Punch/Volume 147/Issue 3829/The Patriot
This is a true story. Unless you promise to believe me, it is not much good my going on... You promise? Very well.
Years ago I bought a pianola. I went into the shop to buy a gramophone record, and I came out with a pianola —so golden-tongued was the manager. You would think that one could then retire into private life for a little, but it is only the beginning. There is the music-stool to be purchased, the library subscription, the tuner's fee (four visits a year, if you please), the cabinet for the rolls, the man to oil the pedals, the—however, one gets out of the shop at last. Nor do I regret my venture. It is common talk that my pianola was the chief thing about me which attracted Celia. "I must marry a man with a pianola," she said... and there was I... and here, in fact, we are. My blessings, then, on the golden tongue of the manager.
Now there is something very charming in a proper modesty about one's attainments, but it is necessary that the attainments should be generally recognized first. It was admirable in Stephenson to have said (as I am sure he did), when they congratulated him on his first steam-engine, "Tut-tut, it's nothing;" but he could only say this so long as the others were in a position to offer the congratulations. In order to place you in that position I must let you know how extraordinarily well I played the pianola. I brought to my interpretation of different Ops an élan, a verve, a je ne sais quoi—and several other French words—which were the astonishment of all who listened to me. But chiefly I was famous for my playing of one piece: "The Charge of the Uhlans," by Karl Bohm. Others may have seen Venice by moonlight, or heard the Vicar's daughter recite Little Jim, but the favoured few who have been present when Bohm and I were collaborating are the ones who have really lived. Indeed, even the coldest professional critic would have spoken of it as "a noteworthy rendition."
"The Charge of the Uhlans." If you came to see me, you had to hear it. As arranged for the pianola, it was marked to be played throughout at a lightning pace and with the loudest pedal on. So one would play it if one wished to annoy the man in the flat below; but a true musician has, I take it, a higher aim. I disregarded the "FF.'s" and the other sign-posts on the way, and gave it my own interpretation. As played by me, "The Charge of the Uhlans" became a whole battle scene. Indeed, it was necessary, before I began, that I should turn to my audience and describe the scene to them—in the manner, but not in the words, of a Queen's Hall programme:—
"Er—first of all you hear the cavalry galloping past, and then there's a short hymn before action while they form up, and then comes the charge, and then there's a slow but while they—er—pick up the wounded, and then they trot slowly back again. And if you listen carefully to the last bit you'll actually hear the horses limping"
Something like that I would say; and it might happen that an insufferable guest (who never got asked again) would object that the hymn part was unusual in real warfare.
"They sang it in this piece anyhow," I would say stiffly, and turn my back on him and begin.
But the war put a stop to music as to many other things. For three months the pianola has not been played by either of us. There are two reasons for this: first, that we simply haven't the time now; and secondly, that we are getting all the music we want from the flat below. The flat below is learning "Tipperary" on one finger. He gets as far as the farewell to Leicester Square, and then he breaks down; the parting is too much for him.
I was not, then, surprised at the beginning of this month to find Celia looking darkly at the pianola.
"It's very ugly," she began.
"We can't help our looks," I said in my grandmother's voice.
"A bookcase would be much prettier there."
"But not so tuneful."
"A pianola isn't tuneful if you never play it."
"True," I said.
Celia then became very alluring, and suggested that I might find somebody who would like to be lent a delightful pianola for a year or so by somebody whose delightful wife had her eye on a delightful bookcase.
"I might," I said.
"Somebody," said Celia, "who isn't supplied with music from below."
I found John. He was quite pleased about it, and promised to return the pianola when the war was over.
So on Wednesday it went. I was not sorry, because in its silence it was far from beautiful, and we wanted another bookcase badly. But on Tuesday evening—its last hours with us—I had to confess to a certain melancholy. It is sad to part with an old and well-tried friend, particularly when that friend is almost entirely responsible for your marriage. I looked at the pianola and then I said to Celia, "I must play it once again."
"Please," said Celia.
"The old masterpiece, I suppose?" I said, as I got it out.
"Do you think you ought to—now? I don't think I want to hear a charge of the Uhlans—beasts; I want a charge of our own men."
"Art," I said grandly, "knows no frontiers." I suppose this has been said by several people several times already, but for the moment both Celia and I thought it was rather clever.
So I placed the roll in the pianola, sat down and began to play...
Ah, the dear old tune...
Dash it all!
"What's happened?" said Celia, breaking a silence which had become alarming.
"I must have put it in wrong," I said.
I would the roll off, put it in again, and tried a second time, predalling vigorously.
Dead silence...
Hush! A note... another silence... and then another note...
I pedalled through to the end. About five notes sounded.
"Celia," I said, "this is wonderful."
IT really was wonderful. For the first time in its life my pianola refused to play "The Charge of the Uhlans." It had played it a hundred times while we were at peace with Germany, but when we were at war—no!
We had to have a farewell piece. I put in a waltz, and it played it perfectly. Then we said good-bye to our painola, feeling a reverence for it which we had never felt before.
*****
You don't believe this? Yet you promised you would... and I still assure you that it is true. But I admit that the truth is sometimes hard to believe, and the first six persons to whom I told the story assured me frankly that I was a liar. If one is to be called a liar, one may as well make an effort to deserve the name. I made an effort, therefore, with the seventh person.
"I put in 'The Charge of the Uhlans" I said, "and it played 'God Save the King.'"
Unfortunately he was a very patriotic man indeed, and he believed it. So that is how the story is now going about. But you who read this know the real truth of the matter.