The Tippah Philharmonic
As indicated by its name, the Philharmonic Society was originally a musical organization, but in time it became also literary and social in its purpose. Both men and women belong to this club, which meets every other Tuesday evening, at the house of a member.
Tippah comes nearer to being without class distinctions than any other place, outside of romantic fiction. There are two races living side by side, but there are not two classes. Nearly all the white people are descended from the original settlers, members of good old Virginia and Carolina families. There has been no immigration from the North, and the few strangers who have drifted in from neighboring stat es have always established a claim to recognition by the older residents, and complete identification with them has soon followed. After the War, everybody was poor; and no one, except the lawyers, doctors, and farmers, knew how to earn a living. It was therefore natural for a man to turn his hand to anything that offered itself, without a moment’s consideration whether it was an occupation suited to his social position. There was no apology, no explanation. Men in whose veins flowed the blood of all the Howards — to use a grandiloquent Southern phrase — thought no shame of measuring calico behind a counter, of managing a liverystable, or of following the plough. Lifeinsurance has never been regarded with favor in Tippah, and many widows found themselves penniless after the War or the Fever. Penniless, but not helpless, for they lost no time in resorting to one or another of the three methods by which it was considered proper for a woman to support herself. They ‘took in sewing,’ or they kept boarders, or they taught music or elementary English in the schools.
This taking up of any form of work, by the men, ‘calling nothing common or unclean,’has kept the village clear from snobbishness, but it has also checked the development of a healthy ambition in the younger generation. A boy growing up with the knowledge that it will be considered right and fitting for him to leave school at fourteen and begin polishing apples and sweeping the floor in a small grocery store, — kept, perhaps, by his uncle, who is one of the Virginia Thorntons, you understand, not a Georgia Thornton, — is likely to have no aspiration for a college education or a professional career. This indifference would be fatal if it were general. Fortunately, many, though not a majority, of the boys leave Tippah as soon as they can wring from their mothers an unwilling consent, and go to Memphis, the nearest large town, looking for a ‘job’ that promises promotion. In Tippah it is an affectation to speak of a situation, or a position. Everybody, from the Chief Justice of the United States to the colored barber who shaves the Tippah males every day but Sunday, has a ’job.'
The Philo, as it is commonly called, is composed chiefly of middle-aged or elderly people. Young folks are not supposed to care for anything but dancing and flirting; and, furthermore, the presence of young girls would be discouraged, as they might hear something not quite suited to their tender innocence. On one occasion Mrs. Erasmus Jones recited ‘Locksley Hall’as her contribution to the evening’s entertainment, and Mrs. Dudley was deeply chagrined that Lucy happened to be with her, and heard such an ‘improper’ poem.
The young married people do not belong to the Philo, because they never go anywhere. The transformation wrought in a Tippah girl by marriage is complete, and rather curious. Up to her wedding-day she appears thoroughly frivolous, without a thought; except for her own pleasure; after marriage all she cares for is her husband, her housekeeping, and her babies. To marry Tom, to live in a four-room house, on seventy-five dollars a month, to have a new baby every two years, to exchange little patterns with her friends, to cook Tom’s favorite dishes, to make ‘something,out of nothing’ for the house, to grow flowers and vegetables in her little two-acre lot, to keep Tom away from the Blind Tiger — such, for every girl in Tippah, are the absorbing interests of the first ten or fifteen years of married life. Later, when the children are out of the way, she may find time for something else, such as embroidery, or music, or the Philo, or the Missionary Society, or even a course of reading, — though this last would always be a subject for apology.
On a certain evening early in June Mrs. Vernon is entertaining the Philo. The guests arriveabout half-past eight, and are received in Mrs. Vernon’s big square parlor, which is furnished exactly like every other parlor in Tippah, with two long sofas, two arm-chairs, and eight smaller chairs, of beautiful design, constructed of mahogany and upholstered in black horsehair. In the centre of the room is a marbletopped table bearing handsome copies of Shakespeare and the Bible, whose freshness testifies the distant respect with which such good literature is treated; although it may be taken for granted that Mrs. Vernon, like every other woman in Tippah, has another Bible in her room, which she reads every night as regularly as she looks under the bed before retiring. In Tippah it is most indelicate to speak of ‘going to bed’ — ‘retire’ is the proper word.
The Vernon parlor, though following a fixed rule in furniture and arrangement, has one crowning distinction: it possesses the finest piano in the town, a new Steinway. Tippah is proud of that piano, proud even of Mrs. Vernon’s extravagance in selling a halfsection of land to the Michigan Lumber Company, in order to get the money to buy it.
Mrs. Carter arrives under the protection of Sally and Tom Pritchard.
‘If you’ll let those children sit out on the porch until the Philo meeting is over,’ she says to Mrs. Vernon, indicating her daughter and Tom, ‘they’ll be ready to take me home.’
‘Why certainly,’ answers Mrs. Vernon; ‘and Tom, won’t you make yourself useful by fetching some more chairs into the parlor? Just get the diningroom chairs — no, not that one, it’s broken.'
She bustles about, making everybody comfortable, and by nine o’clock the whole company is assembled, and Dr. Courtenay, the president of the Philo, rises to announce the programme. Parliamentary law is ignored, but Dr. Courtenay needs no gavel to call the meeting to order. Tippah pays him t he tribute of silent attention, as it pays him every other homage it can offer.
‘Ladies and gentlemen, my dear friends,’ he says, ‘we are to have the pleasure of listening to some real poetry to-night, by a Southern poet whom we delight to honor. Mrs. Ambler has kindly consented to read some selections from a poet whom the North admires and the South loves — Sidney Lanier.’
Mrs. Ambler is old, but her lovely contralto voice has retained the fresh and thrilling cadence of her youth, while her feeling for the poetry informs every word with life.
Every one is listening, except Mrs. Carter and Mrs. Vernon, who, unseen in a corner, are indulging in a little private entertainment of their own. Mrs. Carter has in her possession a letter which Jim, the darkey sexton at St. Faith’s, has just received from his son in Memphis, and which he has brought her to read.
‘He said he could “read readin’ writin’, but he could n’t read writin’ writin,’” she explains. ‘Here’s the letter.’
And Mrs. Vernon reads: —
‘DERE POPPER, — I got a job in a calf A kep by Borrasso and Boggiano at 222 Choctaw strete. thair is find aitalyan cukin. Pleze sen me 2 dollurs. I wants ter git maried on thirsty, an I dont git my pay til satdy nite. I will cloas wid bes respex to enkwirin frens.
‘ yores truely
‘ LITTLE JIM.'
Aft er half an hour of patriotic devotion to Sidney Lanier, the company turns expectantly to Dr. Courtenay, who announces that Miss Agnes Harris will give them some music. She is only seventeen, and is not a member of the Philo, but she is received with open arms, when, for love of Dr. Courtenay, she deigns to play at its meetings.
She is a genius, this girl. Her supreme gift of music is a compensation for everything she has missed. An orphan, nearly blind, cut off in large measure from the pleasures of youth, she lives in a world into which no one else in Tippah has ever penetrated. Perhaps no one but Dr. Courtenay knows that such a world exists, and even he, as he is well aware, can never hope to enter therein. ‘The morning stars sang together when Agnes was born,’ he would say; and he loves and spoils her, and denies himself the necessities of life, to give her trips to Memphis or to New Orleans, to hear music. From time to time she has had teachers, although never for more than a few months in all, and has amazed them by playing through without mistake the longest, most intricate and intellectual compositions, after hearing them once. Her memory is infallible; she remembers every piece of music that she has ever heard, and she can play on any instrument that she has ever touched.
Measured by Tippah standards, she is not beautiful. Her big hands are matched by big feet, which she has the vanity to conceal by long skirts, over which she is always stumbling. Her expression is never light-hearted and gay, like Sally’s or Lucy’s; a big, brooding calm lies in her face, varied by a wistful, questioning, but not unhappy gaze, as though some prescience of the early and tragic death awaiting her had exalted, not troubled, her spirit. Her slate-colored eyes are dull and heavy; she walks uncertainly, even in the quiet streets of Tippah; but to her the Heavens are opened.
This evening, at Mrs. Vernon’s, Agnes is unusually gracious. ‘ I do love to get hold of this piano,’ she says in her deep, rather husky voice; and she sits down and plays.
Tippah responds to the touch of genius. These men and women listening to a solemn performance of the majestic music of John Sebastian Bach are dignified, ennobled, transfigured. For the moment, they stand on holy ground.
After the strain of rapt attention to a very long fugue, each member of the company calls for some favorite, and Agnes plays everything, from variations of ‘The Maiden’s Prayer’ up to the ‘ Sonata Pathétique.’ Then she improvises, tells stories on the piano, — sad stories, funny stories; she plays pranks; she caricatures her friends, to their faces, and they like it. Sally Carter, who, with Tom Pritchard, has come in from the porch to listen, exclaims, —
‘If that doesn’t sound just like Mother on the back porch beating up a cake, and talking to Aunt Charity!’
‘And there’s a mocking-bird in that old mulberry tree,’ adds Tom.
‘And now there’s a thunder-storm coming up,’cries Mrs. Ambler, as some big bass chords boom out.
‘Oh, shucks!’ cries Agnes, banging her hands down on the keys, — she always seemed to strike twenty at once, — ‘this is too silly for any use. Listen and I’ll play you all something I heard last week in Memphis. It’s about rain. I don’t know what it is, for I could n’t read the programme, and Mrs. Carroll, who took me to the concert, had n’t her glasses. We were two blind old ladies,’ — Agnes’s infrequent laugh rang out, — ‘but one of us had ears.’
Then she gave them the ‘ Rain-drop’ Prelude, while Dr. Courtenay — the ‘atheist’ — hoped that Chopin was leaning out from ‘ the gold bar of Heaven’ to listen.
Every one is startled at finding that Agnes has been playing for nearly two hours. She jumps up and helps Sally pass the light refreshments which Mrs. Vernon has placed on the beautiful old silver trays that are among her most treasured heirlooms. Delicate sandwiches, wafers thin as paper, cake that would tempt a fasting hermit to renounce his vows, with long glasses of iced tea or lemonade, are the simple dainties offered, and they are consumed with the unaffected pleasure in good things to eat which Southerners never think it worth while to conceal. In an informal way arrangements are made for the next meeting, and the little company disperses.