Hurrying down the main street, I longed to get out of sight with the dollars, but I heard a shout behind me; my assumed name was loudly called: I turned; my heart sank. I nearly fainted: the publisher was running after me. I clutched my money, determined to resist. The new greatness thrust upon me by the sale of my song still remained with me. I could not humiliate my pride and run, though I longed to do so. With his little skull-cap askew, he stood puffing in front of me! I gave one glance to warn him not to get too near my person, and heard him saying: “Oh, excuse me, Mr Muller, I suppose you will be in Boston long enough to correct the proof?”
In a dream I reached my room, packed up my brush and comb, got my violin out of pawn and left Boston for Providence, where my brother lived, who had left England years before. To my great regret I found, when I arrived, that he was away in California. No one seemed to know when he would return. I could not force my way into his bachelor rooms, and so I was once more on the rocks.
I became acquainted with a young Swede who was musical and played the clarionet. Together we fixed up a small orchestra, went out to play at dances and so just managed to exist. We hired a large room in a hall near the Hoyle Buildings in Westminster Street; made our own furniture out of meat tubs and our beds of old overcoats. My violin, with coats doubled on it, made an excellent pillow. With our heads side by side on it we slept as soundly as though we were in the Australian bush. I spent hours each day, and sometimes worked far into the night, practising my violin and reading the lives of great musicians and writers.
My brother, a crack violinist and a well-known journalist in the States, did not return for four or five months, and in the meantime our orchestra failed. My friend and I lived for a time on the free lunches of the grog saloons. North American saloon owners do not allow their customers to starve while they supply them with alcoholic poison, which is, however, fifty per cent. better than English spirit. For Americans are both humane and practical. They know that dead men do not buy rum, so the bars at luncheon hours steam with hot Frankforts, plates of cold meat, cheese and biscuits, provided without any charge to their customers. The honesty of Providence is illustrated by one fact alone—if you buy ten cents’ worth of whisky they hand you a glass and the bottle, that you may help yourself. In London, Australia and the South Seas the grog-keeper would be ruined in a week if he ran his business on those lines! You seldom see a woman in a grog saloon, and never drunk in the streets.
Eventually I secured several jobs at concert halls. The pay was small, but, though other work was to be had, my temperament strongly objected to anything that needed muscular power. To tell the truth, I was ambitious. I longed to raise myself out of the ordinary ruck of things. However, when my Swedish friend got a job out at Pawtucket, digging post-holes, the high wages tempted me and I too started work there. Together we toiled for three weeks. Then once more I started composing, and had several pieces of dance music accepted in my own name. I arranged them as pianoforte solos, and one or two for the violin and piano.
When the weather got warm I sometimes went out to Fort Hill, on the Seekonk river. The prairie-land of Rhode Island survives in variegated patches of miles of beautiful scenery, with rushing rivers, and landscapes dotted by wooden homesteads that remind one of New Zealand and the Australian bush-land.
CHAPTER II
United States Military Music—The Roger Williams Park—Indians—Rhode Island Scenery and Amusements—Yankees—Experiences—A Miner from California
IN Providence I made friends with a military band conductor. He was a jolly customer, hard up but good-natured and humorous, a real American bandmaster of the old convivial school, kind at heart and fond of good whisky. His greatest virtue was a commonplace one: he would always pay you back anything he borrowed, but unfortunately he was hard up and could not do so. He had every excuse for this, for, as elsewhere, bandsmen, indeed musicians in general, were supposed to be able to live on melody and royalties that might arrive in some remote future. I worked for him, borrowed my comrade’s clarionet and secured a position in the military band. It played in Roger Williams Park, performing on the usual holidays and on sunshiny evenings.