Eleanor Porter, a former musician, wrote fifteen novels including the classic Pollyanna. “Glad Refrains” looks at the ways she wrote about music in those books.
Oh, Money! Money! (1918)
Oh, Money! Money! tells of an unhappy multi-millionaire who cannot decide who will inherit his money. Stanley G. Fulton secretly gives $100,000 each to three distant cousins in a New England town to see how they manage wealth. He moves in the town as “Mr. Smith,” witnesses their foibles, falls in love and weds. (This book is summarized below.)
There are no professional musicians in Oh, Money! Money! and music is alluded to but twice: An old maid decides whether to go to Niagara Falls or buy a phonograph, plus, a while later, a pianist and violinist (amateurs) perform in a scene wherein Eleanor Porter introduces piano rolls.
“A Roll of Music”
Pretty teenager Mellicent is at risk of seduction by idle, rich boys, but they are foiled by a violinist named Donald Gray. In Chapter 16, the two boys, Pennock and Gaylord, are chatting up Mellicent (EHP’s spelling) at when Donald — “ a tall, manly-looking, square-jawed young fellow” who works in a “real estate office” — walks in carrying “his violin and a roll of music.”
… [T]wo minutes later young Gray and Mellicent were at the piano, he, shining-eyed and happy, drawing a tentative bow across the strings: she, no less shining-eyed and happy, giving him "A" on the piano.
[…] Messrs. Pennock and Gaylord were passing through sham interest and frank boredom to disgusted silence. …
The “roll of music” would be a roll of perforated paper that could be fitted to a take-up reel on a player piano. Driven by a foot pump, the unrolling strip travels over a “tracker board” where bursts of air go through the holes and trip hammers that strike the piano strings. Hidden knobs work the pedals. Donald had brought a roll to accompany his violin, but Mellicent stepped in to play the piano, and “Pianolas” are not mentioned again in this book.
The technology was old — rotating metal cylinders, “barrels with pins,” had powered carillons, music boxes, calliopes, etc. before the piano was invented, but paper manufacturing advanced in the 1800s to a point where strips of inexpensive paper 11.25 inches wide could be made strong enough for “rolls of music” — the first portable recording medium that could capture and play back entire performances.
Player pianos were introduced in the 1880s and were very popular from 1900-1930. They were, as a matter of fact, the largest sector of the music industry in several of those years. Why? No talent or skill was necessary to play them. Music from a player piano was clearly audible while phonographs and radios needed bulky headsets to listen. Player pianos were present in saloons and clubhouses and were useful in piano instruction. But their biggest customers may have been movie houses where music rolls accompanied silent films.
BELOW — A piano dealer on YouTube briefly explains the key features of a player piano :
Piano rolls sold for about a dollar, and hundreds of thousands of them were created, but, the adoption of the music roll as an archival medium had been delayed by a failure to standardize the medium. Most early rolls had a short span of sixty-five holes, but, after 1911, a full eighty-eight holes was required. Music roll recordings included some by the composers themselves. Gustav Mahler, Maurice Ravel, Claude Debussy, George Gershwin, Scott Joplin and Jelly Roll Morton are among the dozens of artists that may yet be heard on music rolls playing their compositions exactly as they were originally performed.
BELOW—A paper strip slides over a tracker bar to play “Singin’ in the Rain” (with song lyrics in the margin) in a YouTube clip.
The music roll went into hibernation in the thirties, but the idea behind it was re-discovered decades later by computer-savvy musicians. They recognized the music roll as a prototype for composing music on a digital processor.
MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) virtually emulates the system of player piano rolls, but can be programmed to reproduce the sound of any instrument — or combination of instruments (or sounds). Today, MIDI code is ubiquitous and is packaged with musical instruments and home computers. The MIDI Association, which governs standards for the application, explicitly credits piano roll technology for originating the idea.
BELOW — Here is a MIDI sample from YouTube:
Eleanor also included “rolls of music” in her short stories. She may have used a player piano to accompany her vocal performances. We wonder if she may have made a piano roll of her own playing or was she reluctant to use the prevalent 65-hole standard? If recording standards were better before 1900 would Eleanor have continued her career as a musician?
THE STORY:
Mr.Stanley G. Fulton, about 40 y.o., has $20 million to spend. Lawyer Ed Norton learns Fulton has no wife or heirs and no colleges to endow; but he frowns on church charities, do-gooders, etc. Three cousins may inherit, and he wants to endowing each with $100,000 to see how they manage their fortune. He pretends to leave for South America but comes to Hillerton (“a nice little New England town”), grows a beard for disguise and poses as genealogist “John Smith” to research Blaisdell lineage. He meets three Blaisdell siblings and a stepsister:
(1) Frank, a grocer, with wife Jane, a skinflint and daughter Mellicent,18, a pianist “John Smith” will live with them at first.
(2) James: office worker with wife, Harriet, a social-climber, plus son Fred, 17, daughter Bessie, 16 and boy Benny, 9. They unwisely move to snobby neighborhood and live beyond their means.
(3) Flora , their sister, 42, dressmaker and gossip, never married.
(4) Maggie Duff, 45 — the daughter of Father Duff’s first wife — not a Blaisdell. She was in college, but gave it up to care for “Father Duff.” She uses the word “glad” a lot and has a cheery effect on people. Smith falls for her.
The Blasdells are told to expect money upon the death of an unknown relative. When it comes, it causes turmoil: new houses, schools, cars — and new responsibilities. Blaisdell kids are led astray by rich Gaylords. Mellicent is courted by nice boy Donald Grey. Smith moves in with Maggie to board. Frank sells his grocery stores to enjoy leisure, but wife Jane is money-mad. Flora travels. Jane buys gold mine stock. Jane and Frank plan trip. Father Duff dies. Hattie sees other people are richer and wants James to go back to work. Jane wants Mellicent to marry Gaylord, but Smith to matches Mellicent to nice boy Donald. Young Fred is drinking and gambling with the Gaylords. Miss Flora gives money to false charity, but Smith shows her the scam. Bottom line: The $100K has not brought happiness — only lost investments and exposure to new evils.
Smith tells Maggie he loves her. Smith reveals that he is really Fulton and proposes to Maggie who wants his $20 million to feed the hungry, fix up slums, treat disease, build hospitals and factories, etc. He won’t tell the Blaisdells who he is because it would reveal his deception. So to marry Maggie, he must return from South America as Stanley. They “meet” and marry in Chicago. His fortune will be invested in Maggie’s collectivist projects. END
Money? Money?
The lesson of this book is stated by Stanley Fulton in the first chapter:
“I tell you, Ned, money that isn’t earned is the most risky thing in the world.
Indeed, strife and turmoil followed unearned wealth for the small-town Blaisdells, and, by the end of the book, Mr. Fulton’s millions are not destined for his relatives to enjoy but to build a utopian community as imagined by his new wife, Maggie. Again, we see Eleanor Porter’s persistent concern for economic injustice. Also evident is her impatience with mis-guided church charities, as when when Fulton continues: “If I donated to a church, it was called conscience money; and if I didn’t donate to it, they said I was mean and miserly.”
I half-expected this book to mimic The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg (1900), a contemporary story by Mark Twain which tells of a cynical man who ruins a smug, small town by endowing it with a fortune. Hadleyburg is superficially similar to Money because of the trope of unexpected wealth, but Twain intended his story to be read as a satire on the Garden of Eden, while Eleanor, perhaps, meant Money to be an upbeat reply to Hadleyburg.
For the next “Glad Refrains,” we will look at Dawn (1919), a war-time novel about blindness that, oddly, has no musical references, and, then, Mary Marie (1920) about a child of divorce who plays the piano.
Oh Money! Money is in the Public Domain and available free HERE at Gutenburg.org.
Thanks for sharing this piece, Jim.
Love the back-story on the Rolls of Music.
Who knew about those silent movies! Fascinating.