“‘I was just in time for afternoon service, and I took your letter with me and told the verger I wanted to speak to the organist, to whom I had a letter of introduction.’
“‘Dr. Trackers, sir? certainly,’ said the official with official patronage; ‘never heard the Doctor play? then you’ll ’ave a treat: hevery one says so; perhaps he’ll give you a bit with his new stop, “nux vomica,” they call it; but I think it sounds like a choir of hangels playing on a comb’ (’hïngels plyin hon a ca-omb’—in the original). I hadn’t time to digest this graphic description of the Vox Humana before T. arrived, and accepted my note: ‘What, the old Precentor?’ he said, ‘come up to the organ-loft;’ and I went.”
(“We may skip a good deal here about the organ, and its stops, and pneumatic machinery—did I ever tell you about Old Dick the blower?—and come to the music.” “Cut the cackle and come to the ’osses,” I murmured to myself.)
“It was the 15th evening, with that long Psalm, you know, and never have I heard such chanting. T. knows his psalter by heart, and never seems to look at the book; his mind is busy with half a dozen things, and he keeps up a running commentary of the quaintest but most maddening kind on the music, the singers, the cathedral, and what not. The choir is admirably trained, and the boys’ voices are good, better than the men’s; and they pronounce every syllable, though andanti con moto, and got through the seventy-three verses without a slip. Trackers, as a rule, only indicates illustrations, reserving greater effects for greater needs; but once he just threw in a pedal F natural, to express his opinion of the blacklegs of Ephraim, which absolutely withered and shrivelled them up.
“‘Three chants we have for this long psalm,’ he began, ‘starting in A; sort of reciting, historical chant—do you understand stops? Just pull out that chap’—and he pointed with his big nose—‘listen to that tenor; he’s as flat as Holland’—and he warmed him up with a reed on the solo—‘we can’t afford Sims Reeves, and this is a decent little chap; now that coupler, please;’ and he “brought waters out of the stony rock”: ‘verse 19 brings us into D, with a heavy bass, good for the plagues farther on. Dean’s away this week, don’t know where—now the reeds, please’—and he “rained down manna,” and “brought in the south-west wind,” and with a sudden cyclone “slew the wealthiest of them,” and then bit by bit he muzzled the monster, while the Israelites were falling into forgetfulness, till there was only just enough to keep up the pitch. Then he broke out again: ‘Did you hear of the Dean’s uncle, and his will? Always hoped to get something out of him, and last Christmas the old fellow died in town—now those two at the side:’ and suddenly the organ began to live again, and to grow, and we rushed into the plagues of Egypt. I looked over the rail and saw the eyes of the boys positively shine: the men were shifting from one leg to another, as the growl of the pedals increased.”
(“Dear me! how strange,” the old man interpolated; “I always change legs every verse when I am excited.”)
“They were singing Tutti, and insensibly quickening the pace; I heard Trackers absently mutter something about the Dean and his uncle—‘of course the Dean went to the funeral’—and then even he joined in the chase: “hailstones,” and they danced on the floor; “hot thunderbolts” that rumbled and scorched; “furiousness of His wrath, anger, displeasure, and trouble”; and “the prophets blazoned on the panes” rattled, and the old fabric swam before my eyes, and I clutched at the rail for safety: there came a sudden roar, like an advancing earthquake, and the pestilence smote the first-born of Egypt, so that the tower shook, and then, without warning, we slipped into the smooth waters of G: “He led them forth like sheep”; Israel sat in shady places by the water side in the Promised Land, playing on the harmonic flute, and—Trackers, half turning his head, said:
“‘And they found he’d married his cook, and left her the money.’
But I was leaning over the rail and crying like a girl at her first play.”
“Look here, rector,” I interposed, “I must catch the 6.30.” And I fled.