Van der Straeten’s book is cluttered up with documents of musty interest.  Among them are a number that gain a pathetic interest by the frequence of the appeals of musicians or their widows for a pittance of charity from the hand of some royal or ducal patron.  If there be in these democratic days any musician who feels humiliated by the struggle for existence with its necessities for wire-pulling and log-rolling and sly advertisement, and by the difficulty of stemming the tide of public ignorance and indifference, let him remember that at least he is a free man, and need lick nobody’s boots; and let him cast an eye upon the chronicles of shameful humiliation, childish deference, grovelling servility, and whimsical reward or punishment, favour, or neglect, that marked the “golden age” when musicians found patrons from whose conceit or ennui they might wheedle a most uncertain living.

Among the most pathetic of such instances is that of Josse Boutmy (1680—­1779), court organist at Brussels, and famous in his day,—­which was a long day.  When he was at the age of eighty and the father of twelve children, he had to stoop to appeals for charity; again at ninety-seven he appeals.  At ninety-eight he pleads to be retired with a pension; at ninety-nine he dies.  Three days after his death his son is asking a pension for the mother of that dozen children.  She also writes a pitiful letter still preserved.

“My husband, Judocus Boutmy, had the happiness of serving, for thirty-five years, as first organist of the chapel of Your Highness.  Infirmities, the result of old age, and twelve children raised at great cost, to enable them to earn their bread, have left me at his death in indigence the greater since my son Laurent Boutmy, who for many years gave with approbation assistance to his father, in the hope of succeeding to his post, has been deprived of this boon by others.

“The hope of finding subsistence in the heritage of my ancestors made me go back to Germany, where unhappily the death of my brothers, my absence, the disorder of war, of law, and a faithless administration, have prevented, at least during my lifetime, all that I could hope.  Save for the tenderness of a daughter, who is herself hardly in easy circumstances, having a family, I should lack the necessaries of life.  The infirmities, resulting on an age of seventy, passed in adversity and work, prevent me from gaining my own living.”

Van der Straeten says that her name was Katrina, that she came from Westphalia.  Save a few titles of his works and a few accounts of this pathetic struggle, this is all we know of poor Josse Boutmy and his old wife.  Then there is Jacques Buus, who makes various appeals for aid for his increasing family.  A refreshing novelty in these annals of sordid poverty is given us of H.J.  De Croes, court-organist at Brussels in the eighteenth century, who was forced to make an appeal for charity because the son whom he had sent abroad to study did not return to support his father, but decided to marry a woman he met at Ratisbon; it is pleasant to add that the appeal was granted.