Punch (103.1892)

118 PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI. [September 10, 1892.

*f I HoocsokT

STARTLING DISCOVERY ON THE YORKSHIRE COAST.

Young Tripper (on his first visit to the Sea, becoming suddenly conscious of the ebbing Tide). " Hi ! Bill ! Jack ! T'wattkr be a runnin'

off ! By gum, Lads, but ai bet she's Brussen somewheres ! "

THE POOR VIOLINIST.-An Episode, in the Style of Sterne.

"ie Luthier de Cremone" observed Eugenius, "is a pathetic story."
" Indeed, Eugenius," replied Yorick, " it is extremely touching.
I protest I never read, or hear it, without emotion."

''The violin," pursued Eugenius, "most sensitive, and, as it
were, soulful of human instruments, lends itself, with particular
aptness, to the purposes of literary pathos."

" Dear Sensibility! " said I, "source inexhausted of all that is
precious in our (poetical) joys, or costly in our (dramatic) sorrows! "

"It were well," continued Yorick, drily, "if it were also the
source inexhausted of more that is quick in our sympathy, and
practical in our beneficence. It is scarcely in the columns of the
daily news-sheet that Sensibility usually seeks its much-sought
stimulus. And yet but lately, in the corner of my paper, I en-
countered a piteous story that ' dear Sensibility' (had it been more
romantically environed) might deliciously have luxuriated in.
I protest 'twas as pathetic as those of Maria Le Fevre, or La Fleur,
It was headed, " Sad Death of a Well-known Violinist."
" Prithee, dear Yorick. let me hear it," cried Eugenius.
" 'Twas but the prosaic report of a Coroner's Inquest," pursued
Yorick. "Sensibility would probably have 'skipped'the sordid
circumstance.^ ' Frederick Martin, aged seventy-two, a well-
known Violinist, and Professor of Music, formerly a member of the
orchestra of the Italian Opera at Her Majesty's and Covent Garden
Theatres,' faund life too hard for him. That is all. ' The deceased,
a bachelor.'—Heaven help him!—'had of late been afflicted with
deafness, which hindered his pursuit of his profession, and' (the
witness an old friend feared) 'he was recently in straitened circum-
stances, but he was too proud and independent to ask or accept
assistance.' The old friend, Mr. Lewis Chapuy, Comedian, had
' frequently offered him hospitalities, which he never accepted.'
Offered him hospitalities ! Worthy comedian ! In faith, Eugenius,
'tis delicately worded. True ' Sensibility' here, supplemented by
ractical sympathy. Both, alas! unavailing. Somewhat of the
oggedly independent spirit of the boot-rejecting Dr. Johnson in
this poor deaf violinist apparently. Verily, Eugenius, the story
requires but the ' decorative art' of the literary sentimentalist to
make it moving, even to the modish. The ingeniously emotional
historian of La Fleur would have made much of it."

"My gentle heart already bleeds with it," said I. "But the
upshot, Yorick ; the sequel, my friend ? "

_"'Tis short and simple," responded Yorick. "'The afflicted
Violinist' occupied a room at 34, Compton Street, Brunswick Square,
in which he lived alone. He suffered from lumbago, as well as from
a proud spirit and a broken heart. He had a dread of ' coming to
the Workhouse.' Spectral fear which haunts ever the sensitive and
poverty-stricken! Unreasonable ? _ Perhaps. But not the less
agonising. What comfort may Political Economy and an admirable
Poor Law yield to proud-spirited victims of poverty ? "

"But surely," said I, "the compassion of the stranger would
gladly have poured oil and wine into the wounds of his spirit—or
into poor afflicted Maria's—had he only known."

"Doubtless," said Yorick. "But 'the great Sensorium of the
Worldj' as—in 'mere pomp of words'—thou dost designate 'Dear
Sensibility,' did nut 'vibrate' to the case of this 'well-known
Violinist'—until 'twas too late to vibrate to any useful purpose.
He was ' found lying dead in his bed, fully dressed, with the
exception ©f his hat and boots,' mute as the untouched strings of
his own violin. ' He had died suddenly from syncope, or heart-
failure,' Heart-failure, Eugenius. Doth not thy gentle heart
fail at the thought ? ' Dr. Collet found the body in an advanced
stage of decomposition, and life had probably been extinct since
the preceding Thursday night.' Prithee, Sir, is ' Maria, sitting
pensive under her poplar,' more pathetic _ than this poor broken
musician, dying alone, in his poverty and pride? "

"Indeed, no ! " I responded, musingly.

"Those," continued Yorick, "who go, like the 'Knight of the
Rueful Countenance,' in quest of melancholy adventures, need not
to make deliberately ' Sentimental Journeys' through France, or
Italy, or by forest or mountain, picturesque hamlet, or romantic
stream. The purlieus of great cities amongst the poverty-stricken
members of what it is usual to call the 'lower middle-classes,' will
furnish multitudinous subjects for pensive thought, and—what were
a whole world better—for practical benevolence. 'Tis too late, alas !
to do aught for this dead Violinist, but were eyes and pen more
sedulously and sympathetically employed about real, if sordid-
seeming, in place of imaginary, if picturesque, woes, why verily,
Eugenius, something more, perchance, might _ be done in such
pitiful cases as that I have described to thee in non-journalistic
language, than what was formally done by the Coroner's Jury, who
—as they were bound to do, indeed—' returned a verdict in accordance
with the medical testimony.' "