XVIIINERO DISCUSSES JAZZ
I shuddered as the city editor announced my assignment. True, I had tackled departed desperadoes and undesirable citizens whom I feared about as much in the spirit as in the flesh, but they were different. None of these could be such a formidable customer to interview as an ex-emperor who was notorious for his callous cruelties.
But duty is duty, and I donned my bullet-proof vest, put a revolver in my hip-pocket with a bottle of non-spirituous nerve tonic which a kind physician prescribed for me, and sallied forth to my waiting plane.
Five minutes later I was sitting calmly in the presence of the former imperial tyrant. The ordeal of introduction I had so much dreaded proved to be nothing. I had found the ex-emperor as approachable as a presidential candidate two months before the convention and as willing to talk for publication as a grand opera star who’s just lost another $10,000 necklace.
Could this be the old monster I had readabout, I wondered, as overflowing with welcome he invited me to make myself thoroughly at home.
“What do you want me to talk about?” he asked. “Modern music and musicians? Delighted. Then you still regard me as an expert? I am gratified to hear it. I had feared that some slanderous stories that were circulated might have prejudiced you earth folk against me.
“Perhaps a few words of explanation might not be amiss. You have heard, no doubt, about the time when, as the popular phrase has it, I fiddled while Rome burned? The opposition made a good deal of that circumstance at the next election. They said I ought to have got out and hustled with the firemen, regardless of the fact that I did not belong to their union. Every man to his trade, I say. The firemen played on the flames and I played on the violin.
“Possibly, on looking back now that it is all over, I might have made a happier selection of the composition I performed on that occasion. It was entitled ‘Keep the Home Fires Burning,’ a forerunner of a popular piece which I believe is not entirely unknown in your own country today. But that was a mere bit of thoughtlessness.
“The extent of that conflagration, also, hasbeen much exaggerated. It was confined to a few old garages in the suburbs upon which, oddly enough, I had taken out insurance only a couple of days before. One of those remarkable coincidences which do occasionally occur in real life.
“My political enemies tried to make a good deal out of it, but I am glad to say they were unable to prove anything. My candidates for the Forum were elected by the largest majorities on record. And if that isn’t vindication, what is?”
“Very interesting, Mr. Nero. But how did you come to take up music as a study and attain such remarkable proficiency?”
“I took up music in the first place as a remedy for baldness. I was troubled considerably with falling hair and dandruff and I had observed that all professional musicians were endowed with flowing locks. I looked into the subject. I talked to the court barber and to several performers on the violin, clarionet and bass drum, with names ending in ‘off’ and ‘sky,’ who had lately come to Rome from other countries. One musician informed me that five years before he had been so bald that flies trying to skate over the shiny surface would fall and break their legs, but he was now wearinghis hair in a Dutch pompadour. He was a skilled performer on the classic lyre.
“I cannot say that the study and performance of music had a similar effect in my case, no appreciable change being noted in the hirsute adornment of my dome of thought, though my wife’s mother did refer to my musical efforts as hair-raising—but there were other compensations. As a result of my daily practicing on the violin—or rather nightly, my hours being from about one to three A. M. as a rule—the price of real estate in the neighborhood dropped twenty-five per cent, and I was able to buy in some very desirable properties I had long had my eye on—for a song. (No pun intended.) It was about this time that some one originated the saying concerning making Rome howl.
“I also played at the Rome Asylum for the Insane every Saturday afternoon, and they were just crazy to hear me. One Friday night five of the inmates committed suicide and my political opponents, as usual, tried to make capital of the occurrence.
“But these little things did not interfere with my purpose to become a finished musician—even though unkind critics said they wished I had finished. And speaking of criticisms, there were some that hurt me to the quick though Isuppose history does not regard me as an especially sensitive creature. One of my favorite compositions was entitled ‘Through All Eternity.’ I presume you are acquainted with it. It is still popular.
“I asked a young woman one day if she would like to hear me play ‘Through All Eternity,’ and she replied that that would be her idea of—well, I don’t like to say it, but you doubtless recall the classic definition of war as promulgated by one of your most conspicuous generals. It was a cruel saying.
“But you wished for my opinions on modern music and musicians. I don’t know that I am qualified to judge; not if what I heard the other night is music nowadays. A couple of the boys who were being materialized by a friend of Sir Oliver Lodge inveigled me into going along and attending what the advertisements said was a concert.
“As the first number on the programme, it was announced the orchestra would give an imitation of ‘jazz,’ whatever that is. There was a crash like a pantry shelf full of dishes coming down, followed by a noise that was a combination of a battle and a boiler shop. I thought the roof would fall in next, and I was just preparing to slide out when the man next to me remarked reassuringly: ‘The agony is over.’
“There wasn’t a musical note or a hint of harmony in the whole slam-bang from start to finish. A couple of kids with hammers and an old tin-pan could have achieved the same effect. People paid two dollars and a half a seat to hear that, when they could hire a small boy to run a stick along a picket fence for ten cents. They called that music, and yet the neighbors used to kick when I played ‘Way Down Upon the Tiber River’ and ‘There’s No Place Like Rome’ on my violin at three o’clock in the morning.
“Then a young woman with a low dress and high voice came out and screamed like a patient at a painless dentist’s. One of the papers next morning said she had a sweet voice, but ‘lacked execution.’ She wouldn’t have lacked it very long if she’d lived when I was Emperor. The final number on the programme was a performance on the ukelele by a pair of harmless looking youths whose appearance belied their real natures.
“I have read in my ‘Pocket Chesterfield’ that a gentleman is one who never inflicts needless pain or suffering on others. They were not gentlemen. In my day we occasionally used racks and thumb-screws and other instruments of necessary torture, but we knew nothing about ukeleles. They had not been invented. Hasyour country no Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Audiences? But it is unnecessary to ask.
“Yet you moderns have one advantage over us ancients when it comes to music, and I am willing to admit it: the phonograph. It is much more satisfactory than any human singer or player, because you can shut it off without hurting its feelings. It has a patent stop—something the tenor or soprano lacks. If you get up at a concert and request the soloist in the middle of a song kindly to cease as her effort is making you exceedingly nervous, you are simply reserving a seat for yourself in the patrol wagon.
“But at home with the phonograph all you’ve got to do is to push the little lever and it quits. You can enjoy its concerts without having to put on a clean white shirt and an open-face vest and a dinner coat. You can wear the same clothes you did at breakfast or sit around in an old bathrobe with your collar off and listen to Mary Garden gargle. If you did that at the grand opera house it would be sure to excite remark.
“And now you must excuse me, young man. I’ve promised to play tonight at the Mount Olympus firemen’s ball and I must have a little time to rehearse my piece—‘I’m a Roman in the Gloamin’.’ Perhaps you know it? By the way,are you a musician yourself? But you must be. Everybody is, more or less.”
“No, sir. I can’t play anything.”
“Oh, you must be mistaken. Are you married?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Then to preserve the domestic harmony, you must be used to playing second fiddle.”
As I staggered down the stairs I felt that I had richly earned a Nero—I mean a hero, medal.