Punch (45.1863)

August 8. 1863.1 PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

i

FAUST AND THE ORGAN-FIENDS.

SKETCH FROM A STUDY WINDOW.

Everybody is talking about M. Gounod’s Faust, and for once the subject of general talk is not
unworthy to be discussed by rational persons. But Mr. Punch does not observe that any critic has
yet pointed out the great moral service which the authors and composer have done to the Anti-Street-
Music Cause. This negligence must arise from the vulgar, aristocratic habit of coming in late. Mr.
Punch is always in his stall, with his gloves buttoned and his glass out, three seconds before Mb. Costa
ra® his stick. Hence Mr. Punch knows all about the opera.

The moral, placed vividly and in action before the public, is that street music is a wicked thing, and
drives a sensitive person to madness. Faust is in his chamber, meditating, when a burst of music from the
street breaks in upon him. He instantly sells himself to -, well, to M. Eauke, and is led into crime.

Mr. Punch has a stronger mind than Dr. Faustus, and is not in danger of conducting himself with

i iudiscretion towards Madams
Miolan Cabvalho, or Made-
j moiselle Titiens. But there are
I moments in his life when he is
conscious that he is in a greater
rage than is good for him. One of
these moments is when he is occu-
pied in polishing an inspiration into
an epigram, and an Italian fiend
under the window strikes up “ 1
wish I were with Dixie” or some
such memorial of the filthy Ethi-
opians. If M. Eaube came into
the room in his red-hot drapery at
that instant, Mr. Punch would
probably request him to disappear
with the other fiend, and then come
back for a cigar. But, really it, is
only a martyr-soul (as Mb. Car-
lyle says) like Mr. Punch that can
joke over such horrors. He, like
the party mentioned by Tom
Moobe, could write nine charming
odes while on the rack. But such
fortitude is not given to ordinary
mortals. He is overwhelmed with
appeals from maddened correspon-
dents, begging him to do something
towards abating the nuisauce. One
tells of a sick wife who had to
endure half an hour’s torture
because a brown beast would not
go away, and the policeman was, of
course, down some area and could
not be found. Another says that,
a child, just recovering from brain
fever, was deprived of sleep by a
similar miscreant. Men who choose
t,o read or work at home, and not
in the sacred but costly silence of
chambers, say they lose hours by
the interruptions of the orgau
wretches, and Mr. Punch will cer-
tainly not be surprised t,o hear
that some tormented worker has
taken the advice of the Times,
and delivered himself, with his own
arm, from the scoundrel grinder.
Do not let him hit too hard, how-
ever. He is only “ trying a right,”
and that may be done with dis-
cretion.

The pleas that are made for the
nuisance are, of course, of the most
ridiculous kind. One person says
that though the master of a house
does not like the noise, his children
j and servants do. Therefore, the
I “ bread-winner” is to be hindered
from earning t he food of the former
and the wages of the latter, that
the children may dance a polka,
and Maby Hann (who had better
send her halfpence to her poor old
parent, than fling them to that
unclean beast with the organ) may
grin at something that reminds her
of the night she said she had been
with her sick mother and had been
at Cree-morn. No decent wife
would willingly allow her husband
to be annoyed by the music, any
more than he would allow it to
annoy her were she ill. If the
organs are to be permitted for the
amusement of the dwellers in alleys
(and if they like the noise, there
can be no objection to their having
it), let the players go into the
alleys. They have no right to
come before the houses of people
who hate them, and to extort
money from the fools in the family,
or from the tortured head of it,
who pays them to go away.