Star.
London, England, 1830-10-20 00:00:00

Tlll lUSINfI bfUSICIAN.

" I beg leave in present my card, and to solicit the reader's patio-
nage. as a yenta-tam of innelo Fifty summers and winters have passed
over my bead. I have not, however, kept time in the orchestra of life
-- for life may be aptly likened to an orchestra. whose best performance
is leo an overture, a promise of something to come ; a place where the
thunder of the drum and the whippet of the Bute, the light violin and
the heavy violoncello, nee by turns uppermost, and whose most com-
plicated harmony may be entirely ;erred by the error of ore solitary
fiddler—a Nero. or a Napoleon ; --.1 have not, I say, taken pan in this
performance for half a century, without acquiring a certain degree of
experience, and picking up a considerable number of axioms which I
believe to be incontrovertible. One of these is, that people who go to
parties are more unreasonable than the rest of the world ; another iothat
the man who bath " freak in his soul" bath seldom any mercy in it
for the musician ; a third is, that gentlemen—quadrilles being once
started in an amenably —continue dancing for the rest of their lives,
until the gout seizes hold of them : and that ladies never do sit
down afterwards. Your quadrille, I am perfectly convinced, is your
only perpetual motion. Dancing, to women especially, is like a
hoop, which they twirl round and round without coming to an end.
They seem to imagine that a ball is, in accordance with its designa-
tion, globular; and that, having oncecommenced, there cannot pos-
sibly be any termination to it. I never yet met with a female that
would acknowledge herself fatigued...if she danced well. They an
always ready to go on, and never willing to go home. They have no
notion of giving over—they do not know what breaking-up means—
they think the chalk looks as fresh on the Baer as ever—they wonder
what the old gentleman, who generally goes to bee! at eleven, means
ay gaping at six In the morning—they vow, with Juliet, that it is the
nightingale and not the lark that sings—they !gemlike to accept you as
a rennet in the next dance bet nine ; and they never will, in short,
put an end to theft sport until they fell fast asleep--and even then
the v whl be apt to make a samnambuler inovemeat, and go through
tai- figures with their eyes shut. They dream that they dance.
If this be the carte--and It will scarcely be come:dice:a—with fe.
wales generally, to what a height :tease the evil be increased with those
is particular who ere celebrated, as so many are, for something or
other talents, beauty, a teatime of poems, or a rich relation in a
lesnkitia.establisament. When I enter a room, and find myself surrounded
be }nog, faces, and figures not too fat, I prepare myself for the worst.
But if. in addition to this disastrous display, I discover that there ere
two or three of them who dance divinely, two or three more tolerably,
and another two or three. who, though they cannot &ince at all, have
inherited such thine.; as ankles ;-- it' I have reason to apprehend that
none of the gentlemen are afflicted with the rheumatism or cork legs ;--
If I see a harp within reecib of eonieboily that has been taught to play,
not because she has e taste tar music, but because she has a white ant
or a diamonelthracelet ;- if I find a lady in the room who, happening
to have a good set of toeth, happens to have also what is termed a, voice
—a female professor of science and sentiment, that has all Bayley's bal.
lads by heart ;—wheat I make any one of these dreadful and by no
means unusual diseovera s, I feel that lam indeed fixed. There I am,
like Prometheus, cheated to a mat:ea:my rock stuffed with horse-hair,
with the piaticafette preying upon me like a vulture.
" These refloetions crave been forced upon my mind by a circunt.
wogs: that occurred the other evening. I wax engaged professionally
to, attend a little patty where the mistress of the ceremonies was under.
stood to be an advocate for regular hours, and I accordingly entertained
strung hopes of getting home by two or three o'clock. Vheet I entered
the room, conceive my dismay and disappointment at beholding, ranged
Lefore me, not lots than a dozen of the most indefatigable and deter.
mite.? torturer. if the fantastic toe that ever danced till seven, drank
coffee, and danced eeafie There were many others scattered about;
but the dreadful Moen. Otat formidable twelve—they were the jury by
whom my termer was to be tried—the signs of the Zodiac through
witch I was destined to travel. They were stars that aia not think of
slotting till the morning—pia:lets that would scorn to tort pale till day.
break. I reed my doom in their eyes—they had dressed for my destrue-
t.on. Seeing that there was to he no mercy, I made up my mind for
mischief. After bowing to the multitude—like one who is brought
atoll to stiffer some dreadful sentence for the benefit of society—(the
patelld will rot hold good, tar I lacked the necessary nightcap—how I
longed for it !)-1 took my beat r. ith a snuffing face and a desponding
heart. I was determined to Were calmly. I was quite patient—the
very personification of an angler fishing tar philogmhical consolation.
Dancing commenced. The company proceeded to take their pleasure
in pairs, entering the ark of happiress two and two ; each fop with a
female-1 with my piano. What a partner ! and to have it for life, too,
as appeared at length to be my let. I bore my fate with celniness, nay,
with contentment ; particularly as they commenced with some thew of
moderation, and allowed me neatly a minute and a halt' between each
quadrille. This playing anti purring with me. however, was only to
wattle them to devour me at lest with the greater relish. They ap-
peared to tegerd me as a mouse instead of a musician. At least it never
scented to enter into the imagination of anybody that I was anything'
but a part of the instruna ; a piece of mortal machinery, that, when
out of order, might be tuned or wound up with wine and water.
" The situation of the frog renowned in table presented fruit' to my re-
collection, and 1 felt that their rapture was to be my ruin. I relieved
my mind in some degree from the prersure of sorrow, by inveighing bit..
terly against the legislature, that, while it has provided such appropriate
punishments for home-breaking, suffers heart-breaking to be practised
with impunity.
" It was now long past midnight, and they continued to glide and
glisten about the room with as much vigour and brilliancy as if they
had only just commenced. I could mad in every face at the termina-
tion of a dance, "to be continued in our next." Like authors who are
They
by the sheet. a conclusion was with them quite out of the question.
They appeared insensible to fatigue, and were evidently disposed to
dance on for ever. Life in their philosophy seemed so short, that it
was hardly worth while to leave off. A quadrille was their pursuit,
their occupation—tier object they were born for. There was nothing
else in nature in their eyes. People were created but to teince am! die.
The world itself had been for ages past performing a minuet with the
sun, and appeared at that n.nment to be waltzing away with the moon !
•• My fingers and my faculties began to rebel. I continued to play,
however, though I could perceive the incipient symptoms of day-
light just breaking through the window-curtains. 1 wished a vast
number of things—the principal and most preposterous of which was,
that they would give over. I wished that handsome women were
prohibited by Act of Parliament, or that boardingathool beauties, in
their eighteenth year, were human beings—as in that case some small
degree of pity might he expected from them. The lamps and candles
were burning low—l fancied they began to burn blue ! How I
wished that, by souse necromantic misfortune, there might be no more
oil or long.fours in the house! I ardertly longed for the appearance
of an apparition or a housebreaker. Jack Sheppard and the Hammer.
smith ghost came alternately into my mind, and I wished that we had
all been born in an earlier eta. Hope would not then have been so et-
terly hopeless. It seemed just possible that the kitchen-chimney might
catch tire;—what a relief would that have been to the fever under
which I was suffering ! I prayed fervently that the mistrial of the
house might find the fatigue tot. much for her ;—a fainting fit would
have administered much consolation to meo-patticularly it there were
no sal volatile to be had. I wished most especially that her husband
would get cross and sleepy. And then my imagination would settle
again upon those lovely but provoking pests—those laughing, perse-
vering plagues, who were the real movers of my misery, and whom I
heard every instant proposing some new mode of torturing me and pro-
longing the time. It was clear that, having the persons, they considered
themselves entitled to the privileges of angels, and had consequently
mistaken time for eternity. I hoped that their brothers and uncles
might be desperately alarmed at their stay ; or that Queen Mab might
pay a visit to their grandmothers, frightening them with dreams of elope.
meats, and handsome clerks with eighty pounds per annum."
The remaining part of the paper is a relation of a kind of dream, or
reverie, into which the poor musician dropped, and from which he
did nut awaken until the company withdrew.