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Howards End by E. M. Forster CHAPTER 5
It will be generally admitted that Beethoven's Fifth Symphony is the most
sublime noise that has ever penetrated into the ear of man.
All sorts and conditions are satisfied by it.
Whether you are like Mrs. Munt, and tap surreptitiously when the tunes come--of
course, not so as to disturb the others--; or like Helen, who can see heroes and
shipwrecks in the music's flood; or like
Margaret, who can only see the music; or like Tibby, who is profoundly versed in
counterpoint, and holds the full score open on his knee; or like their cousin, Fraulein
Mosebach, who remembers all the time that
Beethoven is "echt Deutsch"; or like Fraulein Mosebach's young man, who can
remember nothing but Fraulein Mosebach: in any case, the passion of your life becomes
more vivid, and you are bound to admit that such a noise is cheap at two shillings.
It is cheap, even if you hear it in the Queen's Hall, dreariest music-room in
London, though not as dreary as the Free Trade Hall, Manchester; and even if you sit
on the extreme left of that hall, so that
the brass bumps at you before the rest of the orchestra arrives, it is still cheap.
"Who is Margaret talking to?" said Mrs. Munt, at the conclusion of the first
movement.
She was again in London on a visit to Wickham Place.
Helen looked down the long line of their party, and said that she did not know.
"Would it be some young man or other whom she takes an interest in?"
"I expect so," Helen replied.
Music enwrapped her, and she could not enter into the distinction that divides
young men whom one takes an interest in from young men whom one knows.
"You girls are so wonderful in always having--Oh dear! one mustn't talk."
For the Andante had begun--very beautiful, but bearing a family likeness to all the
other beautiful Andantes that Beethoven had written, and, to Helen's mind, rather
disconnecting the heroes and shipwrecks of
the first movement from the heroes and goblins of the third.
She heard the tune through once, and then her attention wandered, and she gazed at
the audience, or the organ, or the architecture.
Much did she censure the attenuated Cupids who encircle the ceiling of the Queen's
Hall, inclining each to each with vapid gesture, and clad in sallow pantaloons, on
which the October sunlight struck.
"How awful to marry a man like those Cupids!" thought Helen.
Here Beethoven started decorating his tune, so she heard him through once more, and
then she smiled at her cousin Frieda.
But Frieda, listening to Classical Music, could not respond.
Herr Liesecke, too, looked as if wild horses could not make him inattentive;
there were lines across his forehead, his lips were parted, his pince-nez at right
angles to his nose, and he had laid a thick, white hand on either knee.
And next to her was Aunt Juley, so British, and wanting to tap.
How interesting that row of people was!
What diverse influences had gone to the making!
Here Beethoven, after humming and hawing with great sweetness, said "Heigho," and
the Andante came to an end.
Applause, and a round of "wunderschoning" and "prachtvolleying" from the German
contingent.
Margaret started talking to her new young man; Helen said to her aunt: "Now comes the
wonderful movement: first of all the goblins, and then a trio of elephants
dancing;" and Tibby implored the company
generally to look out for the transitional passage on the drum.
"On the what, dear?" "On the DRUM, Aunt Juley."
"No; look out for the part where you think you have done with the goblins and they
come back," breathed Helen, as the music started with a goblin walking quietly over
the universe, from end to end.
Others followed him. They were not aggressive creatures; it was
that that made them so terrible to Helen.
They merely observed in passing that there was no such thing as splendour or heroism
in the world.
After the interlude of elephants dancing, they returned and made the observation for
the second time.
Helen could not contradict them, for, once at all events, she had felt the same, and
had seen the reliable walls of youth collapse.
Panic and emptiness!
Panic and emptiness! The goblins were right.
Her brother raised his finger: it was the transitional passage on the drum.
For, as if things were going too far, Beethoven took hold of the goblins and made
them do what he wanted. He appeared in person.
He gave them a little push, and they began to walk in major key instead of in a minor,
and then--he blew with his mouth and they were scattered!
Gusts of splendour, gods and demigods contending with vast swords, colour and
fragrance broadcast on the field of battle, magnificent victory, magnificent death!
Oh, it all burst before the girl, and she even stretched out her gloved hands as if
it was tangible.
Any fate was titanic; any contest desirable; conqueror and conquered would
alike be applauded by the angels of the utmost stars.
And the goblins--they had not really been there at all?
They were only the phantoms of cowardice and unbelief?
One healthy human impulse would dispel them?
Men like the Wilcoxes, or President Roosevelt, would say yes.
Beethoven knew better.
The goblins really had been there. They might return--and they did.
It was as if the splendour of life might boil over--and waste to steam and froth.
In its dissolution one heard the terrible, ominous note, and a goblin, with increased
malignity, walked quietly over the universe from end to end.
Panic and emptiness!
Panic and emptiness! Even the flaming ramparts of the world
might fall. Beethoven chose to make all right in the
end.
He built the ramparts up. He blew with his mouth for the second time,
and again the goblins were scattered.
He brought back the gusts of splendour, the heroism, the youth, the magnificence of
life and of death, and, amid vast roarings of a superhuman joy, he led his Fifth
Symphony to its conclusion.
But the goblins were there. They could return.
He had said so bravely, and that is why one can trust Beethoven when he says other
things.
Helen pushed her way out during the applause.
She desired to be alone. The music summed up to her all that had
happened or could happen in her career.
She read it as a tangible statement, which could never be superseded.
The notes meant this and that to her, and they could have no other meaning, and life
could have no other meaning.
She pushed right out of the building, and walked slowly down the outside staircase,
breathing the autumnal air, and then she strolled home.
"Margaret," called Mrs. Munt, "is Helen all right?"
"Oh yes." "She is always going away in the middle of
a programme," said Tibby.
"The music has evidently moved her deeply," said Fraulein Mosebach.
"Excuse me," said Margaret's young man, who had for some time been preparing a
sentence, "but that lady has, quite inadvertently, taken my umbrella."
"Oh, good gracious me!
--I am so sorry. Tibby, run after Helen."
"I shall miss the Four Serious Songs if I do."
"Tibby love, you must go."
"It isn't of any consequence," said the young man, in truth a little uneasy about
his umbrella. "But of course it is.
Tibby!
Tibby!" Tibby rose to his feet, and wilfully caught
his person on the backs of the chairs.
By the time he had tipped up the seat and had found his hat, and had deposited his
full score in safety, it was "too late" to go after Helen.
The Four Serious Songs had begun, and one could not move during their performance.
"My sister is so careless," whispered Margaret.
"Not at all," replied the young man; but his voice was dead and cold.
"If you would give me your address--" "Oh, not at all, not at all;" and he
wrapped his greatcoat over his knees.
Then the Four Serious Songs rang shallow in Margaret's ears.
Brahms, for all his grumbling and grizzling, had never guessed what it felt
like to be suspected of stealing an umbrella.
For this fool of a young man thought that she and Helen and Tibby had been playing
the confidence trick on him, and that if he gave his address they would break into his
rooms some midnight or other and steal his walkingstick too.
Most ladies would have laughed, but Margaret really minded, for it gave her a
glimpse into squalor.
To trust people is a luxury in which only the wealthy can indulge; the poor cannot
afford it.
As soon as Brahms had grunted himself out, she gave him her card and said, "That is
where we live; if you preferred, you could call for the umbrella after the concert,
but I didn't like to trouble you when it has all been our fault."
His face brightened a little when he saw that Wickham Place was W.
It was sad to see him corroded with suspicion, and yet not daring to be
impolite, in case these well-dressed people were honest after all.
She took it as a good sign that he said to her, "It's a fine programme this afternoon,
is it not?" for this was the remark with which he had originally opened, before the
umbrella intervened.
"The Beethoven's fine," said Margaret, who was not a female of the encouraging type.
"I don't like the Brahms, though, nor the Mendelssohn that came first--and ugh!
I don't like this Elgar that's coming."
"What, what?" called Herr Liesecke, overhearing.
"The POMP AND CIRCUMSTANCE will not be fine?"
"Oh, Margaret, you tiresome girl!" cried her aunt.
"Here have I been persuading Herr Liesecke to stop for POMP AND CIRCUMSTANCE, and you
are undoing all my work.
I am so anxious for him to hear what we are doing in music.
Oh, you mustn't run down our English composers, Margaret."
"For my part, I have heard the composition at Stettin," said Fraulein Mosebach.
"On two occasions. It is dramatic, a little."
"Frieda, you despise English music.
You know you do. And English art.
And English Literature, except Shakespeare and he's a German.
Very well, Frieda, you may go."
The lovers laughed and glanced at each other.
Moved by a common impulse, they rose to their feet and fled from POMP AND
CIRCUMSTANCE.
"We have this call to play in Finsbury Circus, it is true," said Herr Liesecke, as
he edged past her and reached the gangway just as the music started.
"Margaret--" loudly whispered by Aunt Juley.
"Margaret, Margaret! Fraulein Mosebach has left her beautiful
little bag behind her on the seat."
Sure enough, there was Frieda's reticule, containing her address book, her pocket
dictionary, her map of London, and her money.
"Oh, what a bother--what a family we are!
Fr-Frieda!" "Hush!" said all those who thought the
music fine. "But it's the number they want in Finsbury
Circus--"
"Might I--couldn't I--" said the suspicious young man, and got very red.
"Oh, I would be so grateful." He took the bag--money clinking inside it--
and slipped up the gangway with it.
He was just in time to catch them at the swing-door, and he received a pretty smile
from the German girl and a fine bow from her cavalier.
He returned to his seat up-sides with the world.
The trust that they had reposed in him was trivial, but he felt that it cancelled his
mistrust for them, and that probably he would not be "had" over his umbrella.
This young man had been "had" in the past-- badly, perhaps overwhelmingly--and now most
of his energies went in defending himself against the unknown.
But this afternoon--perhaps on account of music--he perceived that one must slack off
occasionally, or what is the good of being alive?
Wickham Place, W., though a risk, was as safe as most things, and he would risk it.
So when the concert was over and Margaret said, "We live quite near; I am going there
now.
Could you walk around with me, and we'll find your umbrella?" he said, "Thank you,"
peaceably, and followed her out of the Queen's Hall.
She wished that he was not so anxious to hand a lady downstairs, or to carry a
lady's programme for her--his class was near enough her own for its manners to vex
her.
But she found him interesting on the whole- -every one interested the Schlegels on the
whole at that time--and while her lips talked culture, her heart was planning to
invite him to tea.
"How tired one gets after music!" she began.
"Do you find the atmosphere of Queen's Hall oppressive?"
"Yes, horribly."
"But surely the atmosphere of Covent Garden is even more oppressive."
"Do you go there much?" "When my work permits, I attend the gallery
for, the Royal Opera."
Helen would have exclaimed, "So do I. I love the gallery," and thus have endeared
herself to the young man. Helen could do these things.
But Margaret had an almost morbid horror of "drawing people out," of "making things
go."
She had been to the gallery at Covent Garden, but she did not "attend" it,
preferring the more expensive seats; still less did she love it.
So she made no reply.
"This year I have been three times--to FAUST, TOSCA, and--" Was it "Tannhouser" or
"Tannhoyser"? Better not risk the word.
Margaret disliked TOSCA and FAUST.
And so, for one reason and another, they walked on in silence, chaperoned by the
voice of Mrs. Munt, who was getting into difficulties with her nephew.
"I do in a WAY remember the passage, Tibby, but when every instrument is so beautiful,
it is difficult to pick out one thing rather than another.
I am sure that you and Helen take me to the very nicest concerts.
Not a dull note from beginning to end. I only wish that our German friends would
have stayed till it finished."
"But surely you haven't forgotten the drum steadily beating on the low C, Aunt Juley?"
came Tibby's voice. "No one could.
It's unmistakable."
"A specially loud part?" hazarded Mrs. Munt.
"Of course I do not go in for being musical," she added, the shot failing.
"I only care for music--a very different thing.
But still I will say this for myself--I do know when I like a thing and when I don't.
Some people are the same about pictures.
They can go into a picture gallery--Miss Conder can--and say straight off what they
feel, all round the wall. I never could do that.
But music is so different to pictures, to my mind.
When it comes to music I am as safe as houses, and I assure you, Tibby, I am by no
means pleased by everything.
There was a thing--something about a faun in French--which Helen went into ecstasies
over, but I thought it most tinkling and superficial, and said so, and I held to my
opinion too."
"Do you agree?" asked Margaret. "Do you think music is so different to
pictures?" "I--I should have thought so, kind of," he
said.
"So should I. Now, my sister declares they're just the
same. We have great arguments over it.
She says I'm dense; I say she's sloppy."
Getting under way, she cried: "Now, doesn't it seem absurd to you?
What is the good of the Arts if they are interchangeable?
What is the good of the ear if it tells you the same as the eye?
Helen's one aim is to translate tunes into the language of painting, and pictures into
the language of music.
It's very ingenious, and she says several pretty things in the process, but what's
gained, I'd like to know? Oh, it's all rubbish, radically false.
If Monet's really Debussy, and Debussy's really Monet, neither gentleman is worth
his salt--that's my opinion. Evidently these sisters quarrelled.
"Now, this very symphony that we've just been having--she won't let it alone.
She labels it with meanings from start to finish; turns it into literature.
I wonder if the day will ever return when music will be treated as music.
Yet I don't know. There's my brother--behind us.
He treats music as music, and oh, my goodness!
He makes me angrier than anyone, simply furious.
With him I daren't even argue."
An unhappy family, if talented. "But, of course, the real villain is
Wagner.
He has done more than any man in the nineteenth century towards the muddling of
arts.
I do feel that music is in a very serious state just now, though extraordinarily
interesting.
Every now and then in history there do come these terrible geniuses, like Wagner, who
stir up all the wells of thought at once. For a moment it's splendid.
Such a splash as never was.
But afterwards--such a lot of mud; and the wells--as it were, they communicate with
each other too easily now, and not one of them will run quite clear.
That's what Wagner's done."
Her speeches fluttered away from the young man like birds.
If only he could talk like this, he would have caught the world.
Oh to acquire culture!
Oh, to pronounce foreign names correctly! Oh, to be well informed, discoursing at
ease on every subject that a lady started! But it would take one years.
With an hour at lunch and a few shattered hours in the evening, how was it possible
to catch up with leisured women, who had been reading steadily from childhood?
His brain might be full of names, he might have even heard of Monet and Debussy; the
trouble was that he could not string them together into a sentence, he could not make
them "tell," he could not quite forget about his stolen umbrella.
Yes, the umbrella was the real trouble. Behind Monet and Debussy the umbrella
persisted, with the steady beat of a drum.
"I suppose my umbrella will be all right," he was thinking.
"I don't really mind about it. I will think about music instead.
I suppose my umbrella will be all right."
Earlier in the afternoon he had worried about seats.
Ought he to have paid as much as two shillings?
Earlier still he had wondered, "Shall I try to do without a programme?"
There had always been something to worry him ever since he could remember, always
something that distracted him in the pursuit of beauty.
For he did pursue beauty, and therefore, Margaret's speeches did flutter away from
him like birds.
Margaret talked ahead, occasionally saying, "Don't you think so? don't you feel the
same?" And once she stopped, and said "Oh, do
interrupt me!" which terrified him.
She did not attract him, though she filled him with awe.
Her figure was meagre, her face seemed all teeth and eyes, her references to her
sister and brother were uncharitable.
For all her cleverness and culture, she was probably one of those soulless, atheistical
women who have been so shown up by Miss Corelli.
It was surprising (and alarming) that she should suddenly say, "I do hope that you'll
come in and have some tea." "I do hope that you'll come in and have
some tea.
We should be so glad. I have dragged you so far out of your way."
They had arrived at Wickham Place. The sun had set, and the backwater, in deep
shadow, was filling with a gentle haze.
To the right of the fantastic skyline of the flats towered black against the hues of
evening; to the left the older houses raised a square-cut, irregular parapet
against the grey.
Margaret fumbled for her latchkey. Of course she had forgotten it.
So, grasping her umbrella by its ferrule, she leant over the area and tapped at the
dining-room window.
"Helen! Let us in!"
"All right," said a voice. "You've been taking this gentleman's
umbrella."
"Taken a what?" said Helen, opening the door.
"Oh, what's that? Do come in!
How do you do?"
"Helen, you must not be so ramshackly. You took this gentleman's umbrella away
from Queen's Hall, and he has had the trouble of coming for it."
"Oh, I am so sorry!" cried Helen, all her hair flying.
She had pulled off her hat as soon as she returned, and had flung herself into the
big dining-room chair.
"I do nothing but steal umbrellas. I am so very sorry!
Do come in and choose one. Is yours a hooky or a nobbly?
Mine's a nobbly--at least, I THINK it is."
The light was turned on, and they began to search the hall, Helen, who had abruptly
parted with the Fifth Symphony, commenting with shrill little cries.
"Don't you talk, Meg!
You stole an old gentleman's silk top-hat. Yes, she did, Aunt Juley.
It is a positive fact. She thought it was a ***.
Oh, heavens!
I've knocked the In and Out card down. Where's Frieda?
Tibby, why don't you ever--No, I can't remember what I was going to say.
That wasn't it, but do tell the maids to hurry tea up.
What about this umbrella?" She opened it.
"No, it's all gone along the seams.
It's an appalling umbrella. It must be mine."
But it was not.
He took it from her, murmured a few words of thanks, and then fled, with the lilting
step of the clerk. "But if you will stop--" cried Margaret.
"Now, Helen, how stupid you've been!"
"Whatever have I done?" "Don't you see that you've frightened him
away? I meant him to stop to tea.
You oughtn't to talk about stealing or holes in an umbrella.
I saw his nice eyes getting so miserable. No, it's not a bit of good now."
For Helen had darted out into the street, shouting, "Oh, do stop!"
"I dare say it is all for the best," opined Mrs. Munt.
"We know nothing about the young man, Margaret, and your drawing-room is full of
very tempting little things." But Helen cried: "Aunt Juley, how can you!
You make me more and more ashamed.
I'd rather he HAD been a thief and taken all the apostle spoons than that I--Well, I
must shut the front-door, I suppose. One more failure for Helen."
"Yes, I think the apostle spoons could have gone as rent," said Margaret.
Seeing that her aunt did not understand, she added: "You remember 'rent.'
It was one of father's words--Rent to the ideal, to his own faith in human nature.
You remember how he would trust strangers, and if they fooled him he would say, 'It's
better to be fooled than to be suspicious'- -that the confidence trick is the work of
man, but the want-of-confidence-trick is the work of the devil."
"I remember something of the sort now," said Mrs. Munt, rather tartly, for she
longed to add, "It was lucky that your father married a wife with money."
But this was unkind, and she contented herself with, "Why, he might have stolen
the little Ricketts picture as well." "Better that he had," said Helen stoutly.
"No, I agree with Aunt Juley," said Margaret.
"I'd rather mistrust people than lose my little Ricketts.
There are limits."
Their brother, finding the incident commonplace, had stolen upstairs to see
whether there were scones for tea.
He warmed the teapot--almost too deftly-- rejected the Orange Pekoe that the parlour-
maid had provided, poured in five spoonfuls of a superior blend, filled up with really
boiling water, and now called to the ladies to be quick or they would lose the aroma.
"All right, Auntie Tibby," called Helen, while Margaret, thoughtful again, said: "In
a way, I wish we had a real boy in the house--the kind of boy who cares for men.
It would make entertaining so much easier."
"So do I," said her sister. "Tibby only cares for cultured females
singing Brahms."
And when they joined him she said rather sharply: "Why didn't you make that young
man welcome, Tibby? You must do the host a little, you know.
You ought to have taken his hat and coaxed him into stopping, instead of letting him
be swamped by screaming women." Tibby sighed, and drew a long strand of
hair over his forehead.
"Oh, it's no good looking superior. I mean what I say."
"Leave Tibby alone!" said Margaret, who could not bear her brother to be scolded.
"Here's the house a regular hen-coop!" grumbled Helen.
"Oh, my dear!" protested Mrs. Munt. "How can you say such dreadful things!
The number of men you get here has always astonished me.
If there is any danger it's the other way round."
"Yes, but it's the wrong sort of men, Helen means."
"No, I don't," corrected Helen.
"We get the right sort of man, but the wrong side of him, and I say that's Tibby's
fault. There ought to be a something about the
house--an--I don't know what."
"A touch of the W.'s, perhaps?" Helen put out her tongue.
"Who are the W.'s?" asked Tibby. "The W.'s are things I and Meg and Aunt
Juley know about and you don't, so there!"
"I suppose that ours is a female house," said Margaret, "and one must just accept
it. No, Aunt Juley, I don't mean that this
house is full of women.
I am trying to say something much more clever.
I mean that it was irrevocably feminine, even in father's time.
Now I'm sure you understand!
Well, I'll give you another example. It'll shock you, but I don't care.
Suppose Queen Victoria gave a dinner-party, and that the guests had been Leighton,
Millais, Swinburne, Rossetti, Meredith, Fitzgerald, etc.
Do you suppose that the atmosphere of that dinner would have been artistic?
Heavens no! The very chairs on which they sat would
have seen to that.
So with our house--it must be feminine, and all we can do is to see that it isn't
effeminate.
Just as another house that I can mention, but I won't, sounded irrevocably masculine,
and all its inmates can do is to see that it isn't brutal."
"That house being the W.'s house, I presume," said Tibby.
"You're not going to be told about the W.'s, my child," Helen cried, "so don't you
think it.
And on the other hand, I don't the least mind if you find out, so don't you think
you've done anything clever, in either case.
Give me a cigarette."
"You do what you can for the house," said Margaret.
"The drawing-room reeks of smoke." "If you smoked too, the house might
suddenly turn masculine.
Atmosphere is probably a question of touch and go.
Even at Queen Victoria's dinner-party--if something had been just a little different-
-perhaps if she'd worn a clinging Liberty tea-gown instead of a magenta satin--"
"With an Indian shawl over her shoulders--"
"Fastened at the *** with a Cairngorm- pin--"
Bursts of disloyal laughter--you must remember that they are half German--greeted
these suggestions, and Margaret said pensively, "How inconceivable it would be
if the Royal Family cared about Art."
And the conversation drifted away and away, and Helen's cigarette turned to a spot in
the darkness, and the great flats opposite were sown with lighted windows, which
vanished and were relit again, and vanished incessantly.
Beyond them the thoroughfare roared gently- -a tide that could never be quiet, while in
the east, invisible behind the smokes of Wapping, the moon was rising.
"That reminds me, Margaret.
We might have taken that young man into the dining-room, at all events.
Only the majolica plate--and that is so firmly set in the wall.
I am really distressed that he had no tea."
For that little incident had impressed the three women more than might be supposed.
It remained as a goblin football, as a hint that all is not for the best in the best of
all possible worlds, and that beneath these superstructures of wealth and art there
wanders an ill-fed boy, who has recovered
his umbrella indeed, but who has left no address behind him, and no name.