In Praise of Noise.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XL, Issue 12, 21 March 1908, Page 15

In Praise of Noise.

THE JOY OF LONDON’S LUSTY. ROBUT ROAR. Without any disrespect to the 10,009 ladies and gentlemen who have petitioned the Home Secretary io abolish certain street noises, I hope that their memorial will not meet with success. London without its noise, without its din and clangour, would be a desolate place. Who that loves London would rob it of its voice, its lusty, robust roar, which is composed of all those separate noises which the petitioners would have abolished? London is made for noise; its buildings bellow back the echoes of the stamping traffic. Who would want London to be like St. Petersburg in the winter, when the show deadens all sound so that the City is a place of men padding with silent footfalls and of sleighs gliding by noiselessly—mere phantoms. For the love of noise is a primitive passion. When man was born to aeons of ■silence, he discovered the joy of thumping two sticks on the stretched hide of an animal, and the virtue of banging together two Circles of brass. He learnt that by bldwing down a cunninglypierced reed the noise of the escaping wind was pleasant and comforting to the ear. The same spirit—that of primitive man eager to make a new noise—lives in the musician to-day who seeks to do the same by gathering different sounds together and welding them into something hitherto unheard. The isolated parts o? the triangle or a bassoon in an oratorio are mere noises, but they become beautiful and well-ordered when they go tp swell the orchestra. MUFFIN BELUS. Thus, in the same way, those muffin bellringers, and German bands, those organ-grinders and shouting hawkers,

those milkmen and newsboys, those traction-engines and motor-omnibuses, though they are hideous and perhaps discordant when they are heard separately, are part of the orchestra of London, gild if you still them you rob London of its musie.

I know the horrors of an early steamroller setting the glass rattling in the window-panes, and making the very houses tremble in fury; I know how the ears fret at the shriek of a cab-whistle, and the agony when the hurdy-gurdy man begins his dismal torture, but I accept them as integral parts of London life. They may be a nuisance—so are clothes and the Income-tax and nearly everything that is compulsory in life. They must be grinned - at and borne stoically, and this can only be done by the man who realises and understands the necessity of their being. Would you have the bells of the muffin-man abolished — that cheerful “ting-a-ling, ting-a-ling, ting-a-ling,” which sounds, as the evening shadows are falling, its message of warm toasted muffins and crumpets with the hot butter oozing from their pores? Would you destroy the individuality of the old squares of Bloomsbury, and blight the lives of the German waiters in the boardinghouses by forbidding those moustached musicians of the Fatherland to play upon the trombones and their flageolets. CHURCH BELLS. And those fifteen per cent, of the memorialists who complain of church hells! Have they never realised the beauty of the bells of the churches pealing through the grey dusk; has it never stirred them to think that, in spite of the sordid turmoil, struggle, and bitter grasping for money, churches still stand in the centre of London symbols of the ideal amid the materialism of every day? No man who has heard the music of the bells of St. Clement Dane’s floating down the Strand above the noise of the traffic could wish it to be stilled. As for the organ-grinder, he is not so bad in his place and time. He, with his olive face and dark ringlets, and the earrings dangling from his ears, is a picturesque figure recalling the warm skies and the blue rivers of Italy; his wife is brilliant with her costume and headcovering of man; colours; her smile is amiable, and her teeth would shame the picture-postcard ladies The .organgrinder- represents family life—the baby is always cradled by the organ, and sleeps soundly, lulled by the trills and runs of “La Mattiehiche.” And he brings joy to the children of the East and West. Who, that has seen the urchins of the slum. jigging it round a barrel-organ would wish wish to banish the grinder? From the view of politics, I know he is an alien; but he at least does not take the bread from British mouths. He brought his Industry with him; and we all know that organ-grinding is not work which appeals to the Englishman unless he has been crippled and can do nothing else but turn a handle. MILKMAN’S VIEWS. The old street cries of London have survived the years, and now it is proposed to still them. Have we no sentimentleft? Look at the matter from the milkman’s point of view! For centuries generations of milkmen have handed down from father to son the inviolate privilege of crying their quarts. For centuries he has sprung lightly down the area-steps, with his cheery cry of "Millukoo-oo!” Are you going to rob him of his rights? What joy will there be in the life of a milkman whose exuberant cry is ehoked in his throat? the bitterness of his life, dreadful as the thought is, might even turn the milk sour. These and other street cries should be preserved from the vandals who would destroy them. Many of the most beautiful have been lost with time; as it is, one seldom hears the ’song of the sweetlavender seller now. For only one noise ean I find no defence, and that is the noise of the cabwhistles; it is a hideous, jarring noise that men only make to save their feet running for a cab. It will die out in time, like the burglar’s rattle, for cabranks and householders will be all on the telephone and a four-wheeler, hansom, or taxicab will be ordered verbally. For the rest noise is necessary and human. Great things have been acepniplished with noise. Would the walls of Jericho have fatten without the blast of trumpets, or the Capitol have been saved without the discordant quacking of the geeset