Jack of Two Trades
DAME ETHEL SMYTH'S whole heart and soul are in her music, but a good deal of her mind and personality she puts into her pen. She says of herself that she is " Jack of Two Trades." The English public has been most generous in its appreciation of her writing, but so far as her music is concerned she com- plains bitterly that she has had her due from foreigners only. Strangers have said things about it which " foreigners are capable of thinking and are not ashamed to say," she tells us with somewhat disconcerting assurance. Here is a piece of Austrian criticism of general as well as particular interest : " Every part of the writer's being is music, music that seems to have streamed through the deepest part of her country's soul." The critic sees in her work " the steel-like qualities of those strange islanders, so straightforward, yet so full of secret passion." If in this " rapid biographical survey " she blows her own trumpet, she blows it extraordinarily well and we are never bored, indeed she knows how to fix our delighted attention during the whole of the performance ; when she tells us, however, that men try to " damp down " the success achieved by any feminine rival in any art or trade, and tilts her lance against " the gentlemen of the Press " who have not " the remotest conception of the quality of my work," we cannot help smiling. These " hoary-minded " detractors have insisted on calling her " the best of our lady composers ! " She cannot forgive the derogatory qualification. The reader wonders that the applause she has had in England outside the newspapers has not atoned for a little Press prejudice. She allows us to see a letter from Mr. Bernard Shaw which is a perfect model of praise.
Her contempt for the self-styled musical Intelligentsia knows no bounds ; nor does her kindness for the " Ignorantsia " whom she encourages to trust to their instinctive judgment and not be made ashamed by any amount of clever contempt. Let them despise " the man with the cold water can." " If what you are listening to arrests you, amuses you, touches your heart, don't be intimidated by the thought that it is perhaps not very high-class music."
If we turn away from Dame Ethel Smyth's work to her hobby we find her attitude changed. She modestly presents her readers with several essays and the libretto of two small comic operas which occupy only the space of two chapters and are gay and charming in the -ektreme. The gongs are full of lilt and the dialogue of laughter. The Ignorantsia are ..encouraged to scrap the orchestra and attempt to go through them with the:piano only.
Charming as these little fantasias are, we think the most entertaining piece of this amusing- scrapbook is a character study, a portrait, or perhaps we should say a caricature of Augusta Holmes, an English musician of yesterday who lived abroad and about whom we are told that, thotigh we are not bound to know of her, some of her compositions will live for. ever. " A perfect thing, however isolated, however small, can never be forgotten." A notorious rather than a celebrated woman, " her reputation was based upon songs and seduction," some of her songs having " a dewy freshness which suggests a French Schubert." As a young woman she was " physically entrancing-" ; as an old woman we are introduced to -her " in the gala room of a ci-devant, a terrible room smothered in tarnished trophies and photographs bescrawled with passionate protestations." She has lost her looks. Cosmetics have succeeded only in carrying on a tradition. The writer cannot at first find any trace of the charm of her wild youth, and " when by chance the talk drifted into intimate regions the serene, detached key in which she,pitched a casual reference to past storms was wonderfully reassuring." Visiting her once more with the charitable intention of getting up a " Holmes_ Concert " in London, Dame Ethel took with her an old musical friend who dimly recollected his own adoration for Augusta in her great days. " That meeting is one of the supremely comic recollections of my life," we read. The comicality is well conveyed, and we :are able "- to reconstruct in flashes the fascination that had conquered Paris some decades ago." The other " lady composer" found it impossible to introduce the subject of business, and a few weeks later saw Augusta's death in the paper. Her songs are still sung. " It pleases me to think, that at this very moment while I am invoking her memory, the earthly echoes of some of her musk -may be going by her ' like thin flames.' " The =whole chapter is a clever bit of journalism.
Most of us have read too much about " Germany after the' War," but even those who suppose themselves surfeited with the subject may find it interesting, as seen through Dame Ethel Smyth's sympathetic and humorous-eyes. The old- cashier in a bank who said " I am glad am old for I have seen much and learned much ; my sons will learn nothing, learning does not -pay and' one must live,"' may have no exact counterpart here. ' But would not many a ruined country gentleman echo the sentiment ? The death throes of any class are very sad to witness. What, one wonderS, mould be the effect of the rationing of rooms here ? There is no telling what overcrowding may bring us to. In 1922 " None is allowed to occupy a larger dwelling than he needs, and I heard of old- friends of -mine whose- house is now crammed with uncles, aunts and; cousins they have not: been .on: .speaking terms with- for years." The picture arouses speculation as to which would one prefer: to have one's house crowded with unsympathetic relations; or complete strangers, say of a different class, much more "smart " or much less educated or even civilized than oneself ? The German evidently preferred his relations. The Englishman
would find it hard to decide. • .
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