Leonard Merrick - The Quaint Companions

"I was thinking of concert singing; only in a small way, of course – I know I can't expect to do anything marvellous – but I've had a lot of lessons, and in Liverpool I used to practise hard. My master – If you'll excuse me for a minute, I'll take Baby upstairs."

He excused her for that purpose readily, and when she came back her mother was with her. He found that Mrs. Tremlett had altered too, but in the most surprising way. When he was a lad she had looked quite old to him, and now she looked only middle-aged. She was the widow of a novelist who had written such beautiful prose that many people had been eager to meet him – once. Afterwards they talked less about his prose than his manners. He had left her, their daughter, a policy for five hundred pounds, and an album of carefully pasted Press cuttings. During his life she had suffered with him in furnished apartments; at his death she took to letting them. She was a well-meaning, weak-natured creature. For forty years she had related her dream of the previous night over the breakfast-table, and read the morning paper after supper. She religiously preserved the reviews, which she had never understood; believed that Darwin was a monomaniac who said we sprang from monkeys; and that Mrs. Hemans had written the most beautiful poetry in the world.

"Mother was quite excited when she heard I had seen you," said Mrs. Harris. "Weren't you, mother?"

"You were a very bad girl. What do you think, Mr. Lee? She came home and said that a – that a" – she gulped – "a strange man had stopped and spoken to her. Such a thing to say! And she didn't tell me who it was for ever so long."

He understood that he had been referred to as a "nigger." She deprecated her blunder to the younger woman with worried eyes, and the latter struck in hastily:

"I was just telling Mr. Lee what I want to do, mother. He thinks he might help me."

"Oh, now I'm sure that's very kind of him indeed! You see, Mr. Lee, it's not altogether nice for Ownie here, and of course having had a home of her own, she feels it more still. Well, dear, you do, it's no good denying it! If she had something to take her out of herself a little it would be so good for her in every way; and we always thought she would make money with her voice – it's a magnificent one, really."

Mrs. Harris shrugged her shoulders. "To talk about its being 'magnificent' in front of Mr. Lee is rather funny. But if I could make even a second-rate position," she went on, "I should be satisfied. I'd try for an engagement in a comic opera if I thought I could act, but I'm afraid I should be no good on the stage, and one has to start in such tiny parts. We had a lady staying with us who used to be in the profession, and she was telling us how hard the beginning was."

"And do you imagine that concert-engagements are to be had for the asking?" he said. "Good heavens! But of course you don't know anything about the musical world – how should you?"

"I don't imagine that they are to be had for the asking," she returned a shade tartly; "but if one can sing well enough, the platform must be easier for a woman like me than the stage, by all accounts."

"Accounts," he echoed, "whose accounts? I could give you accounts that would make your hair stand up. Do you know that professional singers, with very fine voices, come over from the Colonies to try to get an appearance here and find they can't do it? They eat up all the money that they've saved and go back beggared. They go back beaten and beggared. It is happening all the time. My dear girl, you couldn't make a living on the concert-stage under five years if you had the voice of an Angel."

"Not if I had bad luck, I daresay," she muttered.

"I tell you nobody can do it – it isn't to be done. It would take you five years to earn a bare living if you were a Miracle. The Americans and Australians try it for two or three and clear out with broken hearts and empty pockets. It's killing; they starve while they are struggling to be heard. I'll give you an example; a singer with a glorious voice came to England — I say it, 'glorious.' I won't mention his name, it wouldn't be fair; but, mind, this is a fact! He had worked hard in his own country – they believed in him there; they got up a benefit for him before he sailed. He had three thousand pounds when he landed – and he spent every penny trying to get a footing here and went home in despair… Do you know that when I give a concert, even artists who are making a living go to my agent, and offer him twenty, twenty-five, thirty guineas to be allowed to sing at it?"

"They pay to be allowed to sing?" said Mrs. Tremlett. "But why should they do that?"

"Because they can't get into a fashionable programme without; and it's worth paying for. Singers who have been at the game half their lives do it, I tell you. I'm not supposed to know. I don't get their money; I leave the agent to engage the people to support me, and if he makes a bit extra over the affair – well, he forgets to talk to me about it! But it's a usual thing. 'Easy for a woman'?" He turned to Mrs. Harris again, and rolled his black head. "Easy? Poor soul! She looks so fine, doesn't she, when she sweeps down the platform in her satin dress and lays her bouquet on the piano? Oh, dear Lord! if you knew what she has gone through to get there. And what it has cost her to get there. And how she has pigged to buy the bouquet and the satin dress. You think if you can sing, that's all that's wanted, do you? You can wait and beg for years before an agent will hear your singing. And when you are heard at last – if your production is first-rate, and the quality pleases him, and you are a smart and agreeable woman, and you have found him at the right moment – he will ask: 'How many pounds' worth of tickets will you guarantee?'"

"And in spite of everything, some women get on!" she said. "One would think nobody had ever had an immense success, to hear you talk. One would think there had never been a Patti, or – "

"Ah, Jehoshaphat! An immense success? With an immense success – when it comes – you're the cock of the walk. When a woman has made an 'mmense success' she can fill the Albert Hall, and move the world. She can move even the English, and hold them breathless in the gallery, though they have got no chairs and the notices forbid them to sit on the floor. The singers who make 'immense successes' are the kings and queens. They mayn't be able to act, or to talk – they may be as stupid as geese; but God has given them this wonderful power; nobody knows why… And sometimes with His other hand He gives them a black skin; nobody knows why!"

At the unexpected reference to his colour, Mrs. Tremlett started as if she had been pinched; and her daughter murmured:

"Well, I thought you might be able to do something for me. I see you only think that I'm very foolish."

"I haven't heard you yet. I just warn you what sort of a life it is at the beginning. I'd do any blessed thing I could for you. What is your voice? Come, sing to me now!"

"Oh! not now, Ownie," exclaimed the landlady; "the drawing-room people are in, dear, and you know they complain so of every sound."

"You are still called 'Ownie,' I see," he said.

"Mother used to call me her 'little own, her little ownie,' when I was no higher than that, I believe " – she raised her hand about a foot from the table – "and I have been 'Ownie' ever since; I suppose I shall never be anything else now, though I was christened 'Lilian Augusta.' My voice is contralto. I'll sing to you the next time you are here – if the lodgers are out," she added with a harsh laugh. "One must consider the lodgers. The lodgers heard Baby crying in the night and were surprised we didn't keep it in the coal-cellar. At least that's what they seemed to mean."