Practicable Socialism: Essays on Social ReformBarnett, S. A. (Samuel Augustus)
General
Practicable Socialism: Essays on Social Reform
Barnett, S. A. (Samuel Augustus)
Great Britain -- Social conditions -- 19th century; Social problems; Working class
Besides these active pleasures, there is the enjoyment of music, the
love and appreciation of which is so deep and warm in these uncultured
minds; music which more than anything else helps to smooth away
class as well as other inequalities. I have seen rough low-class men
and women leave their active games or the swing for which they had
been waiting and cluster round the singer or musician begging for
another and yet ‘another bit.’ What they like best is a song with a
chorus, or historical songs where they can hear the words, and next
to these solemn music on a harmonium or organ; but any music charms
them, and the hostess who is either musical herself or who invites
her musical friends to help her finds the task of entertaining much
easier. An oft-repeated mistake is that the poor like comic songs
about themselves, and ‘Betsy Waring’ has been suggested and sung at
our parties more often than I like to remember. A moment’s sympathetic
thought will show, however, that the poor want other and wider
interests, and it can hardly be the kindliest method of amusing
them to sing them a song, the joke of which lies in imitations and
‘take-offs’ of their mispronunciation. It is, too, generally thought
that the uneducated cannot appreciate what is commonly understood as
‘good music,’ but this, too, is a mistake. Long years ago I remember
Mrs. Nassau Senior coming to a night-school of rough girls, held in a
rough court. That evening some street row was more attractive than A B
C, and our scholars were clustered around the heroine of the fight. I
can still see the picture made by Mrs. Senior as she stood and sang in
the doorway of the schoolroom, which opened directly on to the court,
and among such surroundings it was a deep-sighted sympathy which led
her to choose ‘Angels ever bright and fair.’ For long afterwards she
was remembered as ‘the lady who came and sang about the angels, and
looked like one herself.’
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