‘Can’t It Be Stopped?’—London and the Popular Tone

Abstract

There have been many readings of late Victorian and early Edwardian fiction that argue for the influence of early cinema on writers’ visual imaginations. However, as this chapter explores, writers’ auditory imaginations were also engaged by a newly popular ‘tone’, exemplified by music hall entertainment, and more generally by the noise of musical mechanization, as heard in different forms of ‘street’ instruments, such as the pianola. Through an analysis of tunes and tones represented in different novels, including Wells’s Kipps, Gissing’s Thyrza, and Conrad’s Chance, this chapter reveals writers’ broader responses to London’s popular culture.

Considering the high social tone of the Royal Grand, it was really a very loud instrument indeed. It gave vent to three deafening brays, and so burst the dam of silence that had long pent it in. It seemed to be chiefly full of the great-uncles of trumpets, megalo-trombones, and railway breaks. It made sounds like shunting trains. It did not so much begin as blow up your counterscarp and rush forward to storm under cover of melodious shrapnel.

H.G. Wells, Kipps (1905) ¹