GEORGE SHAW - The Complete Works

At the next meeting an indignant member begged leave to call the attention of his colleagues to a document which had accompanied the score forwarded in response to the invitation by which the Antient Orpheus Society had honored Mr Owen Jack. It was a letter to the Secretary, in the following terms:

“Sir — Herewith you will find the instrumental partition of a fantasia composed by me for pianoforte and orchestra. I am willing to give the use of it to the Antient Orpheus Society gratuitously for one concert, on condition that the rehearsal be superintended by me, and that, if I require it, a second rehearsal be held.”

The member said he would not dwell on the propriety of this communication to the foremost musical society in Europe from a minor teacher, as he had ascertained Mr. Jack to be. It had been sufficiently rebuked by the Secretary’s reply, dispatched alter the partition had been duly examined, to the effect that the work, though not destitute of merit, was too eccentric in form, and crude in harmonic structure, to be suitable for public performance at the concerts of the Society. This had elicited a second letter from Mr. Jack, of which the member would say nothing, as he preferred to leave it to speak for itself and for the character of the writer.

Church Street,

Kensington, W.

Sir — Your criticism was uninvited, and is valueless except as an illustration of the invincible ignorance of the pedants whose mouthpiece you are. I am, sir,

Yours truly,

Owen Jack.”

The most astute diplomatist could not have written a more effective letter in Jack’s favor than this proved. The party of reform took it as an exquisite slap at their opponents, and at once determined to make the Secretary smart for rejecting the work without the authority of the whole Committee. Jack’s advocate produced a note from the Polish lady acknowledging the receipt of a pianoforte fantasia, and declaring that she should be enchanted to play for the first time to an English audience a work so poetic by one of their own nation. He explained that having borrowed a copy of the pianoforte part from a young lady relative of his who was studying it, he had sent it to the Polish artist, who had just arrived in England. Her opinion of it, he contended, was sufficient to show that the letter of the secretary was the result of an error of judgment which deserved no better answer than it had elicited. The secretary retorted that he had no right to avail himself of his private acquaintance with the pianist to influence the course of the Society, and stigmatized Jack’s letter as the coarse abuse natural to the vulgar mind of a self-assertive charlatan. On the other hand, it was maintained that Jack had only shewn the sensitiveness of an artist, and that to invite a composer to send in a work and then treat it as if it were an examination paper filled by a presumptuous novice, was an impertinence likely to bring ridicule as well as odium upon the Antient Orpheus. The senior member, who occupied the chair, now declared very solemnly that he had seen the fantasia, and that it was one of those lawless compositions unhappily common of late years, which were hurrying the beautiful art of Haydn and Mozart into the abyss of modern sensationalism. Hereupon someone remarked that the gentleman had frequently spoken of the works of Wagner in the same terms, although they all knew that Richard Wagner was the greatest composer of that or any other age. This assertion was vehemently repudiated by some, and loudly cheered by others In the hubbub which followed, Jack’s cause became identified with that of Wagner; and a motion to set aside the unauthorized rejection of the fantasia was carried by a majority of the admirers of the Prussian composer, not one of whom knew or cared a straw about the English one.

“I am glad we have won the day,” said Mr. Phipson, the proposer of this motion, to a friend, as the meeting broke up; “but we have certainly experienced the truth of Mary’s remark that this Jack creates nothing but discord in real life, whatever he may do in music.”

Jack at first refused to have anything further to do with the Antient Orpheus; but as it was evident that his refusal would harm nobody except himself, he yielded to the entreaties of Mary Sutherland, and consented to make use of the opportunity she had, through Mr. Phipson, procured for him. As the negotiation proceeded; and at last, one comfortless wet spring morning, Jack got out of an omnibus in Piccadilly, and walked through the mud to St. James’s Hall, where, in the gloomy rooms beneath the orchestra, he found a crowd of about eighty men, chatting, hugging themselves, and stamping because of the cold, stooping over black bags and boxes containing musical instruments, or reluctantly unwinding woolen mufflers and unbuttoning great coats. He passed them into a lower room, where he found three gentlemen standing in courtly attitudes before a young lady wrapped in furs, with a small head, light brown hair, and a pale face, rather toil worn. She received them with that natural air of a princess in her own right which is so ineffectually striven for by the ordinary princess in other people’s rights. As she spoke to the gentlemen in French, occasionally helping them to understand her by a few words of broken English, she smiled occasionally, apparently more from kindness than natural gaiety, for her features always relapsed into an expression of patient but not unhappy endurance. Near her sat an old foreign lady, brown skinned, tall, and very grim.

Jack advanced a few steps into the room; glanced at the gentlemen, and took a long look at the younger lady, who, like the rest, had had her attention arrested by his impressive ugliness. He scrutinized her so openly that she turned away displeased, and a little embarrassed. Two of the gentlemen stared at him stiffly. The third came forward, and said with polite severity, “What is your business here, sir?”

Jack looked at him for a moment, wrinkling his face hideously. “I am Jack,” he said, in the brassiest tone of his powerful voice. “Who are you?”

“Oh!” said the gentleman, relaxing a little. “I beg your pardon. I had not the pleasure of knowing you by sight, Mr Jack. My name is Manlius, at your service.” Mr Manlius was the conductor of the Antient Orpheus orchestra. He was a learned musician, generally respected because he had given instruction to members of the Royal family, and, when conducting, never allowed his orchestra to forget the restraint due to the presence of ladies and gentlemen in the sofa stalls.

Jack bowed. Mr Manlius considered whether he should introduce the composer to the young lady. Whilst he hesitated, a trampling overhead was succeeded by the sounding of a note first on the pianoforte and then on the oboe, instantly followed by the din of an indescribable discord of fifths from innumerable strings, varied by irrelevant chromatic scales from the wood wind, and a doleful timing of slides from the brass. Jack’s eyes gleamed. Troubling himself no further about Mr Manlius, he went out through a door leading to the stalls, where he found a knot of old gentlemen disputing. One of them immediately whispered something to the others; and they continued their discussion a in a lower tone. Jack looked at the orchestra for a few minutes, and then returned to the room he had left, where the elder lady was insisting in French that the pianoforte fantasia should be rehearsed before anything else, as she was not going to wait in the cold all day. Mr Manlius assured her that he had anticipated her suggestion, and should act upon it as a matter of course.

“It is oll the* same thinks,” said the young lady in English. Then in French. “Even if you begin with the fantasia, Monsieur, I shall assuredly wait to hear for the first time your famous band perform in this ancient hall.”