More on Music

[Fred Shapiro]

Here is more from J. W. Lowe on Stumpers:


Somserset Maugham's story "Rain," published in a book in 1921 (and separately
before?), has an example:---

    "She sat with her hands nervously clasped, a spot of colour on her high
cheek bones, listening to what was about to happen below. They all listened.
They heard him clatter down the wooden stairs and throw open the door. The
singing stopped suddenly, but the gramophone continued to bray out its vulgar
tune. They heard Davidson's voice and then the noise of something heavy
falling. The music stopped. He had hurled the gramophone on the floor."

Similarly, if you're looking for _ragtime_ used to mean _recorded ragtime,_
the final scene offers a famous example:---

    "Her voice was hard and steady. Dr. Macphail could not understand the
look in her eyes. Her pale face was very stern. They walked back slowly,
never saying a word, and at last they came round the bend on the other side
of which stood their house. Mrs. Davidson gave a gasp, and for moment they
stopped still. An incredible sound assaulted their ears. The gramophone which
had been silent for so long was playing, playing ragtime loud and harsh."

Earlier, more succinctly: "In the evening she played through the various
reels of her gramophone, but the pretence of mirth was obvious now. The
ragtime had a cracked, heart-broken rhythm as though it were a one-step of
despair."

If used, these excerpts, which come from texts available on the web, should
be checked against the original.

Curiously, like the story's Davidson, a British missionary in Samoa really
did commit suicide, but he'd done so about seventy years before Maugham's
visit to Pago Pago. It could be interesting to know if Maugham knew about
that suicide, or whether he made Davidson's up out of whole cloth.


Fred Shapiro