and milk-pudding. It is a
common-place. For that is the curious thing about the foreigner:
wherever he wanders he takes his country with him. Englishmen get into
queer corners of the world, and adapt themselves to local customs, fit
themselves into local landscapes. Not so the Continental. Let him go to
London, New York, Chicago, San Francisco, and he will take France, or
Germany, or Italy, or Russia with him. Here in this little square mile
of London is France: French shops, French comestibles, French papers,
French books, French pictures, French hardware, and French restaurants
and manners. In old Compton Street he is as much in France as if he were
in the rue Chaussee d'Antin. I met some time since a grey little
Frenchman who is first fiddle at a hall near Piccadilly Circus. He has
never been out of France. Years and years ago he came from Paris, and
went to friends in Wardour Street. There he worked for some time in a
French music warehouse; and, when that failed, he was taken on in a
small theatre near Shaftesbury Avenue. Thence, at fifty-two, he drifted
into this music-hall orchestra, of which he is now leader. Yet during
the whole time he has been with us he has never visited London. His
London life has been limited to that square mile of short, brisk
streets, Soho. If he crossed Piccadilly Circus, he would be lost, poor
dear!

"Ah!" he sighs. "France ... yes ... Paris. Yes." For he lives only in
dreams of the real Paris. He hopes soon to return there. He hoped soon
to return there thirty years ago. He hates his work. He does not want
to play the music of London, but the music of Paris. If he must play in
London, he would choose to play in Covent Garden orchestra, where his
fancy would have full freedom. When he says Music, he means Massenet,
Gounod, Puccini, Mascagni, Leoncavallo. He plays Wagner with but little
interest. He plays Viennese opera with a positive snort. Ragtime--well,
I do not think he is conscious of playing it; he fiddles mechanically
for that. But when, by a rare chance, the bill contains an excerpt from
Pagliacci, La Boheme, or Butterfly, then he lives. He cares nothing for
the twilight muse of your intellectual moderns--Debussy, Maurice Ravel,
Scriabine, and such. For him music is melody, melody, melody--laughter,
quick tears, and the graceful surface of things; movement and festal
colour.

He seldom rises before noon--unless rehearsals compel--and then, after a
coffee, he wanders forth, sm