The Mistakes of the Fathers

AT midnight, beneath a hotel awning, the two of us stood and waited. My chance companion, an aged bassviolist, was accompanied by his instrument, a baize-covered form of a stature equal to his own, and of an even more ample girth. He supported it with one arm about its shoulders, as if it were a tipsy brother, and periodically he stepped it about on its one wooden leg as he went forward to take another look down the avenue.

In a little while we took cognizance of one another, humanly.

‘It is pretty wet weather,’ he offered.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘It is pretty wet and chilly.’

‘Well, that is the way it is in spring. We have got to take it as it comes.’

‘Yes,’ I replied. ‘But I think this is about the end of it. The evening paper predicts fair and warmer.’

The three of us were waiting for a street car — the two of us, that is, and the portly fiddle in its brown nightgown ; and the street car did not come. Time passed, the water dripped, and the chill gust fluttered the scallops of the awning. And still the street car did not come.

‘Is that a pretty good instrument you have there?’ I queried.

‘Him? Oh yes. He is of very good quality.'

As he said this his hand went to the neck, and the viol turned about and faced toward me as if moved by a sense of courtesy. He went on to explain that the viol had had a quite long and successful career; it had played for years in various orchestra pits, but now the best it could do was to fill engagements at dances and dinners. He went into some further details; and then I noted that his attitude of respect for the instrument changed and deepened into a note of grievance.

The main theme of his grievance was that a man with a bass viol cannot get into a street car and sit down as other people do, but must always stand outside on the platform. Instead of riding like a regular passenger, enjoying the inner light and warmth and social atmosphere, he must find his comer in that cold and drafty place and sort always with his wooden companion, a creature of frail physique and too cumbrous proportions. He dwelt also on other situations that go to make up the life of a violist. It was a chronicle of mishaps that must be guarded against in getting on and off the car; of shielding the thin and fragile belly against the push of drunken roisterers and the stress and strain of crowds; of seeing that its insubstantial shell was not poked in by sharp umbrellas or cracked against the many varieties of hard projections; and, in general, of conducting a viol through a world where more than once its bridge had been pushed over and all its strings unstrung.

If only a viol could sit down in a seat like a person, even though it had to pay a regular fare! As he made this suggestion he indicated by a slicing motion with the edge of his hand just where a hinge or flexure would have to come. But of course that would be impossible. If he took it into the car with him, it would have to stand up in the aisle, where it occupied as much room as a full-sized German, and he would have to stand with it and protect it, which again was impossible. In addition to such perplexities there were midnight encounters with wind and weather, and long waits at street corners or under drippy awnings; so that altogether there was a side to the life of a violist which was little suspected by the heavy diners at the banquets or the light and giddy couples on the ballroom floor. In addition, he was the only one in the orchestra who had to stand up to play. When he was through he had to stand at the street corner and wait. And then he must stand and ride.

’And that,’ I interjected, ‘is the very hardest sort of work. The blood on its way back to the lungs, and the tissue fluids that give renewed life to the cells, receive little help from the pumping of the heart. They depend largely upon the movement of the muscles to complete the circulation. That is why it is so much more fatiguing to stand than it is to take moderate exercise. Right now I would rather be walking on to the next block than standing on this spot waiting.’

‘Ha!’ he exclaimed. ‘An educated man like you — you know how it is. That is what I tell my boy Fred. I say it is easier to march than it is to stand still. But of course that is all in my line of work, and it is not his fault. As I have said, he is an instrument of fine quality. In sixty years he has raised two families; and he has brought them up well.’

At this he gave a playful pluck at one of the strings, and it answered with a muffled hum under the brown baize, like a bee in a bonnet.

‘Oh!’ I exclaimed. ‘You mean that the viol is not to blame. You call it he.'

‘Well, that is something you would think strange, I suppose. I should have to explain. It was my son Fred who started that. When he was a little boy he seemed to think the viol was a real person. It was alive to him — like a doll, you know. One day he put an old sweater on it, and a coat and a hat. Then he ran and got his mother; and he jumped up and down and squealed — just as if it were a snow man. And he called it “Mister.” And then his mother named it for him. She called it “Mr. Zoom-zoom.” For twenty years it has had that name. And I got to calling it “Mr. Zoom-zoom” too. My father was born in Vienna, but I was born here, and I would not call other things he.'

‘Then your boy is grown up now. Was he musically inclined?’

‘Very much so. It is in the family. But never would I have him live a life like mine. And when he would get the bow and try to make a sound on Mr. Zoom-zoom I would take it away from him. “Oh no,” I would say. “That is all right for me. But not for you.”’

As the violist said this he emphasized the point by plucking out a chord — a very deep and discordant chord from the belly of the viol. Immediately there came into my mind that line from Shakespeare, ‘I have sounded the very base-string of humility.’ It comes in the First Part of Henry IV, where Prince Hal tells how he has been sorting with the low characters of the Boar’sHead Tavern, and calling the soursmelling ale drawers ‘by their christen names, as Tom, Dick, and Francis.’ This had the effect of turning my mind for the moment from the subject of conversation. Possibly this habit of recalling other men’s sayings, even Shakespeare’s, can get to be a vice.

‘And so he did not get to be a player of the bass viol?’ I continued.

‘Oh no. Never. I would not have that.’ And again, thinking it might be his car that was coming, he stepped Mr. Zoom-zoom forward to take a look.

It is, thought I, the same old story. In Europe it is still quite usual for the son to follow the father in his calling, but here we labor constantly under the delusion of better things. The shoemaker may stick to his last, but he will seldom allow his son to do so. The skilled machinist, chastising his boy, will threaten to put him at work in the shop, as if this were the worst possible thing that could happen to him. Possibly no preacher ever threatened to put his wayward son into the pulpit; but no doubt this would be the most corrective influence that could be brought to bear upon the race of preachers’ sons.

‘But anyway,’ continued the bassviolist, coming back, ‘he has turned out well in spite of everything. I sent him through common school and then through high school. And when he was through high school I said to him, “Now, boy, if you want to change your mind and go on to college, you may do so. You will not have to work your way through college, nor play your way through, either. Mr. Zoom-zoom and I will tend to that.” Well, he thought it over a little while and then decided that he would rather keep right on with his music. Maybe the studies in college would interfere with what he wanted to be. He was already started and he felt that he ought not to ask me to send him to the University.’

‘His music?’ I queried.

‘Oh yes. He is good. He is brilliant. You ought to hear him play. Already at twenty-three he is an artist — and with a great band behind him.’

The clang of a bell and the rumble of iron wheels brought the violist and Mr. Zoom-zoom forward to the curb again; and this time it was the North Avenue car.

‘Good-bye,’ he waved to me. ‘Maybe sometime you will hear my son. Maybe you will hear him in “The Ride of the Valkyries.” He plays the piccolo in Donizetti’s Band.’

The last I saw of Mr. Zoom-zoom the upper part of him was showing through the back window of the car; and the white hand of the violist was grasping him firmly by the neck.