George Gissing on music: Italian impressions

Musical Times, Summer 2001 by Atlas, Allan W

In fact, the authorities had banned street organs in the city As the newspaper Roma had reported on 20 December: 'The questura has recently prohibited the sound of street organs on the streets of the city, consenting to them only in the villages and the suburbs.'20 To this the Corriere di Napoli added that, even in those locations, street organs would be tolerated only between the hours of 8.00am. and 9.00pm.21

Clearly, Gissing was more than just saddened: he was incensed. And having seen his frequent references to street organs during both this trip and the preceding one, we should consider the wider context of his concern. Already in what had served as a combination letter-birthday card to his sister Ellen on 3 April 1880, he expresses his fondness for the instrument:

How do you get on with your music? That is a very essential point in a girl's education. I would give a thousand pounds - if I had it - to be able to play the piano, - nay, even on a penny-whistle. Do you know, I have frequently contemplated getting a barrel-organ man to play in my room for so much an hour? But perhaps the other people in the house would object (Letters, vol.1, pp.256-57).

And in a moving passage from chapter 26 of the 'Summer' section of his last completed work, the half autobiographical-half fictional The private papers of Henry Ryecroft (1903), he places the street organ in the heady company of a Chopin nocturne in what may be read as a confession-like expression of his love of music. It is worth quoting at length:

Of late I have been wishing for music. An odd chance gratified my desire.

I had to go into Exeter yesterday. I got there about sunset, transacted my business, and turned to walk home again through the warm twilight. In Southernhay, as I was passing a house of which the ground-floor windows stood open, there sounded the notes of a piano - chords touched by a skilful hand. I checked my step, hoping, and in a minute or two the musician began to play that nocturne of Chopin which I love best - I don't know how to name it. My heart leaped. There I stood in the thickening dusk, the glorious sounds floating about me; and I trembled with very ecstasy of enjoyment [...I

It is well for me that I cannot hear music when I will; assuredly I should not have such intense pleasure as comes to me now and then by haphazard [...] It happened at times - not in my barest days, but in those of decent poverty - that someone in the house where I lodged played the piano- and how it rejoiced me when this came to pass! I say 'played the piano' - a phrase that covers much. For my own part, I was very tolerant; anything that could by the largest interpretation be called music, I welcomed and was thankful for; even 'five-finger exercises' I found, at moments, better than nothing. For it was when I was labouring at my desk that the notes of the instrument were grateful and helpful to me. Some men, I believe, would have been driven frantic under the circumstances; to me anything like a musical sound always came as a godsend; it tuned my thoughts; it made the words flow. Even the street organs put me in a happy mood; I owe many a page to them - written when I should else have been sunk in bilious gloom.