THE BENEFACTOR
Vanity Fair (UK) (December 15, 1904)
(Louis Pouzot, of Paris, annoyed by a neighbour’s practising on the trombone, attacked him with a knife recently.)
ALL ye whose brows, when German bands
Strike up, grow moist and clammy,
Who rend your hair with restless hands
When organs grind out “Sammy”,
Who moan when tuneless loafers try
To emulate Caruso,
Drink in the narrative which I
Will sing of Monsieur Pouzot.
This Pouzot, who was on the whole
The best of men, or near it,
Had little music in his soul:
He didn’t like to hear it;
He was, in fact, the sort of man
Who’d rather to the stake walk
Than see a piece Wag-ner-i-an,
Or listen to a cake-walk.
One eve he sipped his “petit verre”
(For which the French are sticklers),
When suddenly a raucous blare
Assaulted his auric’lars;
Now loud, until the plaster cracked,
Now sinking to a mutter—
The sort of sounds, in point of fact,
Which only trombones utter.
For minutes five he sat aghast,
Too dazed for protestation:
And then it crossed his mind at last
To try Retaliation.
He rose, he frowned, he ground his teeth,
His breathing seemed to labour:
He drew his dagger from its sheath,
And reasoned with his neighbour.
* * * * *
My friends, whom music night and day
Has goaded to distraction,
Read carefully this tale, I pray,
And gird yourselves for action:
The time has come to cure by deeds
The ills we all abuse so.
London, like Paris, sorely needs
Her pioneering Pouzot.