In a certain familiar oratorio innumerable pages and much time are taken up in an endless reiteration of the words, "All we like sheep." I beg to ask if the worthy sopranos, altos, tenors and the rest, ever did realise the profound truth of that over-repeated and rather monotonous statement? We are all like sheep! We do what our neighbours do; we think what they think and we wear what they wear. In fact, we are tailor-made inside and out; no, we are worse than tailor-made, we are ready-tailor-made, for we are made by the gross.
If there is a thing the world shudders at and resents it is originality. If a human being cannot be classified as belonging to a certain cut of trousers, coat or waistcoats, let him beware, for he is a misfit human being, and we all know the cheap end of all misfits! It is as embarrassing to have anything obtrusive in one's mental make-up as in one's physical. Happy is he who is on a dead level!
One would like to offer up a meek plea for originality were one not aware how unpopular it would be. To be original is only next worse thing to being a genius. We do resign ourselves to sporadic cases of genius, but a world peopled by genius (for we all know what that is akin to) is more than we could stand. It is about the same with originality. So the next time we sing "All we like sheep," let us consider well the meaning of these inspiring but misunderstood words, and greatly rejoice.
This train of thought is the result of my landlady's little boy, separated from me only by a thin lath partition of a wall, playing five-finger exercises in halting rhythm and with innumerable false notes. The instrument is one in which the flight of years has left a tone like a discontented nutmeg-grater. If the little boy had the legs of a centipede and played his chosen instrument with these instead of two dingy little hands, he could not perpetrate more false notes.
The number of false notes that can be evolved through the medium of eight fingers and two thumbs is simply appalling! The little boy, a pale child in a long pinafore and big white ears, hates his chosen instrument as much as I do, and so we meet on a level of mutual affliction. I loathe hearing him, and he hates his instrument; now, in the name of good common sense, why must he be offered up as a sacrifice?
His mother is a poor woman, and the tinkling cottage piano with the plaited faded-green front represents the chops and many other wholesome things she has not eaten, and what she allows the young lady in third-floor back, who takes her board out in piano lessons, is a serious sacrifice. Now, I ask, what for?
Why is all the world playing an unnecessary piano?
Marriage has a fatal effect on music. For some occult reason as soon as a girl is married, the piano—the grave of so much money and time—retires out of active life, and swathed in "art draperies," burdened by vases, cabinet photographs and imitation "curios," serves less as a musical instrument than a warning. But like all warnings it passes unheeded, for no sooner are the next generation's legs long enough to dangle between the key-board and the pedals, than the echoes awaken to the same old false notes that serve no purpose unless an hour of daily martyrdom over a tear-splashed key-board is an excellent preparation for the trials of life.
Music, as it is taught, is not so much a fine art as a bad habit. Alas, we have got into the habit of learning to play the piano, and the bad habit of playing on the violin is fatally on the increase. Seriously now: why? Because it is considered both uncultivated and quite unfashionable not to be fond of music or to pretend to be. Why? The answer, "All we like sheep."
I know of only one man who has the courage to say that he hates music. It is his misfortune, not his fault, and without doubt there is something wrong about his inner ear. Still, I always wonder why his frank and honest confession is received with a kind of pitying contempt, as if he had writ himself down to be both a brute-beast and a heathen.