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TENSION ENVELOPE CORP.
3 1148 00760 0232
as- ;
DEC?
DELIUS
Reproduced from a sketch in oils by James Gunn
DELIUS
as I knew him
EEIC FENBY
First published 1936
Refnrinted 1937
1948
TO
MY FATHER AND MOTHER
WITH
GRATITUDE AND AFFECTION
PRINTED Of ORBAT BRITAIN BY
I WmCHALL AND 40HS LTD., LONDON AND UVBRPOOL
AUTHOR'S NOTE
MY thanks are due to my friend James Gunn for
his kindness in allowing me to reproduce the
fine sketch in oils of Delius which forms the
frontispiece of this book. This head must not be
confused with the portrait to which reference is made
on pp. 117-18. It represents the painter's first im-
pression of the composer, an impression which, in my
eyes, is the truest I have seen. I am grateful to
Messrs. Boosey & Hawkes for their courtesy in per-
mitting me to print extracts from the full scores of
A Song of Summer and Songs of Farewell, and to the
Universal Edition for a similar favour in respect of a
quotation from the Walk to the Paradise Garden. I
must also acknowledge the kindness of the following
publishers in giving me their consent to quote from
copyright works: Messrs. Allen & Unwin for various
passages from Thomas Common's translation of
Nietzsche's Thus Spake Zarathu$tra\ Messrs. Dent &
Sons for extracts from John of Ruysbroeck's The
Adornment of the Spiritual Marriage; Messrs. Mac-
millan and the Executors of the late W. E. Henley for
the poem " Margaritae Sorori "; Messrs. Chatto &
Windus for several short extracts from Walt Whit-
man's Leaves of Grass. I am indebted to the B.B.C.
for allowing me to reprint my description of the
Idyll here, to Mr. Balfour Gardiner, and to the
vii
AUTHOR'S NOTE
Executors of the late Frederick and Jelka Delius for
permission to publish several letters, and, in addition,
I respectfully ask the indulgence of those whom I have
mentioned in my narrative.
E.F.
CONTENTS
Part One
AN INTERLUDE IN THE LIFE OF
FREDERICK DELIUS
p. i
Part Two
How HE WORKED
.129
Part Three
SOME ASPECTS OF
THE MAN AND THE COMP&SER
AS I KNEW HIM
'59
Part Four
THB SUNDOWN
p. 213
Appendix of Scores
and Index
PART ONE
AN INTERLUDE IN
THE LIFE OF FREDERICK DELIUS
YOUTH is a strange time, and the stuff of Youth is
stranger. For some, for the coarser and happier
natures among us, Youth is the playtime of Life ;
for others, for the more impressionable and thoughtful
of us, Youth is a gradual and painful awakening to
the sense of our heritage. We turn from one con-
flicting philosophy to another in our pathetic attempts
to solve for ourselves the tremendous problem of
Good and Evil, and, swept off our feet by violent
enthusiasms, we oscillate between this and that
conception of Life until, weary and dispirited, we look
about us in this beautiful world and curse the day that
man began to philosophise. Then there begins that
passionate chase of all those transitory things that pall
almost as soon as possessed. Puzzled and perplexed,
we learn the World's Way:
As, to behold Desert a beggar born.
And needy Nothing trimm'd in jollity,
And purest Faith unhappily forsworn,
And gilded Honour shamefully misplaced,
And maiden Virtue rudely strumpeted,
And right Perfection wrongly disgraced,
And Strength by limping Sway disabled,
And Art made tongue-tied by Authority,
And Folly, doctor-like, controlling Skill,
And simple Truth miscalPd Simplicity,
And captive Good attending captain 111 -
4 DELIUS AS I KNEW HIM
until, hopelessly disillusioned, we are left with our
shattered ideals.
Yet there is one thing the world with all its rotten-
ness cannot take from us, and that is the deep and
abiding joy and consolation perpetuate in Great Music.
Here the Spirit may find home and relief when all else
fails. It offers an 'open sesame* to a world of content-
ment such as naught can offer in this brief sojourn
here, until at last we shall be brought into the presence
of that 'Eternal Light which loves and smiles/
In my own experience the glorious final pages of
Elgar's Second Symphony have given me a deeper
insight into life, and kindled a greater zest for living,
than all that philosophy has ever taught me. Here is
the message of a man who had lived and found life
hard but good, and every minute of it worth living.
Yes, it had been good, but something even finer yet
awaited him !
May he rest serene in the company of the Great
Musician and the great masters of the noble art he
served so well !
Here let those who would cavil remember that Elgar
is the only English composer, probably the only
composer, who has given perfect expression to that
rarest and sublimest of all moods (and that but once
for a few bars only at the beginning of the Second Part
of his Dream of Geronttus) - the mood to which all
composers should surely aspire, the mood which
savours of that heavenly world wherein lies our
destiny, whether we have the courage and honesty to
admit it or not - the mood of blessed felicity, by which
I mean an active and loving rest in God.
AN INTERLUDE 5
This is far removed from sanctimoniousness, but
surely we of this tired world need such music of rest
and felicity as never before.
The debt of humanity to its Great Music-Makers
can never be paid, and, though most of them went
hungry of the things of this world, their meed is not to
be reckoned in gold.
It was in such a mood of intense gratitude for all the
loveliness Frederick Delius had brought into my life
that I first wrote to him, in the hope that it might give
him pleasure to know that his music had meant so
much in the life of a very young man,
As yet, I had heard none of his music in the
concert-room except an atrocious performance of his
Violin Concerto, the violin-pianoforte arrangement of
which had been done to death by two of our local
celebrities. It says much for my tender enthusiasm
of those days for Delius's music that it too was not
quenched by such a rendering. I had had, therefore,
to content myself with the occasional broadcast
performances of his work, and with such gramophone
records as had then been issued.
In Yorkshire, the county of his birth, it was almost
impossible to find out anything about his published
music, and, had this been possible, the purchase of
but a few scores would have emptied my slender purse
at that time.
Nevertheless, I had known on first hearing it that
the music of this man was no ordinary music. It had
moved me so strangely and unaccountably, and this
even at second-hand, so to speak.
6 DELIUS AS I KNEW HIM
When, at last, after weeks of enquiries and dis-
appointments, I was able to peruse the vocal score
of his Mass of Life, I had stood spellbound in the little
music-shop in the main street of my native town as I
read that soul-stirring and original passage for Solo
Contralto which, rendered into English by Thomas
Common, reads:
O Zarathustra ! Beyond good and evil found we our
island and our green meadow - we two alone !
Therefore must we be friendly to each other !
. , . O Zarathustra, thou
art not faithful enough to me !
*
There is an old heavy, heavy, booming-clock : it
boometh by night up to thy cave:
- When thou hearest this clock strike the hours at
midnight, then thinkest thou between one and twelve
thereon -
~ Thou thinkest thereon, O Zarathustra, I know it
- of soon leaving me !
As I read on, a cold thrill ran through me at the
magical entry of the chorus basses singing sotto voce:
Oman! Take heed!
What saith deep midnight's voice indeed ?
*I slept my sleep -
From deepest dream I've woke and plead :~
The world is deep,
And deeper than the day could read.
Deep is its woe -
Joy - deeper still than grief can be :
Woe saith: Hence! Go!
But joys all want eternity -
Want deep, profound eternity P
and my musing continued until long after the Solo
Soprano's tender and exquisite close:
AN INTERLUDE 7
And we gazed at each other, and looked at the
green meadow o'er which the cool evening was just
passing, and we wept together.
I knew nothing of Nietzsche. It was the music that
struck me to the heart so that I could scarcely think
of anything else for days.
Thus, by the merest chance, on my first handling a
Delius -score, I stumbled on the very pages that
contain the musical pith of all the composer had to
say.
*.
I had not expected to receive any acknowledgment
of my letter, and was greatly surprised to hear from
Delius as follows:
* Grez-sur-Loing,
'Bourron,
Trance,
'9.6.1938.
*MY DEAR YOUNG FRIEND, - Your sympathetic and
appreciative letter gave me the greatest pleasure. I
am always glad when I hear that my music appeals to
the young. I know Scarborough quite well ; when a
schoolboy I used to spend my summer holidays at
Filey and my memories of all the happy days on that
coast are still very green. Most likely the Phil-
harmonic choir will give the Mass of Life again under
Kennedy Scott next year, when perhaps you may be
able to hear it.
'With warm greetings,
C I remain,
* Sincerely yours,
TREDERICK DELIUS/
8 DELIUS AS I KNEW HIM
About this time I had read several articles on Delius
and his music, and had learnt of his unhappy plight,
namely that he was now blind and paralysed and un-
able to work any more. But the real tragedy of it all,
or so it seemed to me, was to hear that the composer
was worried and unhappy because it was physically
impossible for him to continue and finish his life's
work. Apparently there were several works which he
had begun, and been unable to complete. He could
bear with his misfortunes if only he could finish these
scores.
To have something beautiful in you and not be able
to bring it to fruition because the human machinery
had broken down seemed hard. To be a genius, as this
man plainly was, and have something beautiful in you
and not be able to rid yourself of it because you could
no longer see your score paper and no longer hold
your pen - well, the thought was unbearable !
I remember how, with my dog> Peter, I walked for
miles one stormy day on the cliffs reflecting on the
helplessness and misery of the man. What delicacy of
feeling was in his music ! What must such a sensitive
nature be suffering ? Could not anything be done ?
Of course, I would be willing to But how dare
I presume such a thing ! It was preposterous !
Ashamed and surprised, I dismissed the idea from
my mind and, battling with the wind, tried to think
of other things.
During the next few weeks the conceit that I could
help became an obsession. It chased me like some
Hound of Heaven, and I hid from it under any and
every excuse that I could find ; but it was always there,
AN INTERLUDE 9
and in the end I could not sleep for it. Finally it
conquered me, and, getting up in the middle of the
night, I took pen and paper and wrote to Delius
offering my help for three or four years. I would do
anjrthing to be the means of his finishing that music,
and, provided that my suggestion was acceptable to
him at all, I felt certain that I would succeed in my
purpose. How it was going to be done - well, God
alone knew the answer to that !
I told no one, and waited anxiously for his reply. It
came:
* Grez-sur-Loing,
'Bourron,
'29.^.1928.
'DEAR MR. FENBY, - 1 am greatly touched by your
kind and sympathetic letter and I should love to accept
your offer. Come here by all means as soon as you
can and see if you like it before deciding anything.
How old are you ?
'You know, this is a lovely spot, just a quiet little
village and our house is in a big garden going down to
the river, but of course we live very much alone.
'Perhaps the best way for you to come would be to
travel from London during the night. For instance -
you take the train at 9.10 a.m. to Bourroh, our station,
where you will be at n and where we will have you
fetched if we know when to expect you. With kind
regards from my wife,
*I am,
'Yours sincerely,
'FREDERICK DELIUS.'
Then followed some correspondence concerning
passports, and I received a postcard from Mrs. Delius
10 DELIUS AS I KNEW HIM
informing me that Delius's Sea-drift was to be per-
formed at the Leeds Festival, and that if I had not
arranged to leave before that date her husband would
like me to hear it.
I went over to Leeds at the last moment, but, owing
to the stupidity of a minor official, I was unable to
gain admittance in spite of the fact that I offered ten
shillings to be privileged to stand inside the door at
the back of the hall for that one piece.
However, I was able to tell Delius that I had heard
on good authority that Sir Thomas Beecham had
excelled himself, and given a magnificent performance.
Some months later, when I met Sir Thomas at
Grez, he chaffed me about my adventure. 'My dear
boy/ said he, 'if I had only known I would have put
you on the platform !*
The last letter from Grez before my departure read :
'DEAR MR. FENBY, - My husband was very pleased
with your letter and said you did quite right with the
Passport authorities. ... I hope your journey will
not be delayed as we are expecting our great friend
Balfour Gardiner on the aoth and he is anxious to play
an arrangement of a-Delius work with you which he
has made. You would have to copy out your part
from his manuscript. So you see your kind help will
be required at once,
'With kindest regards from us both, also to your
parents,
4 Yours sincerely,
*JELKA DELIUS,
T.S. - 1 will meet you in Bourron/
IT had rained all night, and when the train steamed
into the long and straggling station of the lazy
little village of Bourron, a half-hour's walk over
the fields from Grez-sur-Loing, that October morn-
ing, there seemed to be no duller place on earth. It
was still drizzling when I alighted, and I looked about
me for some friendly recognition. It came from a
rather unexpected face, and I found myself saying,
'Mrs. Delius - 1 presume ?' I saw that she was
surprised, and this, I afterwards learnt, was due to
my absurdly young appearance. We shook hands,
and a soft and unusual voice with a slightly un-English
accent about it greeted me: 'Mr. Fenby, this is a
pleasure ! I am so delighted that you have come out
here to help my husband. We both appreciate your
kindness very much. If only you can work together
in some way it will be so good for him, better than all
the medicines in the world, and it is the dream of my
life that he will be able to compose again/
She instructed Andre, the untidy little chauffeur, to
collect my things, and as we walked down the plat-
form I saw that she had kind eyes. She was dressed
simply, of fair complexion and medium height, amply
proportioned and obviously a woman of great physical
strength.
We climbed up into the ancient Ford with its
XX
12 DELIUS AS I KNEW HIM
yellow curtains, a lovable old bone-shaker familiar to
unknown visitors as the Delias ensign at the railway
station, and were soon on our way down the station
lane. This grand old chariot had never failed them.
In its heyday they had toured Italy in it, but now it
did no manner of work for six days, but on the seventh
day, Friday, out it came to take them oif to market.
It remained their trusty servant until a few months
before Mrs. Delius's death, when it was sold to the
chauffeur. But such was its devotion to the Delius
household that it had no mind to serve others, not
even the little fellow who had tended it with such care
for years. It had taken the hill over to Fontainebleau
a thousand and one times with all the impudence of a
Bluebird, but on its first outing with its new master
it had not the heart to mount it. Half-way up the hill
it refused to go an inch farther, and then it ran back-
wards, mounted the kerb, and smashed itself up on
its side !
We now struck the grande-route, passing beneath a
long avenue of tall and stately poplars which stretched
away over the hill-top like some proud regiment in
double file. This noble bodyguard was felled to the
ground some months afterwards with all the ruthless-
ness of the modern State behind each blow, and now,
eight years later, the fresh young trees cannot quite
dispel the sense of desolation about the place, nor
take from my heart the sound of those dying groans.
The last moan of a tree as it falls to the ground is
one of the saddest sounds I know.
I asked how Delius was, and was told that he was
fairly well, that he was still resting, and that he would
AN INTERLUDE 13
be brought downstairs at mid-day to see me. Mrs.
Delius hoped that I played the piano, as they were
expecting a visit from a great friend of theirs, a
Russian 'cellist named Barjansky, who would be sure
to bring his instrument along with him.
With this we turned to the left, down a lane, and,
having passed a vulgar and pretentious villa, gaily
coloured and adorned with hogs' heads, my companion
said, 'This is Grez. We have lived here for over
thirty years !'
We entered the village, which seemed none too
clean, all grey and depressing, and zigzagging our
way through the narrow streets we finally halted
outside the rambling house which was to be my home
for the greater part of the next six years.
It was a curious house, fronting the street and
divided in the middle by a great porch through which
one could have driven a loaded hay-waggon with ease.
Over this porch was a corridor, which joined the two
wings of the house together, and here Delius's German
male nurse had his room. In the right wing there
was a big living-room, beyond it the kitchen, and
overhead Delius's bedroom and & guest-room. In
the left wing there was a guest-room on the street
level, and upstairs the music-room, which led into a
small but lofty bedroom. This was to be my room.
Over the two wings were enormous studios, and
branching out from the side of the right wing was
yet another studio with glass roof, whilst underneath
it were the various outhouses. The back of the house
looked on to a now faded garden, and in the back-
ground, some two to three hundred yards away, the
14 DELIUS AS I KNEW HIM
great trees by the river-side piled themselves up in a
gigantic semicircle, but with a mellowness about
them such as I had never seen before.
We climbed the stairs up to the music-room, and,
pausing in the doorway, Mrs. Delius said, 'This is
the room where Delius has written all his finest
music/
I entered with reverence. Immediately I felt the
atmosphere was somewhat sinister, and I was curiously
ill at ease. To the very end of my days in Grez I
never fully overcame that unpleasant feeling in the
music-room. Sometimes, when I have been hundreds
of miles away, I have suddenly remembered it and
shuddered. I cannot understand it at all.
It was a long room, with two heavily curtained
windows looking down on to the street, and one on to
the garden. Taking my eyes off the Ibach grand
piano at which Delius had composed, I glanced from
picture to picture on the yellow walls. Instantly I
felt a distaste for those sickly pinks which had been
lavished on almost every canvas, and, fearing lest my
dislike should be observed, I turned my attention to
the crowded bookshelves.
'Look, Mr. Fenby, this is your room through here.
I hope you will be comfortable/ continued Mrs.
Delius. 'I will go and tell Delius that you are here,
and will call you when he is ready.*
I was now left alone. A full-sized face of mad
Strindberg by Munch frowned down at me from over
the foot of the bed, and over the head was a framed
photograph of Nietzsche. More fantastic creations
of Munch, dark with suicide, hung high up on the
AN INTERLUDE 15
walls, which were covered by a coarse brown material
(almost like sacking) held by tacks, and round the
wainscot had been stencilled quaint little hunting
scenes. Over by the window to the garden was a
clever little sketch of a shrieking goblin. Could this
be the fellow who sometimes shouts in the wrong
place in Eventyr ?
It was all so strange that I wondered whether I
should have nightmare that night. But I longed to
see Delius, and was only happy, though a little
nervous, when at last I stood hesitating on the
door-step of the living-room which led from the
porch.
'Here is Mr. Fenby,' prompted his wife.
'Come in, come in, Fenby. I am very glad to meet
you/ said Delius, and I walked slowly across the room
to return his greeting.
Nothing can ever dim the memory of that first
meeting.
There was Delius, gaunt, deathly pale, his fine
classical head proud and erect as he sat upright in his
chair. Round him stretched a great screen so that
for a moment it seemed as if some Roman Cardinal
was sitting there. He wore a white shirt open at the
neck, and a checked rug hiing loosely about his knees.
With difficulty he extended his arm, as though to
compel the life to return into his drooping hand.
Again I hesitated. It seemed wrong to shake hands,
but a glance from Mrs. Delius reassured me. I took
the long tapering fingers in mine, and in words
something like thfc&e I said, 'Well, sir, this is a very
great honour. I am very proud and privileged to
16 DELIUS AS I KNEW HIM
come here, and it is very good of you to receive me so
kindly/
'Now, Fenby/ said Delius, 'just make yourself at
home, and use everything in your part of the house as
if it were your own -my music, my music-room.
But sit down and tell me about your journey/
We talked about Scarborough, which he had known
very well as a boy. Did I go to the Cricket Festivals
as he had done ? Did I know Filey ? What glorious
times he had had there when his family used to take
a house in the Crescent for the summer holidays !
How he loved playing cricket in the neighbouring
villages of Gristhorpe and Hunmanby, and what fine
fellows the farm-hands were 1 He had nearly lost
his life in some mad escapade on the Brigg when,
along with another boy, he had been trapped by the
tide.
The conversation flowed pleasantly and easily
enough until it suddenly turned to music - English
music - how, I cannot remember. But I shall never
forget the change that came over him when, in my
innocence, I uttered these two harmless words, nor
shall I forget that frown, that contemptuous smile,
which he rounded off by a sly pursing of the lips in a
manner peculiarly his own, that smile which I grew
to anticipate whenever visitors began skating on thin
ice, nor that startling, almost uncouth broadness of
speech as he interrupted me: 'English music ? Did
you say English music ?' There was a pause, and
then he added, 'Well - IVe never heard of any !'
What had I said ? I felt the blood flow to my
finger-tips, and in the silence which followed I saw
AN INTERLUDE 17
many things, but, clearest of all, that if I was to stay
here for months on end and work with him I must not
voice my opinions.
The immensity of my self-imposed task weighed
hard upon me, and I could have given it up there and
then but for my pride. He remained silent, and did
not address me until his wife and I were seated for
lunch, and then he merely asked me what I would
drink. I was thankful when we had finished, for all
through the meal he continued severe and aloof, and
I felt that every word of our conversation, hers and
mine, had been a word too many for him. He had
endured it, and had now and then broken the silence
with, 'Bitte, Brod. . . . KartofFeln. . . . Spinat. . . .
Geben Sie mir mein Bier* - but this not for us, but
for the young German nurse who was feeding him.
When I rose to go, he told me that on his desk in
the music-room I should find the MS. score of an
unpublished work of his -a symphonic poem, A
Poem of Life and Love - and that he wanted me to
transcribe it into short score so that it could be played
on two pianos. He would like to hear it again, to see
if it was good. His friend, Balfour Gardiner, had
already begun it ; would I finish it ?
I lit my pipe and read through the score; I was
hopelessly disappointed. It was true there were
lovely passages here and there, but the work might
have been written by a student in Delius's manner*
Turning to the last page of Gardiner's arrangement, I
began to work. Two hours later three strokes on the
bell called me down to tea, and as I approached the
door I heard the young German reading aloud. The
18 DELIUS AS I KNEW HIM
reading stopped as I entered and Mrs. Delius came
to my rescue. Happily, there was no need for that
kindness, for Delius had evidently made up his mind
to be entertaining just as I had made up mine to
avoid the mention of music like the plague.
I trembled to think what I would say should he
ask for my opinion on that symphonic poem !
After tea we left them to their reading, and Mrs.
Delius and I walked down the garden. Here I learnt
the routine of the household; how that one could take
out one's watch at any hour of the day and say, 'It
is half-past eleven - at this moment the nurse will be
carrying Delius downstairs*; or, *It is two o 'clock -
they will be taking him upstairs to rest* ; or, 'It is half-
past five -Mrs. Delius will just be relieving the
German nurse'; or, *It is three in the morning -the
nurse will be lifting him up to give him his orangeade'
- and all this with an almost military precision.
I found conversation a little trying, for my mind was
full of anxieties. Would I settle ? Had I it in me to
accustom myself to the conditions of this strange
household ? I did not fear loneliness, but could I
stand the complete lack of young society for months
at a time in such a place as this ?
I dreaded going indoors to that music-room; but
that was nothing. . How could I work with such a
difficult man as Delius ? The dankness of the garden
oppressed me, and when two strokes of the bell
sounded - for Mrs. Delius to go in and take her turn
in the eternal round of reading aloud - 1 went out
into the street to explore the village.
It was already dark, and too dark to make out much
AN INTERLUDE 19
of the church, except that there was a fine tower which
jutted out over the street, sheltering the pavement. I
passed beneath it and took the road before me. Two
men returning from the fields bade me *Bon-soir,'
and as I sauntered by the cottages I smelt delicious
soups in the making, for they were preparing the
evening meal.
The full significance of my undertaking became a
sober reality and not a dream any more, and, looking
up into the starry heavens, I prayed that I might
succeed. It is hard to pray at any time, and harder
still to an accompaniment of barking dogs, for my
unfamiliar steps had aroused the great Alsatians in a
yard near by, and soon it seemed as if the dogs of the
whole countryside were raging against me, such a
barking and a yapping was there. In a lighter mood
I should have taken heart from this welcome, but I
was sad in the darkness and a little afraid.
I turned, and, entering the house, crept upstairs to
the music-room and resumed my work.
At seven o'clock, Hildegarde, the pretty young
Saxon maid, came in shyly and said, * Wollen Sie bitte
zum essen kommen?'~so I went downstairs to
supper.
The good food, the wine, and the delightful conver-
sation revived me, and my heart went out to these two
dear old people. The old man's humanity returned to
him, and he became irresistible, and I saw much that
was sweet and lovable in his wife.
After supper, with a flickering oil-lamp to guide us,
we pushed him in his carriage up a hill which led out
of the village, and which, they told me, would take
20 DELIUS AS I KNEW HIM
one over to Marlotte, where lived old Joe Heseltine, an
uncle of Philip. So long as the weather was favourable
Delius never missed this airing before retiring. The
cool evening air was fresh and delicious and everything
was at peace. Little was said, and we left him to his
thoughts. We met no one on the way, and, as we
retraced our steps and neared the village, the street
lights went out - for it was nine o'clock and the village
was already asleep.
Bidding them 'Good night/ I went up to my room
and remembered no more until I heard a voice calling,
'Vbila Teau chaude, monsieur.'
It was eight o'clock, and the beginning of my first
full day in Grez.
3
WHEN I had taken my coffee and rolls I went
out into the garden, and, finding Mrs. Delias
there, I wandered down to the river with her
and heard the news.
Delius had slept well, and was free from pain. He
had not called her to read aloud in the night ; that was a
good sign. Barjansky would be here for supper, and
would probably be staying for two nights. The visits
of such great artists as this 'cellist were all too rare,
and, so long as Delius could bear the strain of listening
intently, such intimate music-makings as they enjoyed
on these occasions made him as happy as he could
ever expect to_be. But one could never be sure of
him; he was such a physical wreck, and had to be
watched and cared for as a baby in arms. The
slightest thing, no matter how trivial it might be, upset
him, for he had no strength to fight against -it. There
were weeks when he would never so much as mention
music at all, nor even ask for a gramophone record
of his own music to be played to him ; weeks when he
just trailed on from day to day, eating a little and
drinking out of all proportion to the next-to-nothing
he ate, when he did little else but sleep, and this even
during the reading. This distressing state of apathy
had greatly worried Mrs. Delius, and she had longed to
have some young and enthusiastic musician about the
22 DELIUS AS I KNEW HIM
house to rekindle his interest. She had written to Philip
Heseltine asking him to come and live with them, but
he had been unable to do so, and when they had
received my letter she had grasped at the opportunity
with both hands. It had seemed a heaven-sent
blessing. Now she was happy, and, if only the public
appreciation of her husband's music would quicken
and become vital, she would have all that she could
desire. It saddened her to think that this beautiful
and original music -the work of a lifetime -was
being so shamefully neglected. It would be harder
still if on his death there was a sudden vogue for
it.
However, Delius had been very definite that morn-
ing. He had said that he particularly wanted
Barjansky to play him his 'Cello Concerto and Sonata,
and that I was to look at the piano parts of these works.
There was something of a command in that tone,
and I went in mortal dread of it, for these works were
but names to me.
I was so anxious to begin my practising at once that
I took little notice of the church, which I saw was early
Norman, on the one side of the house, or the ruined
tower on the other; but the recollection of those great
and majestic Italian poplars higher up the river com-
pelled me to gaze at them again from the music-room
window before sitting down to my formidable task. I
practised until lunch and my confidence came back
to me.
Delius was very talkative and happy, for my delight
in his 'Cello Sonata was unrestrained* I could not
forget those soaring melodies, nor the subtleties of
AN INTERLUDE 33
their accompaniments. The treatment was mostly
chordal, it is true, but the placing of the chords was so
sensitive, so pregnant with suggestion, that, as each
new phrase bred in its stride the next phrase, one's
soul took flight along with it. I was impatient over
my food, for I hungered after more of that rhapsody.
Such music is the food of the Spirit, which cannot be
so easily appeased.
I played on until tea-time, and, when Mrs. Delius
suggested that instead of reading aloud to him Delius
might care to hear a gramophone record, I thrilled
with expectancy, for it is always a fascinating thing to
observe the effect of a man's music on himself. He
chose Sir Thomas Beecham's beautiful record of his
On Hearing the First Cuckoo in Spring, and, sitting
there opposite him in the quiet of that great room,
with no fidgeting neighbours or disturbing faces to
distract, one touched the very heart of Music in those
exquisite opening bars. Never had the sound of
strings nor Goossens's oboe-playing seemed so
magical ! A curious other-worldliness possessed him.
With his head thrown back, and swaying slightly to
the rhythm, he seemed to be seeing with those now
wide-open yet unseeing eyes, and his spirit ebbed and
flowed with the rise and fall of his music.
There was nothing of the quietist's surrender to idle
ictivity here, nor the sensualist's love of mere sound,
aut a continued reaching out of himself. A great
mystic has said that *God is an ocean that ebbs and
flows/ and no words are truer than these of Great
Music* It is only when we are unconscious of the
pulse of Time that we can aspire through goodness to
24 DELIUS AS I KNEW HIM
be at one with Things Eternal. The pause at the
turning of the disc did not disturb his rapture, and
this going-out of himself through the noble love of
music continued until after the lovely sounds of that
final and singularly beautiful cadence had died away.
Not until those moments of silence immediately fol-
lowing that music did I realise to the full the utter
poverty of words when, reverting to mortal speech, I
fished about in my mind for something to say. We
have all of us heard the inane remarks that people
have made at such times, and I have come to dread
these moments, for they invariably take away from us
all that we have received. Guided by a wiser impulse,
I let the silence speak for me, and in a quiet voice I
added two words only: 'Thank you/ He made no
response, and, smiling at his wife, I rose and stole
gently out of the room.
When I came down to supper that evening, Barjan-
sky was there. I was not prepared to find so unusual-
looking a man. He was of medium height, pale and
thin, but he had a striking head, with high forehead
and a mass of long bushy hair ; but for his white shirt
he was dressed entirely in black, and wore black
gaiters like those of an Anglican dean. After a few
minutes 1 conversation with him I perceived him to be
an extremely likeable fellow, and one of those rare
musicians who give the impression of being musical.
He was evidently <a great lover of Delius's work, and
his manner of address was born of reverence. He told
us, amongst other things, that the 'Cello Sonata had
been well received on his tour, that the quality of
German orchestras had much improved since Delius's
AN INTERLUDE 25
active days; and there was much questioning about
far-off friends.
After supper Mrs. Delius reminded us that in a few
minutes* time Sir Thomas Beecham would be broad-
casting Brigg Fair. We heard it to perfection, and
only once did it show signs of fading. When the
music had ceased, Delius called out, 'Splendid,
Thomas ! That is how I want my music to be played.
Beecham is the only conductor who has got the hang
of it ! That was a beautiful performance ! . . . Now
let's clear the air and play that record of the Revellers
-"Ol' Man River."'
This and other such records gave him great pleasure,
for the singing was reminiscent of the way his negroes
used to sing out in Florida, when as a young orange-
planter he had often sat up far into the night, smoking
cigar after cigar, and listening to their subtle impro-
visations in harmony. 'They showed a truly wonder-
ful sense of musicianship and harmonic resource in
the instinctive way in which they treated a melody/
he added, *and, hearing their singing in such romantic
surroundings, it was then and there that I first felt
the urge to express myself in music/
The greater part of the following day was spent in
vigorous rehearsal, and I was much amused by
Barjansky, who would practise like a demon for an
hour or so and then suddenly stop and say, 'Fenby,
I must now take my repose/ Bathed in perspiration,
he would then retire behind his 'cello-case, strip, dry
his shirt before the stove, and, flinging himself in a
state of the greatest exhaustion on the divan, would
smoke the vilest cigarettes imaginable. He was a
26 DELIUS AS I KNEW HIM
most inspiring person, and played like an angel. As
the hours passed by my two battle-horses became
more manageable, and I was not thrown so often.
Barjansky was satisfied, and I resolved to hang on at
all costs, even by their tails if need be.
Six o'clock came and Delius was carried up to the
music-room. I could see that Barjansky was very
nervous, and I had never known such an ordeal, for
my future at Grez depended on it. We played. When
we had finished, Delius, all smiles and exultant,
shouted from his corner, 'Bravo, Barjansky ! It was
glorious. Nobody plays this work like you. Oh, it
was superb ! Bravo, Fenby ! You amaze me, my
boy. I am so glad to have you here with me.'
This reassured me on my difficult enterprise. We
excelled ourselves in the concerto, and the old man
said that we must have a bottle of Pol Roger up from
the cellar to celebrate at supper. When they had
carried him away and I was left alone with Barjansky,
he took my hand and said, * Fenby, you are artiste.
It is vonderful for you that you are here ; it is vonderful
for Delius/ I was overjoyed, for now it seemed to
me that what I had dared to dream two months before
on those distant cliffs of Yorkshire might yet be
achievable, and that I might gradually grow in his
musical favour until at last Delius would have
sufficient confidence in me to dictate to me.
After supper he asked for more music. Would we
play him some of the Mass of Life ? Opening the
doors of the long corridor to the music-room, they
propped him up in bed, and we played all we could
in terms of 'cello and piano, and when we were tired
AN INTERLUDE 27
and had come to the end, and had gone through to his
room and heard his, 'What pleasure you two have
given me to-day P we were happy and contented and
ready for sleep.
The next morning Barjansky left for Italy, and, as
news came that Balfour Gardiner would be with us
that evening, I took up the arrangement for two pianos
of the symphonic poem and worked feverishly.
That day at lunch Delius said, 'You will like
Balfour. He is one of my oldest friends, and one of
the very few people I trust and admire implicitly.*
He then went on to tell me, with many a touch of dry
humour, that Gardiner had given up music; that he
had a theory that at a certain age a man ceases to be
musical, and Gardiner had already reached that age.
'Would that many others thought the same,' said
Delius.
He, Gardiner, now found much more fun in plant-
ing trees and painting rain-water tubs than in writing
music. In fact, he had .even been known to curtail
a holiday and race across Europe to assist at the
accouchement of his sow !
Delius was right. I did like Gardiner. I liked
everything about him except his musical pessimism,
and this I found intolerable. He could not see how
Delius could possibly work again, yet he thought
there was no harm in playing over that arrangement
to him. I could understand his diffidence here, but
I could not share his gloomy outlook on the future of
music. Since then, however, I have not been free
from such pessimism myself. Music as an art is a
glorious thing, but music as a profession is an
28 DELIUS AS I KNEW HIM
anathema. No man should follow it unless he can
help it.
We played the arrangement through several times,
but Delius merely thanked us and made no comment.
After all, it seemed hopeless. Happily for me, Mrs.
Delius still believed that something could be done.
further mention of A Poem of Life and Love
was raade during the days which followed
Balf our Gardiner 5 s departure, and I tried hard
to convince myself that this was because Delius was
suffering more than usual* There were intervals when
he was entirely free from pain, but there were long
periods when a man of weaker fibre would have wished
himself dead. Yet it was strange that he should never
refer to that music, and I wondered what was going
on in his mind. It distressed me deeply to see a man
in such pain, and more than once the sight of it drove
me from the room, such was his agony. But, since I
had offered to take a turn with the reading to allow
the others some recreation, and it had quickly become
a habit that I should read regularly each day, I could
not play the coward and run away.
Sir Thomas Beecham has said mtee than once that
he could scarcely bear to see Delius at the latter part
of his life, and that his visits to Grez always depressed
him. What would he have felt had he witnessed those
excruciating moments ?
At such times - and it was so often towards sunset -
Delius would suddenly become restless and uneasy,
now wanting a thick rug over his legs, now a thin one,
now no rug at all. Perhaps he would fed more
comfortable with his feet on the ground ? No, he had
39
30 DELIUS AS I KNEW HIM
felt more relief with them on the chair. Were his feet
touching ? Were his legs straight ? After half an
hour or so of these preliminaries, during which one
had been trying to read aloud to him, the pains in his
legs would gradually intensify until his ravings became
pitiful* Unbelievable though it may seem, I never
once heard him complain, and the nobility and
patience with which he bore his sufferings continually
astonished me. It was hard to stand by and be so
helpless, or to go on reading, as he always insisted that
I should do, when it seemed that at any moment his
struggles would end in his falling out of his great
chair. Finally he would give in, and with difficulty
and reluctance be carried off to bed. Every cure and
every remedy had been tried in vain. Allopathic
medicine made him worse. His only crumb of com-
fort was the calming influence of certain homoeopathic
remedies.
One thing was ever uppermost in my mind at Grez,
and that was that only there, and with such constant
care as his wife lavished on him, could he go on
living. Her name deserves a very prominent place
on the scroll of those who have given themselves un-
stintingly for others.
And so the days passed by uneventfully, and I found
myself watching him as anxiously as the others.
During those periods when Delius was suffering more
than usual he could bear pain, but he could not endure
the sound of conversation, and we ate and exchanged
the usual politenesses of th$ table in silence. The
slightest rattle of a cup or clatter of a spoon was
sufficient to lash him into a fury, and if one forgot oneself
AN INTERLUDE 31
and found oneself saying, 'Mrs. Delius, may I pass
you so-and-so ?* it was certain to meet with his, 'Will
you please be quiet V The nervous tension one felt
in his presence was almost unbearable, and, after sitting
beside him for an hour, one left the room feeling as if
one had been drained of one's life-blood. The house
at such times resembled a tomb from which the living
in it could have no hope of escape.
Then came a brighter day, when the sufferer was
left in peace.
That evening, after supper, Delius surprised me by
saying that he had an idea in his mind - a simple little
tune - and that he wanted me to take it down.
I took paper and pen and waited eagerly. I had no
idea what he would do -whether he would sing, or
call out the names of the notes and their varying time-
values. What he did was to stagger and confound me
so utterly that I did not recover for the rest of that
night.
Throwing his head back, he began to drawl in a
loud monotone that was little more than the crudest
extension of speech, and which, when there was any-
thing of a ring about it, wavered round a tenor middle
B. This is something like what I heard :
*Ter-te-ter - ter-te-ter - ter-te-te-ter' - and here he
inteqected 'Hold it !' and then went on - 'ter-te-te-
ter - ter-ter-ter - te-ter - hold it ! - ter-te-te-^er - ter-
ter-te-te-te-ter-hold it ! - ter-te-ter-ter-te-ter-ter-te-
ter - hold it ! - ter-te-ter-ter-te-ter-ter-te-ter *
Instantly my mind went back to those days in the
Great War when, as a small boy, I had been accom-
panist in a concert party and had gone off almost
32 DELIUS AS I KNEW HIM
every night to entertain the soldiers. Two or three
items were always reserved for such 'Tommies' as
cared to sing, and I had learnt something of the good-
natured fellow who would come beaming up to the
platform and whisper in one's ear, *I haven't any
music, but it goes like this: High-tee-tigh-tee-tigh-
tee-tigh !'
When he had finished this amazing recital, he turned
to me and asked, 'Have you got that ? Now sing it !'
I was dumbfounded*
'But~Delius,' I stammered, 'what key is it in ?'
'A minor/ came the answer.
In a flash I saw that he evidently heard the tune
imaginatively, but was unable to sing it.
'Well, we will try again,' he went on, and there was
more suggestion of disgust and impatience in his tone
than I cared to admit. It was obvious that he failed
to understand how I could be so stupid.
I had observed that he disliked anything in the form
of repetition - whether it were musical or verbal - and
that if one had the misfortune to repeat oneself, one
was never allowed to proceed very far. Unnecessary
repetition annoyed him, and he sat there, tossing his
head from side to side, and champing and frown-
ing in his anger. This he always did when things
went wrong. When I suggested that it would help
me if he would call out the names of the notes,
he gave a great sigh and added, 'Well, all right
then!'
The drawling began again, but now on another
note!
'A-BC-BD-E/etc,
AN INTERLUDE 33
I quickly sketched the shape of this melody, 1 but had
no idea of the stresses, nor even the time signature.
I was too flurried, too nervous, too upset to go about
it in the proper way. I had not thought that it would
be like this, and the sting of my emotion pierced me
to the heart. My pen flopped about in my fingers,
and in my confusion I found myself holding it upside
down. My fingers were inky, and the tears that I had
been fighting to keep back now blurred my spectacles,
and I could not see. The more I looked at this relic
of a man, and heard his hopeless attempts to make
himself understood in but the rudiments of the
glorious art in which he so greatly excelled, the more
distressed I became, until in the end the sight and
sound of it were too much for me, and I broke down.
I had to give it up !
Just then Mrs. Delius entered the room, and I
pulled myself together as best I could and said, 'I am
sorry, I cannot go on ! Please excuse me.'
I got up and went out into the porch, and as I
groped my way in the pitch darkness round to the
door which led up from the garden to the music-
room, I overheard Delius say, 'Jdka, that boy is no
good ! He is too slow. He cannot even take down a
simple melody T
I slept very little that night, for now it seemed that
my mission was a complete .fiasco. There was only
one consolation, and that was in the thought that
nobody on earth could have made head or tail of those
faltering sounds.
1 This melody, transposed into G minor, is now to be found in the
second movement of DeJiws's Third Sonata for Violin and Piano,
34 DELIUS AS I KNEW HIM
The next day Delius was particularly kind to me,
and I assumed that his wife must have told him some-
thing of the overwrought state in which she had found
me. He was being wheeled about in the garden
before lunch, when he sent for me and immediately
began to discuss A Poem of Life and Love.
'My boy,' said he, 'I want you to look at that score,
aod tell me exactly what you think about it. Take
yew time, and when you are ready I will come up to
the music-room, and you must play it, and then I will
hear what you have to say/
I was greatly astonished, yet not much comforted,
for it will be remembered that I did not think well of
this work, nor did I see how I could possibly tell him
so. But later in the day, when I had talked over the
difficult and embarrassing situation with Mrs. Delius,
all she said was, 'Mr. Fenby, you must tell him
exactly what you feel. After all, you are the only
musician who is likely to be here for some considerable
time, and, though I have no technical knowledge to
say whether you are right or wrong, I do believe in you.
You must forget your youth and stand up to him.
I will always stand by you !
Be it to her eternal credit that, without this woman's
belief that ultimately I should succeed in my purpose,
my position at Grez during those early days would
have been an impossible one. Never once did she
waver in giving me her whole-hearted support*
I now made up my mind that I would assert myself
at all costs, even if it ended by my being packed off
bag and baggage to England ! On the following after-
noon Delius was carried up to the music-room, and I
AN INTERLUDE 35
struggled through the score at the piano. There was
so much going on that it was a physical impossibility
to play it with one pair -of hands, but I called out the
orchestration as best I could to refresh his memory,
for he had not seen the full score for eight years. It
was one of the last scores on which he had worked
before he became totally blind.
I soon warmed up to my difficult task, and found
myself criticising the work fearlessly. My first un-
favourable comment electrified him, but it was not
long before he saw my view and agreed with my
opinion. Had I then known to what degree he
resented severe criticism of his music, no man, nor
even a woman, could have persuaded me to say what
I did on that occasion. As we neared the end he
stopped me and said, c Look here, Fenby, I have got
an idea. Select all the good material, develop it, and
make a piece out of it yourself. Now, take your time ;
never hurry your work, whatever you do P
This insistence on one's taking one's time was a
point which I have heard him stress, over and over
again, as of the greatest importance in all fine work.
How could one always see at first sight the possibilities
dormant in an idea, and relevant to the feelings one
wanted to express ? He told me that though one
could never foresee precisely what the finished work
would be like, yet one should always have some
definite goal in mind, and never take one's eyes off it.
Whether one achieved it or not, of course, was another
matter. Yet good work always shaped itself according
to the laws of its own inner being.
Tor instance/ said he, 'take Sea-drift^ which, I
36 DELIUS AS I KNEW HIM
think, is one of my best works. The shape of it was
taken out of my hands, so to speak, as I worked, and
was bred easily and effortlessly of the nature and
sequence of my particular musical ideas, and the
nature and sequence of the particular poetical ideas of
Whitman that appealed to me. Avoid all "fillings "
and meaningless "passage-work," and remember what
I say about taking your time/
With this he called his nurse to carry him down**
stairs, and left me to my score. I smoked innumerable
pipes over it during the hours which followed, and the
next morning I took a long walk in the woods alone,
turning over all that music in my mind.
It was fortunate for me that Delius had come up to
the music-room without delay, for that day his suffer-
ings returned, and again he was racked with pain.
Now, I rarely visited his part of the house, except for
meals, or to take my turn with the reading. For the
next few days I delighted in working out his beautiful
ideas with all the fascination of a chess problem.
Then I left them, and thought no more about them,
until one night shortly afterwards, as I was about to
go to bed, there c^me to me, just as such things do
come to one at such untimely hours, the opening idea
for that entirely new work which he wanted me to
write for him, and I worked at it until it was very late.
A week later I had finished my score to my liking, and,
as he was still in pain, I put it by and longed im-
patiently for the time when he would be well enough
to hear it, for I knew it was good.
He was not able to think of music for yet another
eight days, and when at last they had made him
AN INTERLUDE 37
comfortable in the great leather chair in the music-
room, and he had said, 'I am ready now, lad; let me
hear what you've done,* I could not contain myself,
but started off with a verve that certainly was not
English. As I played he kept on saying, *Good
good good now more of that yes - yes-yes/ with
eyes wide open and head shaking with interest.
'Fenby/ said he, when I had finished, *I can work
with you. You are a natural musician. You have got
the sense of my ideas in the most wonderful way.
It seems almost uncanny. You have awakened my
interest again, and, now that you have shown me
what yoij can do with my material, it has set my mind
working to see what I can make of it.'
Then he said many pleasing things which will ever
remain with me.
This is how Delius began to work again after years
of inactivity. How he worked with me I will try to
explain later on.
5
I HAD now been in Grez for three weeks when the
autumn rains set in, and icy winds from Russia
stripped the leaves from the great trees by the
river till, from the music-room window, one could see
the meadows and the bleak woods beyond. There
were no more walks up the Marlotte road when all the
village had gone to bed, no more of those tusslings
with the wind, when, if you went alone, you held an
umbrella over the old man with one hand and pushed
him in his carriage with the other, with ever an
anxious eye on that miserable oil lamp, lest it should
blow out and some mad cyclist come dashing into us
in the darkness ; no more of those delicious teas with
him in the garden, as we followed the sun round
greedily until it went down behind the church,
Delius loved the sun, and would often say that it was
not hard for him to understand the early Persians
worshipping it.
Each morning he would ask if the sun was out, and,
if his nurse felt energetic and told the truth, you would
hear that thunderous clearing of his throat, as they
tucked him up in his carriage down below under the
porch. I say thunderous, for I have heard it often
from the bridge a good four minutes' walk away from
the house ! Then would come that habitual question,
'Are there any letters, lass ?' and presently the sound
38
AN INTERLUDE 39
of his carriage bumping over the cobblestones as they
wheeled him towards the garden path. Finding some
sheltered spot - for a puff of wind was like a gale to
him - his wife would read the mail whilst he listened
with head thrown back, facing the sun, anxious lest
it should quickly hide from him behind the clouds.
What questions he asked ! Had the sun gone
already ? How long would it be before he could feel
it again ? Was it a very big cloud, and could we move
a little, so that we should face it when it came out on
the other side ?
How often have I cursed that eternal game of hide-
and-seek up there in the sky, when, just as I had
warned him that in an instant the sun would be
breaking through, some saucy wisp of a cloud would
flitter by and obscure it, and the old man would
complain bitterly, 'But you said it was coming -I
don't feel it yet 1' What excuses and what explana-
tions there were, and what waitings that so often
ended in, 'Well, never mind -wheel me round the
garden and tell me how it all looks/
On such days as he was unable to go out he used
to take exercise indoors. He would try to walk. This
could only be done when three of us were present -
one to support him on either side and the other to
follow behind him with a chair and air-cushion. I
shall never forget the first time on which I assisted with
the chair and cushion at these painful proceedings.
Before he could begin, his nurse carried him from
his great armchair, and set him on a smaller armchair
which had been devised for that particular purpose.
He could not sit on a chair without arms. At a given
40 DELIUS AS I KNEW HIM
signal he was lifted up on to his feet, and held up
gently under his arms, Mrs. Delius at the one, the
nurse at the other. His thinness suggested great
height as they propped him up, limp and unsteady,
between them, so that he towered above their stooping
figures like a giant, and his clothes hung on him like
a skeleton. Then Mrs. Delius coaxed him quietly:
*Are you ready, Fred ? Links - rechts - links -
rechts ' and so the pathetic procession began.
At the word links he kicked out sideways with his left
foot, with no sense of direction or control, and, on
rechts, the right foot did likewise. After five or six
yards of this stutoping along, he cried, 'Be ready with
the chair, Eric/ Then, when he was unable to totter
a step farther, they lowered him gradually into it,
panting for breath. When he had rested in silence
for several minutes, and his breathing had become
normal, we turned him about - chair and all - and he
tried to walk those few paces back again.
There were many incidents at Grez that would
have touched the heart of the toughest, and this was
one of the most terrible of all. Yet it did me good,
for I saw the iron nature and courage of the man, and
I learnt in those moments how a man should bear
suffering and misfortune. There was nothing of the
sickly, morbid, blind composer as known by popular
fiction here, but a man with a heart like a lion, and a
spirit that was as untamable as it was stern.
I had not expected to find such sternness, almost
harshness, in a man of his delicate susceptibility, and
such uncouth passages in his work as had hitherto
puzzled me now became clear. I can never listen to
AN INTERLUDE 41
the perverse insistency of those blatant chords leading
into the last movement of his Violin Concerto, when
it seems as if the whole orchestra is shaking its angry
fist at you, without being whisked off to that room in
Grez where, on more occasions than I care to remem-
ber, I have seen his expression suddenly lose its life
and set as hard as stone, for no other reason than that
the soup had not been sufficiently salted in the cook-
ing. At first, I attributed it to his illness, but on one
occasion^ after it had persisted inhumanly for several
days, I broached the subject tactfully to his wife, only
to be told that I ought to have known Fred when he
was well. He was not half so hard as he had been in
those days !
This sternness was never far away from him. It
embarrassed the kindly Americans who had known
him for a lifetime in Grez - their rare visits to the
Delius household were prompted more by a sense of
obligation than of pleasure - and it terrified the chil-
dren* All too frequently there were periods when
nobody came near the house for months on end, and
consequently I have gone for as long as five months
at a time without speaking to a soul outside their tiny
household.
Once you had crossed the threshold of that great
door to the street you found yourself in another world
- a world, peaceful and self-sufficient, which centred
round the figure of Delius. It was a world with its
own laws, its own standards of right and wrong in all
things, its own particular sense of beauty and its own
music. It had been created for music-making, and
there was an unheard-of reverence for work. Here
42 DELIUS AS I KNEW HIM
these two original people had lived happy and con-
tented for many years, jealously guarding their little
world from all vulgar intrusion. Within the walls of
that house and garden the romance of their life
together flowered and died.
No traveller, pausing on the bridge at Grez before
entering the village by the lane from Moncourt, could
ever imagine that over that wall between the church
and the ruin there existed a world such as this. A
painter's paradise, to be sure, but hardly the sort of
place in which a composer would choose to spend his
life* But, then, Ddius had always disliked the society
of musicians. He had found them such a dull and
uninspiring lot, who talked about nothing else but
'technique, technique/ The world of beauty was a
closed book to them, it seemed. He had much
preferred the more vital companionship of painters,
and Grez had always been a haunt of painters. There
were old men still living who recalled how they had
stood as cheeky little boys behind Corot as he worked
away at his easel, puffing at his pipe under a great
uiftbrella down by the mill. 1 Edvard Munch and
Carl Larson had spent many a summer there, painting
and sketching by the river, and the delightful pictures
of Grez that I have seen in the art galleries of Sweden
are proof of its fascination for Scandinavian artists.
In particular, it is interesting to note that Carl Larson's
studies of Grez in the National Museum at Stockholm
are those by which he first won fame.
Writers, too, had felt something of its charm.
1 Corot painted a beautiful picture of the old bridge at Grez, and there
is an etching of it (in reverse) at the Maine there.
AN INTERLUDE 43
Strindberg had once stayed for several weeks at the
Hdtel Chevion, then a famous rendezvous for artists,
and had not Robert Louis Stevenson proposed to
Fanny Osbourne on the bridge ?
Once a man has come under the spell of Grez, and
known all its moods, life can never be quite the same
elsewhere. -Like all the others, I, too, have vowed that
never again would I set foot in it, yet I know that
before long I shall find myself lolling on that bridge
again, with my eyes turned towards that cluster of
houses nestling round the church and ruin, their
garden walls green with clinging vines, and quiet
homeliness about their tiny wash-houses under the
trees down by the water's edge, and I know that the
old sense of wonder will come back to me.
Alden Brooks, Delius's friend and neighbour, who
has lived in the old church house for over twenty
years, once caught me in this damnatory mood. <r This
wretched place is getting on my nerves/ said I. 'As
for you, I cannot imagine why you go on living in this
miserable swamp 1*
*Oh, I have cursed it just as much as you/ replied
Brooks, *but it gets us all in the end, and we have to
return. It will get you just the same, you mark my
words P
It was ever thus with Delius. He was never happy
for long away from Grez.
We continued to work daily, and those days were
die hardest of all for me in Grez, for we were painfully
and laboriously evolving a method of work, and this
was not easy. It was like groping about in the dark*
After a few weeks of this sustained effort, Delius had
44 DELIUS AS I KNEW HIM
managed to dictate a short work based on the good
material from A Poem of Life and Lave^ and this score
was sent to Balfour Gardiner for his inspection. The
latter had been very sceptical about the possibility of
Delius's working any more. 'For one thing/ he had
said to me, 'Fred will never be able to dictate because
of his inability to make a decision.' Balfour Gardiner
was almost right here, for Delius's constant change-
ableness was the most difficult thing with which I had
to contend. Delius was very pleased with his achieve-
ment, and wondered what his friend would have to
say. He had already composed some of the incidental
music to Flecker's Hassan by dictation to his wife, but
he was then still able to see, and could therefore correct
the score, even though he could not do it with his own
hand. Percy Grainger had also very kindly helped
him with the scoring. Now it was a different matter.
Delius had to picture each page of the score in his
mind, and work it out in his head, away from the
piano, before he could dictate it. He had not been
accustomed to doing this, so that now there were
greater demands on his memory, not to mention the
ticklish problem of picking up the threads of a previous
day's work, and continuing, logically and fittingly, in
accordance with what he wanted to express. This he
found a very trying and troublesome stumbling-block.
Several days later, Balfour Gardiner wrote to Mrs.
Delius saying, 'When I opened the parcel containing
the score, I was astonished at what I found. I thought
there would be numerous sketches all pieced together,
with some parts scored and others not, and a great
mass of material for me to deal with. Instead, I find
AN INTERLUDE 45
a short work practically completed and ready for the
copyist. All that remains for me to do is to go over
the score in detail and suggest minor improvements/
Shortly afterwards, I received a long letter from him
full of helpful and constructive criticism. It ended:
'You have certainly achieved the object you set
out to achieve, namely, making a coherent musical
whole out of the elements at your disposal, and the
solution of the problems involved must have been of
the greatest interest both to Fred and yourself. If
any remarks I have made lead to improvements,
even small improvements in detail, I shall have been
amply repaid for my trouble. . . .'
This kindly and practical interest was greatly
appreciated by Delius, and, I may add, by myself,
and, coming as it did at the right moment from a
musician of whom Delius thought so highly, was the
very best possible incentive to renew his efforts, in the
hope that something worth while might eventually be
accomplished. But there was much to be done yet.
It was not until six months later that Delius began to
dictate with anything approaching confidence and
certainty, and I to take it down with anything like
the understanding and quick anticipation that was
necessary.
That Christmas, Evlyn and Grace Howard- Jones
came over from London, and there was much music-
making and laughter, and Delius called for champagne
at the slightest provocation. The children's party on
Christmas Eve, which Delius had stipulated was to
last no more than one hour, was a moderate success.
46 DELIUS AS I KNEW HIM
I had had a shock earlier in the day that set me think-
ing hard, when I had discovered that one of the chil-
dren who had come to prepare the crib was putting
twins into the manger ! So much for the compulsory
State education of modern France ! The electric
lights were turned out, the^ Christmas-tree and crib
now blazed with candles, and there were carols on the
gramophone. Each child. received a present, and I,
being one of them, found that my parcel contained a
vocal score of A Village Romeo and Juliet.
Then what was to have been a surprise turned out
a miserable failure. Up on the landing Howard-
Jones, the maid Hildegarde, and I waited to sing a
little three-part carol that I had written as a boy:
Behold a silly, tender Babe,
In freezing winter night,
In homely manger trembling lies;
Alas ! a piteous sight.
The inns are full, no man will yield
This little Pilgrim be'd;
But forced He is with silly beasts
In crib to shroud His Head.
Our days of practising had been in vain, for at the
crucial moment the male voices were heard, but from
our little Hildegarde there came not a sound. Her
lips moved, but still she was silent. We struggled on
as best we could, the pair of us, to finish the verse,
and had no sooner ended this than her voice returned.
But, instead of trying to patch up my ruined carol,
she began another, and this at the top of her voice -
'Holy Night, Silent Night/ her annual effort, and the
one thing she had been forbidden to sing. After the
AN INTERLUDE 47
seventh verse Delius sent up to say that he could bear
it no longer. Could we possibly silence her ? We
were just in time to prevent her starting the eighth by
applauding vigorously. She then retired to the
kitchen and wept bitterly.
All through these proceedings, Delius had sat in the
middle of the room, deathly white, silent and aloof,
framed off from the rest by a screen round the back
of his chair. As each child, painfully nervous and
with fear in its eyes, was brought forward and intro-
duced to him, he smiled, but there was nothing of that
easy manner that a child instinctively looks for, and
which wins its affection from the very first. His
attempts at conversation were awkward, strained, and
hollow, so that the children withdrew as soon as they
could and stood about the room in silence.
Even admitting his blindness, and the embarrass-
ment which his infirmities caused him, one would
have thought that a man who had written such tender
music as so often smiles through the pages of his
works would not have been so ill at ease with children.
I FOUND the intense cold of that winter 1 unbearable,
but there was some small consolation on hearing
Delius say that it was the worst winter that he had
ever known in Grez. For several weeks we had been
snowbound, and I had rarely left the house except to
trudge down the garden to admire the magnificent
line of silver birches all glittering in the moonlight in
his meadow on the opposite bank of the river. I
revelled in its glassy stillness and the inky drawing of
the trees in the woods near by. Then when the thaw
came, and there was no snow to temper the biting
cold, it seemed that we had touched one of the fierce
extremes of Dante's Inferno.
There was no central heating in the house in those
days, nor were there open fires, and in my wing I had
to rely on a comfortless stove that stood cheerless as
a pillar-box at the end of the music-room. My bed-
room was the coldest room in the house, and night
after night I could not sleep for the penetrating cold.
For nearly a fortnight now the water in my room had
been frozen inches thick. My hair-brushes were like
bricks, my shaving-brush like a piece of wood. I was
obliged to chisel up my soap, and the hot water which
they sent me from the kitchen was tepid when it
1 1928-9.
AN INTERLUDE 49
reached me. I thawed my things as best I could, but
before I could use them they were stiff again.
Men in these parts mind not how they dress, caring
more for comfort than for fashion, and during these
icy days those who were obliged to go out of doors
paid no heed to their appearance. A more comical set
of rogues I never saw, as they clattered hurriedly
through the streets in their sabots, with coarse
mufflers lashed about the pointed hoods of their black
capes. Some had sacks tied round them with rope,
and all were reluctant to greet you, lest they should
bare their faces for an instant to the cold.
During those icy days work with Delius was impos-
sible, yet he was by no means idle, for that crude and
gallant attempt at composition had Stirred him deeply.
He had told his wife that it would need patience-
great patience - both on his and my part, if ultimately
he was to write something worthy of performance.
It was no use our tackling works that he had in mind
until we had created and mastered a technique by
which we could work, and that would take time-
perhaps a very long time. The only way was to learn
by doing, otherwise we could never hope to under-
stand each other. We must treat this piece as an
exercise, and, guided by Balfour Gardiner's helpful
criticism, hammer away at it until we could knock it
into shape.
'I cannot tell you,' said Mrs. Delius, one morning
when she had brought up my letters to the music-
room, *I cannot tell you what it means to me to see
Fred full of his music again. Twice he has asked me
not to read to him at the customary times; he would
50 DELIUS AS I KNEW HIM
prefer to think of his work. When I awoke this morn-
ing he was already deep in thought, and humming
some of the music from that piece that you are working
on together. I did not stir, but after a while he
suddenly called out, "Jelka, Jelka, write to Universal
for the score of Hassan. I have been, thinking in the
night that I could make a choral suite out of it." *
His interest was gradually reviving.
When we resumed work, I soon saw that he had not
suffered the grass to grow under his feet, and there
were fierce discussions when he suggested that we
should retain some of the rejected material from the
old score, A Poem of Life and Love. Still, it said a
great deal for his open-mindedness that he had been
willing to sacrifice so much of it in the beginning;
therefore I kept my place and let him have his own
way. His mind was working so quickly that it was
always ahead of what he was dictating, but I noted
that he put his finger immediately on the weak spots
of such small sections as hung fire, and quickly
brought them to life.
And so we grappled with our problem, and Delius
grew stronger, until one day, on awakening out of his
usual nap after lunch, he astonished his wife by crying
out excitedly, 'Jelka, I can see my hands V Scarcely
had he uttered these startling words than the vision
faded.
This hopeful sign recurred fairly frequently within
the next few months, though never for more than a
few moments each time, and high hopes were enter-
tained that by the end of the year he might see again.
The tissues of his eyes were sound and healthy, they
AN INTERLUDE 51
told me, and if, in some mysterious way, strength
could be infused into him, he would see. It was not
that he experienced merely a momentary perception
of light ; he told me that he could *see well enough to
count his fingers.'
It was all a mystery to me, and I let it remain so.
Try as I would, I could not convince myself that
Delius would eventually see, though I somehow
managed to mask my true feelings under a conven-
tional cheerfulness that was not always easy to sustain.
It seemed against all natural laws that this man would
ever be anything other than the hopeless wreck he was.
The amazing thing was that he was still so mentally
alive. His conversation was never heavy; on the
contrary, and in spite of his slowness of speech, there
was something about it that smacked of Latin gaiety*
I noticed that as time went on he became increas-
ingly talkative over lunch, and would comment on
the contents of the daily newspaper in a mocking tone
which I should have hated in others, yet in him was
wholly delicious. He would switch from one topic to
another with a swiftness that was as bewildering as it
was often embarrassing.
I remember one instance on the occasion of a visit
from Suzanne Haym, the youngest daughter of Dr.
Hans Haym, whom both Delius and his wife had not
met since she was a tiny tot at the production of
Koanga at Elberfeld in 1904. Delius had been telling
us that he had had a letter that morning from a man
who, confusing him with a certain Delius living in
Harrogate, had written, 'I wonder if you are that
Delius whom I knew at school fifty years ago ; he was
52 DELIUS AS I KNEW HIM
great on the trombone and I was great on the jews*
harp, and they used to call me "Fiddle-Face/' *
Instantly, and with little change in his voice, he
went on, 'Suzanne, we'll drink to the memory of your
father. It was through his efforts that my music first
became known in Germany. I owe him a tremendous
lot for what he did for me in those days/
Dr. Haym had died of a broken heart after losing
two sons in the war.
Already I was beginning to feel the strain of going
from day to day and hearing little or nothing else but
Delius's music.
It was easy to understand that, when either Delius
or his wife desired music, they should choose the
music that had been most intimately bound up with
their own lives. We all do this when the mood is upon
us. They were both at a seasoned age when they
were living in the past, whereas I was a raw young
man who had barely begun to live* With them it was
always the music of Delius. With me it was not quite
so simple.
Years before I had heard of the existence of Delius,
my deepest feelings had found utterance in the finest
music of Palestrina, Victoria, Mozart and Elgar.
Now, starved as I was of all young society - indeed,
any society other than that of these two old people -
with only the sweet and luscious wine of Delius 3 s
music to live on (for that which had once been a
delectable dessert had now become my staple food),
there was a risk lest my musical digestion should be
mined for ever. Music is as necessary for my well-being
AN INTERLUDE S3
as food and wine. I cannot go for long without
it. Yet no man can live on champagne for ever.
A musical friend of Delias, who had spent weeks
correcting the proofs of Sea-drift, once told me, in
the presence of the composer's wife, that in con-
sequence he could not bear to hear that work again.
From now onwards I, too, began to feel something of
that same feeling with every score that we worked on.
Norman O'Neill was also fully aware of this danger,
for I remember his saying to me, 'Fenby, when you
leave Grez, you will never want to hear another note
of Delius as long as you live V
It would have been so refreshing if, after a hard
day's work, one could have listened for a while to
music that was just a little less chromatic in character.
But, when there was to be music, it was always the
same few records that we heard -On Hearing the First
Cuckoo in Spring, Summer Night on the River, Slimmer
Garden, Brigg Fair, or The Walk to the Paradise
Garden. Many a time after these recitals I have gone
up to the music-room at night and played the opening
bars of Sibelius's Second Symphony over and over
again, but Sibelius would have frowned had he heard
the number of times I repeated that strong opening
chord of D major before moving away from it !
Perhaps twice during the course of a week Delius
would 'listen in' to a Strauss waltz, or some rare an,d
seldom-heard piece by Grieg that he had told them
to mark when they had read through the programmes
of the World Radio to him ; but even here I always felt
that his interest was prompted more by the recollec-
tion of some pleasing incident associated with the
54 DELIUS AS I KNEW HIM
performance of this or that particular work in the past
than by any purely musical desire to hear it again.
However, he seldom missed an opportunity of
listening in to a new work, but it was not long before
he would ask us to turn it off and go on with the
reading.
Sometimes, after he had been carried up to bed, I
would play the rebel boy and 'tune in* some favourite
work of mine that chanced to be broadcast. Then,
suddenly, I would hear that loud clearing of his
throat as if he were yet in the room, and, stealing on
tiptoe up the staircase, I would discover that he had
ordered his bedroom door to be opened - but just a
little!
The next morning it was invariably the same ques-
tion that he put to me as soon as I had entered the
room:
'Did you like that music that you were listening to
last night ?'
'Yes/
'Well, I didn't!'
rthe early days of March the icy wind suddenly
left us, the air was mild and soft again, and the
lower and wilder part of the garden pale and beau-
tiful with shy flowers. The old peasant woman with
the home-made, home-cured rabbit-skin coat now put
it away, hoping that before another winter set in she
would have a few more pieces to sew on to keep her
from the cold. The merry widow at the little inn
opposite bustled about in preparation for Easter, and
the postman lingered a little less in the warmth by
the way. Now we were able to take tea in the garden
almost every day*
Hitherto Delius had rarely left the house except
to sit in the open facing the garden in the shelter of
the porch to the main door. On one of these rare
occasions I was sitting beside him, reading aloud,
when there came a knock on the door.
'Eric, would you mind answering it ?' said he* 'The
servants are busy down the garden, I believe/
I opened the tiny door within the porte-cochere^ and
a strange young man greeted me in English:
'Excuse me, sir. I am a reporter from the British
United Press in Paris. May I speak to Mr. Delius ?'
Before I could say a word, from out the mass of
top-coats, rugs, mufflers, and screens not two yards
away came a loud and angry voice, 'I can't see him.
55
56 DELIUS AS I KNEW HIM
Tell him I'm out I 3 Whereupon the young man,
greatly astonished, bowed and quickly walked away.
Earlier in the year Sir Thomas Beecham had given
a Delius concert to a private audience at Kingsway
Hall, and this, happily for us, was broadcast. The
programme, much to Delius's delight, included Paris
and two works which were greatly neglected in those
days -Dance Rhapsody No. a and Eventyr, a ballad
for orchestra inspired by the 'once upon a time' of
Norwegian folk-lore".
Delius was very amused by Sir Thomas's remarks,
before conducting the Dance Rhapsody. In words
something like .these we heard him say, c Ladies and
gentlemen, the next piece we are going to pky is the
least known of Delius's orchestral works - his second
Dance Rhapsody. This is not strange, for, though this
unfortunate work has been given on several occasions,
it has not yet been heard at all ! You will now hear
the first performance F
He then gave a thrilling interpretation, and Delius,
in his usual manner of addressing the conductor as
if he were in the room, said, 'Perfect, Thomas;
perfect V Each work brought forth comment such
as this, and by the end of the programme his en-
thusiasm knew no bounds.
4 I should be content with a few superlative per-
formances like these each year/ he afterwards con-
fided, 'rather than the mediocre ones that I all too
frequently hear/
As he himself was unable to do so, Delius usually
insisted on my following broadcast performances of
his music with the full scores. His criticisms were often
AN INTERLUDE 57
scathing. More than once I have heard him exclaim,
'Whatever should I do without Beecham V
In the light of what followed, it seemed to us that
this concert had been something in the nature of an
experiment, for now Sir Thomas wrote to say that he
intended organising a festival of Delius's music,
which he hoped would take place that autumn.
Delius merely wagged his head and said that it
sounded 'too good to be true.*
Flying visits from Barjansky and Balfour Gardiner
broke the monotony of our weeks of loneliness. The
latter, especially, was most encouraging, and sug-
gested schemes for making various Hassan suites.
All these projects came to nothing in the end, but
they provided me with a great deal of experience and
work, which I found invaluable later on.
Shortly after Easter we had three more visitors -
Roger Quilter, of whom Delius was particularly fond,
Dr. Simon, then editor of the Frankfurter Zeitung
and an old and valued friend, and Professor Dent,
who was busy working on his study of Busoni, and
had come to talk to Delius about their mutual friend.
I remember that it struck me as very strange that
Delius had so little to say about Busoni, but a great
deal about old Ferdinando, Gerda, and Benni. Later
in the day, when the professor had gone, Delius told
me how much he had admired Busoni when first they
had met, but, almost in spite of himself, he had had
to admit that Busoni had never acted quite fairly with
him. He had promised to play Delius *s Pianoforte
Concerto - that is, the first version -but when the
time had come, and Delius had left his work at Grez
K
58 DELIUS AS I KNEW HIM
and gone purposely to Berlin at Busoni's invitation
to hear it, Busoni had made excuses at the last moment
and withdrawn it from the programme. There had
not been time to prepare it properly; he would play
it at his next concert. But, somehow or other, it
was always the same tale, and so poor Delius had
wasted a whole winter's work hanging about Berlin in
miserable uncertainty, and this at a stage when he
had very little money, and when the performance of
his music by the already established Busoni would
have meant everything to him.
When eventually Busoni had tried to make amends
by conducting the first performance of Paris at his
second concert of new music at the Beethoven-Saal
in November of 1902, Delius complained that
'Busoni did not know the score/ and that 'the work
went so badly, I could hardly recognise my own
music I*
According to his wife, Delius turned deathly pale
during the performance, and made no comment when
the music ceased. The next day they left for Grez
and home.
There was always this to be said for Delius ; that
no matter how much they maltreated his music -
and, judging by what he has told me at various times,
he must have endured some ghastly performances in
his day -his belief in himself and his work was
unshakable.
Interesting as all these visitors were, I burned with
curiosity to meet that young man who had done so
much for Delius since he was little more than a
schoolboy - Philip Heseltine. Delius had made scant
AN INTERLUDE 59
reference to him when I had enquired about him, and
I gathered that there had been some slight estrange-
ment between them, so I had dropped the subject.
Imagine my surprise when, one morning, on going
down to lunch, I discovered that Heseltine and
several other people had arrived unexpectedly. They
were not at their full strength, they told us, for they
had missed 'Old Raspberry' 1 on the way ; he would
probably be coming along later in the day !
Delius, extremely sensitive at all times to his
physical disabilities, and pathetically so in the presence
of strangers, was furious, and refused to see Philip.
Why had he brought this crowd of people with him ?
Finally, after some gentle persuasion on the part of
his wife, Delius agreed to be carried downstairs, and
so the whole party stayed to lunch. Conversation
was not easy, for the others, excepting Anthony
Bernard, appeared to be entirely unmusical, and it
was natural that we should want to talk about music.
There were, however, occasional flashes of brilliant
observation from Heseltine. I envied him his splendid
command of words, and liked the way he looked you
full in the eye whilst addressing you. Few people do
this. I shall never forget him for it.
I could see that Delius was still ruffled and not at his
ease, and I was relieved when they had taken him
away to rest, and I was sauntering down the garden
path with Heseltine, leaving Mrs. Delius to amuse his
friends. We chatted affably enough, but by the time
we had reached the pond I found myself wondering
whether this could possibly be the same Heseltine
1 The identity of this musician must remain a mystery,
60 DELIUS AS I KNEW HIM
who had written that glowing book about Delius and
his work, for whenever there was an opening to attack
the music he had once championed, he thrust his
critical rapier in, hilt and all. I knew nothing at the
time of the reactionary phase through which Heseltine
was then passing in respect of Delius's music, and it
astonished me greatly to hear him say that out of
Delius's enormous output, three of the major works
only would live- Sea-drift, A VillageRomeo and Juliet,
and Appalachia. Whether he persisted in this attitude
to the end, I do not know*
It must not be imagined that I have been a blind
admirer of Delius's music, but I was not prepared to
dismiss all save a handful of works as entirely worth-
less, I agreed with him that Sea-drift and A Village
Romeo and Juliet were great masterpieces, but I would
not have placed Appalachia in their company; nor
could I understand his enthusiasm for a comparatively
poor piece like the Air and Dance for strings.
(I remember how, after the performance of Appa-
lachia at the Delius Festival later that year, we were
coming down in the lift together at the Langham
Hotel, after having escorted Delius safely across from
Queen's Hall, and Heseltine saying, 'Well, Fenby,
what do you think of it now ? Wasn't it magnificent ?
It's a superb work !'
Tm sorry/ 1 replied, 'but I still think the opening is
slovenly, and, if I may say so, the whole work much
too long. The amazing thing to my mind is that some
of the best variations are as fine as they are, when one
considers the rather silly tune on which they are
built/)
AN INTERLUDE 6l
Appalachia has never been a particular favourite of
mine.
From Delius he turned to van Dieren, for whom,
both as composer and man, he had the warmest
admiration. Did I know his music, and had I heard
the last quartet which van Dieren had dedicated to
him ? He would send me a score, for it was a 'super-
latively fine work/ Had Fred heard Bartdk's Quartet
(No. 4) the other night on the wireless ?
Now it happened that just at that moment we were
about to enter the living-room again; Delius had
already been brought down from his nap, and was
holding forth to Bernard about some work being
'infantile and horrible/
'What is that, Fred, that you are talking about ?'
asked Heseltine.
'Oh, Bartok's Fourth Quartet/ replied Delius. 'Did
you hear it, Phil ?'
'Yes/
'So did I. I thought it was dreadful ! I'm sick
and tired to death of all this laboured writing, all this
unnecessary complication, these harsh, brutal, and
uncouth noises. How anybody can listen to such
excruciating sounds with understanding and pleasure
is beyond me ! What did you think of it, Phil ?'
'I'm sorry, Fred, but I don't agree with you. I
think it's a masterpiece. For sheer beauty of sound
it is one of the wonders of music.'
'Well,' sighed Delius, shaking his head, 'well I . . .*
and relapsed into silence.
After tea Heseltine asked me to take him up to the
music-room. He could not believe that 'old Fred'
62 DELIUS AS I KNEW HIM
(Delius) was trying to work again, and when he saw
what had been done he exclaimed, 'My God, how you
both must have slaved at this !*
It was now getting dark, so he proposed that the party
should leave, and walk over to Marlotte to see his Uncle
Joe (Joe Heseltine). 'No visit to Europe is complete/
said he, 'unless one has seen old Joe's pictures/ In fact,
there was one masterpiece, showing a horse and cart
coming down a road, but the proportions of the cart
had somehow got so much out of hand that he had
been obliged to sew another lump of canvas on,
higher up the road, to get the cart in ! Old Fred and
old Joe had not been on very friendly terms since the
war, for old Joe had gone about telling everybody that
Delius was a German spy, . and that the strategic
point of the whole world war was centred on the
bridge at Grez. It had been a blind, Delius's living
there all these years. He had been posted there by
the Germans, and they knew what they were about.
Every night he was up there in the church tower
signalling to the enemy. Feeling in the village had
become so hostile that on one occasion they had
broken Fred's windows.
I saw very little of old Joe - once when he was
sitting asleep at a local sale, under a white-hot sun,
amid the shouts of the bidders and the crashes of the
hammer, and now and then strolling about the streets
of Fontainebleau, He used to come over from
Marlotte to see Delius on an old tricycle fitted up
with all manner of gadgets and accessories - his
painting outfit, his waterproof, his kettle, and a
complete change of clothes. Having knocked at the
AN INTERLUDE 63
great door and been admitted, he would take no notice
of anyone, but calmly wheel his machine into the
courtyard, and then, retiring behind the pergola,
would change his entire outfit. Not until he emerged
did the visit begin.
Our rowdy friends had not been gone more than a
few minutes when 'Old Raspberry' drove up in a
taxi; but we pushed him in again and directed the
driver to Marlotte. Delius had had enough for one
day.
Within a fortnight Philip Heseltine was back again,
discussing the coming festival and acting as a link
between the composer and Sir Thomas Beecham.
This time he came alone, and stayed at a little ion
kept by an Italian hard by the canal at Moncourt, the
tiny hamlet I have already mentioned, which is
reached by taking the lane over the bridge at Grez
and continuing along it until one has crossed the canal.
Two or three days before this second visit I had
started to read Cecil Gray's History of Music to Delius*
but the old man, much to my annoyance, had insisted
on skipping the chapter on Gregorian chant. This
did not deter me from reading it for myself, and I was
glad that I did so, for I thought it the best essay I
had ever read on that fascinating subject. I was
therefore full of it when Heseltine came, and was not
surprised to find that he, too, agreed with me. The
discovery that I knew and admired so much of that
older and satisfying music that was so dear to his
heart delighted him,, and we ferreted about in our
minds for the names of such old motets, masses, and
madrigals as contained some delicious harmonic
64 DELIUS AS I KNEW HIM
touch or daring modulation as had never failed to
captivate us. He had been luckier than I, for he had
heard them in actual performance, whereas I had
merely read them or played them at the keyboard.
In Sir Richard Terry's time, he told me, he had been
continually in and out of Westminster Cathedral.
The music in those days had been worth hearing.
He deplored the general apathy of the Catholic
clergy to the glorious music of the Church. It was a
pity that priests were so seldom musical, and, when
they were musically inclined, they were usually
amateurs of the worst type. I, too, had often re-
marked that, contrary to common belief, monks,
nuns, and priests were usually quite unmusical, and
that a religious temperament rarely went hand in
hand with a musical feeling.
At this moment Delius's carriage came into sight
round the bend by the bamboos, and, mindful of the
fact that Delius had about as much use for monks,
nuns, and priests as he had for that older music, I
winked at Heseltine, who, having said that for years
he had had no patience with Fred's eternal tiltings at
Christianity, began a very knowledgeable discourse
on the decline of English beer.
That night after supper Heseltine suggested that
I should walk back to Moncourt and sit and drink
with him. When I hesitated, he looked at me appeal-
ingly and said, Tor God's sake, Fenby, do come, I
cannot bear to be alone ! Bring the miniature score
of Fred's Quartet; I haven't seen it for ages, and we'll
read it together.'
As we crossed the ugly modern bridge at Moncourt,
AN INTERLUDE 65
we idled a little by the railings, peering down into
the hold of a neat and brightly painted barge, which
they had been loading with white sand. A great
Alsatian looked up at us as it sprawled beside the
mast, and, seeing that we meant no harm, buried its
head in its paws. Some men were smoking and
drinking at a little table under an enormous poplar
which stood in stately solitude outside the buvette at
the corner of the street. They took no notice of us
as we passed by, nor did the two barge mules that
were grazing contentedly on the little common, and
as we walked on by the edge of the canal the golden
rim of the setting sun disappeared behind the trees
at the other side of the water, and all was peace.
We entered the inn, and Heseltine called for red
wine. We had not gone far with our reading of the
Quartet when the door opened and Alden Brooks and
Matthew Smith came in, but, observing that we were
immersed in some musical discussion, they left us
alone to it, and did not join us until Heseltine,
suddenly exasperated, threw the score down on the
table in utter disgust and declared in a loud voice that
Fred could not write for strings. If only he had half
of Elgar's cunning in this respect ! Give him his
way, and he would make every student buy the score
of Elgar's Introduction and Allegro for Strings, for
he considered it to be the finest piece of writing for
strings in the whole literature of music. He got up
excitedly and paced about the room, and Brooks
chaffed him, and Smith eyed him whimsically through
his large spectacles, and said nothing.
And when we had settled all the questions of the
66 DELIUS AS I KNEW HIM
day, and had drunk far more than was good for us, we
remembered that even artists must sometimes go to
bed. Had we known how little we were to see
Heseltine again before his tragic death, there would
have been no inclination to go to bed that night at alL
I was sorry when he left for London the next evening,
and for the first time since my arrival in Grez I felt
homesick. But I had become so attached to Delius
and his wife that I could not leave them, for had not
they just told me that I had supplied a want in their
simple life so perfectly that they could not now
imagine it without me ?
They had always thought it unaccountable that I
had suddenly come, like a bolt out of the blue, arid
adapted myself to their needs, yet I knew that the
secret of our happy relationship was simply this - that
I always knew when to keep quiet. There were
evenings when I had pushed the old man up the
Marlotte road in his carriage, and from leaving the
house to returning to it, over an hour later, there had
never been a word spoken between us. 'Thank you,
lad, that was grand F he would say as I afterwards
left him when they had come to carry him up to
bed.
I have always been a great lover of dogs, and by this
time I had made friends with most of the dogs of the
village, so that now I rarely went out alone. One
night, on one of these silent walks, we collected no
less than five of my friends as we passed along the
village street. They accompanied us slowly and
silently up the road, turning when we turned, with
never a bark, not even at one another, and so
AN INTERLUDE 67
completely were they in tune with our mood that
Delhis never knew they were there.
Sometimes we varied this evening procedure by
going on the river, Delius used to sit in a deck-chair
propped up with cushions, iri the wide, flat-bottomed
boat which was always anchored ready for use among
the water-lilies in a tiny inlet beneath the mighty trees
that stretched far out over the river, sheltering the
fishermen from the fierce heat of the sun as they dozed
over their rods. In the cool of the evening I loved
nothing better than to take the oars and row the old
man and his wife up as far as le bout du monde, and,
turning, let the boat drift back with the current. And
when with difficulty we had landed our frail and
precious burden, and were wheeling him up to the
house, through the garden fragrant with the delicious
scent of lilac and apple-blossom under the blue and
cloudless sky, it seemed that of all young musicians I
was the most highly favoured to be here, and in my
contentment my loneliness left me.
8
I HAD been looking through a great pile of pencilled
sketches of all manner of works that Delius had
made before I was born and, coming upon a
particularly faded manuscript, I racked my brain to
place it in the list of his published works. I could not
remember it at all, and yet, at the entry of the voice,
there was a tiny figure in the wood-wind that instantly
brought to mind Songs of Sunset.
I was on the point of dismissing it as nothing more
than some rejected sketch, for Delius often turned
back to his very early work and extracted a lovely bar
here and sometimes a fine passage there (for instance,
one of those fine soaring passages in the 'Cello Sonata
appears almost note for note in an early romance for
'cello and piano; the germ of that beautiful and
romantic melody in Paris which steals in on the violas
is to be found in an early tone poem for orchestra
called Hiawatha. Delius's music teems with examples
of this habit. In fact, in a much more subtle and less
obvious degree, the score of A Village Romeo and
Juliet contains the germs of all the music that was to
come after it, and is a happy hunting-ground for
people who have time for this sport). I was on the
point of dismissing it, I say, when it occurred to me
that it would be fun to play it over. This was not
easy, for, after the first page, there were no indications
68
AN INTERLUDE 69
in the wood-wind and brass as to what instruments
these faintly pencilled notes and phrases were to be
given, and at first sight I could only surmise, by their
vague positions on the score-paper, that such and such
a phrase looked like a bassoon counterpoint, and some
such other looked like an English-horn part* Gradu-
ally I got the hang of the thing as far as it went, for it
was unfinished, but the supper-bell rang out from the
porch before I could place the words. I did not know
Dowson's poem at the time, and when I went down
to supper I asked Delius if he remembered making a
rough draft of a work for baritone and orchestra, in
which he had used that little four-note figure that
haunts the pages of Songs of Sunset i
To which he replied that he did not, but that if I
would play it over to him that night he might be able
to enlighten me.
When they had taken him up to bed and had opened
the doors to the music-room, the gods lent me their
fingers and their eyes, and one of them even held the
great score-paper up, such a fumbler am I when it
comes to turning over 1 Yet they never came to help
me in my boyhood, when, alone in the organ-loft, I
have struggled with some puck of a page that had the
very devil in it - but why bring that in here ? My
organ days are done.
Yes, he remembered it now. It was a sketch for a
setting of Dowson's 'Cynara/ He had written it
twenty-four years before, intending to include it as
yo DELIUS AS I KNEW HIM
one of the numbers in Songs of Sunset which he was
then composing. But he had found that, like old Joe
Heseltine's cart, it did not quite fit into the picture, so
he had left it unfinished, and had never given it a
thought since.
Before saying good night, I read through the poem
to him, and several days later he was carried up to the
music-room and, as I recollect only too well, began to
work on the score again with an excitement that
puzzled me.
The completed score was sent to Philip Heseltine
(who knew of its existence in sketch form), who
wrote to Delius saying that he was delighted with the
beautiful way in which the composer had been able to
finish it. Cynara received its first performance at the
Delius Festival four months later. It is not one of
Delius's happiest inspirations, but there was a moment
in the green-room at Queen's Hall when, suddenly
coming in from the noise of the street, I heard the
distant sounds of its quietly ascending introduction
for divided strings as it was being rehearsed, and there
seemed to be no fairer music in the world than this.
But, then, I was starved. I had not heard the sound
of the orchestra in the concert-room for over a year.
Another work which I unearthed for tHe festival
was a setting for tenor voice and orchestra of Henley's
poem, 'The Late Lark/ This had been misplaced,
though not forgotten, and the old man had been most
anxious that I should turn the place upside down, if
need be, to find it, for he had a rare affection for it,
and, once it was found, was continually asking me to
play it over to him. Together with A Poem of Life
AN INTERLUDE 71
and Love> he had sketched it out just before his sight
had failed him. There were one or two minor adjust-
ments to be made before it finally satisfied him, and
several lines in the voice part which had yet to be
filled in ; this he did by dictation.
I wonder what Donizetti or old Rossini would have
had to say about this tame, contemptuous after-
thought of a vocal line ? Probably something quite
as unprintable as Delius's opinion of the poverty-
stricken accompaniments which they had written to
their immortal arias ! Still, I knew that of the two
evils I preferred the - dare I say it ? - more musical
and instrumental style of the Italians in writing for
the voice. Enough has been said about both schools,
but for me there is no more to be said of the poetry,
sunny grace, the easy, effortless, cast-away-care rhap-
sody of that spontaneous thing of beauty, a lovely
Italian aria, than that it is pure music, just pure music.
A third-rate Rossini is more bearable than a second-
rate Wolf, but Wolf is - well, what can one say of a
song like *Wer sich der Einsamkeit ergibt/ that brings
the tears to one's eyes with its opening chords, or of
an aria like 'Una voce poco fa qui nel cor,' except that
we should be truly grateful for them both, worlds
apart though they be ? Delius, in writing for the
voice, had neither feeling for line nor feeling for words.
Awkward in these things though he was, he was never
careless. As with Cynara, I was astonished to find
that he took more pains with what he considered to be
the correct declamation of Henley's words than he did
with the shape of the melodic line to which they were
to be sung.
72 DELIUS'AS I KNEW HIM
Once, when I had read the poem through to him -
A late lark twitters from the quiet skies;
And from the west,
Where the sun, his day's work ended,
Lingers as in content,
There falls on the old, grey city
An influence luminous and serene,
A shining peace.
The smoke ascends
In a rosy-and-golden haze. The spires
Shine, and are changed. In the valley
Shadows rise. The lark sings on. The sun,
Closing his benediction,
Sinks, arid the darkening air
Thrills with the sense of the triumphing night -
Night with her train of stars
And her great gift of sleep.
So be my passing !
My task accomplished and the long day done,
My wages taken, and in my heart
Some late lark singing,
Let me be gathered to the quiet west,
The sundown splendid and serene,
Death -
and had finished playing his setting of it, he said, 'Yes,
that is how I want to go/
Though he had often seemed so near to death, and
had so often startled me by looking its very image,
as he sat propped up in his chair listening to our
reading, he had never referred to it before save
once, and this rather mockingly. In his youth he
had been nearly shipwrecked off the coast of Norway,
and, when all had seemed lost, a parson, in his bunk
below, had annoyed him so much by his long and
AN INTERLUDE 73
lugubrious praying aloud that Delius had called out
to him, 'Look here, my friend, just make less row.
You can't be so keen to go to that heaven of yours if
you're so anxious to be saved P
Having related this incident, he added thoughtfully,
'So long as I can enjoy the taste of my food and drink,
and hear the sound of my music, I want to live.
Not being able to see does not trouble me. I have
my imagination. Besides, I have seen the best of
the earth and done everything that is worth doing;
I am content. I have had a wonderful life.*
Death, when it did come to him, was indeed
terrible.
PERCT GRAINGER had been a great favourite of
Delius from the day they had met, when Grainger
was a fascinating young fellow, full of original
ideas, with the energy of a team of men and the looks
of an Apollo. They had seen a great deal of each
other in those pre-war days of which I and the rest
of my generation can hope to know nothing; happy
days in England, when Delius was still well, and in
Germany, when he could still see and was yet able to
shuffle along by the help of a supporting arm. Latterly
Grainger had visited Delius at his tiny house up in
the wilds of Norway, and to the Herculean efforts of
his young friend he owed one of the sights of his
lifetime, and this just before it was too late. Delius,
with something of that same restlessness t&at had
animated his youth when, the moment work was
done, he would rush off for a long walk, or a long
cycle-ride, or a strenuous holiday climbing the
mountains in his beloved Norway, and anxious to
add another leaf to that inner book on which he was
soon solely to rely, had insisted on being carried up a
high mountain close by, to watch the marvellous
sunset on the great hills in the distance. Grainger
at one end, and Mrs. Delius and two servants at the
other, had borne the brunt of that seven hours'
ascent, lugging him up the mountain track in an
74
AN INTERLUDE 75
improvised chair on poles. As they had neared the
summit all had seemed in vain, for enormous clouds
now piled themselves up as if to spite the very moun-
tains their grandeur, so jealously did they hide the
sun from view. But at the great moment, 'knowing
that Nature never did betray the heart that loved her/
not even so far as to deny this singer a last sight of the
high hills whose song he had sting, the clouds dis-
persed at her bidding, and the dreamer revelled in his
sunset. Within a few minutes a dense mist had settled
over the scene, and the party began the perilous
descent.
**
And now Grainger announcedhis intention of spend-
ing a fortnight in Grez that June (1929). Delius was
delighted. A few days before his arrival I received a
parcel of arrangements of his music, 'dished up* for one
or two pianos, with a note saying that he would like to
play them over with me to Fred. Amongst these were
'The Arrival Platform Humlet* - the sort of thing one
was expected to whistle whilst awaiting the arrival of
one's girl at the station 'The Drunken Sailor,* 'The
Stable-boy's Romance/ several 'Room-music Tit-
Bits/ his 'Hill-Song/ and an excellent MS. arrange-
ment for twb pianos of Delius 's Song of the High Hills.
There were 'many more to follow,* and some 'choral
and piano-scores (to sing from),* but these we did not
need. All these arrangements, with their curious
directions - 'louden slightly,' 'louden Tots,' 'accom-
panyingly,' 'very rhythmidy but not unclingingly* -
were obviously the work of a first-rate musician,
certainly of a very unusual person.
76 DELIUS AS I KNEW HIM
It was a sweltering day, with scarcely a breath of
air, and the gardener was in hiding down the garden
with his bottle of red wine, when Grainger and his
wife, a sturdy and good-looking Scandinavian with
soft eyes, walked into the courtyard below. To our
astonishment, Grainger said that he felt cold, and
shortly afterwards appeared wearing thick breeches
with puttees, a heavy shirt, and an enormous sweater.
He must have been nearer fifty than forty, but he
looked not a day older than thirty. He had a fine,
arresting, yet rather boyish head, and I liked the look
in his eyes. But for his fair bushy hair, one would
have thought that here was a professional athlete.
He was smaller than I had expected him to be, and
moved with all the alacrity of a man very wide awake.
The more vigorous sports have never been in my
line, but that fortnight I did more chasing about than
in all my schooldays put together. Up with the
blacksmith in the morning, Grainger used" to drag me
out of bed to go running with him. Now, I should
not have minded a gentle trot before breakfast each
morning, but when you were expected to gallop along
and catch a ring that was being thrown at you like
lightning from all angles, to fling it back with equal
zest, and to keep up this strenuous performance for as
long as you were able, I regretted that I had misspent
my sports days idling with a book whilst my more
active schoolfellows showed off their prowess before
adoring females. This galloping about was not
confined to out of doors. Grainger would dash from
one room to another, and, bounding down the stair-
case in two jumps, fly through the doorway in mid-air
AN INTERLUDE 77
and land with a crash beside Delius's carriage half-way
across the yard ; the old man would shake his head and
say that he really could not bear it.
Once when we had gone round to see Brooks, and
were sitting on the terrace overlooking his garden,
somebody made a remark about an amazing jump he
had witnessed; in fact, it was almost as high as the
terrace.
'Why, that's nothing,' said Grainger, and, before
we could say a word, he had sprung up from his
seat, cleared the parapet, and disappeared from
sight !
'Thank God there isn't a greenhouse down there/
said I to Brooks, who was still sitting speechless in his
chair. A few seconds later Grainger came running
up the steps from the garden, and would have jumped
over again had we not forcibly dissuaded him. I had
noticed that if he accompanied us on our evening
walks, he never left the house with us in the normal
way, but always sprang into our midst from a window
facing the street. Brooks now began to dare him to do
this, that, and the other, but Grainger could do
everything. And when they had said that there was
one thing he could not do, namely, to stand on the
terrace below the house and from there throw a tennis-
ball over the house, then run up the dozen steps to
the door, through the house, and catch it before it
fell into the yard on the other side, and, incredible
though it may seem, he had done it three times, I took
his arm and led him home, lest in the end he should
break his neck.
I had never seen such energy in a man. It was
78 DELIUS AS I KNEW HIM
unhuman. He was always impatient when walking,
and was for ever wanting to run. He could not
understand why we forbade him to gallop up the road
with Delius in his carriage ! Despite his tremendous
energy, he was rarely hungry, ate very little, was a
non-smoker, non-drinker, and a vegetarian. Whilst
we delighted in the pleasure of the table, he would sit
with his bran and his glass of 'Chateau de Pump' -
tepid water with a few drops of milk in it -and
Delius would say, * Jelka, stuff Percy well with oatmeal
and macaroni; we know better, don't we, Eric ?'
On the first evening on which he played to us, I
had walked through the corridor from Delius's
bedroom to the music-room to tell Grainger that
Delius was ready, when I was astonished to find him
patting his knees furiously. Then, when he was black
in the face, he sat back, calmed himself and was ready
to play. After a very spirited performance of Chopin's
B Minor Sonata - Delius *s favourite work of Chopin
- 1 ventured to ask him about that other performance,
to which he replied that it was an exercise which he
invariably did before going on to the platform. It
consisted of four pats to the second, and this he kept
up for a minute and a half. He must always feel
excited before he could play.
I tried it for thirty seconds, and could not play at
all!
The first time we played together he stopped me
after a few bars and said, *Fenby, you're a composer,
are you not ?' I answered that I was fond of writing
music, if th^r was the same thing.
'I thought so/ he commented. 'It's a theory of mine
AN INTERLUDE 79
that people like you all play alike; you do the same
sort of things in your playing at precisely the same
sort of places. I have noticed it again and again/
Grainger was full of theories. There was scarcely
a subject on which he talked (and he talked very
brilliantly at times) without bringing in some pet
theory of his - in fact, Delius said that he was 'bunged
up with theories/ I could never understand his love
of the harmonium as an instrument in the orchestra,
and was amazed when he said, with all seriousness,
that he wished the wood-wind of the orchestra could
employ the perpetual tremolo of the cinema organ.
During his stay with Delius he orchestrated his 'Hill-
Song' for the fourth time. The pages of his scores
were so thick with alterations, which had been glued
one on top of the other, that Mrs. Delius used to say
that one could have built houses out of them.
Grainger was extraordinarily frank about his own
music, and claimed that Delius had been much
influenced by it. Yet I never heard him boast. One
afternoon on the river he told me, with the utmost
.nonchalance, that Beecham had said, 'Grainger, your
"Colonial Song" is the worst piece -of music I have
ever set eyes on P It was impossible not to admire the
independent spirit of this charming Australian, even
though one differed so greatly from him on most of
the things he said, and, as I look back on those happy
days, my chief recollection of him is his kindness.
What could one say more of any man ?
In August of 1929 Evlyn and Grace Howard-Jones
took a cottage in the village, and, having given the
old peasant woman next door a few francs to wring the
8o DELIUS AS I KNEW HIM
neck of the lame cock-bird that woke them up before
sunrise, settled down peaceably for two months.
No sharper contrast could possibly be imagined
than that which existed between the playing of these
two celebrated pianists. Grainger played his own
works and those of Grieg with the wild gaiety of a
schoolboy, whereas Howard-Jones played with all
the classical control and restraint of a fine teacher.
Delius, although he loved it the least of all his works,
always contended that Howard- Jones's interpretation
of his Pianoforte Concerto was the best he had ever
heard.
The heat was now terrific, and one could not walk
with pleasure after seven in the morning until seven
at night. Almost every day there were loud beatings
of drums and blowings of trumpets to warn the
villagers of the approaching forest fires. For three
days it seemed that now we had touched the other
fierce extreme of an Inferno. Delius was in agony,
and work impossible. On the morning of the third day
the old gardener said that we should have a violent
thunderstorm that night, and, when the rain had fallen
in torrents and the air was fit to breathe again, it did
one good to look out over that summer garden all
ablaze with colour, and share its quiet, refreshing
mood - the mood that had so often inspired its owner
with thoughts of leisured musical loveliness.
Both Howard- Jones and his wife were ever ready
to come and play to Delius whenever he felt like music,
but it was not easy for them, for the works for violin
and piano that he could still listen to with enjoyment
were pitiably few in number.
AN INTERLUDE 8l
Once when there had been some heated remarks
about Beethoven's pianoforte sonatas, Howard- Jones
had declared the Op. no in Ab to be 'great music/
Delius challenged him: 'Well, play it, then !' And
so it was arranged that on the following day, after
tea, Howard-Jones was to play this sonata. Delius
and I were seated beneath the open music-room
window for this recital. All through the sonata the.
old man was restless, and frowned as he followed the
music. 'Listen - listen,' he kept on saying and
pointing excitedly with his finger the while (he could
only do this when aroused). 'Listen - banal - banal
- listen - listen, my boy - fillings - fillings !' When
the music had ceased, and Howard- Jones had come
beaming down the stairs to receive * his bouquet, all
he got for his pains was, *Evlyn, why do you waste
your time practising such rubbish ?'
Delius liked Howard- Jones, except when the latter
began to discuss religion.
'Why ever does he want to argue about religion on
such a lovely night as this ?' he complained in that
slow and rather mocking tone into which he relapsed
when one of those quips of dry humour (that passed
his lips with never a smile) was on its way. He had
just said good night to Howard-Jones following a
lively argument during the evening walk, and, as I
wheeled him in his carriage down the street, with the
peasants all sitting at their doors and saluting us as
we passed, I noticed with amusement that his hat was
still at a rakish angle after he had accidentally knocked
it so in a feeble attempt to brush a mosquito from his
face.
82 DELIUS AS I KNEW HIM
*He reminds me of Runciman/ 1 he went on
cantankerously. 'Rundman used to come purposely
every Sunday when he stayed in Grez to argue about
religion with me . , . and . . . well . . . you know,
he knew I wasn't keen on Jesus !*
One morning in early August, as I was practising
with Howard- Jones at his cottage for a concert we
were giving that afternoon when Delius was to come to
tea, Hildegarde, with cheeks redder than the apples
in the orchard, burst in to say that Delius was in the
garden and calling for me. Would I return im-
mediately, as he was most impatient.
I found the old man sitting in his carriage by the
stone table under the elder-tree down the garden, and
looking like one possessed. He had thought out an
entirely new opening for the work which is now known
as A Song of Summer, and, having told me to fetch
score-paper and pencil, and to imagine that we were
sitting in the heather on the cliffs by the sea, he began
to dictate. The following afternoon we went through
the new opening at the piano, first at the proper speed
and then slowly, and, when he had satisfied himself
that every detail of the scoring was exactly as he would
have it, I played through the whole work twice. The
next morning, as soon as he had been carried down
into the garden, he called for me to play it again, and,
when I had gone downstairs from the music-room
and joined him, he said, 'It's a good piece, lad ! Write
the score out in ink/ He had barely uttered these
words when the roundabout organ began. It was
the fete day of Grez. The entire village was seething
1 John F. Runciman.
AN INTERLUDE 83
with excitement. The women rushed about preparing
an enormous mid-day meal, laying the great tables in
the shade of the courtyards of their houses whilst
their menfolk idled by the gates, gossiping and shaking
hands with relatives and friends from neighbouring
villages. When the feast was over, a peace descended
on the village, and even the roundabout organ took its
siesta. Then the children became restless, and began
to pour into the fair-ground. Gradually, from those
sweet beginnings, there rose up such a din as only a
noisy people like the French can make - ear-splitting
blasts on cornets and bugles, the high-pitched, jerky
songs with their silly tunes which the peasants bawl
at the top of their voices, the crack of a dozen rifles
at the firing-ranges, the raucous, penetrating voices of
the women, the coarse laughter and shouts of the
men, the screams of girls, and, above it all, the round-
about organ with its full-throated siren, and all this
commotion within a hundred yards of Delius's house I
Even the simple copying out of the score was im-
possible in this uproar, and, remembering that I was
little more than a boy myself, I went out into the
street, and round by the church up into the fair-
ground, and mingled with the crowd.
Our next visitor was that charming and genial
Irishman, Norman O'Neill. Delius had already
spoken of him with the greatest affection, and when
they were together I could see that O'Neill was one
of the very few people whom he loved. That im-
personal, almost indifferent attitude which charac-
terised most of his human relationships left him
completely whenever mention was made of O'Neill,
84 DELIUS AS I KNEW HIM
and when I think of the way in which he looked
forward to O'Neill's yearly visits, and the delight with
which he relished his friend's amusing accounts of the
latest happenings in London - for the old man always
smacked his lips over a bit of good, honest gossip - it
is not strange that I can rarely think of O'Neill
without hearing in my mind that unaccustomed
friendliness which would creep into Delius's voice as
he said, 'Norman is coming,' or, Tve heard from
Norman this morning/ It was as if he had suddenly
returned to the level of the normal balance of man-
kind. All the nervous tension and sense of detach-
ment that surrounded him, and made him so difficult
and inaccessible, save on rare occasions, seemed to
vanish with these words.
When O'Neill died with such tragic suddenness, the
old man was heart-broken. O'Neill was devoted to
Delius, though not blindly. Of all men, he knew his
Delius the man just as well as he knew his Delius the
composer. He told me that Fred's music meant more
to him than the work of any composer, past or present.
I, for one, will always remember him with gratitude,
for without his moral support and advice the diffi-
culties with which I had to contend at Grez as time
went on would have been too much for me. He
understood everything.
Delius now announced his intention of ceasing
work. If he were to undertake the journey to England
to attend the festival - and up to the very last moment
he protested that, no matter by what easy stages he
was to travel, the strain of it would kill him - if he
were to undertake the journey in his state of health,
AN INTERLUDE 85
he must rest completely until the very day on which
he was to start. Although Sir Thomas Beecham had
written to say that he had made all the necessary
arrangements for a motor ambulance to be despatched
to Grez to take him comfortably by road to Boulogne,
and from Folkestone to London, Delius still hesitated.
Together with his wife, I played my part in persuad-
ing him to go. 'Delius/ said I, 'you have not heard
the sound of the orchestra for all these years. Think
of the thrill you will get when you hear your music in
the concert-room again ! Isn't that enough tempta-
tion to risk it
'Yes, yes, lad, I know,* he replied, 'but I haven't
the strength, and when I die I want to die in Grez.'*
Not until Sir Thomas finally took the bull by the
horns, and came along in person from Fontainebleau
to Grez, did Delius begin to entertain the idea with
any seriousness.
It was just such another sweltering day as we had
endured on the arrival of Percy Grainger when Sir
Thomas, immaculately dressed, hat in hand, carrying
an armful of scores and smoking an enormous cigar,
stepped briskly into the courtyard, but, unlike his
colonial friend, he took the very first opportunity of
divesting himself of as much apparel as the laws of
decency would admit, and permitted his taxi to wait
nine hours for him at the door with all the disregard
for triviality of the true grand seigneur. He soon
settled the matter with dignity and calm, so that
Delius had not a word to say. His mission achieved,
he sparkled with his wine, and was gay and light-
hearted as only he can be, poking fun at everything
86 DELIUS AS I KNEW HIM
and everybody in music, himself 'included- a thing
I have rarely heard him do. He explained that he
had been advised to drink but little, and, on Delius's
insisting, * Do have another glass, Thomas/ he stood
up, tested his foot carefully, and, pondering for a
moment, as he fingered his beard, decided that it
might stand another drop !
Sir Thomas had not brought his scores for nothing ;
he was memorising them for the festival. I knew very
little in those days about those blue-pencilled markings
that covered every page, but it was not long before I
was to realise that in effect they meant all the difference
between a good performance and a bad one. There
was scarcely an expression mark in that whole armful
of scores that he had not altered or modified. I saw
that his energy and industry were alike prodigious,
and when, afterwards, we had gone up to the music-
room, and he was playing Songs of Sunset from a vocal
score, and calling out all the orchestration to me as I
sat beside him with the full score on my knee, I
marvelled at the accuracy with which he retained the
orchestral detail in his head.
A few days after Sir Thomas's visit I decided to
leave Grez and await Delius in London. At lunch,
on the day I left for England, the old man drank my
health, and said that he would like to give me some-
thing in memory of that year. He called to his wife to
place that something in his hand, and, supporting his
hand on hers, he said, 'Take this and wear it for me,
my dear boy. You have given me a new lease of life.'
I took his gift, fighting to keep back the tears, for of
a sudden the laughter of the meal, the excitement of
AN INTERLUDE 87
the festival, the coming music, my return the following
year - all these things were forgotten, and I felt how
near I had been to this strange man during the past
year. I opened the box. It contained his gold watch
and chain*
IO
I SAW very little of Delius during the festival. 1 For
the most part I was too busy helping Heseltine
and Gibson, Sir Thomas's musical secretary at
that time, in all the extra work that the festival
entailed. Sir Thomas would come out from rehearsal
and announce his intention of editing some score.
Often he would mark it in the train on his way to
conduct in the provinces, and send it back' with the
guard on the next train so that we could get to work
without delay. It was only possible for one person -
two if you were extra polite - to delete the old mark-
ings from the parts and copy the new ones into the
wood-wind and brass* The copyists could not be
called in to duplicate it until a complete set of string
parts, was ready. Once when Sir Thomas caught me
in the act of yawning in the green-room at Queen's
Hall, he cocked his eye at me and said, 'Master
Fenby, have you joined the night-shift ?* Indeed I
had. Gibson and I had been working for nights at his
office in Regent Street to the deafening accompani-
ment of pneumatic drills, fearful, too, lest we should
suddenly be demolished with the premises next door.
And now he had taken it into his head to edit the
enormous score of the Mass of Life I
1 The Delius Festival consisted of four orchestral and choral concerts
(Oct. i2th, iSth, s6th; Nov. ist) (Queen's Hall), and two chamber con-
certs (Oct. iSth, 23rd) (Aeolian Hall) .
88
AN INTERLUDE 89
Still, there were occasional morning drives with
Delius in Richmond Park, when, as at Grez, I
described everything of interest as we drove along.
Best of all there was the pleasure of seeing him so
enthralled in the sound of his music in the concert-
hall.
*You were right, Eric/ he turned to me and said,
after the first work at the opening concert. 'How
wonderful the orchestra sounds to me after all these
years ! I am so glad I came/
Delius was greatly touched by the warmth of his
reception and the spontaneous kindness of his many
friends and admirers.
Heseltine had the happy thought to bring his friend
Augustus John along with him to the Langham Hotel,
where Delius was staying as Sir Thomas's guest.
John made a very fine sketch of the composer with
lightning rapidity before going over to the concert
with us.
I left Delius, after the festival, full of praise for Sir
Thomas Beecham's masterly interpretations of his
music, the magnificent playing of the orchestras taking
part, and the fine singing of Kennedy Scott's Phil-
harmonic Choir in the Mass of Life, which had
brought the festival to a spirited close. In some of his
purely orchestral works it had seemed that Delius had
been listening to them for the very first time, so
perfectly had their inner meaning been grasped and
realised in performance. That was the way he
wanted his music to be played - Beecham's way
and he hoped that the festival would do one thing
above all else, and that, to establish a tradition by
go DELIUS AS I KNEW HIM
which his music should live. If there was to be a
future for his music - and, despite his habitual
egotism, there were moments when he was curiously
humble about his work - it could only live in the tradi-
tion which Beecham had been at such pains to create.
The strain of listening intently to all the music of the
festival had tired him. He longed for the quiet of
Grez, and was most anxious to get back without delay.
*I shall expect you in the early New Year, my boy/
he had said when I had taken my leave of him. 'By
then I shall be rested and able to work again/
It was not until the end of January (1930), however,
that Delius dictated a note to me saying that he was
ready for work. I went out to him at once, but found
him racked with pain so that one could do nothing but
read aloud to him by the hour for days, whilst his
wife endeavoured to calm him as best she could. The
weather was mild, and there was nothing of that icy
cold that had made the previous winter so unbearable,
but there were heavy rains, and the river became a
raging torrent that flooded the meadows opposite
DeEus's house until the lane to Moncourt was
impassable. It was scarcely light, for the sky was
dark and sinister with hurrying clouds. Each day I
went down on to the bridge, and when I saw the
villagers standing about in little groups, the men quiet
and thoughtful, the women in shawls, warning their
children not to go too near the edge as they gazed over
the waters, my mind instantly and always went back
to the many times I had stood among the fisher-folk
in the tiny villages of my native Yorkshire as they had
looked out anxiously over the cruel sea.
AN INTERLUDE 91
By the end of March, Delius had been well enough
to dictate his Third Sonata for violin and piano*
This was a comparatively easy task, and the composer
dictated it with astonishing rapidity. The few odds
and ends of sketches the opening bars, a subsidiary
theme, and the germ for the second subject of the first
movement, a few bars of the second movement, and
the themes for the last movement - dated from the
war years, when concentration in Grez on a large work
was impossible. Several times, when the Germans
were nearing Paris, Delius and his wife had fled from
Grez, taking with them their beloved picture,
Gauguin's 'Nevermore/ and joined the sad procession
of refugees who night and day thronged the high road
from Fontainebleau. Once they had spent the night
in a cattle-truck.
When they could no longer bear the uncertainly and
the ever-loudening noise of tbe approaching guns,
they had buried the silver in the garden, disguised
and barricaded the stone staircase down to the wine-
cellar with innumerable barrow-loads of wood, so that
it looked like the approach to a wood-shed, and,
having crossed to England, had taken the boat from
Newcastle to Norway, where they had remained until
the Armistice. In their absence the house was used
as an English officers' mess, and, up there in Norway,
old Delius, like old Noah in Mr. Chesterton's poem,
must have 'often said to his wife when he sat down to
dine* that he didn't care what the soldiers did if they
didn't get into the wine !
Some of my sunniest recoUecficais of Grez are the
wine^tasting days, which Delias always treated with
92 DELIUS AS I KNEW HIM
the greatest ceremony. I can picture him now, rolling
that sensitive tongue of his round the wine, disputing
other opinions, and pronouncing his own dictatorially.
Although he could not see, I cannot remember him
once confusing samples of a particular kind of wine
that were somewhat similar in taste. He was as proud
of his cellar as of his music.
The Sonata finished, Delius sent for May Harrison,
asking her to come to Grez that Easter to play it over
for him.
In the meantime Balfour Gardiner visited Grez,
and this time brought with him his young friend,
Patrick Hadley, the composer. It was decided that
we should bottk the white wine, so Balfour Gardiner,
with boyish enthusiasm, sat on a log pouring out the
wine from a keg into the bottles with meticulous care,
whilst Hadley corked them with a machine, and I
wired them. The seventy bottles were then trans-
ferred in triumph to the wine-cellar. The next job
that Mrs. Delius found for us to tackle was a very
unsightly overhanging branch of a tree by the river.
Gardiner thought it wise to have the boat beneath it,
to steady the branch when it fell into the water. So,
saying that he would bring the boat round from the
boathouse, which lies in a tiny inlet at the side of the
garden, he despatched Hadley and me to fetch a ladder
and saw. When we returned, we expected to find him
at the scene of operations with the boat, but, instead,
there he was gyrating helplessly in mid-stream, and
battling with one oar against the strong current about
fifty yards away down the river. The boat had not
in use that winter, and the oars were still hanging
AN INTERLUDE 93
in the shed. Apparently there had been an odd oar
lying in the boat, and Gardiner had thought that he
could paddle round that short distance to the tree with
it. When we had recovered from our surprise and
laughter, I shouted to him that if he could only
manage to back-water, and keep to our side of the
bridge, we would be on the bridge as soon as we could,
and drop him the other oar as he passed underneath.
So up the village street we raced, with the other oar,
to the great consternation of the villagers; but, to our
horror, when we reached the bridge Gardiner had
already passed under it and was heading for the
dangerous weir down by the mill. Fortunately, just
as the situation was getting very serious, the inn-
keeper, happening to be in his garden, and seeing
Gardiner's plight, put off in a boat, and event-
ually towed him into safety. Hadley then said that
he would join Gardiner in the boat, so I remained
on the bridge and watched their repeated efforts to
pass under the farthest arch where the current was
the slightest. At last they succeeded in getting
through, but they were so exhausted that I called out
to them to put into the side, where I- would go down
and take the oars. They took me on board, and all
went well until, just as we were coming into the full
force of the current, I missed my stroke, and back
we shot under the bridge to where they had started.
In the end, the innkeeper, a great, strong fellow like
a prize-fighter, bared his enormous chest and, rolling
his sleeves up, muttered something disparagingly about
les Strangers. He seized the oars, took the bridge at
the first attempt, and rowed the three mariners home.
94 DELIUS AS I KNEW HIM
Delius, of course, chaffed us unmercifully about it.
Needless to say, the offending branch remained
undisturbed. Several weeks later, as I was wheeling
Delius in his carriage down the garden, we heard a
crash, followed by much shouting and cursing, and,
going down to the water's edge, I discovered that the
branch had fallen, and smashed up a fishing-party
that had been lazing underneath. As soon as these
excitable and furious Frenchmen saw Delius from
out the wreckage of branches, bent and broken rods
and tangled lines, their fury increased. It was all his
fault. He must buy them new rods. But Delius
merely answered in dry, unconcerned tones that it
served them right. Hadn't they seen the notice on
the tree, 'Defense de stationner' ? These were his
private fishing-grounds, and they had better be off
before he called the garde-champetre. They now
presented a very sorry sight as they tried in vain to
extricate themselves and to control the boat, which
had broken away from its moorings and was drifting,
wreckage and all, down the river. Then one of them
missed his straw hat, and was livid with rage when
another fisherman, in a boat anchored in the reeds at
the other side of the river, roared with laughter and
pointed to it as it sailed merrily before the wind about
two lengths away. -This was too much for him.
Words jostled in his throat.
'If only old Lloyd George would look after his
trees . . . '
'What was that ?* questioned Delius, warming up
to the fray. 'Lloyd George ? Did he call me Lloyd
George ? f
AN INTERLUDE 95
I thought it was now time for me to intervene, so I
whisked the carriage round and pushed the old man,
now clutching his breast in his anger, out of sight.
As was always the case with Balfour Gardiner, he
had no sooner arrived in Grez than he began to talk*
about leaving. All too soon Mrs. Delius and I were
saying au revoir to our friends on the station at
Nemours, our nearest town. Here we bought a
nasse, a kind of big wire cage used for catching fish,
and, slinging it behind the old Ford like some great
double-bass, we returned home all agog with excite-
ment, for I was determined to trap all the fish that
had come up from the flooded river to the pond in the
garden. But they were too clever for me, and all I
could catch were water-rats, and, once, two frogs, the
mother holding the little one on its back above water.
I took the cage carefully out of the water, opened the
wire door, and lifted the big frog out on to the ground
somewhat gingerly with my handkerchief, putting its
little one beside it. They both allowed me to handle
them without the slightest sign of fear, and hopped off
together in the long grass. Delius x when I told him
of this, shook his head, and said that we should not
get a wink of sleep that night 'for the "Hallelujah
Chorus" of the frogs/
It had come about that, during the course of
conversation with Gardiner and Hadley, mention
had been made of the full score and orchestral parts
of Delius's early opera, Koanga, which had been
missing for a great number of years. Nobody, it
appeared, could trace them, yet Delius felt sure that
they must be somewhere in London. Terhaps at
96 DELIUS AS I KNEW HIM
this moment some grocer is tearing a sheet out of the
score and wrapping up his butter in it, 5 Delius had
suggested. However, Hadley had said that he would
see what he could do. Perhaps they were lying in
some publisher's warehouse, where they had been
dumped by mistake. A few days later Hadley was
back in Grez with the orchestral parts ! He had been
right. Still, there was no trace whatever of the full
score ; they had searched everywhere. There was only
one thing to be done, and that was to reconstruct the
score from the material, for Sir Thomas Beecham had
announced that he wished to play an excerpt from the
opera. Having planted the orchestral parts all round
the music-room, and threatened the servants with fire
and brimstone if they did anything other than dust
round them, I set about the colossal task myself. At
first I found it a fascinating job always speculating as
to what the next bar was going to be, but, after working
the clock round for several days, the brain became
dull, and one addressed oneself to this work for what
it really was -nothing but mere hack work. For-
tunately, there was no need for me to continue in this
arduous way for more than a fortnight, for Hadley
now informed us that, by a stroke of luck, he had
unearthed the score. A new score had to be made, so
I completed my copy from the original MS.
Easter brought May Harrison, and now we were
able to hear the new Sonata. Delius was obviously
very pleased with his achievement, and so delighted
was he with May Harrison's musicianly interpretation
that he dedicated the work to her. *It seems a
younger, fresher work than either of the other two
AN INTERLUDE 97
sonatas/ said he, 'and in some respects I like it
better.'
That May the garden, which had looked like a tiny
corner of England with its well-trimmed flower-beds,
pansies, forget-me-nots, wallflowers, its like and
apple-blossom, and the soft mellow green of its trees,
was suddenly white with snow. A blizzard swept the
country, and the peasants said that the whole wine-
crop of France would be ruined.
In early June there came a somewhat unusual
visitor, a Scotsman from London named Erskine, who
had been sent out to Grez by a friend of Delius, in
the hope that he might be able to restore the com-
poser^ sight by the healing power of hypnotism. At
first Delius would not hear of the suggestion, but he
was eventually persuaded to try it. Erskine stayed a
fortnight in Grez, and, though he did not succeed in
his purpose, the results whilst they lasted were truly
marvellous. Each morning he visited Delius and
remained with him alone for over an hour. What the
treatment was I do not know, but what I do know is
that on the second day, when Delius took his walking
exercise, with his wife supporting him on one side
and his male nurse on the other, I saw him walk three
times his usual distance without fatigue, and on the
following day, instead of being carried from his
carriage in the porch to his chair in the living-room,
as was the custom, I saw him walk in like manner into
the house, and not only walk with little aid, but go up
the two steps into the living-room ! Towards the
end of the first week he could wipe his brow with his
handkerchief, control his fingers sufficiently to take
98 DELIUS AS I KNEW HIM
his handkerchief from his breast-pocket and wipe his
nose, and touch his face with his forefinger, with
unerring accuracy, at whatever point Erskine in-
dicated. The amazing thing was that he continued to
do most of these things whether Erskine was present
or not. On our evening walks I observed that he
adjusted his hat himself, and, whenever a mosquito
settled on his face, he flicked it off with his forefinger,
when hitherto it would have had to have been done
for him. Yet, astonishing as all these things were -
for very few can realise how completely helpless he
was - there was still no mention of his seeing again.
Erskine was very friendly* He had not expected
to find 'an extraordinary man like Delius living in
such a god-forsaken hole as Grez.' He had imagined
Grez to be a fashionable little spa !
Delius, he confided, was the most difficult case he
had ever had. On the first day it had been no easy
matter to hypnotise him.
*I shall make him see before I go, but it will not be
for more than a few minutes at a time, if that. Perhaps
if he were to take a six months' course of treatment I
could make him see again permanently/ said he.
Erskine was very interested in music, and ques-
tioned me a great deal as to how Delius was able to
work with me. It seemed to him that there was
probably as much telepathy as intuition in it, if not
more, and, technical considerations apart, he certainly
did not think that I could have worked with such
understanding as Delius had credited me with had I
not lived with the composer so intimately for months
without a break. I, too, had often noticed during
AN INTERLUDE 99
working hours that a phrase that Delius was about to
dictate had already occurred to me before he could
name it. At some time or another of our lives we
have all of us listened to a piece of music that we have
not heard before, and been able to guess pretty well
what the composer was going to do next, but that is
not precisely the same thing. There, suggestion
plays too great a part, and the brain, whether we are
conscious of its functioning or not, is alert, and con-
centrated on the possible turns this new music might
take; whereas at moments such as those to which I
refer I was often writing out some passage as fast as I
could, when like a flash some phrase would come to
mind, and I would be amazed to hear Delius begin
to dictate it.
It is true that during the course of work on a new
composition I thought myself into it almost as much
as did Delius himself. *My dear boy, you finish my
sentences for me/ he used to say. It was no use
remaining passive and merely taking down the notes
(even if one could have done at the speed at which he
dictated), particularly with a man like Delius, who
never repeated himself unless he could help it.
It will be remembered that earlier in the previous
year Delius had had momentary glimpses of his hands,
at varying intervals over a period of several months,
but to my knowledge these occurrences had ceased
before he went to England for the festival, and there
had been no mention of them ever since. Bearing in
mind what Erskine had achieved in those few days,
I was not surprised when, towards the end of the first
week, they told me that Delius had seen his haodfe
100 DELIUS AS I KNEW HIM
once more, but, as on those other occasions, only for
an instant on awakening from his afternoon nap.
Each day he saw for just such a little time, but no
more, and by the middle of the second week Erskine
as much as said to me privately that it was hopeless.
At the end of that week he came up to the music-
rooin and said that he was going to bring Delius up.
'Don't go/ said he. C I want you to remain.'
He then explained that he would like Delius to sit
once more at a keyboard and finger the keys. Perhaps
. . . but we would see. I hinted that Delius had not
been able to play the piano for years, but he said that
did not matter. What he was driving at I could not
imagine. It seemed absurd, and I thought it a great
mistake, but it was not for me to say so. I was pre-
paring to put an armchair when Erskine stopped me.
* We'll use one of these instead/ said he, selecting a
chair without arms. 'He'll sit on it all right !'
They carried Delius upstairs and set him down on
the chair, but he could not sit on it unsupported, and
I was sure that he would fall off. Erskine, however,
went to him and steadied him, holding him gently by
the shoulders.
c By the time I count five/ said he quietly, 'you will
be able to sit on this chair without my help, but when
I take my arms away you will not be able to move
forward or say your name ! One, two, three, four,
five . . . * And with this he passed the tips of his
fingers slowly down from Delius's head to his
shoulders, and stood back. The old man could
neither speak nor move, but exerted himself to his
utmost to do so.
AN INTERLUDE IOI
'Now say your name,' commanded Erskine after
about half a minute of such struggling, and the old
man repeated his name several times, and moved
backwards and forwards in his chair as he was
bidden.
'Now play V ordered Erskine, and Delius lifted his
hands unaided on to the keys, and there began a
medley of meaningless sounds. Even in this terrible
ordeal his sense of. humour did not desert him, for he
turned his head to me and said, 'Eric, the New
Music F
At this, I went over to Erskine and whispered that
I had had enough of it, and left the room.
What is this awful power that some possess and
others not, and what is this state called hypnotic
sleep when a man is asleep yet awake ?
Whatever it is, and whether it comes from heaven
or hell, let it be recorded that the great improvement
which I have mentioned in Delius's general condition
was maintained throughout that summer. That he
was much less nervous and irritable was evident to
everyone. I, for one, shall always be grateful to
Erskine, in that Delius was now able to work day after
day without interruption on his last choral work, which
was to be called Songs of Farewell* Continuous work
such as this was unheard of during those latter years.
Songs of Farewell, apart from its intrinsic musical
merit, is a monument of what can be done when, the
body broken, there still remains in a man the will to
create. It should be an inspiration to every young
composer who finds the spirit willing but the flesh
weak.
102 DELIUS AS I KNEW HIM
It is a setting for double chorus and orchestra of
words chosen by the composer's wife from Walt
Whitman's Leaves of Grass. Here, in the first three
movements, the composer gives voice to the 'silent
backward tracings/ the 'meditations of old times
resumed - their loves, joys, persons, voyages/ that
delight the heart of man in the twilight of his days.
The great forces of Nature are saluted in turn, and
in the fourth and fifth movements, with a joyous
leave-taking, the old sailor, bidding farewell to *land
and life/ speeds from the shore upon the endless
chartless voyage of Death to the sound of the hushed
voices of his friends in the final pianissimo chord,
'Depart P A' more cheerful note is struck at the
thought of Death in this work than in the Requiem,
the most depressing choral work I know.
So the months passed by uneventfully, except for
a short visit from Beatrice Harrison and her mother
which resulted in two pieces being specially written
for her earning American tour -the Caprice and
Elegy for 'cello solo and chamber orchestra.
That summer, Delius was particularly interested
in the cricket test matches between England and
Australia. Every morning, when I came down to
lunch, I read to him the scores and the full account of
each day's play. The progress of each match was
watched with as much keenness as that of two specta-
tors on the ground, and Mrs. Delius used to say that
she had never heard so much talk about cricket as
when her 'two Yorkshire lads' got together. And the
old 'un used to brag how, in his prime, he had nsver
let a loose ball goby without punishing it unmercifully,
AN INTERLUDE 103
and never dropped a catch in the slips, and the young
y un used to believe him and tell how he had once
skittled a team of yokels with his googlies for seven
runs.
When, at last, the choral work was finished and all
the slaving done, Delius quickly relapsed into his
former state of titter -helplessness and nervous
irritability. Nothing we did was right, and I mar-
velled at the way his wife went on from day to day
with such a happy heart in face of such difficulties.
Every little change of weather affected him deeply,
and once, when there had been a violent thunderstorm
and one of the great trees in the garden had been left
with a horrid scar from the lightning, tKere were days
and nights of ceaseless pain for him and depression
for us*
How Delius and his wife managed to keep their hold
on life during such frightful times as these will always
be a mystery to me. What he suffered and what she
endured no one will ever know !
There must be something that comes with age to
enable a man and a woman to bear the mental and
physical strain of prolonged suffering and misfortune,
for sensitive youth cannot stand up against it for long.
I remember how, after days like these, I have walked
about in the night and fought with myself to keep my
sense of balance^ Alone upon that great high road
that for centuries has been a main artery connecting
Paris with the south, I have peopled it in my imagin-
ation with the untold legions of the past : Charlemagne
and his armies marching north; the merchants of
medieval days coming up and down with all the
104 DELIUS AS I KNEW HIM
outward splendour of their merchandise ; the countless
hosts of hooded friars with their staffs; Napoleon
hurrying to Fontainebleau; and Balzac . . . had
Balzac ever walked along by that lane through Hulay, 1
over the hill to Grez, when he was staying at the
chateau lower down the road towards Nemours ? I
wondered. To give full rein to the imagination in the
quiet and cool of the night braces the jagged nerves
like the healthy flush of the cleaner instincts that tone
the body up when a man is astride a horse. These
reflections brought forgetfulness, and I would return
home ready for what the next day might bring. But
this could not go on for long. When in the late
autumn I had said good-bye to them, and was sitting
in the taxi whilst my bags were strapped behind, I
took one more glance through the door, into the
Delius world beyond, and saw the last rays of the sun
playing on the deep russet gold of the beech-trees in
the garden (as in the love-scene of Fennimore and
Gerda), and I sank back and felt like a worn-out old
man.
1 Hulay, a tiny hamlet near Grez.
II
DELIUS was very anxious to haye Sir Thomas
Beecham's opinion of the new choral work, so
it was arranged that I should take the manu-
script full score and play it over to him.
Sir Thomas was charming.
'Beautiful P was his comment when I had finished
playing the first number, and after the second he
smiled and said 'Lovely P When we had come to the
last few bars of the work, he got up excitedly from his
chair beside me and said, 'Ah, my dear fellow, this is
lovely music ; simple and direct and very much in the
style of A Late Lark, isn't it ? But how the devil did
you manage to get it down on paper ?'
'Extracting music from the brain of a Delius is not
one of the easiest jobs/ I replied.
'No, I should think not/ said he, fingering his
beard. *I think you ought to be a Cabinet Minister P
That was the Beecham touch, so I left it at that.
Christmas was clouded, for all of us who loved and
admired him, by the tragic death of Philip Heseltine.
Delius was greatly shocked and profoundly moved by
the sad circumstances attending it.
'. . . the terrible tragedy of poor Phil has really
quite unstrung me, and Jelka as well. We can think
of nothing else/ he wrote.
He who has heard the cry of the curlew on a lone
H 105
106 DELIUS AS I KNEW HIM
and desolate moor has heard the music of this richly
gifted personality. * It is the saddest music I know.
For some months I was now busy in London,
correcting proofs and orchestral parts, and inter-
viewing publishers respecting all the new scores, but
we kept up a constant exchange of letters, and I was
constantly worried and alarmed by the unsatisfactory
reports of the behaviour of Delius's male nurses.
The existence of such people was almost unheard-of
in France, even in Paris, and, unless they had been
able to read German fluently, Frenchmen would have
been of little use, for not the least important part of
their duties was the reading aloud, and Delias hated
French. English male nurses were out of the question
it seemed; all that remained were German. When,
after endless searchings and unimaginable difficulties
with the passport authorities, a new man was found,
it invariably turned out that Providence had sent us
a clown of the highest order. There were a few
exceptions, but very few.
I had had a good deal of experience of these fellows,
who were always threatening to leave at a moment's
notice, and had often been truly thankful that poor
Delius, the most fastidious of men, could not see them.
There was one in particular, who used to do the
goose-step four or five times round the kitchen to get
the right atmosphere before he entered the room.
There was another who used to put dramas on our
pillows at night, so that we might give him our
considered opinion of his efforts by morning; and
there was another who fell and crashed about like a
comedian in pantomime.
AN INTERLUDE 107
One night, when this worthy had come to carry
Delius up to bed, the old man said jokingly, 'Eric, just
go upstairs and see if my bedroom door is open. You
see, last night he carried me upstairs feet in the air
and head on the ground. Then he swung me round
at the top of the stairs like a battering-ram and pushed
the door open with my head I*
I was not astonished, therefore, to receive the
following letter:
'Grez-sur-Loing,
'11.5.31-
DEAR ERIC, -As I am never sure to have a
moment in the daytime, I will write to you now, as I
cannot sleep. We have had the most troubled times
with the new man all along. He was so extraordinarily
unbalanced and unaccountable in his behaviour*
Still we thought we must try to get along with him,
after all the delay and difficulty of getting him into
France.
'And do you know what happened ? On Friday
afternoon after lunch he disappeared, and we have
not seen him again. He ate a good lunch in his room,
and brought down his tray, and that is the last that
was seen ! In his room he left everything about,
letters, clothes, his unmade bed, and an indescribable
disorder. It was a rainy day, too, and I had had an
awful time at Fontainebleau. He disliked poor Fred,
and on Fridays there was generally some unpleasant-
ness, but this time nothing special, and I had not
spoken to him at all. We searched everywhere, and
108 DELIUS AS I KNEW HIM
M. Grespier went to the Gendarmerie at Nemours.
No one saw him leave the house. At the stations of
Nemours, Bourron, and Fontainebleau he was not
seen. We could not help thinking of the river, as he
was so moody at times - boisterous at others - but he
had taken his money and passports, changed his
blouse and put on an overcoat.
'Well, there we were with poor Fred and nobody
to help us. The maids were very nice and carried
him upstairs on a wicker chair, and I managed to
do the rest somehow and get him undressed and fed
him.
'Luckily I had felt that a catastrophe was brooding
over us, and had got Mrs. Brooks to look out for a
possible remplaganty and I had also written to another
of the former applicants who seemed so good.
Through the American Hospital in Paris I got the
address of a Canadian. I wired him to come, and he
came yesterday afternoon to help us for a few days,
and I am trying to get the other German to come as
soon as possible as tourist. Then I will try to get him
in d'urgence.
'I know you will understand what dreadful heart-
ache and difficulty all this means to me, and the future
so entirely uncertain. Also Fred got such a shock over
his departure that he was not at all well. The weather
was atrocious until yesterday, when it turned heavenly,
and the Canadian helped to get Fred into the garden,
where we had tea.
*The room of the man is all stacked with pamphlets,
books on thought-reading, palmistry, Indian Yogi-ism,
medicines, and treatises to fortify brain-power and
AN INTERLUDE IOQ
give one great influence and power over people. That
is probably what he tried to exercise over Fred in
vain.
'The poor man had hardly any intellect at all, and all
these silly theories nearly turned his brain. And
where can he be ? I also wrote and enquired at the
German Embassy in Paris.
'I always think of you, and especially when I go to
look at the little chestnut, quite a tree now. Please
write and tell us about everything.
'With both our affectionate love,
'JELKA DELIUS.'
I was very uneasy, and contemplated leaving my
work and taking the next train to Paris. I wired, but
there came no reply. However, I decided to wait, and
news came eventually by letter. It read:
'Grez-sur-Loing,
'iS-5-31-
'MY DEAR GOOD EMC, - It was so dear of you to
wire and offer to come and help me, and I thank you
with all my heart. But I have help now. All hap-
pened most dramatically the day after I wrote to you.
'On Wednesday, a young German student of
medicine wrote to me, recommended by the German
Embassy. This man said that he would like to come
and do the work, so I phoned at once and he was to
arrive on Wednesday evening.
'Meanwhile at about 4 pjn. our lost man arrived,
looking in a fearful state, and he had got the school-
master to accompany him here. He himg his head
110 DELIUS AS I KNEW HIM
very much, and said an inner voice had called him
into the wilderness, so that like Buddha he could pass
through terrible times so as to purify his soul. He
rambled on like this and everybody was afraid he
would attack them. (The schoolmaster was very
nervous and had a revolver in his pocket.) But I saw
it was all gas and I took him to his room, where he
said, "Sleep, ah, sleep 1" and sank on his bed and
was fast asleep at once. As he seemed perfectly mad,
I fetched Andre to put a bolt on our bedroom door,
and then, after a little while, he had washed himself,
and dressed like a tennis dandy in white flannels and
came downstairs to have a big meal. In the middle of
that, the new man arrived, a delicate little chap, and
very pale-looking.
*I had to rush out again and try and find someone to
escort the other man safely to the German Embassy in
Paris, and at last I got hold of C , the? brigand, 1
who agreed enthusiastically to do the job. Now we
had to get the man to consent to leave and pack, and
we had another fright last night, as he had gone for a
walk and did not return. When at last he returned for
supper I quickly locked him in his part of the house.
Finally, this morning, he went off with R and the
brigand. We really cannot say if he is mad or simu-
lating. However, we are tremendously relieved to be
rid of him, and to have peace and harmony descend
upon the house once more. The new man has
already been assistant in a hospital; he understands
everything and learns very quickly. It was a wonderful
1 This fellow, whom we nicknamed 'the brigand' on account of his red
face and flowing moustache, was a great local celebrity, and stalked about
the village like a Spanish desperado.
AN INTERLUDE III
coincidence that he landed at the German Embassy
just at the moment of our desperate need.
'With much love from us both, dear good friend,
'Yours affectionately,
*JELKA DELIUS.*
Thus we were all able to breathe freely again - until
the next upheaval came along.
On September iTth of that year, Sir Henry Wood
gave the first performance of A Song of Summer at the
B.B.C. season of Promenade Concerts. Delius had
written to Sir Henry saying that he would like me to
play over the new work to him, and, when I had gone,
and found him in his little room at Queen's Hall,
bestrewn with orchestral parts and working in his
shirt-sleeves at one of those menial jobs that most
conductors leave to some wretched underling, I
realised something of what I had heard of his pro-
verbial thoroughness and untiring energy. The fol-
lowing morning at rehearsal I felt very nervous as I
listened to the work for the first time, for it must be
remembered that Delius had never seen the score
Happily I was able to wire to him that it sounded very
well. A Song of Simmer was given a good perfor-
mance under Sir Henry, who delighted me by saying
that he thought it a beautiful little work. He liked it
so much that he had just made arrangements to
include it in a programme he was to conduct in
Belfast at the end of that season.
Immediately after this performance I returned to
Grez. There I found the composer little changed in
health, his wife looking worn and tired. He told
112 DELITJS AS I KNEW HIM
me that he had 'listened in' to the new work with
pleasure.
*It*s a good piece, lad/ said he. *I would have much
rather heard it over again than my old Piano Concerto.
I am so tired of it, and, as you know, I don't think
much of it.*
It was during this visit that the score of the Fantastic
Dance was completed by dictation, and this the
composer dedicated to me. Another charming little
piece written about this time was a prelude, Irmelin.
This enchanting lyric for small orchestra arose out of
a few musical ideas that particularly appealed to the
composer in his very early unpublished and unper-
formed opera, IrmeUn, and, slight though it is, I shall
ever be sorry that Delius did not live to hear the lovely
sound of it on the orchestra. It was one of the two
pieces that Sir Thomas Beecham found it necessary
to interpolate during a change of the scenery at the
recent revival of Delius's third opera, Koanga, at
Covent Garden. It is always fascinating to watch the
reaction of the men in the orchestra during their
playing of a new work for the first time. Usually the
impression received by the onlooker as he scans the
rows of faces is one of utter boredom and indifference.
I shall not forget the smiles of approval and the
delightful comments that accompanied its Lydian
measures when Sir Thomas first rehearsed it at Covent
Garden.
On my way home to spend Christmas with my
parents, I had the good fortune to meet Elgar in Lon-
don at the Langham Hotel. Sir Edward questioned
me very searchingly about Delius, and the life he led
AN INTERLUDE 113
at Grez, and deplored the death of Philip Hesdtine*
C I can assure you, I felt it just as much as Defius,'
said he.
I noticed that during the course of conversation
Elgar persistently eyed my pocket, from which pro-
truded the miniature score of his Ab Symphony.
Eventually I pulled it out and said, *Oh, yes, I have
just been listening to Beecham rehearsing this/
'But I thought you young men didn't like that sort
of thing/ he grumbled in rather suspicious tones, not
taking his eyes from mine; it all ended in his auto-
graphing the last page of the slow movement for
me.
'Do you know my Falstaffy he enquired with
considerable warmth. I replied that I did, and that,
if he would allow me to say so, I considered it to be
the finest piece of programme music ever written.
He paid no heed to my remark, and went on proudly,
'I think it is my best work. Wait until you hear the
gramophone records of it that I've just made* They're
splendid !' When I left him he said, 'Come and see
me whenever you like,' and then he added with a
chuckle, 'And tell Delius that I grow more like
Falstaff every day 1*
That evening Beecham gave an exquisite perform-
ance of In a Summer Garden. The opening bars were
poised to a nicety, and the timing of the oboe counter-
point, at the bar after the entrance of the strings,
perfect. Usually the semiquaver notes of this fussy
oboe figure are hurried in performance, so that at the
very outset the spefl is broken, and often the whole
delicate machinery of the work thrown out of gear.
114 DELIUS AS I KNEW HIM
When we came to the Elgar Symphony I was un-
moved. The third movement, that had once seemed
the greatest slow movement in the whole range of
symphonic literature, and which I had never tired of
hearing, now seemed dull and uninspired, and its
emotional appeal sickened me* It seemed hypocritical
to have said what I had done to Elgar that afternoon
and to feel like this, but such was the state of my
nerves that, outside the world of Delius's music, I now
felt strangely uneasy and unsafe. No young man
could have lived for long periods with a man like
Delius, as I had done, without having his sense of
musical values constantly disturbed. Sometimes one
felt that the only music that mattered was the music
of Delius, and at other times one felt that one never
wanted to hear a note of it again. Little did I realise
how ill I was, and how soon I was to be prostrated
with a nervous breakdown.
When word of this reached Delius, his wife wrote,
4 Dear Fred had his eyes swimming in tears when I
read him about your illness ; he loves you dearly.'
By the following spring I was well enough to
attend the final rehearsals for the first performance of
Songs of Farewell at the Courtauld-Sargent Concert
at Queen's Hall on March 22nd (1932). Delius had
set his heart on a premUre under Beecham, but it
was not possible to arrange this, and when Mrs.
Courtauld went to Grez, and pressed the com-
poser for its inclusion in the programmes that she
was then drawing up for the coming season's
series of concerts, Delius submitted, somewhat un-
willingly, to her request. It was a very anxious young
AN INTERLUDE 115
man who accompanied Dr. Sargent to the Royal
College of Music, where the first full rehearsal was to
be held. When I heard the sound of the tuning, and
saw the Philharmonic Choir massed up behind the
London Symphony Orchestra, and the audience of
students, every one of whom had a score, I felt just
as I had done at that first rehearsal of A Song of
Summer, but, as on that occasion, I was afterwards
able to wire to Delius that the new work had turned
out well.
There was, however, this that worried me -the
high soprano C at the climax 'Away, O soul, hoist
instantly the anchor !' This was not the instance of a
very high note coming in the stride of a work which
otherwise kept for its intimacies within the middle
compass of the voices, but a work in which even the
quieter and more contemplative numbers were equally
highly pitched. I do not think that it ever occurred
to Delius that in these long rhapsodic passages the
singers might need fo take breath from time to time,
any more than in a similar passage marked fortissimo,
in a work like A Song of the High Hills, the trombone
players might be given but one beat's rest in which to
get their wind. Delius's entire output abounds in
examples of this careless disregard for the limits of
the human agency in performance. Again and again
I had noticed, when working with him, that there was
always a tendency in him to force up the pitch,
particularly whenever the music became more ani-
mated. Sometimes he would even o'erleap his
climax before reaching it ! I have often wondered
whether to attribute this failing to the deafness in one
Il6 DELIUS AS I KNEW HIM
ear which embarrassed his latter years, or to his lack
of the sense of perfect pitch.
With Malcolm Sargent at the helm, Songs of Fare-
well began its adventure o'er the seas, and soon the
old sailor was to depart upon his 'endless cruise/ His
work was not yet quite finished.
12
EACH 'home-coming/ as Delius used to call my
return to Grez, was an occasion of great excite-
ment in the household and frequent anxiety
for me, for it always happened that, shortly before my
departure, there would come a letter with a list of
eatables that I was to take. I have crossed the Channel
with muffins and pikelets, cheeses, Yorkshire ham
and bacon, sausages, jam, caraway-seeds, select blends
of tea, not to mention the night when, during a rough
crossing between Newhaven and Dieppe, the boat
reeking with the smell of new paint, I had oysters to
feed on the way !
This time, on arriving in Grez, in August (1932), I
found that delightful fellow James Gunn installed in
the studio above the music-room, and working on his
portrait of the composer which was to occupy so prom-
inent a position in the following year's Academy. He
had come at the suggestion of Norman O'Neill, who
had persuaded Delius to allow his friend to paint him.
Gunn was working under great difficulties, for Delius
would only sit for short periods, and, even so, was
never still. Sometimes Gunn had no sooner fixed his
easel, and struggled down three flights of stairs with
his large canvas, when Delius would ask to be carried
away ! Then there was the problem of the light,
which could not be regulated; artist and sitter were
almost on top of each other. Delius would in no way
Ii8 DELIUS AS I KNEW HIM
allow the sittings to interfere with the normal routine
of his day, so that for the most part the artist had to
struggle on as best he could. I felt sorry for Gunn,
who was depressed by the atmosphere of nervous
tension about the place, and I did my best to help
him by deputising for the composer in a white shirt,
open at the neck, and a white shoe which had to
protrude a little from beneath the checked rug which
Delius usually wore loosely over his knees.
The new male nurse had not turned out to be such
a paragon after all, and was already about to leave.
His temporary templagant, a meagre-looking Pole
from Paris, was very nervous about carrying Delius,
aid Delius was still more nervous about being carried,
so the poor fellow asked if he might practise on me
before venturing on Delius. What with being carried
up and down the precipitous spiral staircase by the
little Pole, panting for breath, and posing for hours
until the folds of the shirt and the innumerable checks
of that confounded rug were completed, I could have
out-Deliused Delius in irascibility by the time it was
all finished.
Now that his unfinished manuscripts were com-
pleted, Delius said there was one more thing that he
would like to do. Would I play him the score of his
unpublished one-act opera, Margot-la-Rouge ? Per-
haps something might yet be made of it. He had been
badly in need of money, and had written this work in
1902 for a competition (the Sonzogno prize), one of
the principal conditions of which was that the libretto
must be of the French or Italian dramatic type, which
he loathed. There had been very little time, and a
AN INTERLUDE
French authoress had offered him a libretto which,
faute de mieux, he had accepted. When one remem-
bers that Margot-la-Rouge is a product of those six
magnificent years of passionate and vigorous creative
activity when the composer was at the very height of
his powers - 1900-1, A Village Romeo and JuKet\
1902, Appalachian 1903, Sea-drift; 1904-5, A Mass
of Life - it is not to be wondered at that now, those
creative powers spent, he should turn back rather
wistfully to this unfortunate work. His first intention,
on hearing the music again, was to discard the original
story - a sordid affair about a young French soldier's
terrible vengeance when he finds his boyhood sweet-
heart, Margot, flaunting herself as zfille dejoie in an
infamous Paris caf-and to ask his young friend
Robert Nichols to write a new story so that he might
drastically revise the score. Later, however, he
decided to retain only such sections of the work as
particularly appealed to him, and to adapt them to a
selection of words from Walt Whitman that Nichols
had compiled for him. The prelude to Margot-la-
Rouge, evoking, as it does, the presence of a distant
metropolis, suggested the retrospective line, 'Once I
passed through a populous city/ and the work
gradually assumed its present form, an Idyll for
soprano, baritone, and orchestra. A short orchestral
introduction, the original prelude to the opera, leads
to the baritone entry:
'Once I passed through a populous city,
Imprinting my brain with all its shows.
Of that city I remember only a woman,
A woman I casually met,
Who detained me for love of me.
120 DELITJS AS I KNEW HIM
Day by day and night by night we were together -
all else has been forgotten by me.
Again we wander, we love, we separate,
Again she holds me by the hand, I must not go.
Day by day and night by night together P
Then, in his musing, he hears the voice of the
woman:
*Day by day, night by night we were together/
he crying:
*I hear her whisper,*
and she, singing again:
*I love you, before long I die.
I have waited long merely to look on you,
For I could not die till I had once looked on you.'
They extol the contentedness and solemnity of their
ascent to the 'sphere of lovers/ and the music becomes
more and more impassioned:
*O to speed where there is space enough and
air enough at last !
We are two hawks, we soar above and look down.
What is all else to us, who have voided all but
freedom and all but our own joy ?'
But, as in Songs of Sunset:
*They are not long, the days of wine and roses/
the dread of separation darkens as a cloud :
Tace so pale with wondrous eyes, gather closer yet,
closer yet.
Perfume therefore my chant, O love, immortal love.
Make me a fountain
That I exhale love wherever I go/
AN INTERLUDE 121
The work ends with a beautiful yet poignant
passage :
Man: 'Sweet are the blooming cheeks of the living.
Sweet are the musical voices sounding,
But sweet, ah, sweet are the dead
With their silent eyes.*
Woman: 'I ascend, I float to the regions of your love, Oman/
Both: 'All is over and long gone, but
Love is not over.'
When Delias dictated the last line of the baritone
part, I smiled but made no comment. Several months
later, when the score had been published, apropos of
a remark he made I pointed out tactfully that that
phrase might have dropped out of Songs of Sunset.
Greatly taken aback, he had not noticed it until then.
Thus does a composer repeat himself unconsciously
under stress of similar emotions.
The Idyll was first performed at the Promenade
Concerts on October 3rd, 1933, under Sir Henry
Wood, Dora Labette and Roy Henderson being the
soloists.
The dreary monotony of that winter 2 was broken at
intervals - all too few for me -by visits from Cecil
Gray, Arnold Bax (both rather silent and shy, but
always stimulating when they did talk), Kenneth
Spence, with whom Delius loved to recall his wander-
ings in Norway, and Professor Dent, whose book on
Busoni was now in print, and which we had just read
{ i See p. 69. 2 1932-3.
122 DELIUS AS I KNEW HIM
aloud to Delius with the greatest interest. Gray in
particular was almost as astonished by the extra-
ordinary liveliness of Delius's mind as was Spence by
the amazing accuracy of his memory, but the professor
remarked that he could not forget how greatly Delius
had aged since his last visit two years before.
The other visitor was Lionel Tertis, who came to
play his viola arrangement of the Third Sonata for
violin and piano to the composer. Tertis, like most
people, had imagined Grez to be but a very short
distance from Paris, whereas it lies about six miles
beyond Fontainebleau, which town is already about
thirty-eight miles from Paris by road. The taxi-
driver - the rogue ! - was apparently also under the
same impression. Village after village they passed,
battling their way through a blinding snowstorm, poor
Tertis shivering and anxious on the edge of his seat,
clattering at the window to urge the scoundrel on.
After two hours of such agony they at last pulled up
outside Delius's house, and Tertis, clutching his viola,
entered, a picture of desolation. He had no feeling
in his hands; how could he possibly play, he said;
besides, that fellow had swindled him abominably.
After a while, however, we managed to thaw him, and
he went up to the music-room and played as only a
great artist can play. Rarely had I seen Delius so
happy. One of my most treasured possessions is the
beautiful letter which Tertis wrote after his visit,
complimenting me on my playing with him without a
rehearsal.
It was during a short and unavoidable absence from
Grez, attending to matters respecting the publication
AN INTERLUDE 123
and first performance of the Idyll, that Elgar paid
the composer a visit. It had interested me to hear
from Sir Edward, whilst I was yet in England, that
he was 'happy at finding Delius so bright/
Delius described their meeting to me as follows:
'Elgar came. It was really delightful. He stayed
from tea-time until nearly seven o'clock. He was very
genial and natural and altogether quite unlike what I
had expected him to be. I never knew him well.
I had seen him for a moment now and then in London
and once at the Birmingham Festival in 1912 when he
conducted a new thing of his - The Music-Makers > I
believe. Anyhow I didn't care for it -it was too
rowdy and commonplace. That was the time they
did Sea-drift and Sibelius came over to conduct anew
work of his, the Fourth Symphony - fine music with
a genuine feeling for Nature. I like Sibelius, he's a
splendid fellow. I had often met him at Busoni's
house. Elgar brought me an album of his records
the Fifth Symphony, Tapiola, and Pohjola's Daughter
- very good in their way, but he always uses the same
procedure to get the music going and that irritates me.
A lot of his work is too complicated and thought out.
Fve got no use for that sort of writing. I've written
pages of it myself - paper-music - but I had the sense
to burn them. If you knew the amount of music I Ve
written and burned you would be amazed. It is
against my nature to write music like that. The
English like that sort of thing just as they like vogues
for this and that. Now it's Sibelius, and when they're
tired of hint theyll boost up Mahler and Bruckner.
There's an album of Wolf songs that Elgar also
124 DELIUS AS I KNEW HIM
brought. I Ve played one or two on the gramophone,
but I never liked Wolf. Herbert Janssen sings them
beautifully with the deepest feeling, every syllable
declaimed perfectly, with just that graveness of voice
that gets to the very heart of the words, but what a sad
and morbid fellow poor Wolf must have been ! Fve
never been able to understand why people like Ernest
Newman rave so much about his music !
*We talked about music. I told Elgar that I had
just finished the Idyll with your help, and he was very
interested in -the way we managed to work and asked
a great deal about you. He said he was sorry that he'd
missed you. He then went on to say that he was busy
working on his Third Symphony.
* "But then," he added, "my music will not interest
you, Delius ; you are too much of a poet for a workman
like me !"
*I replied that I thought there was some fine stuff
in his Introduction and Allegro for strings, and that I
admired his Faktaff, but I thought it was a great pity
that he had wasted so much time and energy in writing
those long-winded oratorios.
* "That," said Elgar, "is the penalty of my English
environment."
' "Well, ajiyhow, Elgar, you're not as bad as Parry ,"
I replied. "He would have set the whole Bible to
music had he lived long enough !"
' We talked about books (and I could see that he was
very well read), about people we'd known, about what
would grow in my garden and what would not grow
in his in England. He was as excited as a schoolboy
about his first trip from Croydon to Paris by air and
AN INTERLUDE 125
insisted that, should I go to England again, I must
travel by air. He would love to conduct some of my
music. Would I send him some scores ? I said that I
would and that it would give me the greatest pleasure.
We had a bottle of champagne before he left, and I was
very disappointed that he couldn't stay longer, but he
had to motor back to Paris to see young Yehudi
Menuhin that night.
* "The way that boy plays my concerto is amazing/'
said Elgar. Obviously I could see that he adored the
youngster. Most of the time he sat close by me on a
very modest chair, the one my man generally uses,
and, as Jelka afterwards told me, he constantly tele-
graphed signs to her - was he tiring me ? - was he to
leave ? - but, of course, she negatived them. Yes, I
liked Elgar very much. . , .'
I now found myself in a very difficult position at
Grez, for, although the music was finished and my
mission ended, Delius insisted on my staying on with
him- In the house of a healthy man I should have
been happy to do so, for then I could have worked,
but it was irksome for a young man to go on regulating
his life according to the whims of a sick man. Those
five years had taught me that it is not wholesome and
good for a youngster to live for long periods in an
atmosphere of sickness and depression if he would
keep his spirit, and the doctors had told me that,
cared for as he was by his wife, there was no reason
why Delius should not live for yet another ten years.
With the best intentions, the attitude of both Delius
126 DELIUS AS I KNEW HIM
and his wife had become so possessive towards me
that they strongly resented my friendship with anyone
outside the household. Accustomed even as I was
from childhood to solitude, I could no longer bear the
sad loneliness of Grez devoid of all young society.
My position was further complicated by Mrs. Delius,
who was now showing evident signs of fatigue. She
had not been well for some time, owing to an accident
in which she was knocked down in the dark by a
drunken cyclist, and, but for my presence of mind,
would have been killed by a passing motor-car* How-
ever, on Delius's saying that he would ask his niece,
Peggy, to come and stay with them to relieve Mrs.
Delius with the reading, I decided to leave Grez, but
on the understanding that they were to send for me
should anything serious occur.
It was with the greatest satisfaction that I afterwards
heard that my parents had received the following
letter:
*Grez-sur-Loing.
'137.1933.
'DEAR MR. AND MRS. FENBY, - These are only a few
words to thank you once more for letting us have Eric
so long ! The work he has /lone for me is absolutely
unique, and it is almost a miracle that he came at all
and that he worked so admirably.
*I want you to know how deeply we feel and
appreciate what he has done. He has always been so
steadfast and painstaking, and with his wonderful
musical gift added to all those good qualities he has
achieved it. It seems so glorious that all these works
AN INTERLUDE 127
that but for him would have remained mere sketches
are now actually brought to life and in the publishers*
hands.
'I hope that now Eric will start his own work and
achieve great things ! We miss him very much
indeed.
'With kind remembrances from my wife to you
both,
*I remain,
*Yours affectionately,
'FREDERICK DELIUS.'
PART TWO
HOW HE WORKED
r attempting to show how Delius worked by
dictation, it must not be supposed that I am dis-
secting the printed scores as I know them to-day.
The only way in which I can give some idea of the
method of work is for me to forget the pages of the
scores which I have chosen for my illustrations, so to
speak, and put them together again as Delius dictated
them to me. I must therefore imagine myself to be
in turns both creator and amanuensis: the creator
who knows what he wishes to be written down, the
amanuensis who has little or no idea of what is to
follow. It is obviously impossible for me to remem-
ber the exact words that Delius used at each dictation,
but, as I live it all over again, my memory serves me
well enough to vouch for the 'accuracy of the order
and the way in which the detail was assembled at the
actual time of composition, and the picturesque
remarks which that detail often brought forth.
The technique of dictation varied, often consider-
ably, with each work. Much depended on the extent
to which Delius had already arranged and sifted in his
mind the musical matter of what he was going to say
before calling for me to note it down. Sometimes he
had no more than the roughest idea of what he wanted
until that rough idea had been played over to him at
the piano. The final test was always the sound of his
musical thought when transferred to the piano. With
the exception of the solitary occasion which I am about
132 DELIUS AS I KNEW HIM
to describe, Delius always worked in the music-room,
I sitting at the keyboard and playing each dictation for
his correction or emendation before writing a note of
it into the score. Again and again the work of several
days proved to be but a mere stepping-stone to some-
thing finer. Delius was never able to think, of and
retain more than a few bars at a time, and the most he
ever dictated at a stretch was the new opening to the
orchestral work A Song of Summer. It will be recalled
that the good material from the rejected MS. A Poem
of Life and Love was turned to account in A Song of
Summer; that Delius was still dissatisfied with the
opening; and how I found him sitting in his carriage
under the elder-tree waiting for me to take down an
entirely new opening, which, he said, had come to. him
in the night.
It happened like this:
'Eric, is that you ?' he called, as he heard me coming
down the garden path. *I want you to write down this
new opening for the new work. Bring your score-
paper and sit beside me. . .
*I want you to imagine that we are sitting on the
clifis in the heather looking out over the sea. The
sustained chords in the high strings suggest the clear
sky, and the stillness and calmness of the scene,
I in a bar (four and a three); divided strings, chord
of D major- A, D, F# doubled at the octave, lowest
note the A string of the violas. Dovetail the violin
parts (F# and D), (A and F#), and mark the score
"Lento Molto" and each voice pianissimo. Hold the
chord for two bars/
Example i shows what I wrote down, and each
HOW HE WORKED
133
subsequent example
gives the progress of
the score as I con-
tinued to write from
bar to bar.
'You remeihber
thatfigure that comes
in the violins when
the music becomes
more animated' -
sings it. Tm intro-
ducing it here to
suggest the gentle
^i. .
rise and fall of the waves. Now the fifth beat of the
134 DELIUS AS I KNEW HIM
first bar 'cellos and basses in octaves in quarter notes'
-sings and calls out names of notes -*G#, A, D, C
(hold it - a whole note), then repeat the same.' As I
was scribbling this down, he went on, 'Slur the
quarter notes - one bow, and with each rise and fall
put crescendo and decrescendo marks.' Ex. 2.
'Now go on with the 'cellos, again in- quarter notes
- bottom Ff , tar-tar-tar - hold it' - sings - 'last note
seven beats.' Ex. 3.
*What have we got in the basses ?'
T#, B, Cff, FJ, seven beats,' I sing.
'Good ; where was I with the upper strings ?'
HOW HE WORKED
135
*At the beginning of the third bar/
'The same chord again, a new bow, and move down
to E in the firsts on the last quarter note, then up to
A (five beats)' - sings - *Tar - tar, tar, tar. Keep the
F# in the second fiddles running right through.*
Ex. 4.
3g
*Now, on the fifth beat, change the chord. A's to B's
and D's to fifths (F#, Cj) and come back to the same
position of the D major chord at the next bar and hold
it through the bar. Strengthen the viola F# at the
change of the chord at the octave in the second fiddles.
Swell out all voices up the bar and soften down the
next/ Ex. 5.
136
DELIUS AS I KNEW HIM
fcr *-
'A whole note chord at the
new bar; C, A, violas; octave
F#s, second violins; A, F#
firsts ; move each voice down
a tone except the first halves
of the first fiddles and hold
for a dotted half note and
tell me what youVe got/
'Bb> G, violas; octave E's,
seconds; and Gin the second
halves of the firsts/
'Good/ Ex. 6.
'Now add octave C in the
first halves ; mark it "DivisL"
Next chord - violas, Ffc Eb ;
HOW HE WORKED 137
seconds, octave C's; Eb, second halves of firsts; and
move the divisi octave down to Bb- Hold it seven
beats/ Ex. 7.
*Now, after that chroinaticpassage in the firsts' -sings
it-'Tar-tar, tar, tar-I want a semi-quaver run up
in tones in the solo flute from top D to A, three beats
on A, and then come down - ti, er - ti, er' - sings the
phrase - 'hold it for the rest of the bar. The ti, er
figure is the same value as the one that comes in that
solo oboe passage later on* (sings it). Ex. 8.
138 DELIUS AS I KNEW HIM
Is that ti, er in the flute Glj, Delius ?*
'Yes.' Ex. 9.
'That flute figure suggests a seagull gliding by. Now
put a horn call on the fourth beat of the last bar' -
sings it -'and the same progression in the strings
moving from a whole note chord at the beginning of
the next bar, violas G, E; octave C#s in the seconds;
Eft second halves of the firsts; octave A, divisi first
halves/ Ex, 10.
HOW HE WORKED
139
f fc* "
?*
^.
'What have you got for your last chord ?'
*Db, Bb, violas; octave G's in the seconds; Bb,
second halves of the firsts; octave F, first halves/
'No, that won't do ! Make a note of the chord for
the next bar, Cb, F, 'cellos divisi; A in the violas ; Eb,
seconds; A, firsts.' Ex. n.
140 DELIUS AS I KNEW HIM
'Alter the distribution
of that other chord; Db,
second 'cellos; Gand Bb,
violas; Fand G, seconds;
Bb and F, firsts/ Ex. 12.
'Bring the F's down to E
on the last beat of the bar.
Now the next bar, the
chord I've already given
you, move the Cb in the
'cellos down to Bb for a > r
dotted half note on the fifth /y<> j
beat, and the other voices
a beat after ; no, I'm wrong,
the Eb in the seconds
ft'l
pp
should move
down to D on
the fifth beat (a
quarter note) and
then to a half note
cr
I sensed that
he wanted a 7-6
progression over
the 'cello Bb and
that the chord on
the first beat of
the following bar
HOW HE WORKED
141
would be relative to the chord of F, so I tried to help
him out:
'First violins, A to a half note G; violas, A to Bb ;
'cellos, F to E.'
'That's it; now a strong chord held through the bar,
A and D in the 'cellos, fifths in the violas (F and C)
non-divisi; C and F in the seconds and the same
phrase as we had at the beginning in the firsts, Tar -
tar, tar, tar - hold it seven beats' (sings it). Ex. 13.
*Now go back and give that flute counterpoint to the
oboe, beginning the bar after the horn call; you'll see
at a glance how it fits. The first note is A (second
space), and repeat the horn call (first note to sound
Bb).' Ex. 14.
142
DELIUS AS I KNEW HIM
Fx.
ci "r
^
5E3
c Have you got that ?'
'Go on to that long note in the first violins, the same
chord but C in the 'cellos ; F in the violas (first line) ;
A and D, seconds; and let the basses double the
'cellos at the octave from that C onwards. That same
waving figure again 1 - sings it - 'and change the upper
strings to Bb, F, A; F, fourth space in the violas;
HOW HE WORKED
143
Bb below the stave, seconds. Mark that bar piano
and repeat it pianissimo and 'cellos and basses hold the
D through the bar.' Ex. 15.
- /r.
tr
f
It
c Now, two more bars to lead into the | movement.
Violas, D and F|; second violins, Bl]; 'cellos, D
below the stave and A, first space; basses, in fourths,
you know what I mean ! First horn, three half notes,
then a quarter note* - sings the phrase - 'and repeat
in the next bar* At that bar bassoons at same pitch
as violas playing same notes solo/ Ex, 16.
'Bring the bassoons down a semitone in thirds on
the last beat, and give the 'cellos and basses the same
rhythm as the bar before that strong chord' - sings it -
*ter - ter, ter - ter. Take the octave A's in the 'cellos
and basses down to G # at the beginning of the last
bar and go down chromatically to end on F# on the
first beat of the | movement in that rhythm/ Ex, 17.
144
DELIUS AS I KNEW HIM
'It would be an improvement if, in the first bar, you
changed the F# in the violas on the fifth beat to Ft].
Give those two notes, F#to Ft), to the second horn,
and that seagull figure to the flute again. This time
vary it. Start the flutter up from D (fourth line), the
first ti, er - (G#), and the second one upwards this
time 1 (sings it).
'You mean D, F| ?'
HOW HE WORKED 145
'Yes. Repeat the flutter up on the bassoon in the last
bar, starting from B (the same note as the solo horn),
and at the ti, er - come down from E# to Cj.' Ex. 18.
At the end will be found the complete passage
1
^^
3*
ff^
=$?F
after it had been played over to the composer at the
piano, unproved here and there in detail and finally
set up in print.
The foregoing remarks must not lead the reader
to think that composition by dictation proceeded in
146 DELIUSASIKNEWHIM
J./** . t
ijjJA li.-v
V """W
HOW HE WORKED
147
a calm and leisurely way* On the contrary, the
composer dictated with great rapidity, and with one
or two exceptions - for instance, the closing bars of
Songs of Farewell -the accompanying mood was one
of frenzy and great physical activity. He could not
keep still, but would wriggle about in his armchair,
gesticulating wildly with his hands to a degree that
would have been impossible in a more collected mood
until, bathed in perspiration, he could go on no longer.
Then he would be carried away exhausted* This new
opening to A Song of Summer was the easiest of all.
We will now turn to a more difficult undertaking -
the second movement of Songs of Farewell. Of this,
the orchestral introduction (Example 20) already
existed in short score. Note the 'backward tracing/ 1
the theme in the horns in the last two bars, which
plays a prominent part in the development of this
short movement.
1 Hassan.
148 DELIDS AS I KNEW HIM
Delius, having memorised the words, set to work as
follows :
Tirst, I want you to read the words to me, then
play the opening.'
I began:
*I stand as on s'ome mighty eagle's beak,
Eastward the sea absorbing, viewing (nothing but sea
and sky)
The tossing waves, the foam, the ships in the distance,
The wild unrest, the snowy, curling caps - that inbound
urge and urge of waves,
Seeking the shores for ever/
I now played over the opening. At the last bar he
called out, 'Now then, go on- "I stand as on some
mighty eagle's beak" - chord of C.' Here I played
the particular disposition of the chord that I had in
mind, but he corrected me - *No, the top note E, not
C ! - now hold it - "Eastward the sea" - change the
chord at "sea," Bb in the bass, and reach out to top G,
hold it -"sea absorbing, viewing nothing"; at
"nothing," change the chord - A major, "nothing but
sea and sky." '
After playing this, I jotted it down.
He then went on:
'Now, to suggest the rolling of the sea, go backwards
and forwards on each half note-C#, Ct|, Q, Ctf
(sings and calls out the notes). * "The tossing waves"
- octaves in the basses A, B minor in the right hand ;
keep the C# ; now work up - ter, ter, ter, ter'- sings B,
A, C, B extitedly-'that's it, F in the bass-"the foam"
- now then, up !* - sings the note and I feel my way
with chords.
HOW HE WORKED 149
When I was not writing during his dictation I was
feeling my way at the keyboard, striking every note
immediately after he had named it, and anticipating
whenever possible what I thought would be the next
chord as well as my musical instincts and his verbal
directions would allow me.
But to continue:
'Yes, yes, that's it I* he went on, *now move the left
hand up chromatically and mark it "trombones."
"The ships in the distance" - move the whole chord
up - yes - now what comes next ?*
* "The wild unrest 1" '
'Strong chord on the brass; what's your last bass
note ?'
'B.'
'Move up to chord of C - "the wild unrest" - on
"unrest" change the chord, that rolling movement
again, E to Eb ; A in the bass. Mark that a sforzando
chord in the horns. "The snowy, curling caps" - a
swaying movement | in a bar -now C, Eb, G, B,
keep the inner parts and move up to C in the treble
and down to A in the bass and repeat. Now same
thing a half note lower and change the harmony.*
At this point I fumbled about badly, not knowing
precisely what he meant. After a time I stumbled on
the right progression, and quickly wrote it down, for
he was already ahead - * "that inbound urge and urge
of waves" - down to F# in the bass, chord of B - no,
up to F#, that's it; hold the Ff- A in the bass,
minor chord -"and urge" -now on the second
"urge" hold the chord and go down to E in the bass -
"urge of waves" - on "waves" come down to E, A
DELIUS AS I KNEW HIM
to G#-yes-but play Oj, not C#-"seeking the
shores for ever" back to C major on "seeking/* and
on "shores" go up to G. 3 Here he sang the soprano
phrase 'shores for ever* and left it at that.
*Now play the whole thing through from the begin-
ning and recite the words when you come to them/
Example ai will give some idea of what I played.
Er*.
A *^^-
',^
HOW HE WORKED 151
When I reached the 'shores for ever' he called out,
'Now come up from C below the line in the 'cellos
rather like the opening* - sings the phrase - 'and come
down chromatically in sixths with the seconds. Move
the bass in quarter notes and the sopranos in half
notes on shores/ Ex. 22.
JJL
'
\
'Now repeat that last phrase in quarter notes in the
strings and keep the inner parts moving chromatically
- no, no, down a whole tone in the bass and lead into
the opening theme in the 'cellos/ Here he sang each
part ahead whilst I endeavoured to reproduce the
progression at the piano. Ex. 23.
That VMS enough for one day*
At the next two sessions he shaped the chorus parts
from the crude chunks of sound of Example 21,
gave more definition to the movement of the chords,
and sketched the ending. Ex. 24.
I wondered what he would do with the horn theme
(bars ID and n of the introduction) and was not
surprised when he said that he wanted it to 'run
through the movement,* first in the wind, then in the
strings. The tiny interjections by the flute were meant
DELIUS AS I KNEW HIM
I III 1 1 1 II t
HOW HE WORKED
153
Jw>r-3
*
ME
=fe
t~K- Ki
*
tt
P
1 1-
fff
i i M
DELIUS AS I KNEW HIM
to 'suggest the tints of white on the crests of the
waves' (bars 2,3, and 4 of the I movement) . Example
25 should make that clear.
At 'sky' he inserted another bar of that 'rolling*
movement (from C# to Ctj), and said that after that
bar the strings should take up the horn theme, but
before doing so they must ascend gradually in octaves
to the high C# after 'sky/ beginning at the word
'viewing/ Having dictated this, he freed the basses at
'the tossing waves' and added a trumpet note sforzando
at 'foam,' to 'give a touch of fire to the colouring/
The 'horn theme* was then developed in the high
strings as shown in Example 26.
HOW HE WORKED 155
These rough sketches in short score were now
dispensed with, and we began to work in full score.
The pages at the end of the book give the patient
reader the whole movement as he hears it in the
concert-room.
These illustrations, the opening of A Song of Sum-
mer and the second movement of Songs of Farewell,
remain most clearly in my mind as two of the few
instances in which Delius appeared to know fairly
accurately the notation of the music he wished me to
write down before a note of it had been realised in
sound at the keyboard. An account of what hap-
pened when he felt moved suddenly to compose with-
out premeditation, as it were, would be unreadable,
even if what I have already attempted is readable,
were I to describe it here.
Such was the way Delius worked during his last
years of fitful creative activity.
Such, too, was my privilege in helping him.
Ex. 26 follows
156
DELIUS AS I KNEW HIM
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sgafe
, It*.
HOW HE WORKED
157
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PAST THREE
SOME ASPECTS OF
THE MAN AND THE COMPOSER
AS I KNEW HIM
WHAT can we know of any man ? And, when
all is said and done, how little do we under-
stand those of whom we boast that we can
read them like an open book. We tack on to some
obvious idiosyncrasy, some loose remark, some stray
gesture, and from these things we draw our host of
vain conclusions, good or evil, according to the
measure of our nature. Seldom do we realise in our
everyday dealings with others that the simplest nature
is an unfathomable mine of complexity, responding in
incalculable ways to the subtle probings of that infini-
tude of things that makes this life of ours what it is,
and even though we may sometimes remember this,
we are all too prone and eager to forget it.
There are some who say that knowledge of the man
behind the work of art is unnecessary, and they are
probably right, for few of us improve on closer
acquaintanceship. Yet there are others who, the more
they hear or see of a work of art, the more keenly are
they interested in the man, the mind of the man who
created it, and the conditions and circumstances under
which it was created. This, I think, is a natural and
healthy curiosity so long as a true sense of values is
maintained. That is not easy in this godless age;
it is well-nigh impossible. A constant, almost super-
human effort is required if one would detach oneself
yet mingle freely with the throng and preserve intact
one's innocency of vision.
161
I&2 DELIUS AS I KNEW HIM
Man of Himself can create nothing. The impetus
for creation is not of this world, this world that 'is
too much with us/ and it is just because there are so
few who have spiritual insight into things not of this
world that our sense of values is so easily warped.
Again, how few there are who can appreciate a work
of art without conjuring up in their minds a picture
of the super-man who fashioned it by giving that
impetus from within the form they now enjoy. Let
them give the creator the homage and gratitude he
deserves for developing the powers that distinguish
him from his fellows, and for the diligence with which
he has turned that mysterious inner driving-power to
beautiful account. But let them not make a god of
him, for these creators are apt to turn out, after all,
to be mere men, with the failings of men, like the rest
of us. It is a sad reflection on the prevailing spirit
of our times that it should be necessary to deplore
such a false attitude of mind. That it exists, in a much
more general degree than is usually supposed, has long
been painfully evident to me by the absurd comments
that I have heard from the mouths of so many people
conceiving Delius. The moment they began to talk
about the man, it seemed that they had lost all sense
of proportion.
The musician Delius was greater than the man
Delius. He lives for us now in his music, and not by
reason of his outstanding qualities as a man. I doubt
whether we should ever have heard of him apart
from. it.
What was extraordinary in the man as I knew him
was not so much that which was inherent in his nature
THE MAN AND THE COMPOSER 163
(as with a man like Beecham, who would have excelled
in almost anything to which he had applied that
remarkable brain of his), but that which was largely
the fruit of his Unbelief and the seduded life he found
it necessary to lead in order to perfect his art, namely
his intellectual isolation, his inhuman aloofness, his
penetrating truthfulness, wholly indifferent thereby
whether he hurt people or not, his utter contempt for
*the crowd/ and his all-embracing self-sufficiency.
To these were added his colossal egotism, his dreadful
selfishness, his splendid generosity (particularly to
those of his old friends who had fallen on hard times),
his equal indifference to money and honours, his
exceptional refinement, and his noble triumph over an
almost total physical incapacitation.
That he was a true artist if ever there was one, none
can deny. Everything and everybody were sub-
servient to the chief business of his life - his music.
That was the only thing that mattered* The rest
could go.
It was fortunate for him and for us that he met and
married Jelka Rosen when he did, otherwise we might
also never have heard of him as a musician, for he was
not one of those men who can organise their lives.
She did it for him, and it was no easy task.
Their first meeting had not been very promising.
She had known that he was a composer, and he had
said that he loved Grieg's songs; she had offered to
sing some for him. He had winced when she had
started and been polite when she had ended. The
discovery that they had a common interest that
dominated their lives -their mutual enthusiasm for
164 DELIUS AS I KNEW HIM
the philosophy of Nietzsche gradually drew them
together in a way that nothing else could have done.
It must not be imagined that Delius had always been
the country dreamer that the music of his maturity
would seem to suggest. There had been a wild and
reckless youth spent in the great cities of the world,
with much travelling over half the earth, and many
love-affairs, and one, the affair of his life, which had
come to nothing. There had been no inclination to
settle down in the country now that his studies at
Leipzig were completed. On the contrary, he loved
the Paris of those days, and the gay and picturesque
Scandinavian students there who were so vital to his
happiness. The men liked him; the women adored
him. But there were moments when he felt he must
get away from the market-place; that that noble urge
to creation which he felt within him, which alone
seemed worth while, and which set him apart from
other men, must be preserved at all costs.
The three months that he had spent entirely alone
on his orange-grove in Florida before going to
Leipzig had been a revelation to him. *I was demora-
lised when I left Bradford for Florida/ he told me;
*you can have no idea of the state of my mind in those
clays. In Florida, through sitting and gazing at
Nature, I gradually learnt the way in which I should
eventually find myself, but it was not until years after
I had settled at Grez that I really found myself.
Nobody could help me. Contemplation, like composi-
tion, cannot be taught.*
Since those days when the stillness of nature had
first calmed the troubled waters of his soul, he had
THE MAN AND THE COMPOSER 165
known in his heart that he had something to give,
something to say about life in terms of music that no
one else could give or say* This noble urge which
stirred him so strangely was the only spiritual thing
in life for which he had reverence, and this remained
so unto the end of his days*
The second call, as he himself confessed, was a call
to a much more complicated being than the mere boy
who had sailed for Florida. That first call had been
a call of the boy to the man in him; the second call
should have been the call of the man to the boy in him.
But it was the call of the man to the man in him, the
call of Nietzsche's super-man, Zarathustra.
Open still remained! the earth for great souls. Empty are
still many sites for lone ones and twain ones, around which
floateth the odour of tranquil seas.
Open still remaineth a free life for g*eat souls. Verily, he
who possesseth little is so much the less possessed: blessed be
moderate poverty I
There, when the state ceaseth - there only commenceth the
man who is not superfluous: there commenceth the song of
the necessary ones, the single and irreplaceable melody
Flee, my friend, into thy solitude ! I see thee deafened
with the noise of the great men, and stung all over with the
stings of the little ones.
Admirably do forest and rock know how to be silent with
thee. Resemble again the tree which thou lovest, the broad-
branched one - silently and attentively it o'erhangeth the sea.
Where solitude endeth, there begianeth the market-place;
and where the market-place beginneth, there beginneth also
the noise of the great actors, and the buzzing of the poison*
flies.
little do the people understand what is great - that is to
166 DELIUS AS I KNEW HIM
say, the creating agency. But they have a taste for all repre-
senters and actors of great things. ...
Full of clattering buffoons is the market-place - and the
people glory in their great men ! These are for them the
masters of the hour
Slow is the experience of all deep fountains : long have they
to wait until they know what hath fallen into their depths
Flee into thy solitude ! Thou hast lived too closely to the
small and the pitiable. Flee from their invisible vengeance !
Towards thee they have nothing but vengeance. . . .
They flatter thee, as one flattereth a God or Devil; they
whimper before thee, as before &T God or Devil. What doth it
come to ? Flatterers are they, and whimperers, and nothing
more.
Often, also, do they show themselves to thee as amiable
ones. But that hath ever been the prudence of the cowardly.
Yea ! the cowardly are wise ! . , .
Because thou art gentle and of upright character, thou
sayest: 'Blameless are they for their small existence.' But
these circumscribed souls think: 'Blamable is all great
existence.' ...
In thy presence they feel themselves small, and their
baseness gleameth and gloweth against thee in invisible
vengeance.
Sawest thou not how often they became dumb when thou
approachedst them, and how their energy left them like the
smoke of an extinguishing fire ?
Yea, my friend, the bad conscience art thou of thy neigh-
bours; for they are unworthy of thee. Therefore they hate
thee, and would fain suck thy blood.
Thy neighbours will always be poisonous' flies; what is
great in thee - that itself must make them more poisonous,
and more fly-like.
Flee, my friend, into thy solitude - and thither, where a
rough strong breeze bloweth. It is not thy lot to be a fly-
flap. . . .
THE MAN AND THE COMPOSER 167
Ye higher men, learn this from me: On the market-place
no one believeth in higher men. But if ye will speak there, very
well ! The populace, however, blinketh : * We are all equal.'
* Ye higher men* - so blinketh the populace - 'there are no
higher men, we are all equal; man is man, before God we
are all equal !'
Before God ! - Now, however, this God hath died. Before
the populace, however, we will not be equal. Ye higher men,
away from the market-place !
Before God ! Now, however, this God hath died ! Ye
higher men, this God was your greatest danger.
Only since he lay in the grave have ye again arisen. Now
only cometh the great noontide, now only doth the higher man
become - master !
Have ye understood this word, O my brethren ? ye are
frightened ; do your hearts turn giddy ? Doth the abyss yawn
for you ? Doth the hell-hound here yelp at you ?
Well ! Take heart ! ye higher men ! Now only travaileth
the mountain of the human future. God hath died : now do
toe desire - the Superman to live.
No matter what the motive, withdrawal from the
world, if even for but a brief period, has usually been
the first step that a man has taken on the road to high
endeavour.
At such times of tremendous inner conflict Delius
would pack his bag and lose himself in the country
for weeks together, thinking only of his work; and,
when he could bear that no longer, back he would
come to Paris and plunge again into the whirlpool of
life. Not that he was lazy. Even amid the thousand
and one distractions of Paris the habit of regular work
which he had acquired from Ward, out there in
Florida, never left him. That virtue was the surest
168 DELIUS AS I KNEW HIM
defence against a nature and temperament such as his,
and it saved him. Ward, a devout Catholic and his
senior by a few months, had known his pupil for what
he was - a headstrong, boisterous, hot-blooded young
fellow with more than a streak of the adventurer in
him - and he had taken him well in hand.
I remember my amusement when, on turning over
the pages of an illustrated edition of the complete
works of Byron bearing the inscription 'From Thomas
F. Ward, Jacksonville, Florida, to Fritz Delius,
Leipzig, Germany/ I found the following passage
heavily scored and marked by a pressed flower:
The youth who trains, or runs a race,
Must bear privations with unruffled face,
Be calFd to labour when he thinks to dine,
And, harder still, leave wenching, and his wine.
Speaking of those early days, Delius once said to
me, *It was not until I began to attend the harmony
and counterpoint classes at the Leipzig Conserva-
torium that I realised the sterling worth of Ward as a
teacher. He was excellent for what I wanted to know,
and a most charming fellow into the bargain. Had it
not been that there were great opportunities for hear-
ing music and talking music, and that I met Grieg,
my studies at Leipzig were a complete waste of time.
As far as my composing was concerned, Ward's
counterpoint lessons were the only lessons from which
I ever derived any benefit. Towards the end of my
course with him - and he made me work like a nigger-
he showed wonderful insight in helping me to find out
just how much in the way of traditional technique
THE MAN AND THE COMPOSER 169
would be useful to me/ After a pause, in which he
appeared to be deep in thought, he added, 'And
there wasn't much. A sense of flow is the main
thing, and it doesn't matter how you do it so long as
you master it/
Unhappily, Ward did not live to see his pupil
famous, but died of tuberculosis, after spending the
last years of his short life in a monastery.
A quiet, regulated country existence, then, was not
very much to the taste of this fiery young Delius, still
in his early thirties, but he felt that if he was to find
himself, and realise his ambition as a composer, no
other life was possible. It meant sacrificing a great
many things without which, mistakenly enough, he
thought he could not live, and it was not done all in a
day. Long after he had settled at Grez-sur-Loing,
Delius was ever clamouring to be off to Paris. After a
few days of concentrated work on some score, he
would suddenly come downstairs from his music-
room, surprise his wife at her painting in the garden,
and announce his intention of taking the next train to
Paris. He wanted a change.
A woman possessing less tact and understanding
would have made many a scene, but she knew that he
would eventually see for himself the futility of all this
gadding about for half the night on the Montparnasse
with companions, most of whom were worthless.
Delius was a very fortunate man in most respects.
It was always his good luck to meet precisely thfe very
people he needed at the crucial stages of his career.
First there came Ward, who gave him a sound
grounding in his art; then Grieg, who encouraged
M
170 DELIUS AS I KNEW HIM
him with his friendship and practical advice, and to
whom he continued to send his scores for comment
after he had left Leipzig; then Jelka Rosen, to whom
he was well mated, and who made it materially
possible .for him to devote himself entirely to composi-
tion; and, lastly, Beecham, who did everything that a
man could do to establish his genius.
As I see it, it is a tragedy that Ward's influence was
a purely musical one. Would that, together with
those seeds of musical culture, Ward could have sown
but a few of the Catholic culture, not so much as to
make his pupil a Catholic, but, at least, a believer;
for with belief there would have come that joy which
is not to be found in his music, and which constitutes
its chief defect. What joy there is, is as an echo
through the ages of the joys of pagan antiquity - the
joy of the gods, and the delight in all natural things
before the world was born again. It is tinged with the
sadness with which all joy must be tinged that is not
born of that virtue which Christianity brought into
the world - hope. And there is no hope in Delius's
music.
'Lift up your hearts, my brethren, high, higher P
sings Zarathustra in the Mass of Life, 'and do not
forget your legs ! Lift up also your legs, ye good
dancers, and better still if ye stand upon your heads !
This crown of the laugher, this rose-garland crown :
I myself have put on this crown, I myself have
consecrated my laughter.' For all this, he cannot
exult, nor can he dance, and the faintest flicker of a
smile never crosses his face.
Despite its undeniable grandeur, its strength, its
THE MAN AND THE COMPOSER 171
moving passages of ravishing beauty when the poetry
of both poet and composer is at its most musical, I
have never yet come away from a performance of the
Mass of Life without feeling depressed. I am not
alone in this. Several others have had like experience.
Better, as one of them said, somewhat irreverently,
had it been called the Mess of Life,
Already as a youth, when he had left Bradford on
his first visit to Florida, Delius was at heart a pagan.
A young mind, such as his, that had been nurtured
chiefly on detective stories and penny dreadfuls, was
not likely to forget that incident he had witnessed in
Bradford when Bradlaugh had stood, with his watch
in his hand, calling on his Creator-to strike him dead
within two minutes if He existed ! Delius had never
forgotten that two minutes. It had made a lasting
impression on him.
When, one wet day, a few years later, he was
looking for something to read in the library of a
Norwegian friend with whom he was staying during a
walking tour, and had taken down a book, Thus Spake
Zarathustra-* book, for all and none -by one
Friedrich Nietzsche, he was ripe for it. That book,
he told me, never left his hands until he had devoured
it from cover to cover. It was the very book he had
been seeking all along, and finding that book he
declared to be one of the most important events of his
life. Nor did he rest content until he had read every
work of Nietzsche that he could lay his hands on ; and
the poison entered into his soul.
Given those great natural musical gifts and that
nature of his, so full of feeling, and which at its finest
172 DELIUS AS I KNEW HIM
inclined to that exalted end of man which is contem-
plation, there is no knowing to what sublime heights
he would have risen had he chosen to look upwards
to God instead of downwards to man ! It was just
the difference between upwards and downwards,
but what a difference ! *Ye look aloft when ye long
for exaltation, and I look downward because I am
exalted/ says Nietzsche's Zarathustra. It is this
looking downward that chains Delius's music to the
earth.
There are many for whom this music is too much of
the earth earthy. None would have complained had it
been too much of heaven heavenly, for no music can
be too heavenly. It is the lack of heaven in the minds
of its creators that is the curse of music. As yet we
have no standard of comparison by which the truth of
this may be judged. Oh, for a modern Palestrina to
breathe into the voices of the modern orchestra the
music of that joy of joys, that blessed felicity that
would transport us with an earthly tasting of eternal
bliss !
If, following the way of the great Christian contem-
platives, Delius had chosen to look aloft, he would
have brought heaven to earth, for, constructing music
as he did by feeling alone within the structure of his
particular sense of form, and with his delicate touch
and refinement, he would have been the perfect com-
poser for those long flights of musical felicity which
none have attempted, yet which I pray I may hear
from some composer ere I die. Such music, when it
comes, will be the music of Eternal Life.
It is a confession of the utmost spiritual poverty of
THE MAN AND THE COMPOSER 173
soul to maintain, as so many moderns maintain, that
the possibilities of music have been exhausted. Of
the higher realms of spiritual exploration music has
said very little; of the highest realm, next to nothing
at all. This is strange, yet not strange. Strange,
because music is of all the arts the one and only art
that can give expression to the. mystery of heavenly
things, the one language in which the inexpressible is
expressible, and not strange in that the creation of the
kind of music that I am trying to define, and in which
Delius would have excelled, would demand rare
qualities of mind and disposition in the soul of the
creator.
Music some think no music is
Unless she sing of clip and kiss,
And bring to wanton tunes fie fie,
Or ti-ha ta-ha or I'll cry,
But let such rhymes no more disgrace
Music sprung of heavenly race.
That is rather an excess of zeal, for a balanced life
of action and contemplation is as essential in the ideal
type of composer as in the anchorite, but the poet had
the root of the matter in him. Let composers write as
much active music as they may, and hard necessity
will see to it that they are not failing in this, but would
that more often they would practise that higher
contemplation, not, as with Delius, finding their chief
inspiration in the works of God, but, in the words of
one of the greatest of all mystics - John of Ruysbroeck
- in 'the most noble and the most profitable contem-
plation to which one can attain in this life, 1 the
contemplation of God Himself.
174 DELIUS AS I KNEW HIM
'Man,* says Ruysbroeck, 'created in the image and
after the likeness of God, has a natural tendency
towards God, because of the spark of the soul, and
because of the highest reason, which always desires
the good and hates the evil.
'And he shall raise his enlightened eyes, by means
of the illuminated reason, to the intelligible Truth,
and mark and behold in a creaturely way the most high
Nature of God and the fathomless attributes which
are in God: For to a fathomless Nature belong
fathomless virtues and activities.
'The most high Nature of the Godhead may thus be
perceived and beheld : how it is Simplicity and One-
foldness, inaccessible Height and bottomless Depth,
incomprehensible Breadth and eternal Length, a dark
Silence, a wild Desert, the Rest of all saints in the
Unity, and a common Fruition of Himself and all
saints in Eternity. And many other marvels may be
seen in the abysmal Sea of the Godhead; and though,
because of the grossness of the senses to which they
must be shown from without, we must use sensible
images, yet, in truth, these things are perceived and
beheld from within, as an abysmal and unconditioned
Good. But if they must be shown from without, it
must be done by means of diverse similitudes and
images, according to the enlightenment of the reason
of him who shapes and shows them. The enlightened
man shall also mark and behold the attributes of the
Father in the Godhead: how He is omnipotent Power
and Might, Creator, Mover, Preserver, Beginning and
THE MAN AND THE COMPOSER 175
End, the Origin and Being of all creatures. This the
rill of grace shows to the enlightened reason in its
radiance. It also shows the attributes of the Eternal
Word: abysmal Wisdom and Truth, Pattern of all
creatures and all life, Eternal a*id unchanging Rule,
none of which is hidden from Him : Transillumination
and Enlightenment of all saints in heaven and on
earth, according to the merits of each. And even as
this rill of radiance shows the distinctions between
many things, so it also shows to the enlightened
reason the attributes of the Holy Ghost: incompre-
hensible Love and Generosity, Compassion and
Mercy, infinite Faithfulness and Benevolence, incon-
ceivable Greatness, outpouring Richness, a limitless
Goodness, drenching through all heavenly spirits
with delight, a Flame of Fire which burns all things
together in the Unity, a flowing Fountain, rich in all
savours, according to the desire of each; the Prepara-
tion of all saints for their eternal bliss and their
entrance therein, an Embrace and Penetration of the
Father, Son, and all saints in fruitive Unity. All this
is observed and beheld without differentiation or
division in the simple Nature of the Godhead.*
The way of this *most noble and profitable contem-
plation/ this 'perpetual striving after the unattain-
able,* this 'swimming against the stream -busy in
ourselves, idle in God/ this 'seeing and beholding of
Truth which/ says St. Augustine, *is the seventh and
last stage of the soul (and not indeed a stage but a habi-
tation to which she attains by these stages)/ Ruys-
broeck describes with exceptional clarity and direct-
ness : 'But if above all things we would taste God, and
176 DELIDS AS I KNEW HIM
feel eternal life in ourselves, we must go forth into God
with our feeling, above reason; and there we must
abide, onefold, empty of ourselves, and free from
images, lifted up by love into the simple bareness of
our intelligence. For when we go out in love beyond
and above all things, and die to all observation in
ignorance and in darkness, then we are wrought and
transformed through the Eternal Word, Who is the
linage of the Father* In this idleness of our spirit, we
receive the Incomprehensible Light which enwraps us
and penetrates us, as the air is penetrated by the light
of the sun. And this Light is nothing else than a
fathomless staring and seeing. What we are, that we
behold; and what we behold, that we are: for our
thought, our life, and our being are uplifted in
simplicity, and made one with the Truth which is God.
And therefore in this simple staring we are one life
and one spirit with God.*
If Delius had understood contemplation in this
traditional and Dionysian sense, what a musician we
should have had ! He would have been unquestion-
ably the greatest composer of his generation, and the
most inspiring composer who ever put pen to paper.
With what serenity he sang of the loveliness that is fast
passing away before our eyes, of creaturely happiness
short-lived, never more to return. But we need to
forget the misery of this our exile, and be made
mindful of the happiness which is our destiny. With
what serenity would he have sung had he beheld 'God
in all things, without distinction, in a simple seeing,
in the Divine brightness' I He had no faith in God, no
faith in his fellow men, only a proud and simple faith
THE MAN AND THE COMPOSER . 177
in himself. All through his self-guided life he was
blind to what he was doing, blind in the highest sense
of the word, directing his untiring energy to the
worship of Pure Beauty as a supreme end in itself,
instead of to that end of ends which is God.
Such an opinion, for what it is worth in these days,
would have once seemed sound and normal to the
generality of men, who saw things unconsciously
through the light of a common faith. Now all that is
gone, and it is unlikely that it will find favour any-
where, least of all in the Delius camp. I am well
aware of the ridicule that it will bring on my head.
Nevertheless, I shall hold to it tenaciously, knowing
that, should I live to be an old man, I shall still think
the same, and my admiration for Delius's music will in
no wise have suffered thereby.
From my very first days in Grez I tried desperately
hard to understand Delius and his attitude towards
life, and all through the years there I was ever careful
to avoid the slightest mention of religion. Religion,
like health, is never harped upon save by the
unhealthy.
My position was not easy, however, for as time went
on the old man gradually grew to take a fatherly
interest in my mental development. 'You must
always tell me what you think about things,* said he
one evening (several months after I had been in Gres),
as I wheeled him up the hill out of the village in
search of coolness. 'Perhaps I may be able to help
you/
I should have been very communicative about many
things other than music had he not killed all my desire
178 DELIUS AS I KNEW HIM
to be so by a remark which he made a few days later.
We had been talking about Haydn, and I had said that
I thought he was a much greater composer than most
musicians seemed to admit ; that I was most anxious to
hear a performance of his Creation. I had seen the
score, and been so amazed by the many modern
touches in the instrumentation that I had laughed with
delight. 'There is one enchanting passage, Delius,*
said I, 'that always makes me wish that I had known
old Haydn every time I think of it. It goes, "And
God created great whales, and every . . " *
'God ?' interrupted Delius. 'God ? I don't know
Him!'
This was not all.
Shortly afterwards, during another evening walk,
apropos of something we were discussing, he said,
'Given a young composer of genius, the surest way to
ruin him is to make a Christian of him. He will end
up by being a second Perosi. Look at Elgar. He
might have been a great composer if he had thrown all
that religious paraphernalia overboard. Gerontius is a
nauseating work, and, of course, tremendously influ-
enced by Parsifal.'
I made no comment on either of these occasions.
Again, after he had been particularly pleased with
the quickness with which I had taken down some
music, he hinted that he was really very disappointed
in me. It was a pity that I was 'one of the weaklings.' 1
The climax, when it did come, burst over me like
a thunderclap. Robert Nichols had been paying
1 Referring no doubt to the 'weaklings* in his Pagan Requiem who,
filled with woe and fear, drugged themselves with dreams and golden
visions, arid built themselves a house of lies to live in.
THE MAN AND THE COMPOSER 179
Delius a visit, and there had been a great deal of talk
about Nietzsche between the two in the garden on
the day on which Nichols had left. I had kept
silent. That evening, when we were alone, without
the slightest warning, Delius turned on me like a
lion: 'Eric, I've been thinking. The sooner you get
rid of all this Christian humbug the better. The
whole traditional conception of life is false. Throw
those great Christian blinkers away, and look around
you and stand on your own feet and be a man. We
are all sent into this world, we know not how and we
know not why. We each have our own individualities,
our own particular and varying natures, and our job
is to find ourselves at all costs. Never be afraid of
being yourself in spite of everything, and everybody.
Be yourself, and don't trouble if it hurts anybody else.
They'll soon get over it. That is the supreme test of
a man -his ability to stand on his own. Look to
yourself, and don't narrow and hedge in your life
with conventional behaviour and all these silly moral
restrictions that are the stupid invention of priests.
Sex plays a tremendous part in life. It is terrible to
think that we have come into this world by some
despicable physical act. Don't believe all the tommy-
rot priests tell you; learn and prove everything by
your own experience. Do things and find things out
for yourself, and don't be frightened of making a fool
of yourself. If an unmarried girl came to me and said
she had had a child, I should say, "My girl, you have
done well." Take Christianity. Jesus was a beautiful
character -if He ever existed -but if He was the
Son of God, whatever that may mean, there was no
l8o DELIUS AS I KNEW HIM
merit whatever in His perfections, for in that He was
God He set up an impossible ideal for man to imitate.
I am inclined to think, along with Brandes, that the
whole thing is a myth, like William Tell. One thing
is cer^am - that English music will never be any good
till they get rid of Jesus. Humanity is incredible.
It will believe anything, anything to escape reality.
We shall probably find in the end that man is no more
than a mere vegetable. The whole system of things
as we know it is a vast speculation. Tell me, what
Catholic ever wrote a piece of music worth hearing ? J
'But, Delius/ said I, 'what about that romantic
thing that sprang from the very heart of the Catholic
Church - plainsong ? When it is unaccompanied
and sung with understanding, as it so rarely is, it
never fails to move me. For me its power to move is
almost as mysterious as the very nature of music
itself/
*I see no mystery in it, 5 replied Delius emphatically,
*just dullness ; and you are evading my question/
'Well, consider Palestrina and Victoria, two of my
favourite composers and both devout Catholics/ I
pleaded. 'You must admit that a motet like Pales-
trina's Laudate Dominion is an astounding piece of
music/
'What ! Do you call theirs fine music ? You
should have said mathematics/ he snapped.
*I grant you, Delius, that these two composers
have been the cause of more musical snobbery than
all the rest of them put together. I have heard people
go into raptures over modern performances of
Palestrina, when they should have been either helpless
THE MAN AND THE COMPOSER l8l
under the seats with laughter or completely distracted.
I admit that there are times when both Palestrina
and Victoria can be as dull as old Bach/
'And don't I know it,' put in Delius, with something
of a sneer in his tone.
'I'm speaking of their inspired pages, not when they
functioned as mere craftsmen without having any-
thing vital to say/ I continued.
'No, my boy, it's no use/ concluded Delius, 'you'll
never convince me that music will be any good until
it gets rid of the Jesus element. It has paralysed music
all along.*
I argued that I did not see how a disciplined in-
tellect in the harness of a strong and simple faith
could harm any artist. Besides, one could not dismiss
the religious experiences and intuitions common to
men of all ages as things unworthy of consideration,
but Delius merely replied that all artists were 'best
rid of such nonsense/
The following Christinas he sent me a copy of
Thus Spake Zarathustra with the accompanying note:
'In introducing you to Nietzsche my intention is to
open up new horizons to you. I myself do not
subscribe to everything Nietzsche said, but I hail in
him a sublime poet and a beautiful nature. I want to
make myself very plain to you as regards religions and
creeds. Personally I have no use for any of them.
There is only one real happiness in life, and that is
the happiness of creating/
I did not get along very well with Zarathustra. I
was prejudiced before I started, for it was my mis-
fortune to come across some of Nietzsche's music.
182 DELIUS AS I KNEW HIM
Whatever he may have been as a philosopher, what-
ever he may have been as a poet, the Reverend John
Bacchus Dykes, that infallible, touchstone in matters
of this kind, and -without mention of whom no essay
on DeEus would be complete, was a veritable Mozart
compared with Nietzsche as a composer. Since then
I have never been able to take the fellow seriously.
Delius knew nothing of this, for he had the pro-
foundest admiration for the man and his work, so
much so that I often thought it was Nietzsche himself
addressing me. Sayings such as these that come
haphazard into my mind as I write: 'Christianity
preaches Death.' 'There is little difference as far as
I can see between animals and the great mass of
humanity. They live to feed themselves and take as
much as they can from others. Man is the cruellest
animal.' 'Sin as we know it is an invention of the
Jews.' 4 To pity is to be weak. Don't let your heart
run away with you or your head will soon be chasing
it.* 'The state you call chastity is responsible for as
much filth of soul as lust/ Sayings such as these,
which sounded so novel and striking to a young man's
ears, and particularly when a Delius had finished
rolling his tongue round them, had all found perfect
expression, had I then known it, in the rhapsodic
utterances of Nietzsche. Many a time I discovered
that they were word for word the same. It was not
until Delius told me that it had been his habit, over a
period of a great many years, to open Thus Spake
Zarathmtra at random, take a chapter and ponder
over it sometimes for weeks together, then, when he
had extracted its essence, turn to another and do
THE MAN AND THE COMPOSER 183
likewise, that I realised something of the influence
Nietzsche had exercised over him, and something of
his disappointment in my polite refusal to follow his
example.
The occasion of this outburst was the only one on
which there was ever anything approaching unpleas-
antness between us, yet to the end he continued to
taunt me for my persistence in being a Christian.
Every time I went down to lunch or supper I was
always in danger of heavy bombardment. If, during
the reading of the day, he found anything that he
could shoot against me, he would ask his man to give
him the signal on my entrance to the room, and open
fire before I had passed through the door.
Once, when the guns were loaded, and the enemy
had come into the room unobserved and surprised
the sentry drowsing over his reading and the gunner
snoring louder than the reading, the sentry, astonished,
and faithful to his orders, gave the signal in a loud
voice:
'Herr Delius, Herr Fenby ist dar !'
No response.
The batde-cry was now transposed into a higher
key:
*Herr Delius, Herr Fenby ist dar ! f
*Vas ist es ?* yawned Delius, coming to with a start.
'Herr Fenby ist dar i*
There was a pause, and I waited for the barrage to
begin. It opened like a sudden dang of the heavy
orchestral brass.
*In 175 5 there was an earthquake in Lisbon. Thirty
thousand people were destroyed in a few minutes I
184 DELIUS AS I KNEW HIM
How do you reconcile that with your loving God who
is supposed to mark the fall of every sparrow ?'
*I know, Delius, it is very hard ; very hard indeed to
understand the meaning of these things/ I replied
quietly.
'Then why do you believe as you do ?* he ques-
tioned severely.
It was now time to unload myself of a shot that
always exasperated and silenced him, a remark made
by Dr. Johnson; when 'talking *of those who denied
the truth of Christianity/ he said, 'it is always easy
to be on the negative side/
'Damn Dr. Johnson V he would say, and, clutching
his breast, wriggle from side to side in his anger, and
invariably would mutter something about the man's
intelligence being 'sadly overrated.* I dreaded these
encounters, for they always unsettled him until he
had slept them off.
Seldom did he miss an opportunity of poking good-
natured fun at me in the presence of others. Once,
when in the company of several distinguished
musicians, he had ordered the wireless to be switched
on, and none of them, himself included, knew the
name of the work, nor the composer of the work that
was being played (one of those appalling effusions the
equivalent of that shocking taste in devotional objects
which make most of our churches a purgatory on earth
for sensitive people), he suddenly said, 'Go and fetch
Fenby. He'll tell us what it is. He knows all about
angels P
There was, however, towards the end of my time at
"Grez, one other occasion on which he was furious
THE MAN AND THE COMPOSER 185
with me. Apparently he thought I was paying too
much attention to a very charming young English
girl who was known by the lovely name of Soldanella,
and who happened to be staying for a short while
with her father, a great friend of mine, in the village.
Having returned one afternoon from a stroll in the
forest with her, I was told that Delius wished to speak
to me privately on a matter of great importance. I
would find him at the bottom of the garden. As I
came round the corner by the. bamboos, I saw him
sitting there in silence beneath 'the great trees with his
head back, facing the sun, his man raiding an apple-
tree near by. I walked across the lawn and greeted
him with the usual, *Here we are, Delius.'
'Eric/ he began sternly, with his usual outspoken-
ness on such subjects, whether he was in the presence
of his wife or not, *what are your intentions towards
Miss ? Marriage ?'
'But, Delius/ I explained, *I hardly know the girl I*
'Well, you must never marry/ he continued
severely. 'No artist should ever marry. He should
be as free as the winds. Amuse yourself with as many
women as you like, but for the sake of your art never
marry one. It's fatal. And listen ; if you ever do have
to marry, marry a girl who is more in love with your
art than with you. It's from your art only that you
will get lasting happiness in life, not from love. Love
is a madness. The physical attraction soon plays
itself out. Passionate affairs are like fireworks flaring
up only to fizzle out. You are a fool if you ever marjy *
I thanked him for his advice, and took up my book
and began to read.
186 DELIUS AS I KNEW HIM
Mention has been made of his absolute truthfulness,
and how he always said exactly what he felt regardless
of the feelings of others. He often upbraided me
because I thought a more moderate course was some-
times the better part of discretion. A very tiresome
habit of his, and often a very embarrassing one in the
presence of others, was to ask for your opinion before
giving his own, then, if he thought that you tended
to politeness rather than truthfulness, he would give
it you soundly when the others had gone. On one
occasion, when some friends of the performers had
brought a test record of one of his works for his
approval, I gave a very non-committal answer in reply
to his usual question. Afterwards, when we were
alone, he said, 'Eric, you knew the playing was bad,
didn't you ?' 'Of course/ I replied, 'but it was rather
a delicate situation/
'Nonsense,' said he, 'you knew it was bad; you
should have said it was bad/
What always amazed me was the way he coated his
pills of truthfulness with the most disarming polite-
ness, so that no one could really take offence. Would
that I could convey some idea of the many difficult
situations in which his wife and I were paralysed with
the fear of what he was going to say next !
When strangers came, he would take no part in the
first few minutes of conversation, unless he was
addressed, but sit silent and aloof, sizing his visitors
up in his mind chiefly by the sound of their voices.
An unpleasant voice always had a disastrous effect on
him, and he would long for the offender to go. It
was usually the women who were at fault.
THE MAN AND THE COMPOSER 187
*Eric, will you please take that woman away,' he
would whisper, when he judged she was out of ear-
shot. 'I can't bear the sound of her voice any longer/
His continual appearance of serenity - a serenity I
always likened to the serenity of a lion as it sits gazing
nonchalantly down at one at the Zoo - and his silence,
ominous and full of awful possibilities, underlined
his occasional remarks to a degree that had to be seen
and heard to be believed.
There was no nonsense about him, nor would he
tolerate it in others, and if he was bored he showed it
pretty plainly. Even when dining with friends, if the
conversation was not equal to the good food and the
good wine, for which his table was renowned, I have
heard him suddenly say to his man, with the un-
mistakable accent of a Yorkshireman, * Begin to read P
and his guests have had to sit in silence for the rest
of the meal.
It is unlikely that I shall ever forget the visit of a
certain violinist and his colleague, who came to Grez
to treat the composer to their conception of his Sonata
for Violin and Piano No. i. Their stay was almost as
brief as their rendering, for, in the silence of the turn
of the page between the slow movement and the
energetic last movement, a voice from the corner was
heard to say, 'Good afternoon. Take me away,
please, and, Jelka, make the lady and gentleman some
tea!'
On another occasion, the visit of a famous string
quartet who came to play Delius his own very un-
satisfactory effort in that medium, and a very com-
plicated quartet which Bernard van Dieren had just
l88 DELIUS AS I KNEW HIM
dedicated to him, the leader, embarrassed by Delius's
aloofness and anxious to make a good impression,
proposed that they should start off by playing one of
the last quartets of Beethoven.
*Oh no, you won't/ came the response. *Oh no,
you won't !'
Woe betide anyone whom he found out to be a liar
and a cheat. That person was never forgiven. I
have seen Delius take an instant dislike to his man for
no other reason than that he felt sure the fellow was
not filling his glass to the brim. He knew the number
of mouthfuls in a glass I
As I watched his servants feeding him, dressing
him, and carrying him hither and thither, the thought
struck me more than once how terrible it was that
with his lively contempt for ordinary men Delius
should be so pathetically dependent on ordinary men.
Nor would he stop for a moment to chat with the
kindly villagers whom we frequently met in the
evenings on our way up the street, or returning from
their work in the fields.
*If anybody comes up to us when we're out,
take no notice, keep going/ were his orders when
I first went to Grez. Never once did I see him
unbend.
No workman was ever allowed to pass near him as
he sat in the garden, and, if the electrician called
unexpectedly to examine the wireless, he was not
admitted until Delius had been carried away, or they
had put a great screen round him. He remained an
autocrat to the very end.
He set no store by the public taste* 'A few there
THE MAN AND THE COMPOSER 189
are who love and understand/ he would often say:
'they are the ones that count. The rest are not worth
bothering about. To be a success in England you Ve
got to be a second Mendelssohn, He gave the public
what they wanted, "O Rest in the Lord." *
The sympathetic view to take is that he never
understood the ordinary man because, so far as I can
make out, he had never known the ordinary man.
Once he had shaken the dust of Bradford from his
feet, he seems to have associated with rather an odd sort
of people, some of them very odd indeed, seeming
to prefer that which was unusual in mankind to that
which was normal. To hear him talk about the
queer people with whom he had chiefly kept company
during his formative years was always amusing, often
fantastical. More than once he laughingly remarked
that he wondered what some of the charming English
friends his music had earned him would have thought
about many of his former companions, most of whom
appear to have been notable in various strange and
unaccountable ways. In striking contrast to his
turbulent youth, the Grez period in his life (1897-
1934) was increasingly uneventful as the years went
on save for the production of his works, until le
mauvais gargon de Montparnasse y living more and
more apart from his fellow men, gradually became
the legendary recluse of Grez.
The root of the whole trouble was, I think, his
horror of the mediocre.
I used to tell him that if he had ever talked to the
ordinary man, as he pottered about in the little
greenhouse of his allotment on his half-day holiday,
DELIUS AS I KNEW HIM
he would have found him a delightful fellow* Shake-
speare would have been in his element with the house-
painter downstairs who, as I write, breaks out
spasmodically into song: *A hero I live . . . and a
hero I shall die/
Chesterton has put the matter in a nutshell: 'The
first-rate great man is equal with other men, like
Shakespeare. The second-rate great man is on his
knees to other men, like Whitman. The third-rate
great man is superior to other men, like Whistler/
So we find that Delius's taste inclined to the par-
ticular in things, as in men, rather than to the general
- to champagne rather than water, to the chromatic
rather than the diatonic.
The fascinating northern dialect of a Grieg, the
aristocratic and elegant utterance of a Chopin, he
preferred to the common language of a Bach, a
Beethoven, or a Sibelius. Being a man of excess, he
exaggerated what in others was unessential. It had
been so all his life. If he must smoke, then he must
smoke all day long; if he was to have spinach, then
spinach it had to be at almost every meal; if it was to
be beautiful harmony, well, then, beautiful harmony
it had to be all the time. There were no half-measures
with Delius. In a man of less force and refinement
such chromatic excess would have been positively
harmful, as it was in Spohr, who lacked the strength
and sweep of a Delius. Strength and refinement
rarely go hand in hand; they are usually regarded as
counter to one another; yet there are very few works
in which these two seemingly opposite qualities are
to be found in such measure as in the Mass of Life.
THE MAN AND THE COMPOSER 191
Refinement was a religion to Delius. I cannot recall
a single instance of ever hearing him make a vulgar
remark* He was as intolerant of bad manners as of
ignorance.
'My boy/ he used to say, *the greatest enemy you've
got to fight in life is ignorance. You'll find it popping
its ugly head up all over the place, and in pkces where
you least expect to find it, Fm an old man now, and
my whole life has been one long struggle against
ignorance/
That was the man as I knew him y hard, stern,
proud, cynical, godless, completely self-absorbed -
the man Frederick Delius.
Nothing could have so misrepresented the character
of the man as the photographs which circulated
through the Press during the latter years of his life,
depicting him in the last and painful stages of a
terrible affliction. It is a deplorable thing that these
photographs were ever allowed to be published, for
they have created in the public mind a legendary figure
of the man which is as stupid as it is false. If, in this
rough sketch of Delius, criticism be made by the few
who knew him intimately that the drawing is a little
hard, it must be conceded that the lm.es are true. If
I have erred in this, I have erred in the right direction,
for, though there was lovableness and a certain charin,
the chief trait in my collected impression of the man is
his severity. Such was the little I knew of Frederick
Delius, a man of whom Nietzsche would have said,
'Here is one of the great despisers/
What, then, of Delius the musician* and what of his
attitude towards music ?
192 DELIUS AS I KNEW HIM
Strictly speaking, his attitude towards music is best
defined by saying that he had no attitude. Music, for
him, to use his own words, was simply and solely the
.means of expressing 'the imminent, unchanging
realities of nature and humanity' as seen through the
medium of his own individuality. The past, and the
ideals and conventions of the past, whether they were
of the classical order -the objective point of view-
or the romantic order - the subjective point of view -
occupied and interested him but little if at all. He was
concerned in his own personal and particular way with
the 'eternal present/ and that particular way he had
not found by study, but by doing. No composer,
with the possible exception of Verdi, was so unlearned.
From the very beginning Delias seems to have gone
his own leisurely way, working through his influences,
not avoiding them, firmly convinced that it was fatal
to have more than a nodding acquaintanceship with
the music of others. His development was unusually
slow. It will always be a wonder to me how he had
the courage to go on during his long apprenticeship,
writing work after work in which there is scarcely a
trace of the Delius we know, and not a hint of potential
greatness.
At the same age at which Strauss had a Don Juan
and Sibelius an En Saga to their respective credit,
Delius was still plodding away at orchestral works
which in their quiet moods plainly showed the in-
fluence of Grieg, and in their more vigorous moods
the spell that the second manly theme in Don Juan
had cast over him - the magnificent theme that is
first given out by the horns. Forty years later he still
THE MAN AND THE COMPOSER 193
revelled in that theme, and rarely missed an oppor-
tunity of hearing the work* I never hear Don Juan
without thinking of Delius, and of the humorous way
in which he used to tilt his head at the pedal G in the
violins in preparation for the entrance of his favourite.
Then, and at each appearance of the theme, he would
all but wag his head off to its rhythm !
Delius was obviously one of those artists who only
come to a full realisation of their powers after pro-
longed and unceasing application to their work, and
that suddenly. It was not until he was thirty-seven
that he produced a work that was greatly in advance
of anything he had written hitherto, and which proved
him a man to be reckoned with - his orchestral work
Paris, the Song of a Great City. Yet, even so, Pans
(1899) was not so completely advanced as to give the
most discerning critic even the slightest suspicion of
what was to follow in those six glorious years (1900-5)
to which reference has already .been made, to say
nothing of his last period. How he found himself so
suddenly is a mystery. That it was the effect of some
strange inner happening or revelation seems the onlv
reasonable explanation one can supply.
From now on he was sure of himsdf. He had never
forced his work, but, guided first by his instinct and
then by his intellect, had allowed his technique to
grow unconsciously with his inspiration. He had
laboured tinder one very severe handicap* Only
twice during those difficult years of maturation had he
heard the sound of his music on the orchestra, once
at the age of twenty-six, and again when he was
thirty-one. He had to wait until he was thirty-seven
194 DELIUS AS I KNEW HIM
before he was able to profit to the utmost by such a
necessary experience, and that on the occasion of the
Delius concert at St. James's Hall, London, in 1899,
which he gave at his own expense. He told me that
after that concert he was so conscious of the faults of
his music that he could not rest, but left London for
Grez early the next morning, so eager was he to take
up his sketches of Paris and apply the technical
knowledge that he had just acquired.
Had there been the same opportunities in his day
as there are in ours for the young composer of talent
to get a hearing, I doubt whether he would have
found himself any the sooner. No matter how
technically proficient a man may be, his inner develop-
ment can never be hurried. If a man has something
worth saying, he will manage to say it somehow, no
matter how clumsily. It is having that something
worth saying that is the important thing. *To be able
to do something/ said Goethe, *you must be some-
thing'; and, it seems to me, it was this suddenly
'being something' that accounted for the sudden and
instant flowering of Delius 's genius.
He was not one of those artists who are given to
talking a great deal about their art, let alone solemnly,
as so many of them do, and days would pass with not
a mention of music. Certainly nobody would have
guessed from his general conversation that he was a
great composer. But I do remember his saying during
a conversation about Walt Whitman: *It was a long,
long time before I understood exactly what I wanted
to say, and then it came to me all at once*'
I have never heard of any artist who was so
THE MAN AND THE COMPOSER 195
completely and utterly himself, so detached and aloof
from the world of his art and so little interested in
the work of any other artist, past or present. It was
not easy to gather very much about his views on the
music of the past, for I soon discovered that the
"subject was unmentionable before him. Shortly
after my first arrival in Grez, when there had been a
relay of one of his works r I asked if we might keep the
wireless on to hear a pianoforte concerto by Mozart,
His reply was startling. 'You needn't ask me to
listen to the music of the Immortals. I can't abide
*em. I finished with them long ago P The only
other remarks that I can remember are as follows: *It
takes a genius to write a movement like the slow
movement in Schumann's Piano Quintet in E Flat,
but the third movement is entirely without inspira-
tion'; and, whilst listening to the Scotch Symphony,
he commented, 'How much better Mendelssohn uses
the orchestra than Beethoven.' He was indignant
when he found that I was fond of Berlioz, whom he
described as a vulgarian, and surprised that Debussy
left me cold. UApris Midi and PeUeas he loved, but
detested the piano works. He had a glowing admira-
tion for Bizet, whom he thought the greatest French
composer, and he considered Verdi's Fakteff a
masterpiece. Coming nearer our own time, he
loathed Puccini, preferred the music of the Spaniards
-Albeniz, Granados, and Da Falla-to that of the
Russians - Borodin, Moussorgsky, and Rimsky-
Korsakov - and enjoyed the records of Hebridean
folk-songs from Mrs. Kennedy-Fraser's collection.
What little interest he had ever had in the music of
196 DELIUS AS I KNEW HIM
others a glance at his library will suffice to show. The
only foil scores he possessed were Beethoven's
Symphonies (many of the pages are still uncut), the
Fatist Symphonie (Liszt), Tristan und Isolde (Wagner),
Don faon. Til Eulenspiegel, Heldenleben, Zarathustra
(Strauss), Rhapsodic Espagnole (Chabrier), La Mer
(Debussy), Daphnis et Chloe (Ravel); and Busoni's
Pianoforte Concerto.
*It is a great mistake for young composers to study
too much/ he used to say. Teople with a little talent
nearly always kill it by too much learning. Learning
kills instinct. It is just as dangerous as too much
reflection/
Despite his total indifference to the work and aims of
others, he was ever ready to lend an ear to any young
artist who was still struggling with himself. No young
Treplev could complain of him, 'He has read his own
story, but he has not even cut mine/ Often, when I
was at Grez, he would receive music from quite
unknown people, and when I had played it over to
him, if it showed promise, he would return it with his
dictated comments and kindly words of encourage-
ment. If it showed no promise, it was ignored.
*You can't teach a young musician to compose/ I
have heard him say, 'any more than you can teach a
delicate plant how to grow, but you can guide him a
little by putting a stick in here and a stick in there.
Composition as taught in our academies is a farce.
Where are the composers they produce ? Those who
do manage to survive this systematic and idiotic
teaching either write all alike, so that you can say that
this lot belongs to this institution, this lot to that, or
THE MAN AND THE COMPOSER 197
they give us the flat beer of their teachers, but* watered
down. In all probability those who are most aware of
this depressing state of things are the teachers them-
selves. How can music ever be a mere intellectual
speculation or a series of curious combinations of
sound that can be classified like the articles in a
grocer's shop ? Music is an outburst of the soul. It
is addressed and should appeal instantly to the soul
of the listener. It is not experimental analysis like
chemistry. Never believe the saying that one must
hear music many times to appreciate it. It is utter
nonsense; the last resort of the incompetent. And
another thing : the amateur musician is better without
a knowledge of the science of music. When you see
a lovely rose you treasure it as it is ; you don't pull it to
pieces to appreciate its beauty and find out where its
delicious perfume comes from. So it should be with
music/
Here, waving aside the question of whether he was
right or wrong, I will add, for what it is worth, that
he always insisted that I should have been of no use
whatever to him as an amanuensis had I not been
practically self-taught*
Music, he thought, should be a simple and intimate
thing, direct and immediate in its appeal from soul to
soul, a thing of instinct rather than of learning, of the
heart rather than of the head. It should never be
complicated, or, in other words, the intellect should
keep its proper place, for with complication music
lost its power to move. One should never be con-
scious of its workings, or of how it was put together,
otherwise how could it transport ? Some composers
198 DELIUS AS I KNEW HIM
seemed to think that music was a means of displaying
their ingenuity. Such an attitude was altogether
unworthy of music. To be purely cerebral was easy.
To be truly and genuinely emotional was hard. One
should always feel rather than invent, and feel deeply,
and never think out the detail of one's score. Much
of the detail of modern music existed on paper alone,
and could not be heard in performance. Even
Strauss was not exempt from this failing.
The score of A Village Romeo and Juliet is a
model of this effortless assembly of detail with the
utmost economy of notes. The decorative detail,
like the form, is not applied from the outside,
but grows inevitably from the inside as the music
proceeds.
Much as he resented adverse criticism of his work,
Delius was entirely unmoved by it. It was his habit
to have the various Press notices read aloud to him,
and the unsympathetic criticism contained therein
was almost always directed, not against the content of
his music, as one might reasonably have expected
from certain minds, but against what was called its
'lack of form/
It has always been my opinion that Delius had a
well-nigh perfect sense of form for what he had to say.
In his mature works he said things as lucidly and
expressively as he could. There is no 'passage-work/
no c working-out/ no meaningless repetition, and in
the sustained intensity of the rhapsodic flow of his
music the decorative detail is caught up and trans-
formed into the framework of his own particular sense
of architectural design. I cannot see how he could
THE MAN AND THE COMPOSER 199
have said what he had to say in any other way than
the way he chose,
It is true that here and there he would have given
more point to his charming discourse had he tightened
up the form. The first instance that comes to mind is
the slow movement of his Sonata for Violin and Piano
No. i, which actually ends several bars before the
composer brings it to a close. Here, as in most
instances, his sweet meandering is due not so much
to his lack of proportion, but simply because he could
not tear himself away from the loveliness that he had
created.
Music has never been oppressed with loveliness,
least of all in our time. It is ungrateful to complain
of a surfeit of it in the work of one man.
Still, the fact remains that, although he sometimes
nodded (he is in distinguished company here, for the
very greatest have nodded at times), he had a much
finer sense of form than his critics maintain. He is
never formal, as even Mozart is sometimes formal, nor
does he provoke one, as Elgar sometimes does, by his
anxiety to keep the music going whilst he gets back
somehow to that other theme that he has at the back
of his mind. No matter what the method, a sustained
intensity of thought is the aim of every composer.
Delius's was that most dangerous and difficult
method, the rhapsodic flight. The slightest failure of
inspiration and down the machine came.
The remarks of his critics often gave him con-
siderable amusement. 'Did you hear Beecham's
magnificent performance of Eventyr ? * he asked in a
letter to me dictated to his wife. 'Jelka read a silly
200 DELIUS AS I KNEW HIM
and superficial notice by one critic who said he was
tired of counting the anti-climaxes in the work ! Fancy
talking about climaxes and anti-climaxes in a work like
Eventyr, a ballad based upon Norwegian peasants'
fairy-tales ! The fellow still seems to have Beethoven's
Symphonies as his point de depart, showing great lack
of imagination*'
Once, after having read a particularly absurd
criticism, he said, 'It is fatal wifti most of the critics if
a composer .has found it necessary to reject German
forms and refuse to mould his thought into stand-
ardised patterns. One can't define form in so many
words, but if I was asked I should say that it was
nothing more than imparting spiritual unity to one's
thought. It is contained in the thought itself, not
applied as something that already exists, Look at
Walt Whitman. Whitman spent his whole life
writing Leaves of Grass. It is his individual contribu-
tion to art. Nobody else could have written it. So
with my own work.*
Delius had no preliminaries in conversation, but
always went straight to the heart of the matter. So
it was with his music. Despite its 'wanderings as in
dreams,' it is, at its best, and within the orbit of its
own world, as direct and concentrated as is the music
of Sibelius within the play of its own world. Review-
ing his life's work, one can only wonder at the extra-
ordinary richness of his imagination, and the aston-
ishingly wide range of thought that world contained.
It is a far cry from the romantic exuberances of Paris
to the fantastic frolickings of Eventyr, from the song
of a lover in the Mass of Life to the song of a lover in
THE MAN AND THE COMPOSER 2OI
Songs of Sunset, from the honeyed intimacies of the
chorus in Appalachta to the sexless, impersonal voices
in the wordless chorus in the Song of the High Hills >
from the rich mellowness of In a Summer Garden to
the comparative bareness and bleakness of the North
Country Sketches, from the heartrending poignancies
of Sea-drift to the exotic extravagancies of Hassan.
How he managed to ring so many changes on the
circumscribed musical stuff of his thought is evidence
of the truth that it is only genius that matters.
It has always struck me as odd that with the in-
numerable evidences to be found in his music of a
highly developed and extremely subtle feeling for
sounds at work the slow movement of the double
concerto and several 'pictures' in the opera Femwnare
and Gerda are miracles of loveliness when played with
understanding, if we have ears to hear Delius had
no feeling whatever for the music of words. I stress
the word feeling, for, as far as he was concerned,
music was little more than the habit of feeling logi-
cally in sounds. It would hardly be an exaggeration
to say that life for him was entirely a matter of feeling,
for, as I have remarked, he was Contemptuous of
learning, and completely anti-metaphysical. Never
once did I hear him say that this composer had an
excellent melodic gift, or that composer a beautiful
sense of design; it was always a reluctant admittance
that *Yes, that song shows fine feeling,' or, 'That
passage is good. What beautiful feeling !* .
Fine feeling had to mean precisely what he felt by
fine feeling, and fine feeling meant vital harmony.
He was entirely incapable of feeling a thing from
o
202 DELIUS AS I KNEW HIM
anybody else's point of view, only from his own. The
fine feeling exemplified in the tender delicacy of that
gem of a slow movement of Mozart's Symphony No.
34 in C was abhorrent to him; the fine feeling such as
we find in the strong, heavy brooding in the slow
movement of Sibelius's String Quartet -the Beet-
hovenish quality - he loathed. Nor was he moved by a
fine melody that ran along easily and effortlessly, now
quickening impulsively here, now relaxing in repose
there, with but a bare understatement of its implied
harmony in the basses and occasional interpolations
from the middle voices. That sort of music-making he
hated. For him, the power to stir, or be stirred, was
always measured by the harmonic intensity of a work*
In setting words, however, it must not be imagined
that he was careless. I have heard him declaim a
phrase over and over again -but always, oh, so
clumsily ! - before finding the music for it. It will,
no doubt, astonish the many who, like myself, must
often have flinched before his mutilations of English
to hear that he used to say, *I am always at my best
when there are words/ That he probed to the heart
of whatever poem he was setting is beyond the shadow
of a doubt, but I am equally certain that he had no
notion of how badly he declaimed English. Of his
settings in German and Norwegian I am not com-
petent to judge, but, with English, the words are
almost like an unnecessary commentary on the mood
which the composer has drawn up from the depths of
their meaning. The melodic accent he imposes on
them is wholly at variance with their verbal accent.
One can more readily forgive this in a composer who
THE MAN AND THE COMPOSER 203
is unwilling to sacrifice the shape and spacing of the
beautiful melody that he has been at such pains to
perfect to the shape and spacing of the words that he
has been given to set. In the case of Delius it was
unforgivable, for it would have been just as easy for
him to spread the words out comfortably and accur-
ately over the rich texture of sound they had inspired
in him as to perpetrate the verbal absurdities of an
otherwise lovely work like Songs of Sunset.
I often gathered from his remarks, whilst listening
to music with him, that he regarded voices in the
nature of a necessary encumbrance. There were
certain works in which one could not very well do
without them, yet they were a nuisance all the same.
Often, during relays of his choral works in which one
guessed that the microphone had been placed in
such a position as to give undue prominence to the
voices, he would say, 'Can't you get the Orchester any
louder ?' (He always used the German form of the
word.) *It doesn't matter so much about my hearing
the singers. The Orckester - the Orchester is the chief
thing I want to hear.* It was the same in listening to
Wagner. 'Never mind so much about the singers, or
even what they are singing about; the narrative is in
the Orchester.*
What he did understand in writing for voices was
the colour of choral sound, and the peculiar emphasis
and choice of voice a particular line needed if it was
to tell effectively in the harmonic texture. He used
to relate with great amusement how, at the early
rehearsals for the first performance of Sea-drift, at
the Tonkunstierfest in Essen in 1906, they thought the
204 DELIUS AS I KNEW HIM
chorus parts unnecessarily difficult, whereupon one
bright fellow decided to rewrite several passages,
distributing the parts in such a way as to facilitate
their execution, yet preserving the actual harmony.
After a great deal of manipulation he finished the job,
convinced that he had done the composer a noble
service. Copies were made of the new part-writing,
and a few crack singers from the chorus chosen to
sing the improved version, so that the indignant
composer might be shown the error of his ways.
*When they had finished singing/ said Delius, *I told
my good friend that he could just alter it all back
again; that I would have none of it ! He had taken
all the character out of my music. The outcome of it
all was that he apologised, and said that it had been a
shocking eye-opener to him. He would never have
believed that such music could have sounded so
different when the part-writing had been altered.
When he heard the total effect of the chorus with the
orchestra at the last rehearsals - and how thoroughly
they used to rehearse in Germany in those days ! - he
was more surprised than ever, and heard for himself
that the chorus parts had to sound exactly as I had
distributed them/
The root of his insensibility to the music of words
was, I think, a certain lack of literary taste. A man's
library is usually a fair criterion of his mind, but,
apart from the dozen or so books that had been given
him at various times by Heseltine, whose taste was,
of course, impeccable, there remained very few that
one would have associated with a mind of Delius's
quality and stature.
THE MAN AND THE COMPOSER 205
During the six years that I knew him I never re-
member his reading anything in English other than
autobiographies, both political and artistic, detective
stories, and any yarn, no matter what it was, that told
about the sea. So long as it was colourful, and the
action moved quickly, he was content* He had no
patience with a writer like Conrad, who took his time
in the telling of a story. Of English verse he knew
surprisingly little, and never once during my stay at
Grez did he ever ask us to read a line of it to him.
Several times I fancied that it would be an agreeable
change from our normal routine of book-reading, but
he always turned my suggestion down.
From 1895 onwards, with the exception of the text
of the Mass of Life, which was selected from Thus
Spake Zaratkustra by Fritz Cassirer and the composer
during a holiday together in Brittany, the composer's
wife chose almost every word that he set* Whenever
she came upon a poem that matched the mood of that
sad longing which she had first sensed in his im-
provisation, she copied it out and left it on his desk.
Sometimes, she told me, the music he played was so
poignant that she thought her heart would break.
The granddaughter of Moscheles, she had been
brought up from her earliest years in an atmosphere
of music and culture. She had heard a great deal of
extemporisation in her youth, but none that bore the
slightest resemblance to that of Delius, either in
mood or manner. Whereas everyone else improvised
on easily recognisable themes, with Delius there were
no themes, just chords. When the mood to extem-
porise was on him, he always followed the same
Zo6 DELIUS AS I KNEW HIM
procedure. He would start very quietly and dreamily,
moving along slowly and, for the most part, chro-
matically in a rhapsodic procession of chords from one
leisurely climax to another, until the music culminated
in a tremendous outburst; then, with many tender
dallyings by the way, it would end as peacefully as it
had begun*
Delius, according to his wife, was a very bad pianist,
playing his own music shockingly. His slender,
tapering fingers were too long to play even the
simplest runs cleanly. His limited technique had
been a severe handicap to him all along, for he was
never able to play his works from his scores when he
showed them to various publishers. Yet, when he
improvised, it was as if other hands were fingering the
keys. Such improvisation, she said, was, in its way,
quite as impressive as the more florid outpourings of
the accomplished technician; to her ears it was
certainly more musical.
It would have been interesting to have heard
Delius improvise, for then it would have shown to
what extent his improvisation had influenced his
composition. He composed every note of his work
at the piano (with the exception of the opening to the
Sang of Summer), and there is no doubt in my mind
that his limited keyboard technique was largely
responsible for the occasional mechanical chromatic
slidings of his harmony, the oft-restricted movement
of his part-writing, the frequent lack of fitness in his
writing for strings, and the unrelieved, plodding
crotchet movement of much of his music.
Although his music is instantly recognisable, it
THE MAN AND THE COMPOSER 207
has no style - style as it is generally understood in tlie
sense of precision and ease of manner, trimness,
aristocratic movement, and grace of gesture held to
the point of perfect control. Such style is the pre-
rogative of those artists who attempted none but the
shorter and safer flights. It would be as absurd as it
would be unreasonable to expect such a sense of style
in the rhapsodic broodings of a Delius as in the
rhapsodic violences of a Beethoven. Style rarely
clothes the intelligence of a weighty mind.
No music is more difficult to interpret convincingly,
or requires more rehearsal, than the music of Delius,
and no music sounds duller when it is badly played.
Consummate artistry and skill are needed to hold that
simple texture together and give it life. Delius is
like that delightful member of the team who goes in
to bat fairly well down the list, and requires a great
deal of fuss and attention. One must fasten his pads
for him, help him into his batting-gloves, adjust his
cap, and sometimes even ran for him, but, somehow,
it is worth it; he always manages to score. Some of
his shots may be flukes, and, where a crack batsman
would play a defensive stroke to a ball pitched well
up on his middle stump, Delius, serene and unruffled,
with a mixture of bat, pad, and glove will steer the
same pitched ball dangerously through the slips for a
boundary, then fall to a silly catch from a ball that
he should have hit out of the field. And the amazing
thing about it all is that it never once occurs to him
that his escapades might give the others some anxiety,
or that he takes more looking after than the rest of the
team put together.
208 DELIUS AS I KNEW HIM
This music has a way with it all its own, and, unless
that way is grasped instinctively and immediately,
conductor, player, and singer alike might just as well
shut up their Delius scores and give them away. The
music of Delius is not an acquired taste. One either
likes it the moment one first hears it, or the sound
of it is once and for ever distasteful to one. It is an
art which will never enjoy an appeal to the many, but
one which will always be loved, and dearly loved, by
the few.
I am at a peculiar disadvantage in being unable to
say anything of consequence regarding the so-called
English characteristics of the work of Delius. I can
only speak of his music in relation to my own limited
experience. A penetrating thinker like Cecil Gray has
proved conclusively on paper that 'nothing could be
more unmistakably English than such things as the
Dance Rhapsody No. i or In a Summer Garden, or
the two lovely pieces for small orchestra - in spite of
the fact that the first of these two latter happens, quite
irrelevantly, to be based on a Norwegian folk-song.
How magically, too, do the first few pages of Brigg
Fair evoke the atmosphere of an early summer morn-
ing in the English country, with its suggestion of a
faint mist veiling the horizon, and the fragrant scent
of the dawn in the air P
Yet I cannot understand why it is that when I walk
about the countryside of England I seldom, if ever,
find myself humming anything of Delius, but always
some exquisite passage from Elgar; either something
from the 'Cello Concerto, the Introduction and
Allegro for Strings, the String Quartet, the lovely
THE MAN AND THE COMPOSER 209
interludes in Faktaff, the 'W. N.' variation, or the
opening theme of the last movement of the Second
Symphony.
When I am in France, and taking the same walks
that Delius had taken for over thirty years, the walks
on which he thought of nothing else but music, which,
he told me, was ripening in his mind as the years
went on, it is impossible for me to get that music of
Delius out of my mind. I am singing it all the while.
The gardens at Grez on a summer day, the river, the
woods, that stretch of meadow opposite his house,
that unforgettably beautiful walk on to Montigny,
the mellow countryside round Villiers and Recloses,
the rich brown soil, the indescribable feelings such
as I have only felt at sunset up there on the road over
to Marlotte - here, for me, was the source of his
inspiration, not England. Even the wizardry of Sir
Thomas Beecham cannot make me 'hear' England
in this music, but transports me to the countryside
round Grez. All the time I was at Grez I never
thought of Elgar's music unless I was homesick.
I have not the learning to trace the artistic lineage
of Delius, even if it were desirable in a book of this
kind. It would require several years of profound
study, an undertaking which very few young men can
afford. It is all very well to point out that in such-
and-such a work there is a suggestion of Grieg in the
turn of a modulation, or Chopin in the shape of the
melodic line, or Wagner in the sense of flow. These
things are but the bait of the problem, ever ready to
catch the unwary. Perhaps, in a more leisurely age,
scholars will be able to show just how far an artist
210 DELIUS AS I KNEW HIM
had been influenced by the work of others, and just
how far similarities of expression are the workings of
an unconscious affinity of mind. In all probability,
in the case of Delius, such enlightened eyes may see
no further than mine - that as Delius he began and
as Delius he ended*
Whatever one's personal reaction to his music may
be, no one can fail to admire his artistic integrity,
which remained inviolate from first to last. In a
short article written for a Polish paper some months
before I first went to Grez, he had written, 'There is
evidently something wrong with musicians who can
suddenly change their entire outlook and experiment
in atonal ugliness. Is the present tendency perhaps
due to lack of imagination, a lack of emotion ? Is it
perhaps the outcome of our hasty mode of life, or a
striving after publicity, arrivism, sensationalism, or
self-advertisement ? Is it an equivalent of cubism or
futurism which seems to have already gone out of
fashion ? It is difficult to tell. But I feel certain that
no outward influences, no set principles or theories,
can give birth to beautiful music/
c No outward influences, no set principles or
theories* - these words epitomise the man and the
musician.
He would have agreed whole-heartedly with Verdi
(that other born fighter, who, like himself, always
went his own way) when he wrote, 'I believe in
inspiration; you in workmanship. I admit your
criterion as a basis for discussion, but I want art in
all its manifestations - not amusement, artifice,
system, which is what you prefer. Am I right ? Am
THE MAN AND THE COMPOSER 211
I wrong ? * . . My backbone is not supple enough for
me to yield and deny convictions which are so deeply
rooted. If artists could understand the meaning of
truth, there would be no longer music of the past and
music of the future, realistic and idealistic painters,
classical and romantic poetry -but 'true poetry, true
paintings, true music/
To write true music a man must be that rare thing,
a true artist. No artist of any age was more worthy
of that epithet than Frederick Delius. Despite his
negative and somewhat depressing outlook on life,
the best of what he was still lives for our delight. So
long as the noble art of music is held in reverence, so
long will his music be played. His was true music,
the glory of a great and imperishable name.
PART FOUR
THE SUNDOWN
TTT may be remembered that I had left Grez in the
I summer of 1933 on the understanding that they
were to send for me if need be, and I knew that,
when that time came, it would be for no musical
thing that I should be needed, but for something of
greater moment, and the dread of that something -
whatever it might be -was never far from me. Ihad
often wondered how it would all end; whether Delius
would outlive his wife, or whether she would suddenly
break down under the strain of that constant watching
and anxiety.
Delius had listened-in' to the first performance of
the Fantastic Dance on January i2th (1934) under
Dr. Adrian Boult. The weather conditions were not
very favourable, but Fred was very pleased, and said
that, as far as he could judge, it was a good perform-
ance/ was the verdict.
Later that month there came a letter which read :
Tred has been very unwell for nearly a week and
has given me great anxiety. ... I phoned at once
to D n p - in Paris and he said that if there was no
fever or pain it was not immediately dangerous. But
Fred's an was so anxious, and I as well, that we got
the Nemours doctor to come. He put Fred on a very
severe diet, and we had to keep him in his bed (oh 1
2l6 DELIUS AS I KNEW HIM
the difficulty), cook ail his food without salt, no
exciting drinks, no fish or fowl, no milk, etc. You
who know Fred will understand all that I was up
against/
Shortly afterwards I received another letter as
follows:
'I have been so often to Fontainebleau for medicine,
food, analysis at the hospital, that with all the reading
I have to do now that Peggy has gone I really have
not the time to write. But now Fred is much better,
and I told the doctor I could not go on with that diet
as Fred simply ate nothing, so we are normal again
and he had cider for his lunch yesterday.
'Did you hear Beecham's concert ? We heard it
remarkably well. I had even called on the people
who have motors that afternoon, and got them so
interested and willing that the baker baked his whole
bread without electricity, that the B s and C s
pumped by hand to feed all their animals, and the
butcher lady also turned off her motor. It showed
plainly that most of these disturbances come from
these wretched motors. Eventyr, Fred thought, was
quite amazing; he had never heard it like that before.
He was immensely pleased with Songs of Sunset, the
suavity of the whole, Beecham's exquisite handling of
the orchestra, and the fine singing of Olga Haley.
He also thought The Walk to the Paradise Garden
was glorious, stronger and more passionate than on
our recording. I was happy to see Fred nodding so
elatedly his head to the music/
THE SUNDOWN 217
Another letter dated March 12th read:
"Fred is all right. We read more than ever. To-day
we are to eat roast pork with the fat and crisp skin
left on. I brought it from Fontainebleau and Fred
is quite excited about it. There have been negotia-
tions about it for three weeks* Fred takes great
interest in his food now, and I think that is a good
sign, although his forethought and imagination are
always much bigger than his actual appetite/
At the beginning of April I was alarmed to hear
rumours that Delius was gravely ill. I wrote to Mrs.
Delius at once. She answered immediately:
'84.34.
*MY DEAR ERIC, - No, Fred is not seriously ill, but
we must be most careful. . . . The worst is that
he is troubled with the most dreadful shooting-pains
that return every day at the same hour (5 p.m.) and
persist through the whole night if he does not take a
calming medicine, which he generally does. But, of
course, all that makes him feel weak and fatigued in
the morning.
*We have had several visitors, and, as Fred has been
unable to see them, you will understand how these
rumours arose. There is no actual necessity for you
to come, but it would be delightful and an unspeakable
help to me. Why not come for a month ? It would
take Fred out of his groove, to talk music once more.
I asked him, and he said spontaneously, "Oh, I
always love having Eric here 1" . . /
It was not possible for me to leave there and then,
p
2I DELIUS AS I KNEW HIM
so I decided to pay them a visit in May. A week
before the day on which I had arranged to leave there
came a letter containing the usual list of things that
Delius fancied. Two days later, on returning home
from an evening walk, a telegram awaited me. Its
contents staggered me ; c When are you coming ? Am
operated on to-morrow Clinique St. Joseph, Foritaine-
bleau. Jelka. May iTth, 1934*'
I weighed the matter in my mind and saw that
nothing would be gained if I set out that night. I
would 'wait till morning, when possibly there would
be a letter. It came:
'16.5.34.
'DEAREST ERIC, - 1 am afraid I am very ill; I have
gone on till I could not any more. They are going to
fetch me this evening and operate on me in a dimque
in Fontainebleau. Please, Eric, be an angel and come
here as quick as you can and stay with Fred and keep
him company. I hope when they will allow it you
wiU come to see me, but Fred is the principal thing.
I cannot write any more, but please, dear, do not
fail us.
'Yours affectionately,
'JELKA DELIUS.'
By the same post there came another letter from a
neighbour urging me to come at once and take charge
of the household, for the chances were that Mrs.
Delius would never survive the operation, so critical
was her condition, and that should she come out of the
hospital alive, she would be an invalid for the rest of
her days.
THE SUNDOWN 219
All the way on that hurried journey to Grez my
mind was full of awful possibilities. Would I reach
Fontainebleau before she died? And, should she
die, how should I manage with Ddius alone ? Would
it mean the complete sacrifice of all my youthful
years ? I should have to stay with him to the end.
Little did I realise that I was being summoned to
the death-bed of my friend, and that his wife was to
outlive him by a year.
It seemed strange that of all my returns to Grez this
day should be the most beautiful. Great white oxen
tramped leisurely across the fields, dragging the
enormous, top-heavy, two-wheeled carts that the
French use, and here and there little groups of men,
brown with the hot sun, rested under the fruit-trees,
now in full blossom, eating their bread and cheese
and drinking red wine from their bottles, whilst others
in wide-brimmed straw hats" bent their backs in the
asparagus fields. My mind was not in tune with
these good things of the earth, and I paid little heed
to them.
I entered the house and went straightway to Delius's
room. As he heard me mounting the staircase he
called out, 'Eric, Eric, is that you ? Eric !*
'Here I am, Delius ! 5 I shouted.
c Oh, lad, it's good to have you back; where are you ?
Come here, come here P he cried.
I went over to the bed and took the delicate hand he
offered me and kissed his brow, for he was weeping
like a child. As I stood there beside him I could
scarcely believe my eyes. I had never seen him look
like that before. He was much thinner, and but the
220 DELIUS AS I KNEW HIM
shadow of that relic of a man I had known for these
six years.
'What a catastrophe this is P said he, 'Jelka so ill,
and here am I left alone/
He then went on to tell one how he had come to
detest his male nurse because of his roughness and
uncouthness; that he wanted me to share his room so
that he could have me by him all the time. I muttered
something about Yorkshiremen always pulling
through, and that all would be well. Now that I
was there, he seemed contented though weary, and
was not disposed to talk even of his wife's illness.
Would I read to him ?
'Let's read Huckleberry Finn again !' said he. ...
After about an hour of this the German nurse came
in, bowed very gravely, as I continued to read, and,
glancing at his watch and then at me, took up his
German translation of an Edgar Wallace thriller, and
began to read in a loud voice that startled the old man
and drowned my efforts completely.
Realising that Mark Twain was no match for Edgar
Wallace, I threw my book down, and, whispering to
Delius that I would be back soon, rushed round by
the church to see Mrs. Brooks, to find out exactly
what had happened. The operation, she told me, had
been successful. I might go and see Mrs. Delius in
the morning. That was reassuring.
That night after supper I went up to Delius 's room,
determined to rouse him. 'Come, Delius/ said I,
'let's have some music on the gramophone/
"Very well/ he replied, 'play me In a Summer
Garden'
THE SUNDOWN 221
I went downstairs and, turning the great horn of
his E.M.G. gramophone towards the staircase, put on
Geoffrey Toye's record.
That was the last music he heard.
He now seemed brighter, and we talked about
music. Had I seen Beecham lately ? I told him that
I had, and about the magnificent performance of
Paris that I had heard him give only a few weeks
before at Queen's Hall. The old man was delighted,
and said how he longed to hear the records of Paris
and Eventyr that Sir Thomas was then making for
the Delius Society.
*I have only one wish as far as my best music is
concerned/ said he. 1 want Thomas to record it all.'
Delius, apparently, had no idea of the gravity of his
wife's illness, and appeared to think that it was quite
a minor operation, from which she would recover and
be home again shortly to resume her normal duties.
After every visit I made to Fontainebleau to see her
it was always the same question he asked: Isn't she
coming back to-morrow ?*
With the days my difficulties increased. Backwards
and forwards I went, keeping his condition from her,
and hers from him, until at the end of a fortnight, the
worry, suspense, and responsibility became more than
flesh and blood could bear. The pyrethane which
they gave Delius to ease the pain upset him so that he
could not retain his food, and he was gradually grow-
ing weaker and weaker and could not sleep, even
during the reading. I was now reading nine hours a
day and the greater part of the night. Unless one
read to occupy his mind he seemed to be in constant
222 DELIUS AS I KNEW HIM
pain. Nor could he rest in any one position for long
without my having to move Wm> or lift him up to take
the folds out of his pyjaina-jacket, which continually
hurt his back. One could.have done with an army of
nurses, except that he would have dismissed the lot.
He would now only tolerate his nurse at the most
necessary times.
I begged Sir Thomas to send us the test records of
Paris. Word came that they were already on the way,
so we lived for the moment we should hear them.
Sad to say, they were held up in the French Customs
at Calais, and, though we wrote letters and sent tele-
grams explaining that they wete not for sale, they were
not released until after Delius's death.
After discussing the situation thoroughly with the
Nemours doctor, and slightly with Mrs. Delius, who
was now out of danger and making a splendid recovery,
it was decided to invite the doctor's colleague, a very
celebrated man who had lately come to Fontainebleau,
to give his opinion on Delius. This, however, could
itot be done without a good deal of tact, for Delius
would not have submitted to an examination without
the approval of his wife, on whom he relied for most
things to an amazing degree. Again, it was important
not to alarm such a sensitive intelligence as his. To
the credit of the two doctors and of Mrs. Delius, I am
confident that he thought that this rekpse was but of
temporary duration. He would recover when she
returned. Formerly I left the room on such occasions,
but this time, when the doctors arrived, Delius said,
'Don't leave me, lad. 3 They stayed about ten minutes,
and, as they glanced at one another, I read in their
THE SUNDOWN 223
looks that impersonal despair that doctors assume
when things look b$d. Delius remained passive and
collected, answering thek questions firmly, but when
they asked him about his sight he flared up in bitter
resentment. They then went downstairs, and re-
mained in consultation for over half an hour, when
they returned and announced the course of treatment
they had prescribed. Taking me aside, the Fontaine-
bleau doctor told me that at the very most Delius
could not possibly live for more than three months.
I lost no time, but immediately acquainted Sir
Thomas Beecham and Balfour Gardiner with what
had happened, and, as the latter was proposing to
visit Grez in July, I suggested that it would be a
tremendous help to me in this crisis if he could come
at once. This he most generously agreed to do, and,
waving everything aside, hurried to Grez.
Meanwhile Delius iad rallied considerably under
the new treatment, and by the time his friend arrived
was greatly improved. Unfortunately, Balfour Gar-
diner could not stay for more than two days, but was
kind enough to promise that in the event of a further
relapse he would return* The companionship, under-
standing, and advice which he gave me during those
days made it possible for me to go on alone.
Shortly after Balfour Gardiner's departure Delius
became less well, but there was not the slightest
indication that death was imminent. We had come
to that part of Mark Twain's Roughing It which tells of
the adventures of the unmanageable Mexican horse,
and the old man had laughed and joked about it.
But I noticed that, as I continued, he became less and
224 DELIUS AS I KNEW HIM
less interested, and appeared to be sinking slowly into
a coma. I summoned the doctor immediately. (One
of the precautions that Delius had taken to preserve
his privacy - his refusal to install a telephone - now
became a serious handicap* The only means of
communication in the night with the doctor in
Nemours was the cook's husband, on his capricious
motor-cycle. Having knocked this good fellow up -
he was always willing to be of service - 1 would pace
Delius's bedroom, waiting and listening anxiously,
helpless to relieve him. Then, after an interminable
time, there would come a roaring and sputtering noise
up the street. It would grow louder and louder.
*Ah, they're here P I would say to myself, and rush
quietly downstairs to admit them. But the sounds
would grow fainter and fainter. He was just starting
off!)
The doctor came with his morphia syringe and soon
there was calm, but when the effects of the drug had
worn off, Delius became restless again and asked me
to read. This I did until eight o'clock the following
morning, when the doctor returned. There yet
remained one chance of reviving him, said he. He
would bring Mrs. Delius back from the hospital that
morning. By mid-day she was sitting by him, in a
wheeled chair, and I left them alone. It was obvious
that Delius was sinking rapidly; that he had not the
strength to talk. All he wanted was the soothing
drone of a voice to which he need make no response.
It must not stop ; it must go on, and on, and on.
I wired to Sir Thomas Beecham, Balfour Gardiner,
and Ernest Newman, informing them that Delius
THE SUNDOWN 225
was gravely ill. Through the help of Alden Brooks
and his* wife, whose kindness and thoughtfulness
during this dreadful time were unlimited, an excellent
nurse was quickly found in Nemours for Mrs. Delius.
The house inside now resembled a miniature hospital.
Each time he came to, Delius was in agony. The
doctor was now coming every four hours. Towards
evening on that day, Friday, June 8th, he was easier,
and his wife was brought in to see him. 'Jelka, I'm
glad P he muttered when told that she was there, and
smiled faintly. Later that day his suffering was so
intense that his features became distorted, and it was
as much as his nurse and I could do to prevent him
from falling out of bed. Finally, after a night the
unspeakable horror of which I shall never forget,
the doctor paid his second visit in the early hours of
the morning with his morphia syringe, and from six
o'clock that Saturday morning Delius was as if in a
sound and noisy sleep. All day long he lay there, his
mouth wide open, and his stertorous breathing could
be heard down below in the garden. The village
clock struck twelve. It was midnight. Still there was
no change. But for the heavy action of his breathing
he had not moved for eighteen hours.
They had persuaded me to take some rest, and I
had gone reluctantly and flung myself on a couch,
telling them to wake me should he stir. At four
o'clock that Sunday morning they roused me. 'Sir,
he is moving again P I rushed into his bedroom; the
nurse said that it would soon be over. The others
said, 'Speak to him.' I knew it was hopeless, but I
bent over him and called, 'Delius, Delius, this is Eric P
Z26 DELIUS AS I KNEW HIM
I had not seen Death before, and it had always been
linked in my mind with doctor, priest, and tears, but
when it came none of these attendants was present.
Within five minutes he was as if dead, but when I
undid his pyjama-jacket the heart was still flickering.
I took his cold hand and felt it grow colder in mine.
It was the end.
I went through into Mrs. Delius's room. The
agonising gaze of that sick woman was unforgettable,
as she gradually lifted herself up on her side to
look at me. 'My dear/ I said, 'be brave. Delius is
dead 1*
She did not speak or cry, but sank bads: on her
pillows momentarily dazed. By this time the doctor
had arrived, and, after examining that human wreckage
on the bed, he turned to me and said, c Oui, Monsieur,
il est mort P He was to lie in the music-room. Mrs.
Delius begged to be brought in to see him, so we
carried her through in her little chair. She explained
exactly how she wanted him to lie, and ordered
Madame Grespier to go out into the garden and pluck
roses. Soon she was back with a basketful, and we
strewed them round him and left him there. It was
now almost half past five and getting light, and, when
I had thanked the doctor and seen him out, I went
back to the ghostly silence of the music-room, and,
kneeling beside the body of this strange and unusual
man who had been almost a father to me since the
day I had come as a raw youth to help him, I prayed
that God would forgive us our sins and receive his
soul.
After breakfast I sent telegrams to Sir Thomas
THE SUNDOWN 22J
Beecham and Balfour Gardiner informing them of the
composer's death, and Mrs. Delius, Brooks, and I
then discussed the question of his burial.
It had long been DeUus's wish to be buried in the
garden of his house, but, as this was not possible, he
had said that he would like to rest in a country church-
yard somewhere in the South of England, for there
the churchyards had always reminded him of those
he had loved up in Norway, Yorkshire was too bleak
and too far away from London, for there would be
some who would wish to visit his grave and he would
like them to place wild flowers on it. I remember
how, having heard him say all this, I thought it so
strange that this man who believed in the souPs
extinction at death should have given so much thought
- indeed, any thought at all - as to where they should
bury his bones*
It was decided to make arrangements for a tempor-
ary burial in the graveyard at Grez until such time as
Mrs. Delius was able to travel, and a suitable spot in
England could be found.
That night we heard the B.B.C. announcement of
his death, followed by that exquisite passage from the
Walk to the Paradise Garden (page 228).
Looking out over the garden, as I listened to that
music, I saw the world of music as he entered it, and
the world of music, richer now by far through his
legacy of loveliness, as he had left it. And I, being
young and of that hard, cold, and materialistic post-
war generation of those who know little or nothing of
the world of which he had sung, but only of a world
of shams and substitutes and devastations, felt a sense
228
DELIUS AS I KNEW HIM
A-
of finality, distinct from personal loss, as if with tlrs
man the very Spirit of Romance had died.
The following day Mrs, Delius sent to Paris for a
mouleur to come and make a death-mask, and take an
impression of the composer's right hand. There being
no one else to help, it fell to my lot to assist at these
gruesome proceedings, and, when a photographer had
been called in to take several photographs of the dead
man, I was glad to see the last of these gentlemen.
How horrible are the tawdry trappings of death !
The next afternoon, with the sun still high in the
sky, we laid him to rest in the ugly churchyard which
is reached after a few minutes' walk out of the village
on that Marlotte road, the scene of so many of our
evening walks.
It was the strangest ceremony I have ever seen, and
never do I want to see another like it. Yet there was
THE SUNDOWN 229
something about it - a something difficult to express
in words that was characteristic of the man Delius,
who had always gone his own way, been true to
himself, and steadfast in his particular attitude towards
life and death.
There was to be no semblance of a funeral what-
ever, and, when I had seen the coffin safely into the
garish horse-drawn hearse awaiting it at the door, I
departed in the opposite direction to join Brooks at
his house, leaving it to go its lonely way up the village
street, unattended save for the bearers who slouched
along beside it. Balfour Gardiner, Mrs. Brooks, and
her sister had gone on ahead, and, skirting the village
in Brooks's car, Brooks, Barjansky, Klemperer (an
old friend from Paris), and I met them at the grave-
yard and waited there. When the hearse had passed
through the gates, we instinctively assumed some sort
of orderly procession behind it, and followed it round to
where it now halted amid the rows of rusty iron crosses
bedecked with artificial flowers and wreaths, all in the
sickliest colours. The coffin was taken from the hearse
and borne across the ground to the grave by the wall.
We all stood back, not knowing quite what to do, and
the bearers now put it down on to the planks beside
the grave and, turning round, eyed us appealingly.
Someone nudged my elbow, and I heard Balfour
Gardiner whisper, 'You go, Fenby'; so I walked over
to the graveside and gave them the sign to lower the
coffin into the grave. This done, the bearers stood
aside, and the rest, nervous and embarrassed, came
over to where I was. We lingered there for several
moments in silence, bare-headed, looking down into
230 DELIUS AS I KNEW HIM
the grave, and I wondered what was going on in the
minds of the others. Then we all walked slowly away,
still silent, and the masons began their work before
the filling in of the grave.
The villagers behaved admirably. There was no
idle curiosity, no lining of the street. Not one of them
came near the graveyard. They understood.
Several days kter a heather wreath arrived from the
Lord Mayor and citizens of Bradford. Delius's old
gardener wheeled it up to the graveside on his barrow,
and stood with his cap in his hand as I laid it on the
grave in their name.
I remained in Grez for a few weeks longer, until
Mrs. Delius's aged brother and sister-in-law were
able to pay her a visit. I then returned to England,
happy in the belief that she was making a complete
recovery. Later that year she was well enough to
come over to England, and, with the help of Miss
Margaret Harrison, chose the spot at Limpsfield
where Delius now lies. It was arranged provisionally
that his body should be brought over and buried
there in the May or June of the following year.
As the months of that year passed by, it was evident
that Mrs. Delius was not maintaining her progress,
and during the last weeks immediately preceding
Delius's reinterment it seemed doubtful whether she
would be fit to travel. So determined was she to
attend her husband's funeral that nothing could dis-
suade her, even though it was necessary to take her
by ambulance to Paris. That she was unable to do so
after having already reached London was a tragic
disappointment to her.
THE SUNDOWN 231
I had promised her that I would return to Grez, to
witness the exhumation and accompany Delius on his
last journey* The coffin was now housed in the
mortuary in the graveyard, and, having seen Mrs*
Delius off by train from Paris, I went back to Grez
alone. Early the next morning, as I was standing
beside the passenger motor-hearse bidding farewell
to Brooks and his wife whilst the others loaded it with
its heavy burden, I could not help remarking how
wrong Delius had been when he had chosen to be
buried in England. He belonged to Grez, and only
to Grez.
My friends agreed with me.
And as I looked back and saw them standing in the
middle of the road gazing after us as we drove up that
Marlotte road overlooking Grez -his favourite walk
for years in his active days, and the road on which he
loved to be wheeled in his carriage at sunset in the
evening of his days - 1 knew that I was right.
From now on a curious indifference possessed me.
It struck nine as we passed through Fontainebleau,
and we judged that with luck we should reach
Boulogne by six that night* Turning west just before
entering Paris, we passed through Versailles and
headed north for Beauvais. My two young com-
panions sitting at the front of the coach - the chauffeur
a fat, happy, red-faced little fellow dressed in green
livery, and the undertaker, tall, effeminate, and
painful in a tight-fitting black coat and enshrouded in
an air of professional gloom - seemed highly solicitous
for mv comfort and entertainment as we rode aloner.
j O
Whenever we passed some object of interest, lite
QD
232 DELIUS AS I KNEW HIM
latter turned round, and, pulling back the sliding glass
door in the screen which separated us, called my
attention to its peculiarities, and held forth about its
history in a manner that suggested that he had once
been a guide of some sort or another. When we
reached Beauvais, he asked me if I wished to stop there
for lunch, and, when I had assented, he showed me a
great hotel to which, he said, English people usually
went. I asked my friends if I might lunch with them
instead, on condition that they came as my guests*
They told me that they knew a little restaurant where
we should get good food and good wine, and, having
backed the hearse up a side-street and left it there,
they showed me the way down some dirty alleys
which led into a narrow street approaching the
cathedral. Here we found our restaurant and entered.
The meal was all they had promised it to be, and more !
It is a rule never to be forgotten in France to eat where
the French eat, not where the English and Americans
eat. My companions were very talkative and inter-
esting, and I learnt a great deal about their respective
occupations. They were keenly interested in, and
asked a great many questions about, the King's
Jubilee, and about life for such as them in London.
They said that people of their class had been greatly
impressed by the loyalty and unity of the British
Empire. Who was Monsieur Delius, and what did
he do ? They had never heard of him. Several times
during the meal I had shown signs of uneasiness about
the hearse up that back street, and, when I suggested
that I should like to slip out to see if it was still there,
they roared with laughter. I told them sternly that
THE SUNDOWN 233
it was no joking matter for me. My tall friend was
bent on showing me round the cathedral. I might
not pass by that way again. It was still very hot when
we left the restaurant, and, leaving his mate to refuel
the hearse, he conducted me along the narrow streets
until, reaching an opening, we suddenly saw the
fa9ade towering up before us. My chief recollection
is the delicious coolness that met us when we entered,
and how I thought of the time when I had caught cold,
or imagined I had caught cold, on coming from an
icy little church, not far from Grez, into the great
heat outside, and how Delius had said that it served
me right. He hoped it would teach me a lesson never
to enter a church again.
Passing through Abbeville, we reached Boulogne a
little sooner than we had expected and made our way
down to the docks. Here, after consulting some filthy
ledgers, they examined my papers relating to the
deceased, and with much ado finally stamped them.
The coffin was now put into a packing-case by a
Boulogne undertaker and his men and swung aboard
the Channel boat* My companions of the day were
now ravenously hungry, so we parted, they to a cafe
near the docks and I on to the boat.
Shortly after nine o'clock, when the passengers had
disembarked, the coffin was being lifted into the
English hearse which awaited it alongside the boat at
Folkestone, and soon we were on our way to Limps-
field. It was midnight by the time we got there, and
pitch-dark. The vicar met us at the lychgate, the
coffin was placed on a bier, and, with lanterns to guide
us, we moved slowly to the graveside. The coffin was
234 DELIUS AS I KNEW HIM
lowered into the grave, and the silence of the night
broken by the vicar's prayer, c tet light perpetual shine
on them, O Lord, and may the souls of the departed
through the mercy of God rest in peace/ The coffin
was now covered up temporarily for the night with
boards.
I will not write of the funeral service in the late
afternoon of that day. Such people as may find this
book of interest were, no doubt, all there, or will have
read about it elsewhere.
For me, it was all wrong. If the shade of Delius
looked down from the Elysian fields, he too must have
seen that it was all wrong and that he had blundered.
Better that he had been left in that cold graveyard at
Grez, over there by the wall amongst the peasants
whom he had known, than that he should rest with
strangers in a strange place even in his native land.
They buried his bones at Limpsfield, but his spirit
will ever remain at Grez, the home of his life's work
and the country round which was his chief inspiration.
Whatever feeling he may have had for England,
Florida, and Norway, Grez was his home, and Grez
should have been his last resting-place.
The only thing that was right was that a few days
later his wifeshould be buriedwith him. This had been
his wish when the time came, and justly so, for her one
aim in life had been the establishment of his genius.
And so our friendship came to an end, and with it
the passing of a man the likes of whom I know I
shall never meet again. Youth is a strange time,
and the stuff of youth is stranger. How glad I am
that I wrote that letter I
APPENDIX OF
SCORES
(By kind permission of Messrs. Boosey & Hawkes)
A SONG OF SUMMER
SONGS OF FAREWELL II
Ed*
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INDEX
AIR AND DANCE, 60
Albeniz, 195
Appalachia t 60, 61, 119, 201
BACH, 181, 190
Balzac, 104
Barjansky, 13, 21, 22, 24-7, 57, 229
Bart6k, 61
Bax, Arnold, 131
Beecham, Sir Thomas, 10, 23, 25,
29, 56-7> 63, 79, 85-6, 88-90,
96, 105, 112-14, 163, 170, 199,
216, 221-4, 227
Beethoven, 81, 188, 190, 195, 196,
200, 202, 207, 209
Berlioz, 195
Bernard, Anthony, 59
Bizet, 195
Borodin, 195
Boult, Dr. Adrian, 2x5
Bradlaugh, 171
Brandes, 180
Brigg Fair, 25, 53, 208
Brooks, Alden, 43, 65, 225, 227,
229, 231
Bruckner, 123
Busoni, Benni, 57
Busoni, Ferdinando, 57
Busoni, Ferruccio, 57-8, 121, 196
Busoni, Gerda, 57
CAPRICE AND ELEGY, 102
Cassirer, Fritz, 205
'Cello Concerto, 22
'Cello Sonata, 22, 24, 68
Chabrier, 196
Chesterton, G- K., 91, 190
Chopin, 78, 190, 209
Common, Thomas, 6
Conrad, Joseph, 205
Corot, 42
Courtauld,Mrs.,ii4
Cynara, 69, 70-1
DA FALLA, 195
Dance Rhapsody No. i, 108
Dance Rhapsody No. 2, 56
Debussy, 195, 196
Ddius, Frederick, 5, 7, 10, 12-18,
20-3, 25-9, 31-4, 36-8, 40-1,
43-5, 47-52, 54-5, 57-62, 64-75,
77-94, 96-103, 105-7, "MS,
H7-l8, 122, 125, I3I-2, 102,
164, 167, 169-72, 176-9, 181-3,
186-94, 198, 201, 203-11, 215,
217-26,229,231-4
Delius, Jelka, 9-15, 18, 21, 2*3, 25,
28, 3i, 33-4, 40, 44, 49-52, 59*
66-7, 74, 78-9, 85, 91-2, 95,
102-3, 108-11, 114, 125-6, 163,
170, *87> 199, 205-6, 217-22,
224-7, 230-1
Delius, Peggy, 126, 216
Dent, Professor, 57, 121
Donizetti, 71
Dowson, Ernest, 69
Dykes, John, 182
ELGAR, 4, 52, 65, 112-14, 123-^
178, 199, 208, 209
Erskine, 97-101
Ewntyr, 15, 56, 199, 200, 216, 221
Fantastic Dance, 112, 215
Fenmmore and Gerda, 104, 201
Festival, Delius, 60, 70, 84, 88-9
Flecker, James Elroy, 44
Florida, 25, 164, 165, 168, 171, 234
GARDINER, BALFOUR, xo, 17, 27, 29,
44, 49, 57, 92-3, 95, 223-4, 227,
229
Gauguin, 91
Gibson, Henry, 88
Goethe, 194
Goossens, L., 23
Grainger, Percy, 44, 74-7, 79^
85
Granados, 195
Gray, Cecil, 63, 121-2, 208
regorian chant, 63, 180
Grieg, 53, So, *$3, 168-9, 190, J9
209
Gunn, James, 117-18
INDEX
HADUBY, PATRICK, 92-3, 95-6
Haley, Olga, 216
Harrison, Beatrice, 102
Harrison, Margaret, 230
Harrison, May, 92, 96
Hassan, 44, 5, 57, acfc
Haydn, 178
Haym, Dr. Hans, 51-2
Haym, Suzanne, 51-2
Henderson, Roy, 121
Henley, 70-1
Heseltine, Joseph, 20, 62, 70
Heseltine, Philip, 20, 22, 58-60,
63-6, 70, 88-9, 105, "3, 2<>4
Hiawatha, 68
Howard-Jones, Evlyn, 45-6, 79-82
Howard-Jones, Grace, 45, 79-80
IDYLL, 119, 121, 123-4
In a Summer Garden, 53, 113, aoi,
208, 220
IrmeUn, 112
JANSSEN, HERBERT, 124
John, Augustus, 89
Johnson, Dr., 184
KENNEDY-FRASER, MBS., 195
Kennedy-Scott, C., 7, 89
Klemperer, 229
Koanga, 51, 95, *
LAEETTE, DORA, 121
Larson, Carl, 42
Late Lark, A, 70, 105
Leipzig,. 168
Umpsfield, 230, 233
Liszt, 196
MAHLER, 123
Margot-la-Rouge, 118-19
Mass of Life, 6-7, 26, 88-9, 119,
170, 171, 190, 200, 205
Mendelssohn, 189, 195
Memihin, Yehudi, 125
Moscheles, 205
Moussorgsky, 195
Mozart, 52, 182, 195, 199, 202
Munch, Edvard, 14, 42
NICHOLS, ROBERT, 119, 178, 179
Nietzsche, 7, 14, 164, 17*-*, 179.
181-3, 191
Newman, Ernest, 124, 224
North Country Sketches, 201
Norway, 72, 74, 91, 121, 234
O'NEILL, NORMAN, 53, 83-4, 117
On Hearing the First Cuckoo, 23, 53
Osbourne, Fanny, 43
PALESTRINA, 52, 172, 180-1
Paris, the Song of a Great City, 56,
58, 68, 193-^, 200, 221-2
Parry, 124
Perosi, 178
Pianoforte Concerto, first version,
Pianoforte Concerto, second
version, 80, 112
Poem of Life and Love, A, 17, 29,
34, 44, $o, 70, 13*
Puccini, 195
QUARTET, STRING, 64-5, 187
Quilter, Roger, 57
RAVEL, 196
Requiem, pagan, 102
Rimsky-Korsakov, 195
Rossini, 71
Runciman, John, 82
Ruysbroeck, John of, i73~5
SARGENT, MALCOLM, 115-16
Schumann, 195
Sea-drift, 10, 35, 53, &>> "9, *>x,
203
Shakespeare, 190
Sibelius, 53, 123, 190, igz, 200,
202
Simon, Dr., 57
Smith, Matthew, 65
Sonata for Violin and Piano No. x,
187, 199
Sonata for Violin and Piano No. 3,
91-2, 96, 122
Song of Summer, 82, in, 115,
13^-47, 157, 206, Appendix
Song of the High Htlls, 75, 115,
201
Songs of Farewell, xoi, 105, 114,
116, 147-57, Appendix
Songs of Sunset, 68-70, 86, 120-1,
201, 203, 216
Spence, Kenneth,
Spohr, 190
Stevenson, R. L., 43
INDEX
Strauss, J charm, 53
Strauss, Richard, 192, 196
Strindberg, 14, 43
Summer Night on the River > 53
TERRY, RICHARD, 64
Tends, Lionel, 122
Toye, Geoffrey, 221
Twain, Mark, 220, 223
VAN DIEREN, BERNARD, 61, 187
Verdi, 192, 195, 210
Victoria, 52, 180, 181
Village Romeo and Juliet, A, 46,
60, 68, 119, 198
Violin Concerto, 5, 41
WAGNER* 196, 203, 209
Walk to the Paradise Garden^ 53,
216, 227
Wallace, Edgar, 220
Ward, Thomas, 168-9, *7
Whistler, 190
Whitman, Wak, 36, 102, 119*
194, 200
Wolf, HugO, 71, T23, 124
Wood, Sir Henry J., ni, 121
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