[ Mackay / "Music and Misery" ]
Charles Mackay (1812 - 1889) was a Scottish journalist, editor, novelist, poet, and songwriter.
This essay first appeared in the August 8, 1868, issue of All the Year Round, a weekly literary and cultural magazine owned and edited by Charles Dickens.
This article recounts Mackay's experiences with music — much of it unexpected, undesired, and bad — in the streets of London, in particular the street on which his rented house was located. Thinking it a quiet lane when he took the house, Mackay is horrified to discover it appears to be a thoroughfare for street musicians: "I had not been three hours within these peaceable precincts before I discovered that the transaction of business in this respectable street was simply impossible, that I had been deceived by false appearances, and that as a residence it was a very Pandemonium of discords and evil sounds from daylight until long after dark." (XX: 220)
One of the passing buskers includes a Newfoundland in his act:
Twenty minutes past Six. — A man leading a Newfoundland dog, with a monkey riding on its back. The man beats a big drum to attract
attention. Somebody rises from the dinner table, throws a bone into the street to the dog, which speedily unhorses, or I ought perhaps to say undogs the monkey, and darts upon the prize in spite of the opposition and the kicks of his master. The monkey performs several little tricks—holds out its paw for halfpence, mounts and dismounts at word of command, but not until the dog has crunched the bone and made an end of it, with as much relish as if it were flesh; and is altogether so popular with the children and the servants, as to earn the price of a dinner for his owner. The monkey gets bits of cakes and apple from the children, the dog gets another bone, with a little meat on it, and the partnership of the man and two beasts, departs in peace; to amuse the children somewhere else. (XX: 232)