. (Mullenhaff, Sagen Märchen.)