Pages from an unwritten diary

PAGES FRQM AN
UNXX/RITTEN DIARY

SIR CHARLES VILLIERS STANFORD

THE LIBRARY

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PAGES FROM AN UNWRITTEN DIARY

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LONDON; EDWARD ARNOLD.

PAGES FROM
AN UNWRITTEN DIARY

BY

SIR CHARLES VILLIERS STANFORD

WITH PORTRAITS

LONDON
EDWARD ARNOLD

1914

lA II rights reserved]

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Music
Library

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AMICIS DILECTIS

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VXORI DILECTISSIMAE

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PREFACE

Hans von Bulow was once conducting a rehearsal of
the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, at which some
ladies were invited to be present. They indulged in
whisperings and chatterings which greatly disturbed
the players. Biilow turned round and said *' Ladies,
we are not here to save the Capitol, but to make
music." I fear that the contents of this book may
suggest a tendency in one or other of these directions
to my readers, according to the spirit in which they
open its pages. Those that look for music may
happen upon cackling, those that affect the cackling
may be bored by the music. My main hope is that
there may be some who like both ; my chief dread
that there are others who like neither.

A few of the records it contains may, and I trust
will, be of some future value. They are my only
excuse for inflicting upon the public a volume which is
so prolific of the first person singular. In all such
books the "I's" must needs stand out like telegraph
poles.

I ti'ust that I have not in the course of its pages

vii

viii PEEFACE

wounded any susceptibilities ; but, to guard against
such an eventuality, I will adopt the formula which
was used with such success by the officer, as recorded
on p. 161 of this book: "I apologize for anything I
have said, am saying, or may at any future time say."

C. V. s.

June, 1914.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I

PAGES

Old Dublin — The Henns — Legal and medical luminaries —
Archbishop Trench — Trinity College and its Fellows — Dean
Dickinson and other ecclesiastics - - - 1 — 17

CHAPTER n

Music in old Dublin — Petrie and Folk-song — Irish composers
— Singers — John Stanford — Lablache — Mendelssohn at
Birmingham — Chamber music — A professional violinist —
An amateur tenor ----- 18 — 35

CHAPTER HI

The two Dublin Cathedrals — Their choirs — Handelian and
other traditions — Sir Robert Stewart - - 36 — 51

CHAPTER IV

Early days — Jenny Lind — The local orchestra — Pianoforte
training — Joachim — The Duke of Wellington and Mr.
Seed — Sayers and Heenan — The Dublin Sunday — Passing
visitors — George Osborne and Berlioz - - 52 — 69

CHAPTER V

London in 1862 — The Exhibition — Chorley — The theatres —
Moscheles — School and schoolfellows — The Crystal Palace
—Music in Dublin ----- 70—86

CHAPTER VI

The Dublin theatres — Operas and singers — An omnibus fatality
Dr. Houghton and the science of humane hanging — Visits
of Royalties and Statesmen — Dublin street cries — Joachim
and Fenianism — Irish temperament - - 87 — 102

ix

CONTENTS

CHAPTER VII

PAGES

Education of musicians — Cambridge in 1870 — The Cerman
Reeds and John Parry — Birmingham Festival — Cambridge
dons — The C.U.M.S.— Sterndale Bennett — Musical under-
graduates—The lOUX Indians - - - 103—119

O'

CHAPTER VIII

Trinity College in 1873— The Master— T. A. Walmisley— The
Schumann Festival at Bonn — Brahms — Paris after the
Commune --.-.- 120 — 137

CHAPTER IX

Musical Education in England — Societies and opera in London
— Leipzig in 1874 — The German theatres and concert-
rooms — Liszt — Wieniawski — The Thomas-Kirche - 138 — 152

CHAPTER X

Leipzig ancient and modern — Reinecke and the Gewandhaus —
Dresden in 1875 — The Leipzig fair — Student duels —
Friedrich Kiel 153—165

CHAPTER XI

Developments of Cambridge music — Brahms' Requiem —
Baireuth in 1876 — Berlin — Joachim at Cambridge— Brahms'
first Symphony — James Davison — Wagner in London 166 — 180

CHAPTER XII

The Cambridge A.D.C.— J. W. Clark— Greek Plays— J. K.
Stephen — The Veiled Prophet — Ernst Frank — Hanover in
1881 ...... 181—196

CHAPTER XIII

Richter Concerts — Hermann Franke — Brahms at Hamburg —
Costa — Birmingham Festival of 1882 — Gounod — Meyerbeer
—Parry's " Prometheus "—R. C. Rowe - - 197—211

CONTENTS XI

CHAPTER XIV

PAGES

Foundation of the Royal College of Music — Scholarships —
Belaieff and music-publishing — George Grove - 212 — 227

CHAPTER XV

Tennyson — Irving — Browning — Leighton and Millais — Fred
Walker and Thackeray — R. Pendlebury — Church music at
Cambridge 228—243

CHAPTER XVI

Hamburg in 1884 — Richter at Birmingham — Vienna — The
Bach Festival at Eisenach— Leeds in 1886 — Ireland in the
Early Eighties _ . - - . 244—257

CHAPTER XVII

The Queen's Jubilee in 1887— The Irish Symphony — Hans von
Billow— Dvorak ----- 258—272

CHAPTER XVIII

Robert Bridges and Eden — W. S. Rockstro — Rome and Florence
— The jubilee of the Cambridge University Musical Society
— "Falstaff" at Milan and elsewhere — Verdi and Boito —
Bach in Paris — Madame Viardot- Garcia - - 273 — 288

CHAPTER XIX

The Bach Choir and Leeds Singers, an additional chapter of
Mr. Labouchere's Biography - - - 289—298

CHAPTER XX

Modern tendencies and modern audiences — Colour- worship — ■
von Billow and his views — The Church and its duties to the
art — The influence of the Muiu praprio decree — llymu
tunes — Concert-rooms and the Government — Financial
policy and musical societies — National Opera — Conclu-
sion - 299—319

Index - .... - 321—328

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Sir Charles Villiers Stanford -

FACING PAGE

Frontispiece

Jonathan Henn, Q.C.

-

6

John Stanford

-

- 28

Sketch by Grattan Cooke -

-

- 31

Mary Stanford

-

- 64

An Orpheus Quartet

-

- 66

Concert Bill

-

158

Group of the Henn Family

-

- 160

By Edouart, 1834.

A Christinlas Card -

-

- 186

By J. K. Stephen and H. J. Ford.

Xlll

PAGES PROM AN UNWRITTEN

DIARY

CHAPTER I

Old Dublin — The Henns — Legal and medical luminaries — Arch-
bishop Trench — Trinity College and its Fellows — Dean Dickin-
son and other ecclesiastics.

A TOWN mouse I was born and bred, and the town
which sheltered me was one Hkely to leave its mark
upon its youngest citizens, and to lay up for them
vivid and stirring memories. Dublin, as I woke to it,
was a city of glaring contrasts. Grandeur and squalor
lived next door to each other, squalor sometimes under
the roof of grandeur. Society, " The Quality " as the
Irishman calls it, had deserted its centre and made its
home in the outskirts : houses of perfect architectural
proportions had become tenements ; Adam's ceilings
and Angelica Kauffmann's designs looked down upon
squalling families in rags and tatters. The hall
where Handel conducted the first performance of the
" Messiah " had become a low theatre. The two old
cathedrals stood in a region compared to which the
Seven Dials was a Paradise. But the well-to-do
classes, who had turned their faces outwards, had
ijuilt up a town which, if it had its usual quota of dull
featureless streets, was not wanting in a good sprink-
ling of private houses of artistic merit, and in open

1

2 PAGES FROM AN UNWEITTEN DIAEY

spaces and squares of a beauty quite unique in this
country. Best of all, they entrusted the designing of
their public buildings to an architect of genius, James
Gandon, who had those rare gifts, a style of his own
without extravagance and an unerring sense of dignity.
Two great monuments of his skill, the Law Courts
and the Custom-House, with the impressive group in
College Green, gave Dublin the cachet which distin-
guishes it from all its sister cities. Beauty was
everywhere, dirt was everywhere too, trying its best
to conceal it. A perspective of quays and bridges,
whi^h rivals that of its prototype, Pisa, looked down
on a salmon river so polluted that to drive along it at
low tide recalled to the passing traveller Coleridge's
description of Cologne. It was an amazing tribute to
the endurance of the monarch of fish that, though
unable to hold his nose, he could plough through this
ditch to the upper waters of the Liffey ; (and I have
seen him jumping at the falls of Leixlip, the Lach's
Leap, many miles above). To the North stretched a
street of a breadth comparable to the famous Unter
den Linden in Berlin, with a massive central column
to Nelson's memory, which accentuated its noble pro-
portions. To the South stood the semicircle of the old
Parliament House, the statues of Burke, of Goldsmith,
and of William of glorious, pious, and immortal
memory, guarding the hill up to the gloomy castle ;
and so one passed into Merrion Square where Medi-
cine on the North side gazed at Law on the South,
along streets upon which the distant Dublin mountains
smiled, and a canal lined by tall old trees where the
smell of the turf was wafted from the smoke of barges

OLD DUBLIN 3

from Athlone. Thus semi-consciously did famous names
in the country's history become famihar to a young
mind. Fitzwilliam, Carlisle, Sackville, Harcourt, Dor-
set, Grafton, Usher, Heytesbury, Grattan, Herbert,
all these were household words. It was in Herbert
Street (No. 2) I was born, and all round were names of
Herbert history : Wilton, Mount Merrion, Sidney and
many more. So much for the setting of the scene.

The characters were as varied as the city. The
division line between the two religions was indelibly
marked ; great exceptions only accentuating the rule.
But in spite of an antagonism which was only too
naturally intensified by close contact, I was seldom if
ever conscious of personal intolerance. It showed
itself more in the markedly Low Church spirit of the
Protestant inhabitants, who resented on principle an
East- end organ and choir in their Parish Church,
while they inwardly preferred a Cathedral service,
when they could go there for relief I remember a
grotesque row, nearly destructive of close friendships,
which was caused by a very sensible attempt to place
the choir in our church (St. Stephen's) near the organ
at the East end. This heresy lasted only for one
Sunday ; there were shrieks of " Puseyism," but the
loudest protesters were to be found in the stalls of St.
Patrick's the same afternoon. The feeling, as I after-
wards came to know, was accentuated by the Oxford
Movement, which in Ireland resulted in a twofold
secession, the one in the direction of Rome, the other
in that of Plymouth. It had split families, my own
amongst them, iind it took years for thn l)itterness to
die down. T\m influence which lioIp<<l most to heal

4 PAGES FROM AN UNWRITTEN DIARY

the wounds, and to keep Dublin from undiluted Cal-
vinism was the music of the Cathedrals, of which more
anon.

The circle in which my family moved was that of the
law : and a very brilliant and gifted group it was. I
knew many of them as a boy ; my grandfather, William
Henn, Master in Chancery, a winning sympathetic
personality whose charm, as Bishop Graves told me,
was irresistible, and whose memories, if he had yielded
to the Bishop's entreaties to write them, would have
been priceless. Like all his race he was a crack shot
and a masterly fisherman. He had killed snipe on the
fields which bordered on what is now Merrion Square.
He tied his own flies, many of which are still in active
service. In his large study on an unfavourable day he
used to practise with the top joint of his rod casting at
a particular boot in the formidable row of a dozen pairs
or so along the wall. He was a cultured musician and
an expert flute-player, and for many years was the
most popular of Presidents of the most ancient body of
the kind in Ireland, the Hibernian Catch Club. His
grandchildren adored him for his many little whim-
sical kindnesses. They still remember the half guilty
merriment, with which he used to purloin tiny glass
tubes of homoeopathic pilules belonging to my grand-
mother (an ardent follower of Dr. Luther), empty out
the globules, and substitute infinitesimal quantities
of port and sherry which he distributed to them in
secret.

His brother, Jonathan Henn, Q.C., became famous
through his defence of O'Connell, for, alone of all the
row of brilliant barristers who were his colleagues at

THE HENNS 5

the trial, he discovered the flaw in the indictment
which procured the "Liberator's" acquittal by the
House of Lords. A lawyer of the first class, gifted
with a wit and an eloquence which had scarcely a rival,
he always preferred sport to law : he refused his first
brief, for which he had waited fifteen years, for the
sake of a day's salmon fishing. This passion, for he
was a superb angler, he kept to the last, catching a
30-pounder on the day he completed his eightieth year,
an achievement which he celebrated by a family dinner.
But his distaste for politics and his intense nervousness
before speaking led him to retire comparatively early
from active work : and when Sir Robert Peel was
anxious to make him a Law ofiicer of the Crown, he
answered that " he would rather not do his dirty work
in Parliament for him." He was guardian of three
nephews, the sons of his youngest sister, of whom the
second was an able officer in the Engineers, and the
youngest became famous at the English Bar as Henn-
Collins, Master of the Rolls, and afterwards a Lord of
Appeal. He had the quaintest ways and loved the
most humorous paradoxes. I possess a large two-
volume French Dictionary which he sent me in the
month of June as a Christmas Box, excusing himself
by writing " Who knows where I shall be next Christ-
mas ? Better too soon than never." He suddenly
descended upon our house with a full-sized grand
pianoforte, when he thouglit 1 had had enough of a
small upriglit. He taught me whist, of which he him-
self was a past-master, "as part of a liberal education,"
and instilled all the leads and finesses into my juvenile
mind with a zeal worthy of a teacher explaining the

G PAGES FROM AN UNWRITTEN DIARY

diriiciilties of Tliucvdiiles or ^Eschyliis. His last
accoiiij^lishiuent was to learn the then brand new jj^aine
ot* croquet, and 1 had many a hard tussle with him
when he was past eighty. He still remains in my
memory as clearly as if I saw him yesterday, with his
strikuigly handsome face, of the Norman oblong type
which was so marked in most of his relations, and
which he inherited from his mother, one of the Lovetts
of Liscombe.* His j'oungest brother Richard, was a
typical sailor-man, who fought at Copenhagen as a
midshipman.

Many other famous colleagues and successors of
Jonathan Henn at the Bar were familiar figures of my
boyhood. Blackburne (Lord of Appeal), Brewster
(Lord Chancellor), the Fitzgeralds, Monahan (Chief
Justice), Walter Berwick (the Judge in Bankruptcy),
most kindly and humorous of men, who taught me to
dap for trout, and who possessed a pocket-knife with
an entire tool-box in it (the envy of my youth and of
which I was speedily given the double) by which alone
his ashes were identified after the burning of the Irish
Mail at Abergele. T. B. C. Smith (Master of the Rolls)
nicknamed "Troublesome, Bothersome, Cranky Smith"
in accordance with his initials. Fitzgibbon also,
Master in Chancery, my father's chief, who was a
martyr to asthma, and had a back so round and bent,
that the jarvey of the cab, in which my father accom-
panied him one day to the Courts, whispered to him

* The history of the Lovetts of Liscombe has recently been
written by Mr. R. J. A. Lovett, the thirty-second lineal descendant
of Richard de Louvet, Master of the Wolfhounds to William the
Conqueror.

JONAIHA.N HkNN, (^.C.
(/KUI. So.)

LEGAL AND MEDICAL LUMINAKIES 7

"If only the poor Master's head was turned the other
way, what a beautiful chest he'd have !"' Whiteside,
the hero of the Yelverton case, a tall digniBed figure,
as beloved by his friends as he was honoured and
respected by his opponents : full of boyish fun, and of
cosmopolitan experiences. He once amused a large
collection of friends at a garden-party, by performing
for me the Battle of Prague upon his white hat,
illustrating the " groans of the wounded " with a high
tenor voice. He had a wholesome contempt for
snobbishness, but resented any slight upon his office.
The late Lord St. Leonards once invited him, shortly
after he became Lord Chief Justice, to dine at Thames
Ditton Lodge, which is some little distance from the
station. When Whiteside and his wife arrived, they
found no vehicle of any sort to take them dry shod to
the house. The Chief was equal to the occasion,
stopped a baker's cart in the road, put Mrs. Whiteside
on the box, placed himself on the top of the cart with
his long legs extending far beyond it, and insisted on
the baker driving them up the avenue and ringing the
bell for the flunkeys to help them down. His Lordship,
who was very punctilious, was far from pleased, but as
Whiteside laughingly said, it served him right. His
predecessor in the chief justiceship, Lefroy, I visited
when he was ninety-four, with my fatlier, about a case
of arson in the County of Muath which he liad tried
two years Vjefore. He had written to ask liiin to bring
his notes of the case, as tliere was a point al>oul which
he was uncertain. 1 sat in the corner and heard him
go through from m(!mory every detail of the trial, and
ask if his statement corresponded with the records; he

8 PAGES FROM AN UNWIIITTEN DIARY

had not, my father said, missed a single point. His
niece, who had a bad lisp, always called him " The old
Thief,'' a nickname which went the rounds. Keogh,
the Napoleonic, and Morris, both renowned for wit and
rapid repartee, were of a later generation, amongst
which stood out two striking figures, Lawson and
Murphy, who might both have been surnamed "The
Fearless," for they carried their lives in their hands,
while doing their duty in the black days of the Phoenix
Park murders. Of Keatinge, the Judge of the Court
of Probate and Divorce, I have an exceptionally vivid
memory, for when I was about ten years old I managed
to get engaged to two young ladies (of eight and ten
respectively) at the same time. This weighed so
heavily on my tender conscience that I consulted my
father as to the best means of disentangling the
difficulty. He immediately said that the only way
was to write fully to Judge Keatinge. The Judge
replied in a formidable blue envelope inscribed " On
Her Majesty's Service," and threatened me with
committal for contempt, if I did not carry out his
instructions. These he sent me in another long legal
document, pointing out the penal consequences of
bigamy, and prescribing a course of action which would
obviate my committing the crime. All this elaborate
joke I of course swallowed in solemn seriousness,
accompanied by a wholesome dread of the assizes.

An interesting group in its way was the phalanx of
physicians and surgeons. Amongst the latter were
Colles (of wrist fracture fame); Butcher, a picturesque
ficrure, who dressed a la Lytton with well oiled ringlets^
velvet waistcoat, white silk stock with two diamond

LEGAL AND MEDICAL LUMINARIES 9

pins linked by a chain, and ruffles to his sleeves, and
went by the nickname of Jehu " because he drave
furiously " ; he had hands like a woman's for delicacy
and refinement, and a fore-arm so splendidly developed
that a cast of it was taken for the College of Surgeons ;
he was such a past-master of the noble art of self-
defence, that he boxed creditably with Jem Mace, the
then Champion of England. He was the uncle of two
brilliant men of our own day, Henry, the Edinburgh
Professor and M.P. for Cambridge University, and
J. G., the member for York. The grim Cusack and
the kindly John Hamilton were Butcher's ablest
colleagues. The Physicians too were a world-renowned
body. Stokes, the friend of George Petrie and almost
as distinguished in archaeology as in medicine, Henry
Marsh, Dominic Corrigan, Cruise, Philip Smyly, the
most handsome of men, and Meldon the most adipose.
The last-named iEsculapius gave occasion to one of
Father Healy's most witty repartees. The doctor's
proportions made it impossible for a second person to
occupy his carriage. A friend of Healy's of a critical
turn of mind was rallying him on his acceptance of
certain historical data in theology.

The Friend. " How can a sensible man like you,
Healy, believe that Jonah really came out of the
whale's belly ?"

Healy. "1 don't know, I saw something quite as
peculiar to-day. I s;iw Meldon getting out of a
lly!"

Charles Tottenham o{' liallycuiry was another
familiar figure. A stout powerful man with a character-
istic stutter, and rather large prominent eyes which

10 PAGES FROM AN UNWRITTEN DIARY

struck terror into those who did Dot know the kindli-
ness and humour behind them. The Devil's Glen, one
of the show places in the County Wicklow, was on his
estate, and the public were allowed to visit it at certain
fixed times. On one of the forbidden days, he met
two ladies taking an unauthorized walk in his grounds,
and demanded somewhat peremptorily to know their
business.

The Leading Lady. " Who are you ?"
Mr. T. " Mr. Tottenham of Ballycurry."
The L. L. " We were hoping to see the Devil's Glen,
but we did not expect to meet the Proprietor."

Mr. T. [roaring with laughter). " Come and have
some lunch."

And he acted himself as cicerone to the visitors.
His method of endearing himself to small children was
to say " Quccck " and to drive a forefinger into their
ribs. I used to hide in the topmost room when I saw
him in the ofiing.

The list of memorable Dublin figures in the sixties
would not be complete without mention of the clergy,
and the Dons of Trinity. I once heard Whately
preach ; but he was too old and infirm for his
voice to reach me. His successor in the Archbishopric,
Trench, began his first sermon in our church by
terrifying me with the orotund and tragic delivery of
his text, " I am tahrmented in this fla-ame." It
did not strike me at the time how suitable the
quotation was to his own position in the trembling
Establishment of the Irish Church, A Dublin wag
shortly after eulogized Palmerston for his engineering
skill in putting a Trench in the Irish See. Trench's

ARCHBISHOP TRENCH 11

speeches on all occasions were delivered with an
intensity of emotional expression which often quar-
relled somewhat ludicrously with their contents. I
remember a children's party at the Palace, where the
very lively proceedings wound up with a short
dramatic piece. Before the curtain rose, the Arch-
bishop, leaning on a prie-dieu chair in the precise
attitude of a preacher, led us to imagine for a moment
that we were all to be serious and say our prayers ;
but the speech bewrayed him for all his episcopal
enunciation. " My young friends ... I would ask
your kind indulgence . . . for this little plil-a-ay
(in a very high and agonized voice). Applarse to
ahl is dear! — {tlten beginning low and rising high) — but
esp-a.s'/i-ily to those, who are unskilled in acting.
Therefore (verij tragically), my young friends ... I
would sa-a-y — {long pause) — Applahd !"

Tennyson told me that Trench had exactly the same
style of oratory when he was at Cambridge. On one
occasion he was making an inordinately long speech at
the Union which began to bore his audience, when
Charles Buller, who was sitting next to him, tried to
pull him down into his seat ; but Trench speaking in
the same sonorous oratorical voice interpolated in one
of his sentences, "Charlie Buller! if you continue to

[)ull me l)y the coat-tails, I will hit you in the eye."

or a vastly different type was Salmon, the great
mathematician and Provost of Trinity, who never
missed a good concert, but worked pro])lems on his pro-
gramme all the while. He was capa})le too of a kindly
sarcasm comparable in its gentler way with that of
the Master of Trinity, Cambridge : a Junior Fellow of

12 PAGES FEOM AN UNWRITTEN DIARY

the College who was credited, rightly or wrongly, with
a certain tendency to romance, was inveighing against
the corporal punishment of boys, and clinched his
argument by stating that " he had once been flogged,
and that was for telling the truth," when Salmon
intervened with the soft reminder, "and it cured

you, ". At one time the Provost was suffering from

sciatica, and a benighted faddist begged him to try the
ejffect of Christian Science. Some weeks after a friend
asked him, " Well, Provost, did Christian Science cure
the sciatica?" "No," replied the soft Cork voice,
" but the sciatica cured the Christian Science."

Many of Salmon's contemporaries were men of mark
and fame. Jellett, one of three wonderfully gifted
brothers ; Magee (afterwards Archbishop of York),
whose eloquence carried me away even in my 'teens ;
Butcher, afterwards Bishop of Meath and brother of the
surgeon ; Todd, antiquarian as much as theologian ;
Graves (afterwards Bishop of Limerick), almost Salmon's
rival as a mathematician, and a keen clear-sighted
critic of music and of art, of whom, as a godfather who
was somewhat exceptional in his interest in his god-
children, I have countless happy memories. Of his
pretty wit and broadminded views I had an amusing
experience. I arrived late one Saturday at his pic-
turesque house, Parknasilla, on Kenmare River, famous
for mackerel trolling. The next morning I looked out
on a perfect day, with the gulls hovering over the
obvious shoals of fish, and remembered with heart-
searchings that I was staying with a Bishop and that
it was Sunday. But at one o'clock, after a long talk
with him on many interesting subjects, he stopped me

DEAN DICKINSON 13

at the door, saying, " Remember in this house on
Sunday after two o'clock you do what you like : and
better men than you or I have fished !" I caught
about fifty in an hour.

Archdeacon Lee, tall, combative, with prominent
goggle eyes, and West, Dean of St. Patrick's, short,
square, and humorous, were two striking figures. On
one occasion they had a serious difference which came
before Archbishop Trench ; West emerged from the
contest triumphant, and said to a friend whom he met
upon the Palace steps, " And Ishbibenob, which was of
the sons of the giant, thought to have slain (pointing
to himself) David." Of Hercules Dickinson, Dean of
the Chapel Royal, " the only established clergyman in
Ireland " as he called himself, a volume could be
written by itself Among all the wits in Dublin he
had but one rival, and he went by the sobriquet of
"The Protestant Father Healy." The records of his
repartee are numberless ;i but at the risk of the charge
of " old chestnuts," I may quote one or two of the most
brilliant. When the Synod of the Irish Church first
met after the Disestablishment, a great feud arose as
to its division into a House of Bishops, and a Lower
House of Clergy and Laymen. Lord James Butler took
a lead In opposing the creation of an Upper House,
|)ickinson in supporting it. When tiie division was
taken, Dickinson was victorious. The next da}^ lie
niet his op])onent in Stc^phen's Green :

Lord James Butler. " HuHo, Dickinson, have you
heard the latest news al^tout me ?"

Dickinson. "No, my Loid."

L. J. B. "'^J'h(iy ai-e going to make me a Bishop."

14 PAGES FROM AN UNWRITTEN DIARY

D. (in a flash). " Well, my Lord, I have heard of a
Bishop of your name, but I cannot see any Analogy in
your case."

The Synod was a great field for his wit. Having
been misquoted by a very Low Church layman called
Brush, he called out " I have never given Mr. Brush
any handle to make such sweeping assertions about
me." When Roe built the new Synod House, a small
but inane party worried the Church-body to paint
texts over the various rooms. The Dean destroyed
this fad for good, by suggesting for the Refreshment
Room " The place where the wild asses quench their
thirst !" The same party demanded that a special
form of prayer should be drawn up for the meetings of
the Synod. Quoth Dickinson, " You have it all ready
made. The form of Prayer for those at Sea, of course."
When Canon Marrable, a leading Evangelical, raised
a hurricane, because the architect of Christ Church
Cathedral had designed the figure of a Lamb to sur-
mount the Choir Screen, Dickinson allayed the storm
thus : — " Christ Church is really becoming a Zoological
garden. They have already a Lamb in stone and an
Ass in Marrable." The Dean was driving one day on
an outside car to the North Wall, following another
car on which was a brother clergyman, Jordan by
name. In crossing the drawbridge the horse of
Mr. Jordan's car jibbed and backed down the bridge.
Dickinson, as he sped by, called out " What ailedst
thee, Jordan, that thou wast driven back ?"

Some short-sighted persons thought the Dean un-
duly flippant, but it is not too much to say that to his
well-calculated ridicule, kindly wit, and sympathetic

IRISH ECCLESIASTICS 15

personality was largely due the healing of sharp differ-
ences and the softening of rancorous party feeling
which at the outset threatened the solidarity of the
newly constituted Irish Church.

But if the Irish Church could rightly boast of intel-
lects of the hiofhest order, it also sheltered men whose
zeal oftentimes outran their knowledge. I can recall
the peroration of a sermon preached by a Trinity Don,
Benjamin Dickson, which took the palm for exag-
gerated hyperbole : — " The sun, like an antelope,
bounding from pinnacle to pinnacle of the heavens,
until at last it culminates in the meridian "; and the

Bev. A D , pillar of the Evangelicals, more

famous for oratory than for book-learning, who
preached upon the text " Well done, thou good and
faithful servant," and ended with this grotesque
amplification of the Greek eu, ( = bravo), "It is not
well-thought, it is not well-intended, it is not well-
sentimentalized, but it is well done." And lastly the
best-remembered of all by old visitors to St. Patrick's
Cathedral, Minor Canon Westby. Endowed with a
voice of supernatural compass, ranging from deep bass
to falsetto treble, this great man used to read the
lessons with a dramatic emphasis, a disregard alike of
commas and of quantities, which filled congregations
with ill-concealed delight, and his colleagues with a
holy terror, ^'{ff) The wicked Flee, {pp) when no man
purthuetli but the righteouth, {cres.) ith ath bold
ath a Lion," was one of his most famous readings,
delivered with an exaggerated lisp, a failing which he
so markedly emphasized as to make it seem that s
should always be pronoiniced tli. The difficulty of

16 PAGES FROM AN UNWIIITTEN DIARY

ending the unfinished lesson from the Acts of the
Apostles (ch. xxi.), which so many readers conceal by
addition or subtraction, he boldly faced by the simplest
of methods, " He thpake unto them in the Hebrew
tongue [pause) thaying ' Here endeth the Thecond
lethon.' " His false quantities at the end of the
Epistles would have been enough to turn a pundit's
hair grey, had he not insisted upon his version with
an accentuated certainty which carried conviction that
Westby was right contra mundum. " Epaphodituth
thalute thee," and " Let him be Anatheema * Mara-
natha " were but two of many striking instances.
Delivered without a blush, they carried such a feeling
of sublime inevitableness, that even now if I had to
read the lessons I believe I should unwittingly follow
his pronunciation. But his crowning achievement was
a sermon upon Job, in which he tackled the mighty
problem as to whether the book was allegorical or
historical. On the allegory theory his scorn was
poured out in tones which echoed down the aisles and
reverberated back into the choir. The climax was
reached when he rolled out this memorable period,
delivered with tremendous earnestness, and with all
the air of triumphing over a crushed adversary —
" And they tell uth, mee brethren, that Job wath an
allegory ! Boilth, mee brethren, there boilth, {this re-
echoed fronn the vaults of the nave /) From the crown
of hith head (soprayio), to the thole of hith foot (bass),
he wath all over There Boilth ! Now mee brethren
[this very softly and insinuatingly) if Job wath an

* Was Westby unconsciously or pedantically correct ? Probably
the former.

lEISH ECCLESIASTICS 17

allegory, how could he have boilth ?" And then, as
some flippant newspapers of the sporting persuasion
say, the organ played, and Sir Robert Stewart's
fingers drowned the titters of the congregation and
the scandahzed protests of the Dean and Chapter.

CHAPTEH II

Music in old Dublin — Petrie and Folk-song — Irish composers —
Singers — John Stanford — Lablache — Mendelssohn at Birming-
ham— Chamber music — A professional violinist — An amateur
tenor.

Music in Dublin in the fifties and sixties demands
from me, as in private duty bound, a place to itself.
The whole island, as is abundantly proved by its un-
equalled wealth of Folk-Song and Dance, was richly
endowed with the love of music ; the two vital ele-
ments of the art. Rhythm and Melody, were equally
prominent in this, the most natural outcome of Irish
imagination and invention. The originality and dis-
tinctiveness of its style were as marked as in the Keltic
type of ornament, of which the finest examples are in
the Book of Kells and the Missals at St. Gall. The
researches of Petrie and of Bunting had laid bare a
mine of treasures which no other country could sur-
pass, if indeed it could equal, either in quality or
quantity. But before the days of railways and of
steamers the country, save for a chance visit from
over-seas, was isolated and left to its own resources.
Among great European composers its only visitor
was Handel. The natural result was a levelling-up of
the amateur element, a process which left its mark
long after communication with the outer world became
more easy and frequent. The standard of the pro-
fessional musician was not appreciably higher than

18

PETRIE AND FOLK-SONG 19

that of the cultured dilettante ; the latter in many
instances far outclassed the former. It is to the
amateurs of Ireland that we owe the first serious
publication of undiluted Irish music. The Church,
the Law, Medicine, Science and Literature all counted
amongst their ranks ardent lovers of music, and these
were backed and encouraged by many patriotic col-
leagues who were not themselves actively musical.
Any fortunate possessor of the first volume of the
original printed collection of Dr. Petrie will find the
roll of honour in the list of the Council of " The
Society for the Preservation and Publication of the
Melodies of Ireland," founded in 1851. It includes
many names of note from every rank and profession :
the late Duke of Leinster, Sir Francis Brady (after-
wards President of the Irish Academy of Music),
F. W. Burton (afterwards Director of the National
Gallery), Charles Graves (Bishop of Limerick), Ben-
jamin Lee Guinness (father of Lord Ardilaun), Thomas
Rice Henn (son of the Master, and Kecorder of Gal-
way), Henry Hudson, Robert Lyons, John Macdounell,
W. K. Wilde and William Stokes (all prominent
physicians), and that most fascinating and human of
antiquarians. Dr. J. H. Todd. These men with their
devoted President, Petrie, at their head did a greater
if less world -famed work than Moore.

Thomas Moore and his collaborator Sir John Steven-
son, ransacked many old collections such as those of
P)Urke 'I'humoth and Holden, but were far from being
pious ill their methods. If Mooi'e satisfied himself
with a tragic or romantic poem, he would ruthlessly
twist a "Ploughman's whistle" or a "Keel" to fit it.

20 PAGES FROM AN UNWRITTEN DIARY

If he found a tune in the scale of G with an F natural,
he would sharpen the unfamiliar note, regardless of the
character of the modal scale which gave the whole dis-
tinction to the melody. In a way the charm and wide
appeal of his polished and musical verse were a draw-
back to the very plan which he set out to accomplish,
for many of the distorted tunes, which he. Procrustes-
like, lengthened and lopped, became so familiar to the
world in their " transmogrified " shape and contents,
that their fine old flavour became obliterated and for-
gotten. Unfortunately his collaborator, Stevenson,
who was a man of a certain genius, was such a devotee
of the great Haydn, that he read all the native music
through Austrian spectacles and acquiesced in, if he did
not suggest, the destruction of modal scales. There
was therefore a reason for the term " Preservation " in
Petrie's Society. Petrie would never accept those
modern emendations in spite of the prestige of the
Irish poet. Bunting wavered, but Petrie never. He
had noted the tunes himself (in a handwriting which
shows in every note the accomplished and routined
musician) over turf-fires in the cottages of Arranmore,
and in the wilds of the West, and as he found them so
he left them. It is almost a tragedy, that Ireland to
this day is so loyal to the memory of her best-known
poet, that she resents the alteration of a note of his
work, looks on it as blasphemy to restore his tunes to
their natural and proved form, and is still, under
official sanction, teaching her young children to sing
the wrong and wholly un-Irish scales which Moore and
Stevenson stereotyped. Truly she fills with France
the role of the most innately Conservative country in

IRISH COMPOSERS 21

Europe. No worshipper of Cobden or of Herbart
could be more bigoted. But this very loyalty to one
of her great men compels the admiration of those who
hold that celebrities can sometimes err, and occasionally
betray ignorance. The pity of it was that Moore
dabbled in an art which he did not fully understand,
and especially in that branch of it which precisely
demands the most thorough experience : and that he
lived before the days when the study and apprecia-
tion of Folk - Music became a finished craft, and
when such men as he had learnt to look before they
leap.

Of composers Ireland could boast but few in the
early part of the nineteenth century, and those not of
the hicrhest rank. How could it ? The means of
hearing instrumental music was limited to one-man
instruments. Musicians were not in the position to
know, except from hearsay or pianoforte arrangement,
the wealth of chamber and orchestral music which was
to be found across the seas. They had not the means,
as England had, to entice it to their own shores.
Balfe and Wallace made their operatic careers else-
where. Of residents the only man of any mark was
Stevenson. His metier was, as it had to be, vocal :
and more })articularly that part of vocal music which
had to do with the Cathedrals and the Catch Club.
But he could write a melody of intimate charm, such
as the soprano solo "Turn thee again unto thy rest"
in the anthem " I am well pleased," far superior to
those of his English contemporaries ; dramatic recita-
tives which showed him to have the true spirit of the
footlights (and must have startled some of the Deans

22 PAGES FROM AN UNWRITTEN DIARY

and Canons) ; quartets and glees (one of* them, ''Alone
on the sea-beaten rock," is a veritable gem of its kind)
which proved him to be a consummate master of vocal
writing. I have heard many quaint stories of his
peculiarities and witticisms from an old Irish musician,
Henry Toole, who knew him well. One of his glees
was sung at the Hibernian Catch Club after a dinner
presided over by the Lord Lieutenant of the day (Lord
Hardwicke I believe). The Viceroy was so full of
admiration and, as my informant wickedly added,
*' claret," that he knighted him on the spot. The next
morning Ulster King-at-Arms sent his merry men to
Sir John to collect the fees :

Stevenson {grandiosely). "Ah! You may un-
knight me if you like, but no hundred pounds out of

me !

His friend, Dr. John Smith, afterwards Professor of
Music in Dublin University, perpetrated an oratorio
on the Book of Revelation with which he used to bore
Stevenson out of his life, perpetually bringing it to
play and to sing to him. When the final inevitable
fugue was produced to the words " I John am alone ..."
with a portentous running passage on the last syllable,
his knighted namesake came in at the entry of the
second voice with the words "And so am I . . ." sung
in the true buffo manner. To one of his sons who
was treating him with less than filicil respect he sud-
denly burst out " Well John, I'd rather be a natural
son than an unnatural son !" The descendants of this
humorous and courtly old worthy still exist. His
daughter married Lord Headfort, and the present
generation of their house is fourth in descent from him.

SINGERS 23

Dr. Smith, the only link between his day and mine,
was an Englishman who had come over as a tenor
singer to the Cathedral choirs. He must have assimi-
lated some of the same Irish inconsequence which
Minor Canon Westby afterwards immortalized, for he
is still remembered by a few as the composer of a
service in which he laid down (by his declamation of
the words) a new theory of the universe : " As It was
In the beginning ; tfie beginning Is now and ever shall
be!"

When I first had sense enough to look round, and to
take note of my surroundings, I found myself in a
centre of real music, where amateurs were cultivated
performers, who had taken their art as seriously as if
it were their means of livelihood. The conditions of
musical life had vastly improved, but steam, though it
had brouofht ""reat artists from outside into touch with
Dublin, had not robbed the resident music -lover of
his self-reliance. An excellent Choral Society, "The
Society of Antient Concerts," had been founded in
1834 by a brilliant boy of eighteen, Joseph Kobinson,
the youngest of "four wonderful brothers" as their
townsmen dubbed them ; and this grew and prospered
so exceedingly that it built its own concert room, which
still exists ; a hall of about the same size as the old
Gewandhaus at Leipzig. Though the Society's pro-
ductions were conservative in the main as its name
implied, it opened its doors widely to anything new.
It gave the works of Mendelssohn as soon as they
appeared, " P^lijah " was produced in 1847. Kobinson
would never consent to maimed rii^hts and his band
was always complete, even wlien he had to send to

24 PAGES FROM AN UNWRITTEN DIARY

Liverpool or Manchester for the means. He was an
expert singer as well as a magnetic conductor, and his
chorus, which had the sympathetic timbre familiar to
Irish ears, was trained to perfection.* The singers
were as keen as those of any North Country Choir : so
much so that their zeal occasionally bordered upon the
comical. Robinson used to recall with infinite amuse-
ment a performance of Handel's " L' Allegro," which
began with a laughter as universal in the audience as
in the singers and the poem. The Chorus, " Populous
cities please me then," starts with a crotchet rest on
the first beat of the bar. Robinson solemnly warned
the choir at rehearsal to respect the silence on his first
down beat : but at the concert an enthusiastic bass
threw discretion to the winds and shot out ?i fortissimo
and staccatissimo " Pop."

The Society had not the means to employ an
orchestra on all occasions, but it possessed a great asset
in its organist, Dr. (afterwards Sir Robert) Stewart,
whose metier was the orchestral treatment of his
instrument, and who, unlike most of his contemporaries
(and I fear many of his successors) knew his full scores
from memory. The late Mr. G. A. Crawford, known
to many as a great authority upon musical hymnology,
told me that he was at a rehearsal of "Elijah" when
Stewart was replacing the band upon his instrument
with amazing skill. Madame Rudersdorff had on this
occasion a pitched battle with Stewart, because he
played the flute shake at the end of " 0 rest in the
Lord " on the middle B of the stave.

* A fuller account ^of Joseph Eobinson will be found in my
" Studies and Memories," p. 117 e^ seq.

SINGERS 25

Madame R. " That shake should be an octave
higher."

Stewart. "You are mistaken, Madame."

Madame R. " I know it is."

Stewart. "I am afraid you do not know the
score."

Madame R. " Show me the score."

Stewart. " I can't now, it's only in my head. But
I will bring it to-night !"

He did and of co^urse got a proper apology. These
were in the days when "Elijah" was far less known,
and was, comparatively speaking, a modern novelty. I
remember sitting with Stewart in St. Paul's when Sir
John Stainer was accompanying the " Sanctus " in the
second part of the same oratorio, and his amusement at
a mistake in the orchestral treatment upon which he
made the whispered comment, " He did not look at his
full score."

For his soloists Robinson, fortunately for the
treasurer of his society, had a wonderful body of
finished amateur singers to draw upon. Mrs. Hercules
MacDonnell, a dramatic soprano with a voice which
would have rivalled even the greatest prima donna of
her day, was in every sense an artist both technically
and musically. So great a judge as Costa valued her
powers at the highest estimate, and lamented that she
was not enrolled in the ranks of the great public
singers. Mary Lucy Lady de Vere, the wife of Sir
Vere de Vere of Curragh Chase, and sister-in-law of
the poet Aubrey de Vere, was a coloratura soprano
of perfect style and winning charm. Mrs. Geale (nee
Josephine Clarke), the cleverest and most gifted of

26 PAGES FROM AN UNWRITTEN DIARY

them all, called by Prince Puckler Muskau " that
pretty little devil, Jose,"* had by some extraordinary
art manufactured for herself a tenor voice of rare
Italian quality which she controlled with the best
Italian skill. She was a niece of Lady Morgan, whom
Thackeray is supposed to have taken as the prototype
of Becky Sharp. That there was some basis for this
belief is proved by a correspondence between the
novelist and Mrs. Hercules MacDonnell, who invited
him to dinner and asked Lady Morgan to be of the
party. Thackeray accepted, but evidently heard later
of the lady whom he was asked to meet ; for a second
letter came from him, excusing himself from having to
forego the invitation. When Queen Victoria came to
Ireland during the Viceroyalty of Lord Clarendon, a
musical evening was arranged at the Viceregal Lodge
at which Jenny Lind was the star. A trio for soprano,
tenor, and bass from an Italian opera was one of the
items, the two other singers being Mrs. Geale and my
father. Madame Goldschmidt at the rehearsal wished
to wait for the tenor, but to her amazement Mrs.
Geale said, "I am she." When it was over, no one
was more appreciative of her powers than that most
critical of artists. In later days my father once wrote
and asked "Jose" to come and sing once more at his
house, but her reply was characteristic: — "My dear
John, I am the miserable remains of a well-spent
voice !

Of the men, the two most distinguished were Mr.
Hercules MacDonnell (a son of a former Provost of

* See " Picturesque Dublin, Old and New," by Frances Gerard,
p. 57.

JOHN STANFORD 27

Trinity) who had a baritone voice of great power, and
possessed a dramatic temperament which gave great
incisiveness to his dehvery ; and my father, John Stan-
ford, whose bass with a compass from high F to low
C was one of the finest in quahty and in style that I
have ever heard anywhere. He studied with Crivelli
and in Paris, spoke Italian like a native, and in more
than one respect resembled (in the opinion of those
best competent to judge of both) his half-countryman,
Lablache.

I have never understood the feeling which prompts
the belittling of or (at best) the silence about a
remarkable man because he happens to be a relation or
a close friend. It is a common failing, and sometimes
becomes a disease. My friend, Henry Bradshaw, the
wisest and most perspicacious of Cambridge Dons,
once in my presence trounced, strong Liberal though he
was, a man who attacked the late Lord Salisbury for
giving some important appointment to a near relative
of his own. I can hear his indignant protest now, and
how he drove in the common-sense fact that so clever
and so upright a man as Lord Salisbury would know
the weak points of his own relations far better than
ignoramuses of the outside world would, and that he
was all the sounder judge of their strong points, and
of their suitability for the purposes of the country. 1
feel therefore no compunction in describing my father
as I knew him, and in claiming for him a place, which he
wfjuld have been the very last to claim for himself, in
the foremost ranks of those who deserved well of his
native country for his devoted services to the art he
best loved. As a matter of fact he was the backbone

28 PAGES FROM AN UNWRITTEN DIARY

of the whole fabric, but the world sees faces and heads
while the spine is invisible. He never cared for pub-
licity, but more often than not gave the initiative idea
upon which a movement started, and exerted every
influence to support it on its career. In person a mag-
nificently built man of six feet four, with a strikingly
handsome face " of the type of a French General of
the Old Guard," as Lionel Tennyson said to me, he
had made himself in the intervals of his legal work, a
past-master in the art of singing. His scales were
those of a first-class instrumentalist, and his capabilities
of interpretation ranged from oratorios to the most
patter buffo which he tossed off with the ease and
fluency of an Italian. As he was a born actor, with a
great love for the stage, it was with the greatest
difliculty that his very Low Church family prevented
him from becoming an operatic singer, a scandal which
in their opinion would have shaken their character
and traditions to the core, Ireland, for all its love
of music, looked on the professional with a doubtful
eye. But the vacations of the legal profession, more
prolonged then than they are now, gave him plenty of
opportunity for perfecting his singing, and enlarging
his knowledge. The most interesting and perhaps the
most valuable of his experiences was due to a visit
which he paid to Lord Dunraven (father of the present
peer), an intimate friend of all the Dublin music-
lovers, in London. Lord Dunraven was an enthusiast
for Mozart, and in the forties finding a number of his
Irish friends in London, he arranged for a series of
rehearsals of Mozart's " Don Giovanni " at the house
of Sir Robert Gore Booth in Buckingham Gate. The

John STANi-fiKi).

(.Ktat. 57.)

LABLACHE 29

artist engaged to conduct them was no less a man than
Lablache. My father sang the part of Leporello, and
Lablache instantly called him " his second self," and
gave him all the traditions and tempi of the opera,
which were instilled in turn into me, as soon as I was
able to scramble through the accompaniments. As
Lablache sang as far back as 1824 in Vienna, these
readings probably approach as near as can be to
Mozart's own wishes. My father always described
Lablache's voice as a seemingly illimitable force, which
gave the impression of a reserve of double the amount
of power which he used, and which, to quote his own
simile, " enveloped you like a feather bed." Staudigl,
the creator of the part of Elijah, he considered as
the next best, though " his voice was rather of the
quality of a trombone."

These rehearsals in Buckingham Gate gave rise to
one very humorous episode. The house, which is still
in existence, stands back in a shallow blind alley in
which is the entrance door. The rooms on the draw-
ing-room floor open on a balcony over it. After the
first rehearsal Lablache, who was famous for breadth
and thickness as well as for length, requested that a
four-wheeler should be called to cart him away. The
entire company crept out on to the balcony to watch
the manner in which the Leviathan would get in. He
managed it by opening both doors, stepping across,
and then squeezing himself roinid into the back seat,
shut a door with each hand, and departed vvitli an
arm hanging ont of ciich window. Alter the, second
rehe^arsal the great man again demanded his cab, and
again the party spied on liim, Imt they were doomed

30 PAGES FROM AN UNWRITTEN DIARY

to disappointment. He knew their game, slowly
stalked round the corner into the open street, beckon-
ing the cabby to follow him, and when the vehicle
was out of sight as slowly returned for the pleasure
of making a long — very long — nose at the balcony.
After that public snub, the household left him in
peace.

An amusing instance of Lablache's love of a joke
was told me by his son-in-law, Rokitansky, the leading
bass singer of the Vienna Opera. When Tom Thumb
was exhibiting himself at a Paris Music Hall, two men
from the provinces journeyed up to see him. After
they had bought their programmes, they found to
their chagrin that the little dwarf's name was not in
the bill. They complained bitterly to a gentleman,
who was sitting beside them. He comforted them by
saying that Tom Thumb was still in Paris, and that
he was sure if they called at a certain house, the
address of which he wrote down, he would receive them
privately. They duly went the next day, and knocked
at the door.

Loud Voice (within). " Entrez !"

They enter and see an enormous figure standing in
the room.

Lablache (for it was he). " What have you come
for ?"

Visitor {nervously). '* We came to see General Tom
Thumb."

After a short silence :

Lablache. " I am the General Tom Thumb."

Visitor {surprised). "But we thought you were
quite small."

'^^^Ui^^ /^^T<A<

v:r^

'^cu^

'T:?-^^''*-^

From a sketch ( ? ok Mendelssohn) by Gratton Cookf..

The notes are both the initials of the artist, and those of the boy's recitatise,
"There is nothing" (Elijah).

MENDELSSOHN AT BIRMINGHAM 31

Lablache. " Before the public, yes ! But at home
I prefer to be comfortable."

When " Elijah " was produced at Birmingham in
1846, my father accompanied Joseph Robinson to the
rehearsal and the first performance. They both made
great friends with Mendelssohn, whom Robinson had
previously met in London, and he extemporized for
them on the new organ after the rehearsal, and joined
them in a very Irish supper party at the " Woolpack "
Inn, where the fun was fast and furious and Mendels-
sohn as full of fun as any Hibernian. His impressions
of Mendelssohn's tempi exactly tallied with all the
other opinions which I have heard from men of his
time who had experience of them. His Allegros were
very quick, and his Adagios very slow. There was
an entire absence of sentimentality. My father told
me that the composer's conducting of the " Midsummer
Night's Dream " overture was so rapid that he seemed
to be whipping cream ! After the first rehearsal of
" Elijah," Grattan Cooke the oboist came up with a
long face, and said "It is very unkind of you, Dr.
Mendelssohn, to have forgotten the oboe so much."
" I will put it right for you," said M. " give me your
part :" he added the long C where the boy sings
" There is nothing," holding the pause for so long a
time at performance that Cooke was nearly blue in the
face. 1 still possess a thumbnail sketch of Cooke blow-
ing this note, which was drawn by himself at the
rehearsal.* After Birmingham my father immedi-
ately studied the })art of Elijah with all Mendels-

* It is possible that this figure represents Mendelssohn, and that
the G. C. is a joke upon the phrase " There is nothing."

32 PAGES FROM AN UNWEITTEN DIARY

sohn's readings fresh in his mind, and sang it at the
Antient Concerts the next year. These traditions he
handed on to me, and I had good cause to remember
them ; for my very juvenile fingers could never get over
the keys quick enough for his singing of "Is not His
word like a fire?" the pace of which was like a hurri-
cane, but so rhythmical and clear that not a note or a
passage was blurred. The later humdrum tempo^ a la
Handel, of " Thanks be to God " was unthinkable to
him. It began at the pace of the descending scale at
the close, and the only ritardando was in the middle of
the movement, at the words "But the Lord." The
final bass song " For the mountains shall depart " he
would never sing, for he said, with truth, that it had
nothing to do with the centre figure who had gone up
in the fiery chariot, and that technically it was written
in the baritone tessitura, while all the rest was pure
bass. He ascribed this to the fact that the composer
wrote the part with Staudigl as his prototype, and
Staudigl had a phenomenal range from low C to the
high tenor G.

One of my father's beat parts was Harapha in
" Samson." On one occasion when he was singing it
at a concert, my mother who was sitting in the room
to her great amusement heard the lady next her say
to her companion, " That is Mr. Stanford, the most
conceited man in Dublin." The time came for " Hon-
our and Arms." After the second part of the Aria the
da capo repeat of the first part began : whereat the
good lady loudly remarked with a triumphant air
" There, didn't I tell you ? He's encoring himself
without so much as a hand being raised to him." The

CHAMBER MUSIC 33

Dublin mouth found it very difficult and puzzling to
pronounce the name of Mendelssohn. My father once
heard a customer in a music shop ask for " Mendolly-
son's songs without music." It came to grief too over
that of Joachim, who was announced at a Dublin
party by the butler in stentorian tones as " Mr.
Jehoiakim."

My father's energies however were not confined to
vocal matters. Himself a fair violoncellist of no mean
merit, who could tackle the Beethoven trios and
sonatas without disgrace, he took a leading part in the
founding of the Academy of Music, and in inviting to
Dublin an excellent player of his favourite instru-
ment, who was also an admirable all-round musician,
Wilhelm Eisner of Frankfurt. This most lovable
German of the best type suited the place to a nicety.
He had a quick wit and a ready tongue ; saw the
point of a joke as well as any Kelt, caught a most
amusing broken brogue which he never lost, and made
himself famous by perpetuating the following jest,
probably the best of his many witticisms. Ludwig
Straus (of Monday Pop. fame) had been engaged by
him to lead one of a series of quartet concerts. At the
end of the performance a lady came up to Eisner and
the following extraordinary conversation took place
(for which I as an eyewitness can vouch).

Fair Stranger {ec statically). " Oh ! Mr. Eisner, is
that the Mr. Strauss that writes the waltzes ?"

Elsner,. " No, Madam."

F. S. (si(//(/e?ifi/ vluuujirKj from, erstasij to horror).

" You don't mean to tell me that that is the man who

wrote the Life of Our Lord ?"

3

34 PAGES FROM AN UNWRITTEN DIARY

Elsner {soothingly). "Oh no Ma'am, he was an
Infidel, but this is a Fiddle." When he related this
exploit, he would laughingly add " Not so bad for a
poor German !"

The chief violinist in Dublin was a great character,
with a face which might have been the model for the
typical Irishman of the comic papers. He was a
rough player, but an admirable leader of an orchestra
and often as a conductor managed to make sows' ears
resemble silk purses. Though he was by force of
circumstances essentially provincial, he had sharp eyes
and kept them open, and he was the first musician in
his own town to be a whole-hearted Wagnerian. His
name quarrelled with his face ; it was incongruous to
hear the servant announce " Mr. Levey," and see, not
dark hair and a pronounced nose, but an unmistak-
able Paddy enter the room. The Gallery at the
theatre knew better, and greeted him every night as
he entered the orchestra with shouts of "The top of
the mornin' to ye, O'Shaughnessy," the good old Irish
name, which he had dropped for what he considered
to be a more musical one. Joachim was much amused
to see a Levi, of whom he knew many in Germany,
with a snub nose and a most Hibernian grin. Levey
distinguished himself (or perhaps it is an honour of
which his better half should share the credit) by
increasing the population of Dublin with three sons at
a blow, an event which is immortalized in an auto-
graph in my possession signed by Mario, " Cento figli e
felicita !" Two of these " Triolen " were afterwards
well known in musical circles, one of them as con-
ductor at Drury Lane, the other as a curious but

AN AMATEUK TENOR 35

certainly gifted violinist, who went one better than
his father and changed his name to Paganini Redivivus.
The sons of Levi however were the sons of O'Shaugh-
nessy, and so they remained in physiognomy, in nature
and in wit.

In the course of this chapter, I have made no
mention of those singers who were afflicted with the
disease (as von Billow termed it) of a tenor voice.
One specimen of the tribe amongst the amateurs was
to be found, but he was principally distinguished for
the Dublin brogue with which he pronounced the
Italian language. It was not the " French of
Stratford-atte-Bowe," but the Tuscan of the Liberties
of St. Patrick's. His singing of " 0 ! Quel amor che
palpito " can scarcely be described phonetically in
print : it can be imagined by any person who is con-
versant with Dublin patois. But his Christian name,
or rather the name which he considered sufficiently
dignified for a tenor singer, was no less a one than
Hamlet. He acted up to the spirit of the melancholy
Dane, but his audience, when they were not as
melancholy as he, were consumed with inward giggles.
He had, like other people, a mother, and she, on one
memorable occasion, spoilt the show. For at a large
party just as he drew himself up to pour forth Kevin
Street Verdi, her clear voice rang through the hushed
room, and maternal admiration revealed in one fatal
moment the skeleton in the tenor cupboard. She
addressed him as " Peter," and all the agonized singer
could do was to raise a protesting hand, and say one
word in a tone of mingled sorrow and reproach,
" Mothah 1"

CHAPTER III

The two Dublin Cathedrals — Their choirs — Handelian and other
traditions — Sir Robert Stewart.

Dublin is one of the very few cities which boast the
possession of two ancient Cathedrals. They are within
ten minutes' walk of each other. The older, Christ
Church, stands on a low hill near the river ; the younger,
St. Patrick's, now called the National Cathedral, is a
picturesque building in the pure Early English style,
much resembling its contemporary at Salisbury, but on
a far smaller scale. In those early days, it had a
tragic poetry about it, which has long been swept
away. As I entered the north door, I saw a dark
gloomy transept leading into a nave of lovely pro-
portions, which were indeed hard to appreciate ; for it
was a mass of cracked, often half-broken masonry,
with fairy pointed arches peeping through a forest of
rough supporting beams and rotting scaffolding, an
old regimental flag or two giving a splash of colour in
the midst of the surrounding devastation. Many were
the ghosts which I felt must be there, and to this day
I have a recurrent dream of wandering about an old
grim Church, sometimes (if I am inclined to nightmare)
in the " Friars' walk " above without any parapet to
stop a fall, but it is always the nave of old St. Patrick's.
For safety as well as for convenience the arch between
the nave and the choir was completely closed, and the

organ stood upon the screen facing east. High up in

36

THE TWO DUBLIN CATHEDRALS 37

the choir near the organ was what can only be described
as a private box, known I believe as " The Dean's
Closet," whence favoured visitors could look down on
the crowd below. This curious structure lent addi-
tional force to the satirical title of the afternoon
service, "Paddy's Opera." The service, indeed, never
gave me the impression that the congregation had
come to say their prayers : truth to tell they came to
hear the music : and as soon as the anthem began in
its rubrical place, to my juvenile amazement the bulk
of the congregation walked out of their seats and stood
under the desks and the noses of the singers, with all
the air of a concert audience, only stopping short at
applause. I remember wondering if they would clap
after a well-sung solo, and why my mother had not
brought her opera-glasses so that we might see better
from our stage-box. After the anthem there was a
general stampede out of the church. The whole
atmosphere filled me with a kind of eerie uneasiness,
uncertainty whether the nave would not collapse and
pen us in for ever and ever, and whether the pedals of
the organ would not shake the choir arches down too.
This uncanny feeling was intensified by one of the
worst thunderstorms I remember in Dublin, which
came on in the middle of the service, and reverberated
from the tumble-down aisles at the back. I was glad
to get out, but would not have missed the impression.
I suppose that my feelings must have betrayed me
somewhat, for I was never again taken there by my
parents. I gather that the organ, as I heard it, was
of very antique mechanism. I put my fingers on it
once, and can recall the exceeding yellowness of the

38 PAGES FROM AN UNWRITTEN DIARY

keys, and the general ricketiness of everything con-
nected with it, including the giddy steps which went
up to the loft. But the diapason tone was perfect,
and the 16-foot pedals superb, which is no wonder;
for it contained several of the stops, unspoilt and
unaltered, of the organ which Renatus Harris built in
the Temple Church to compete with that of " Father "
Smith.

Not long after my gloomy and thunderous visit to
the private box, the poetry and history of the old
tumbling arches brought home their appeal, and the
Cathedral found a friend in Sir Benjamin Lee Guinness,
who saved the fabric and restored it in the form in
which it now stands. On the architectural merits and
demerits of the restoration I will not dwell ; it looked
for all the world like a brand-new coin from the mint.
The romance was gone, the form which could only be
guessed at in a forest of supports and picturesque
buttresses was laid bare and naked to every eye. The
screen was knocked down, the organ was packed away
in a side aisle, everything was cleaned up and brought
up to date ; there was no more possibility of an
applauding audience, no private box, no grim darkness
or shadowy triforium, and the ghosts were gone to
protest against their eviction to the forefathers of the
Society for the Preservation of Ancient Buildings.
The last vestige of the old theatrical days disappeared,
when, with great canniness, the show anthem was
removed from the middle of the service, and placed at
the end after a sermon, often long, which the old
pittites had perforce to sit out in patience and in
decency, if they wished to hear the music.

THE TWO DUBLIN CATHEDRALS 39

Christ Church Cathedral, considerablv the elder of
the two, was mainly Norman in style. The transepts
wholly so, the choir Pointed and Transition, and
what remained of architecture in the nave, Early
English of a date anterior to St. Patrick's. A large
volume has been published, fully describing the
restoration by Street, but unfortunately skimming
over its condition before Mr. Henry Roe undertook
the restoration of the fabric. The structural condition
of the building was in a less parlous state than that
of St. Patrick's, but it was far more spoilt by such
works as had been undertaken in previous centuries.
One side of the nave had fallen down, and had been
replaced by a blank wall. The choir originally ended
in a short apse with two side chapels, but they had
either collapsed or been knocked down, and a long and
hideous room (I can call it nothing else) of more than
double the length had been added on where the Lady
Chapel had once stood ; this barbaric structure was
not even straight, but turned off at an angle from the
line of the Cathedral. All that remained of the apse
was two pointed Norman arches with their zigzag
mouldings. As in St. Patrick's, the organ was on a
screen which entirely shut off the nave. In spite of
the havoc wrought by past rebuilders, the great
dignity of the church survived. The music was as
good as, often better than that at St. Patrick's, but
there was no theatrical crowd here. Something in the
noble atmosphere of the place made it unthinkable.
Street's restoration was far more pious than that of
the many cooks who spoilt the broth of St. Patrick's.
He explored th(3 crypt, thereby confirming Canon

40 PAGES FROM AN UNWRITTEN DIARY

Seymour's discovery of the ancient design, and he
exactly reproduced the old East end. As the north
side of the nave was well preserved, he had no
difficulty in reproducing the south. While the exca-
vations of the crypt were in progress, my father
happened by accident on a most curious discovery.
A cousin of his, St. John by name, who was a keen
amateur violin-maker, was anxious to get some well-
seasoned wood for his work. My father made in-
quiries and found that the best store for old timber
was on the north side of the river, and at some
distance from it. He went one day to inspect it, and
the timber merchant told him that his best wood was
kept in an old vaulted gallery of exceptional dryness.
He took him along a kind of aisle with Gothic arches
of great age, at the end of which was an obviously
ancient ecclesiastical door. Being asked whither it
led, he answered that there was a passage beyond
which it was dangerous to penetrate for any distance,
and that the tradition always had been of a communi-
cation under the Liffey with Christ Church. When
my father was visiting the Cathedral crypt shortly
after, he found a door of an architecture exactly
corresponding with that at the timber merchant's and
on the north side next the river. The passage was
most probably a means of escape for the monks in
the time of the Danes. It is impossible not to ad-
mire the innate artistic feeling and the conscientious
thoroughness of workmen, who were as careful about
their dog-tooth ornaments and delicate arches at an
emergency exit, as about those in the Cathedral
itself.

THEIR CHOIRS 41

These two historical buildings were the cradle and
the nursery of music in Ireland. In them were
trained the singers who made the first performance
of the " Messiah " possible, and who compelled the
w^armest appreciation of the great Handel himself.
But it was found either unsatisfactory or impos-
sible to carry on a full Cathedral Service with a
complete choir at both churches ; and the other
competitors, Trinity College Chapel and the Chapel
Royal, required once on Sunday a full musical equip-
ment. When I was a boy, one organist and one choir
did duty for three of them : Trinity at 9.30 a.m.,
Christ Church at 11 a.m., St. Patrick's at 3 p.m., and
Christ Church again in the evening. At Trinity
after the anthem, the choir all decamped out of
Chapel, and made off hot-foot for the Cathedral,
dropping four or five singers on the way to do duty
at the Chapel Royal. They all combined at three for
" Paddy's Opera," and those that had any voioe left
dissipated the remains of it in the evening at Christ
Church. They must speedily have been reduced to
the state of mind which the late Walter Bache so
un))lushingly described to a professional friend, who
meeting him one day after along absence from London,

asked him if he was still organist of Church.

"No, no," said Bache. "It was really too d d

demoralizing." And he had only to listen to " Dearly
beloved brethren" twice a day, while the Dublin
choir-men had four doses extending from 9.30 a.m. to
8.30 p.m. What a satire upon their duties must the
reading of the injunctions about "vain repetitions"
have sounded in their ears !

42 PAGES FROM AN UNWRITTEN DIARY

The personnel of this ubiquitous choir was highly
efficient as regards individual singers. What ensemble
they had was the result of their reduplicated services,
for rehearsals were seldom and scanty, more often
than not confined to a haphazard ten minutes at the
piano while the surplices were being put on. There
was no question of the beauty of voice and finished
style of many of the men : the salary of the posts was
very high, and the attractions of Dublin as a teaching
centre very considerable ; so the Cathedrals were able
to skim the cream off many of the English choirs in
addition to securing the best Irish voices. There was
Hemsley, the purest and most sympathetic of altos,
a finished vocalist and a most conscientious artist,
well-remembered for his faultless attire, and for the
dainty dallying of his lavender-gloved hands with the
pages of his score. Peele, most stalwart and straight-
forward of tenors, who betook himself to medicine and
died of nursing the poor in an epidemic of virulent
typhus fever. "Dick" Smith, the nephew of "the
beginning is now " Professor, a breezy and matter-
of-fact baritone who had been in the navy, and
brought a refreshing flavour of salt-water into the
Cathedral stalls : no one could sing " Rule Britannia "
with a better spirit and clearer runs than he. Grattan
Kelly, a thunderous and self-confident bass who with
his colleague Benjamin Mullen, made " The Lord is
a man of war " sound like an Ossianic battle of the
bards. What Handel would have said to the vocal
emendations which this hero introduced into the
" Messiah " I tremble to think. I remember one of
them, a passage from " For behold darkness shall

HANDELTAN AND OTHER TEADITIONS 43

cover the earth " (a sentence which he pronounced
" cawver the arth ") :

Handel {emendavit Kelly).

And His glo

ry shall

seeu up-on Thee

It is just possible that this is one of the Dublin
traditions of the " Messiah," which in some respects
(notably in that of tempo) corresponded with those of
Sale, who sang under Handel. These he taught to
Mrs. Frere, the gifted wife of the Master of Downing
College, Cambridge, who recorded them. As an in-
stance of the great freedom of expression and elasticity
of time upon which the composer had insisted, she
gave the following passage, which I have marked
exactly according to her statement of Sale's teach-

ing :

rail.

=SfB^

^7N

Come un

to

Him, all ye lliat la - - hour.

The great Kelly therefore may only have been carry-
ing on a variant of Handel's time.

Singers then, as in the days of Rossini, took many
liberties with their texts at which the composers
winked and of which they even approved. There is
no denying that the Kelly version (If we were not too
hide-bound in our scrupulous piety for written texts)
is extremely effective from a vocalist's stand})oint,
and even more illustrative of the words. Another,
to my miiul v(;ry sound, Dublin tradition was the

44 PAGES FROM AN UNWRITTEN DIARY

rendering of the introduction to the oratorio in double
dots, a reading which gives far more point to the
rhythm, and removes all the feeling of stodginess
which a strict adherence to the printed note-values
emphasizes. If I remember rightly, the late Sir
William Cusins strongly insisted on this very point,
and he most probably got the tradition through
Mrs. Anderson from Sir George Smart. No such
monstrous caricature as the pianissimo start of the
chorus " For unto us a Child is born " was ever heard
in Dublin. The ludicrous suggestion which such a
rendering gives of the necessity of "hushing up the
facts " was enough to kill it with ridicule in an Irish
mind. Hans Richter, when he directed it for the first
time in his life at the Birmingham Festival of 1885,
made such satirical criticisms upon this Costa-monger
nuance^ that it never could be ventured on again by
any self-respecting conductor. He also, from the
natural intuition for the right tempo with which he
was so gifted, saw that movements in ^ and f time,
such as the Pastoral Symphony and " Come unto
Me," were to be played "alia Siciliana" and not as
funeral dirges, and in this his judgment exactly
coincided with the Dublin use. To give its true value
to the Irish tradition, it should not be forgotten that
for years after Handel had stereotyped his own read-
ing in Dublin, there was no other influence to disturb
it ; for the town ^vas by force of circumstances self-
contained, save for a few moneyed travellers, until
steam-packets began to cross St. George's Channel.
Let us then give Grattan Kelly and Mullen and their
colleacfues and successors the benefit of the doubt.

SIR ROBERT STEWART 45

Two of the elder brothers of Joseph Robinson sur-
vived and sang in my time. The doyen, Francis, had
a perfectly trained if somewhat small tenor, and was a
most thorough and capable musician as well. The
second, William, was a grotesque caricature of his
youngest brother. Every line in Joseph's face (and
they were very marked and of a Jewish type) was
exaggerated in William's ; and he carried beyond the
point of comicality the ultra-nasal quality of his
junior's vocal production. His bass voice in all con-
science went, by nature, low enough — he would have
nearly qualified for a Russian Choir — but he never
could resist giving the impression of still deeper notes
than he possessed, by trusting to a forefinger dramat-
ically pointed at the floor, emitting the while a raucous
" aw " with an air of celestial solemnity.

The controlling force which held this motley crew
together was the organist, Robert Prescott Stewart.
With the exception of his early experiences as a choir-
boy in Christ Church, this, in many ways, most re-
markable man was wholly self-taught. He evolved
his own organ-playing, his own knowledge of orches-
tration in particular and composition in general, his
own general familiarity with the literature of European
countries. How he did it is a mystery to me, for his
grasp of every detail of contemporary progress was
unmistakable, and he certainly had no one to teach
him at home. To this spontaneous bringing up was
probably due a certain carelessness of detail and irre-
sponsible love of ornamental incrustations upon familiar
masterpieces which were calculated to sliock the ac-
curate artist. But the compensation came in his new

46 PAGES FROM AN UNWRITTEN DIARY

view of the instrument upon which he excelled. He
was practically the first organist in this country to
phrase with his feet. Pedal passages with him were
as carefully " bowed " as if they were played by violon-
cellos and double-basses. He abolished for good and all
in Ireland the then all-pervading organist's trick of
adding the sharp seventh to every common chord.
" A fine rolling effect " I once heard an adherent of the
old school term it. " Imagine," I can hear Stewart
say, " the trombones playing a persistent B natural at
the opening of the Finale of the C minor Symphony of
Beethoven ! Why perpetuate this barbarism upon an
equally loud wind instrument because it happens to be
in Church ?" Another hete noire of his was the pedal
note which was always bumped upon the first beat of
the bar in old music which started on the second beat.
He used to term Te Deums and Magnificats of this
sort " door-knocker services." In spite of the stiff
mechanism of the organs of his early days, before the
pneumatic action came to the rescue of perspiring
players, he had a perfect pianoforte touch and an
excellent technique, so good in fact that it encouraged
him to indulge at times in the most unecclesiastical
fireworks. When he was more than usually bored
with some dryasdust anthem, they scintillated and
danced about the score in a most dazzling fashion, and
the singers had to keep their wits about them when
they were accompanied by unfamiliar and unauthorized
figures. He shared S. S. Wesley's dislike of and con-
tempt for mediocre eighteenth-century productions :
as he had to play them, he dressed them up in clothes
which made them tolerable to himself

SIR ROBERT STEWART 47

Although he had no reverence for stuff of poor
quality merely because it was dignified by the musti-
ness of age, he was never flippant over the genuine
masterpieces. Here he often threw a new light upon
picturesque ideas which had been smothered by years
of perfunctory dryasdust treatment. He spied out
the Dantesque colour of Blow's " I was in the spirit,"
with its recurrent circles of seraph voices, an effect
which in modern days has been so dramatically realized
by Boito in the Prelude to " Mefistofele." His admira-
tion for Gibbons and for Purcell was infectious. Bach
was his chief deity, and that too in a surrounding
atmosphere of Handel-worshippers, who looked upon
Sebastian as an interloper and a purely mathematical
puzzle-maker. His treatment of Bach, which I have
often heard mercilessly attacked, was only an intelli-
gent anticipation of the principles of phrasing, upon
which Schweitzer lays such stress. Stewart applied
the same method of " bowing " to his organ music, that
Joachim and others have laid down in practice and by
precept for the violin works. He used to be sharply
criticized for the rapid pace with which he played
many of the Preludes and Fugues. Recent authorities
have held that Bach himself played his music so quickly
that his pupils despaired of imitating him.* As an
example of Stewart's manner of phrasing I can give
two quotations, marked as he played them :

etc.

* This view is subject, of course, to the proviso "as quickly as
the stiff mechanism permitted."

48 PAGES FROM AN UNWRITTEN DIARY

This phrasing, as I said above, he carried out with
the pedals as well as on the manuals, and it made the
construction of the Fugue come out as clear as crystal.
And :

It is quite true that Stewart was so imbued with
this principle that like many other men who are
keen about a pet theory, he applied it in cases to
which it was unsuitable, and he often lost in solidity
and dignity of style in consequence. But to players
who could apply the excellent maxim which my grand-
mother formulated to my father " Copy my perfections
and not my imperfections," and who had wits enough to
discern the strong point of his renderings, his methods
were a most valuable example.

His memory was exceptional. I often sat by him
on the organ seat, and seldom saw him trouble to open
his book. He used to pick up the list of chants and
services, read it, throw it down, and accompany every-
thing without a note on the desk. On one occasion
this power was put to a severe test. Robinson had
undertaken to conduct a performance of Handel's
" Samson " at Belfast ; no orchestra was available and he
brought down Stewart to play the accompaniments on
the fine organ in the Ulster Hall. Stewart's eyes,
which were never very strong, struck work, oddly
enough just as the tenor singer was beginning " Total
eclipse." He turned round to a companion who was
beside him on the organ seat and said " I can't see,"
and accompanied the whole of the rest from memory.

SIR ROBERT STEWART 49

The blindness was happily only due to a temiDorary
disturbance, which afterwards passed away ; but
Robinson, and my father, w^ho was singing the bass
part, were in entire ignorance of any hitch and knew
nothing of the anxiety above them till the close of the
first part. This incident was enough to prove his
pluck and nerve.

He had a great admiration for S. S. Wesley's work,
and was anxious to hear him play. Knowing his
peculiarities, he travelled down secretly to Winchester,
and sat himself down in a corner of the choir for
service. But Wesley's quick eye detected him, and
instead of the usual voluntary at the close, he played
about eight commonplace bars and vanished.

Stewart's wide knowledge of instrumentation led
him in later years to rely more on his own arrange-
ments from orchestral works than on the literature of
his instrument for the pieces he chose to play. He did
not (like Best) write them down, but played them
direct from the score. He did not draw the line at
works which would seem the most unsuitable for the
organ ; but his nimble fingers and command of phrasing
made one forgive him, even when he astonished his
hearers by a performance of the overture to the " Mid-
summer Night's Dream " ! His facility in such feats
was somewhat of a snare, but his over-indulgence in
them, to the exclusion of pure organ-music, may be the
more easily condoned as orchestras in Dublin were to
seek, and his o})portunities for hearing the greater
repertoire correspondingly limited.

His compositions are more facile and brilliant than
deep. He had a distinct vein of melodic invention of a

4

50 PAGES FROM AN UNWRITTEN DIARY

type common to other Irishmen of his day, such as
Balfe or Wallace, but more refined in style and backed
by a much sounder technique. A short choral work
" Echo and the Lovers " which is, I believe, unpublished,
was a little gem of its mock-antique kind. He knew
well how to orchestrate, and one of his favourite books
was " our Hector's " (as he called Berlioz) treatise on In-
strumentation. He never appreciated Schumann nor
Brahms, but went to Baireuth for the first performance
of the "Ring" in 1876 and became a devotee of Wagner.
His propensities, like those of most Kelts, were for the
opera-house rather than the concert-room. The articles
which he wrote for the Dublin Daily Express on the
Nibelungen were, with those written by Mr. Hercules
MacDonnell for the Irish Times, almost the best which
appeared in any of the public press. Written far away
from the clash of party, and the intrigues of the foreign
stage, they are especially valuable for their freedom
from prejudice and their fresh, but not inexperienced,
outlook. I well remember the first lessons he gave me
on the organ ; and that record may be of some use to
masters of our own day in a similar situation. The
first maxim was " Remember that your left hand is a
tenor and not a bass " : and the first exercise was
the 100th Psalm, which he wrote out for me placing the
melody in the pedals (coupled to the 4-foot flute on the
choir without any pedal-stops) and the lower parts only
given to the hands. To a beginner this sensation some-
what resembled the topsy-turvydom experienced by
those who have " looped the loop." A little more dead-
in-earnestness, and a greater grasp of the big things in
life and art would have made Stewart an outstanding

SIR ROBERT STEWART 51

man. But his easy-going nature, and the sloppy
laisser-faire atmosphere which surrounded him pre-
vented his attainment of the highest place. It was
hard, even for one gifted with so brilliant a brain, to
live in a circle of half-baked musicians without being
affected by their standard, and still harder to occuj^y a
position in which he had no rival to excel or to learn
from. He left his mark however on the " melancholy
island," which was responsible both for his witty and
versatile gifts and for the lack of opportunity to give
value and effect to them.

CHAPTER IV

Early days — Jenny Lind — The local orchestra — Pianoforte training
— Joachim — The Duke of Wellington and Mr. Seed — Sayers
and Heenan — The Dublin Sunday — Passing visitors — George
Osborne and Berlioz.

I HAVE but few memories of any interest before 1860.
I saw once (in 1858) the famous disciple of Dr. Hahne-
mann, Dr. Luther, the direct descendant of Martin
Luther ; but I expect the true reason of my still
vivid recollection of his burly figure and striking per-
sonality is to be found in the fact that on running into
the room to see him I made my entry head first, and
the leg of the drawing-room table divorced me from my
best front tooth. He did not carry out his principle of
" Similia similibus curantur," I am glad to say, on that
occasion, by knocking out the other. Two years pre-
viously I had been given my first newspaper to read,
and well remember what was in it, the fall of Sebas-
topol. It is a grim proof of the horror which pervaded
every household in the two following years, that I
never was shown another until the Indian Mutiny was
over, and did not know of its having taken place until
one afternoon five years afterwards. I went with my
father to see Lady Campbell (the daughter of Lord
Edward Fitzgerald of 1798 fame), and we were met on
the steps by a stalwart handsome military-looking
man. To my astonishment my father and he embraced
and kissed each other like two girls. I had never been

in France, and the unfamiliar spectacle made me ask the

52

EARLY DAYS

53

reason. Then I heard for the first time of the Mutiny,
through which Sir Edward Campbell had fought, and
I dimly understood the long strain to which families
and friends had been subjected, and the intense relief
when the danger was past.

In 1859 I crossed the Irish Channel for the first
time, and we spent a summer in Beaumaris. There we
found J. S. Lefanu, the famous author of " Uncle
Silas," who used to pilot me about the ruined passages
of the Castle, and when he got me into some particu-
larly eerie corner was wont to frighten my life out with
the most blood-curdling ghost stories. To this day I
lament that I was too young to remember or to write
them down. The other element in our coterie was pro-
vided by Joseph Robinson, who, finding that I was
somewhat of a gourmet when there were fresh
flounders for dinner, wrote a song for me to his own
libretto, in about thirty stanzas, of which I can write
down the music and poetry (so-called) of the first and
pattern verse. (In Beaumaris flounders were termed
dabs. )

Moderato.

^^^^^^^^

It's a sweet thing to dine iqi-on a dali, dab, dab, It's a

>•
3C

i

^^

v'E^i

f

aweet thin;^ to dine up - on a dab ; It's a sweet thing to

dine up on a dab, dab, dab, It's a sweet thing to dine up -on a dab.

54 PAGES FROM AN UNWRITTEN DIARY

On the way back, just outside Holyhead, I was kept
on deck (it was disgustingly rough) to see the Great
Eastern which was lying outside the harbour. My
early drawing-books are full of her, with her five fun-
nels, six masts and huge paddle-boxes. She was then
I believe on her way to Liverpool, preparing to start
on her first Transatlantic voyage. A few days later
came the famous storm which wrecked the Royal
Charter not far from the very spot where the Leviathan
(as she was called) was anchored. During that storm
I heard my first concert ; and owing to it one of the
performers was unable to arrive in time to sing. The
work was the " Messiah," the belated passenger was
Lockey, the tenor who sang at the first performance of
the *' Elijah," to whom Mendelssohn paid such a glow-
ing tribute ; but one singer was there, whose voice and
beauty of interpretation came home even to a child of
seven, Jenny Lind in her prime. I did not hear the
sound of her voice again until 1873, when she suddenly
and unexpectedly began the soprano solo in Bach's
" Ich hatte viel Beklimmerniss," (My spirit was in
heaviness) at a private amateur performance, the first
given in this country, conducted by Arthur Sullivan in
Arthur Coleridge's house. I was not even aware that
she was in the room, still less whose throat the voice
was coming from ; but it brought back 1859 in a flash,
and I recognized the sound and the singer.

In 1892 while staying at St. Leonard's I paid a visit
to Lockey, a big giant of a man with a striking head
and physiognomy, and had the satisfaction of poking a
little fun at him about his failure to appear in 1859,
and the fatality that the absentee was, of course, a

THE LOCAL ORCHESTRA 55

tenor : but he too recalled the Royal Charter storm,
and said that not even the most doughty of basses
could have faced it. He was most interesting about
Mendelssohn and the " Elijah " performance at Birming-
ham. He told me that the composer impressed upon
him the supreme importance of simplicity of rendering,
that such tricks of portamento as many tenors have
indulged in {e.g., in " If with all your hearts"), were
anathema to him; that the metronomic pace of '* O
rest in the Lord " was exactly that at which he con-
ducted it, and had taught it to Mrs. Lockey (the Miss
Williams of the first performance), and that he nearly
cut out that song altogether from dread of its being
dragged and over-sentimentalized.

My next musical experience was the rehearsal for a
concert of the Dubhn Philharmonic Society, the suc-
cessor of an older body called " The Anacreontic
Society." They had an orchestra of the type which
Chorley happily termed "scrannel." The brass was
very blatant, and the strings excessively stringy. The
conductor, a worthy named Bussell, who was a kindly
Englishman of exceptional stodginess, scarcely knew
one end of the stick from the other, and was certainly
incapable of reading a score to any advantage either
to himself or to his myrmidons. So tired did the press
become of calling attention to his shortcomings, that
they used to end all notices of Philharmonic Concerts
by saying, " Mr. Bussell conducted himself as usual."
To this rehearsal came Charles Halle. The noise of
the brass had, I am ashamed to say, brought the un-
willing tears to my eyes, and caused them to overflow
enough to attract attention. Halle, who was waiting

56 PAGES FROM AN UNWRITTEN DIARY

for his term of martyrdom, caught sight of this little
tragedy, and began the first of a series of kindnesses
to me in which he never failed to his dying day, by
cheering me up with little jokes, and soothing my
small nerves most effectually. He told me that if I
cried at the brass, that I should have a much worse
time in later life. I reminded him of this episode in
later years, and he said it was no wonder that the
Dublin brass had moved me to tears, for it had nearly
had the same effect upon himself.

My musical education had hitherto been confined to
the j)ianoforte, with an occasional lesson in harmony
from " the beginning is now " Dr. Smith and from Dr.
Francis Robinson : and the lady who took over my in-
strumental training from my mother was my godmother,
an admirable amateur pianist, Miss Elizabeth Meeke.
She had been one of Moscheles' favourite pupils in the
days when that famous master lived in London and
was fresh from his close intercourse with Beethoven,
and with him she had studied all the works of the im-
mortal Netherlander, wrongly termed a German from
the accident of his birth in the Rhineland. (He was
no more German than Cesar Franck was French.)
Miss Meeke was an ample lady with a sweeping and
swishing silk dress, and hands of exactly the same
build and type as Madame Schumann's, whose style
she closely resembled both in touch and in interpreta-
tion. Her personality was vividly recalled to me on a
recent occasion in a comically incongruous way. I was
sitting in the stalls at a performance given by the
"Follies," my neighbour, oddly enough, happening to
be a cousin who like myself was Miss Meeke's godchild.

PIANOFORTE TRAINING 57

That most whimsical and gifted actor, Mr. Pelissier,
appeared in the guise of a commanding dame of mature
years in order to give a recitation with pianoforte ac-
companiment. My cousin and I gave one look at each
other, we both ejaculated simultaneously " Meeke "
(she always was called by her surname by her friends
young as well as old) and we both collapsed into such
hopeless hysterics that we had in consideration for
our neighbours to bury our heads in our hands.

Some of the Beethoven traditions which this first-rate
teacher gave me are interesting in view of the modern
deviations from them which are now to be found every
day. Chief among them was her insistence (on the
authority of Moscheles)that acciaccaturas, mordents and
such-like are to be played before and not on the beat :
Beethoven in this respect differing in his method from
earlier masters : and that when two successive notes

were slurred, e.g. •J? the first is accented almost like

a sforzando, and the second is definitely staccato.
This latter rule will be found to apply with equal force
in the works of Brahms ; in orchestral passages where
this slur occurs, I have frequently heard him call out
"Absetzen! Absetzen !" (Take it off!) when he was
directing his own compositions. For one ever-useful
accomplishment, the value of which to any artist is in-
calculable, I have wholly to thank Miss Meeke. She
taught me, before I was twelve years old, to read at
sight. The method she used to enable me to acquire
ease and fluency in this difficult branch of musicianship
was daring but wholly effective. She made me play
every day at the end n\' my lesson, a Mazurka of

58 PAGES FROM AN UNWRITTEN DIARY

Chopin : never letting me stop for a mistake, and, if I
did shy at a difficulty, reiterating " Go on, go on, don't
stutter !" By the time I had played through the whole
fifty-two Mazurkas, I could read most music of the
calibre which my fingers could tackle with comparative
ease. The effectiveness of her method was, I feel sure,
due to two main causes : — the principle of non-stop
runs, and entire unfamiliarity with the style of music
tackled. At the time she placed Chopin on the desk I
knew no more of his compositions than a Red Indian.

She always held that a beautiful touch was a gift,
which can be developed by careful training but cannot
be manufactured by machinery ; and that the safest
way of fostering it was one widely different from that
in vogue at the present day. She believed in making
the player sit at a sufficient height to keep the upper
line of the forearm absolutely straight to the first
joint of the fingers, the end of the fingers falling like
little hammers upon the keys. To get command of
the instrument, the player therefore had to sit up to
his work. Nowadays they sit below it. This, in
my experience, leads to banging and forcing the tone,
and I confess that I seldom now hear the velvety
quality which used to distinguish her playing and
that of others of her time who carried out the same
plan. It may be that the fault lies at the door of the
modern pianoforte ; and that, like the race between
guns and armour, the finger force has had to give
place to fist force, in order to make an impression on
the latest types of battleship grand. Noise versus
sonority. As the superficial imitators of Wagner's
instrumentation so often attain a plethora of the

PIANOFORTE TRAINING 59

former at the expense of the latter, so do the quasi-
disciples of Liszt and of Rubinstein. It is the age of
the hit instead of the pressure. If it is old-fashioned
to prefer the pressure, I am happy to be still in the
ranks of the out-of-date. I shall always prefer beauty
of tone to strength of muscle. And beauty of tone
was precisely what I found to be the predominant
quality in both Liszt and Rubinstein. When Liszt
raised his arms above his head, he did so, to be frank,
simply to make a theatrical display which would catch
the eyes of an audience. He was quite capable of
showing off, with his tongue in his cheek. All the
same he had brains enough to know that the poise of
a hand, whether at the distance of two feet or two
inches above the keys, makes no difference to the tone.
A careful observer of his playing would have noticed
that no matter how high was the upward lift of his
arms, the downward fall was always in time to allow
of his hands being in the same position to strike the
keys as if the brachial flourish had not been made at
all. To hit the key from a height would be to risk
wrong notes and damage to the instrument. It was
magnificent but it was humbug. Liszt knew it ; he
always played for musicians with an immovable body
and a quiet repressed dignity, reserving his acrobatic
performances for audiences whom he in his heart
despised. Rubinstein's arm exercises on the other
hand gave the impression of a wild genius who had
not complete? control over his own nature. With him
the displays were spontaneous and part of the man :
his sincerity was on the face of him. If he exagger-
ated in phrasing or in gesture, he did it in spite of

60 PAGES FROM AN UNWRITTEN DIARY

himself. He often smashed a hammer, or a string if
the hammer was strong enough to stand it ; and I pre-
ferred him when he was in his least destructive mood.

The soundness of the method in which I had been
trained was still more brought home to me at the
only interview, a most interesting one, which I had
with Sigismund Thalberg in 1862. This princely
person was, in spite of the ephemeral rubbish which he
wrote, an artist, as well as pianist, of the highest
calibre. A son of Prince Dietrichstein, he inherited
all the strong points of good breeding and refinement,
which, well directed, must stand an artist in good
stead in his profession, as in any other walk in life.
He was too sincere and also too witty to pose. It is
well known that Liszt rated him highest amongst his
contemporaries. The story goes that a rather tactless
friend asked Liszt whom he considered to be the
greatest pianist of the day.

Liszt. " Thalberg of course !"

Tactless Friend. " And where do you place your-
self?"

Liszt [grandioso). " Hors concours."

I went with trembling limbs to play for Thalberg at
the house of a friend with whom he was staying in
Dublin. After my small performance, he proceeded
spontaneously to give me a most valuable lesson. The
lines of it were precisely the same as my godmother's.
The one trick which he warned me against, one which
I had picked up during my old teacher's absence from
Dublin when I had been placed in other hands, was
that of raising my wrist above the flat level of my
hand as I struck a note. " If you go on doing that

JOACHIM 61

you will thump," said T. I felt a little inclined to
giggle inwardly, for the teacher who had encouraged
this very failing was standing beside me, and I knew
quite well that she did thump mightily.

This spring of 1862 was to become ever-memorable
to me. I was taken to a concert, where I saw and
heard for the first time the greatest artist of our time,
Joseph Joachim. The pieces he played were the
Kreutzer Sonata, and the G minor fugue of Bach. He
was then only thirty-one. His massive mouth and
chin had no beard to hide it. The impression he gave
me at once was that of the inevitable ricrhtness of
every note and phrase he played. In the last volume
of Hans von Billow's letters, it is obvious that he
had the same feeling, for he often uses the term
" Joachimsch" as a synonym for "perfect." When I
went to see Joachim the next morning, he was in an
instant as much a boy as I, and a friendship began
which lasted unbroken till his death. I can never
over-estimate the value of that forty-five years'
influence in my life and in my work. It had the
double power of giving impulse and controlling it with
brake-power. A purist of almost microscopic accuracy,
his criticism, even when it seemed to border on the
pedantic, kept experiment within the bounds of
beauty, and made one weigh and measure all depar-
tures from the normal by the standard of artistic
merit. I was able to gauge the true span of Joachim's
art by comparison with that of another great violinist
who came to Dublin within a few weeks of his visit,
Henri Vieuxtemps. Joachim thought of the nmsic
he played, Vieuxtemps of Vieuxteiiii)S. The former a

62 PAGES FROM AN UNWRITTEN DIARY

composer himself of remarkable gifts and originality
of style, (his playing has blinded too many to the out-
standing value of his works even to this day), made it
his business to bring home Bach and Beethoven to his
public ; the latter exploited Airs Vari(^s and con-
certos ad libitum, but they always bore the name of
Vieuxtenips. This self-advertising policy does not tell
in the long run, for even at the immature age of ten
it annoyed me too much to leave any marked memory
of Vieuxtemps' undoubtedly great gifts as a player.

In the same year I heard for the first time Madame
Patti in the first opera I ever saw, Flo tow's " Marta,"
that old war-horse of the early impresarios which was
always trotted out when some other opera was insufii-
ciently rehearsed. I was strung up to a high pitch of
dramatic excitement about this piece of vapidity, and
had a shock when the diva as an encore in an Italian
opera, came down to the footlights out of the picture,
and interpolated "Coming thro' the rye." I confess
that it had much the same effect upon me as would
have been produced by a comic song in the middle of
the anthem at St. Patrick's. Children love illusions,
and resent their being destroyed.

The first organ upon which I tried to play was a
very curious instrument, with an interesting history.
The builder's name I do not know, but it was very
ancient, with black naturals and white sharps. It
stood under the north arch of the chancel of St.
Stephen's Church where its restored and enlarged car-
cass still is. It was formerly in the gallery at the
West end, and before it was purchased for the church
had been the property of Lord Mornington,the Professor

THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON 63

of Music in Dublin University, who was responsible for
the authorship of the famous glee " Here in a cool
grot " and of the still more famous Arthur Wellesley,
afterwards Duke of Wellington. When a subscrip-
tion was being raised in order to remove the organ to
the East end, one of the churchwardens, by name
Stephen Seed, an excellent man gifted with a some-
what ludicrously ornate style of epistolary correspon-
dence, bethought him of addressing a letter in his best
English to the Duke, in the hopes of getting a sub-
stantial contribution. After reminding him that the
organ had once belonged to his lamented father, he
added that " Your Grace's own famous fingers may not
infrequently have wandered over the keys." The
Duke was not to be drawn, but answered with his own
hand, as he always did, somewhat in these character-
istically laconic terms : " F.M. The Duke of Wellington
presents his compliments to Mr. Seed, and begs to say
that if he ever played upon the organ in question, it
must have been when he was quite an infant." The
church was more or less a square room with galleries
all round three sides, and a Georgian attempt at a
chancel. Our pew was facing that of a family whose
young hopeful was a great friend of mine : and I used
to be consumed with envy every Sunday morning at
seeing him sent home before the dreaded sermon
began. I had to sit it out, but consoled myself and
developed a certain amount of practice in mental arith-
metic by studying the Golden Numbers and Sunday
Letters in the preface to the Prayer-Book. I was
fascinated by contemplating the years up to a.d. 8500
and the injunction to "guide your eye sideways to

64 PAGES FROM AN UNWRITTEN DIARY

the left hand," and to add to the year its fourth part,
omitting fractions (a great relief), and all the other
permutations and combinations for fixing the date of
Easter which helped to distract me during the dry
theological disquisitions which were as Greek to me.
The only words in the sermon of those days which
really appealed to me were "and now." They came
like balm to a wounded spirit. Occasionally a preacher
used to score oflP me in the middle of my heathenish
sums, by saying these two words at the beginning of a
totally different sentence from the expected coda, and
my resentment was deep. I was however much better
off than some cousins of mine, who were expected,
awful thought, to recite a rSswnie of the sermon when
they returned home.

One Sunday two of these young martyrs were stay-
ing with us, and had for once in their lives a relief
from their ordeal and the experience of hearing a very
different sort of precis. After church, my father made
a careful reconnaissance of the lie of the land, and when
he saw the coast was clear we crept up in guilty
silence to the schoolroom at the top of the house. He
produced from his pocket a copy of the renowned
sporting paper BelVs Life, and read out with great
dramatic gusto, round by round, the historical fight
between Sayers and Heenan, the Benicia Boy. We sat
round open-mouthed, I got my first lesson in the
vocabulary of the prize ring, and we went down to
dinner knowing all about canisters, potato traps, bread-
baskets, chancery, and the tapping of claret.* Our

* A full and Homeric 'account of this great battle was given in
the TiTius of April 18, 1860.

iMakv Stam'okd.

(,'Klat. Circa 21.)

THE DUBLIN SUNDAY 65

return from the higher regions was as strategically
perfect as our ascent, and I think we were never found
out. Our precautions were of course ridiculously un-
necessary, for my mother, most gentle of women, was
far too full of fun not to appreciate the joke of our
manoeuvres. If it had not been for the sanguinary
details, she would have been as thrilled by the battle
as we were. The Irish Sunday was nearly as dour and
stiff as the Scotch, but there was a leaven of fun which
lightened it in my happy surroundings. One cousin of
mine, who had a great gift for drawing animals, was
only allowed to draw churches on Sunday ; but my
father once shattered the tradition by suggesting that
the boy might be allowed to draw a horse and cart,
provided that he gave his word that it was driving to
Divine service. One other unexpected Sunday pleasure
I can also recall, when I was first made acquainted
with one of the great classics of the English language.
I had been asked to stay with my mother's cousin,
Christina Lady Waterford, in the County Armagh.
After church I was sent for to the drawinof-room and
expected " What is your name? N. or M." but to my
great relief, the catechism was not, and in its place was
produced . . . Lear's "Book of Nonsense." I was not
half-adventurous enough to })lease my hostess, whose
sons were, happily for the country, made of more martial
stuff, so she christened me "The Prince of Crocks."

Our house used to be, during the early sixties, a
great port of call for some very interesting visitors on
their way from England to the country parts of Ireland.
I liave often found the late Lord Dunraven, most
fascinating and witty of men, recuperating from the

66 PAGES FEOM AN UNWRITTEN DIARY

night journey by a sleep on the sofa in the dining-
room when I came down for breakfast ; John Palliser
with liis stirring accounts of blockade-running during
the American Civil War, who used to make me play
him one of the forty-eight Preludes and Fugues of
Bach before he would go away : his brother, the
handsome Colonel who invented chilled shot ; and my
mother's cousins, Aubrey de Yere, the poet, who used
to visit Wordsworth's grave every year, and Stephen
Spring Rice, who would arrive fresh from Farringford
and the Tennysons, brimful of stories of the great
bard. I recall, with a still surviving sense of horror
at my youthful impertinence, a pressing request I
wrote to Spring Rice that he would get Tennyson to
write a poem for me to set. He gave me a very
kindly and timely set-down, but so great was the
reverence of Tennyson for babes and sucklings that I
dare say he would not have thought my proposal quite
so ridiculously impertinent as I still blush to think it.
At any rate it showed a small boy's love for his poetry.
One other meteoric visitor from over the sea was an
Irish musician, one of the most kindly, upright and
loyal friends that a boy or man could wish to have,
George Alexander Osborne. The son of an organist
at Limerick, the creamy brogue of which he never
lost, he migrated in his 'teens to Belgium and after-
wards to Paris, where he became the intimate friend
of Rossini, Chopin and Berlioz. Before the revolution
of 1848 he changed his abode and became one of the
leading teachers of the pianoforte in London, where
his house was for many years an international home of
musical life. His brilliant Irish humour, his detesta-

An Ukiiiki ;s (^uaktkt.

(I'liolographcd liy Ch. (Iravcs, I'islio)) of I.iinericU, circa i860)
The l''.:irl i)f R(-v. AiigiiMus lo'^epli Joliii

Dunra

M.-u

KoljiiiN

Staiifor

GEOEGE OSBOHNE AND BERLIOZ 67

tion of little artistic jealousies, and his stalwart
support of every artist and composer who was worth
his salt made him, as a natural consequence, a centre
of attraction to them all. He had the rare g-ift of
perpetual youth, and of keeping well abreast of every
progressive movement. He was one of the sturdy
small band, headed by Sainton, who appreciated at its
true value Wagner's spadework at the Philharmonic
in 1855, where, as he told me, his eyes were first
opened to the true rendering of Beethoven's symphonies.
He was equally hard-working in the support of
Berlioz at the New Philharmonic, was one of the first
musicians in England to recognize Schumann and
Brahms, and one of the very few Britons who went to
Baireuth in 1876, having with him Davison and
Griineisen, and fighting their prejudices like a good-
natured demon. His relations with De Beriot, with
whom he wrote a once well-known series of duets, led
to his close acquaintance with all the leading violinists
of the day. Wieniawski, who was one of his most
intimate friends, married his niece. He told me many
curious stories of his Parisian days, notably one of
tragic memory for him. Nourrit, the celebrated tenor
singer of the Grand Opera, to whom he was greatly
attached, had been away in Italy and returned to find
that his successor Duprez had supplanted him in the
afi'ections of the Parisian public. He went with
Osborne and Berlioz to hear his rival, and after the
performance his two friends walked with him up and
down the l)0ulevards until the small hours of the
morning trying to dissuade him fi-oni suicide. They
succeeded in persuading liiin to retuni 1<> Italy, wfiere

68 PAGES FEOM AN UNWRITTEN DIARY

they knew that Rossini and Donizetti would make the
rough ways smooth for him. They were right in this
prediction, but his nerve was too much shaken, and
they saw him no more ; at Naples he threw himself
out of a window after a concert, at which he had had
a great ovation in which he could not bring himself to
believe. Osborne described most graphically this
terrible walk, and the extraordinary contrasts of the
glare and glitter of the lively street and the broken-
hearted artist between them, Berlioz chaffing him and
Osborne soothing him. My old friend closely resembled
Rossini, a fact which that witty and lazy Italian fully
recognized and often exploited. For if he found
Osborne at an evening party at which he was bored,
he would go up to him and whisper " Now, cher ami,
I give you full leave to be Rossini for the rest of the
evening," and decamp to his bed. I have no doubt
that his double acted the part to perfection.

He also told me a most amusing story, which shed a
characteristic light on Berlioz's literary methods. It
may be remembered by readers of that masterly work
(? of fiction) Berlioz's "Memoirs," that he describes at
length the first performance at the Invalides of his
huge Requiem ; how it was conducted by Habeneck,
his old foe of the Conservatoire, how the four brass
bands were distributed at the four corners of the
orchestra, and how vitally important were the four
beats which the conductor has to give, in order to
insure the exact entry for the "terrible explosion."
He says that with his habitual mistrust, he had
stationed himself behind Habeneck and continues : —
" Just in the one bar where the conductor's beat is

GEORGE OSBORNE AND BERLIOZ 69

absolutely necessary, Habeneck lowers his stick, coolly
takes his snuffbox out of his pocket, and leisurely takes
a pinch. I always had my eye upon him, turned
round quickly, and stepping in front of him I put out
my arm and gave the four slow beats of the change of
tempo. The orchestra followed me accurately. I con-
ducted the piece to the end, and got the effect I
wanted. When Habeneck saw that the Tuba mirum.
was rescued, he said, ' What a cold perspiration I have
had ! We should have been lost without you !'
' Yes I know,' was my answer, fixing him with a
sisfnificant look." I asked Osborne if he remembered
anything about this episode, and he said that he had
reason to, for he was sitting in the nave with Berlioz,
that he never stood up, that Habeneck never put
down his baton, did not take a pinch of snuff, and
that there was no necessity or opportunity for fixed
significant flashes of the composer's eye. Moreover
that when the "Memoirs" were published, he asked
Berlioz why upon earth he had put upon record such
a wholesale piece of pure invention ; that Berlioz
burst out laughing and said that the story seemed to
him far too good a one to be lost ! So much for
imagination in autobiogra2:)hy. It is dangerous ground ;
it makes me think with a certain tremor of the incur-
sions of foolish humanity, and whether it is not safer
to be, like Disraeli, on the side of the Angels.

CHAPTER V

London in 1862 — The Exhibition — Chorley — The theatres —
Moscheles — School and schoolfellows — The English police —
Music in Dublin.

The summer of 1862 was an eventful one for me, as I
went to London for the first time, and saw the Exhibi-
tion of that year which was held in a big building
where the Natural History Museum now stands.
We stayed with my grand-uncle Jonathan Henn in
Clifford Street, off Bond Street. The first impressions
London gave me were funereal, for we drove from
Euston along a street which then, even more than now,
consisted mainly of a succession of sample tombstones
and cemetery sculptures. The second was the extra-
ordinary narrowness of the hall doors and halls as
compared with the breadth and airiness of those in
Dublin. The Exhibition was fascinating to any
youngster, and the Austrian court especially so : but
the main attraction to me was the collection of pictures,
where I made my first acquaintance with the works of
Leighton, Millais, Watts, and the French and Belgian
schools. We had exceptional chances of seeing these
in ease and quiet, as Sir Bichard Mayne, the Chief of
the Police, was a connection of my mother's, and he
gave us the run of the picture galleries on Sundays.
There was good music to be heard there sporadically.
I heard Sauret, and, I think, his brother, both boys at
the time, give two or three excellent recitals in the

French court.

70

LONDON IN 1862 71

But London itself was a far greater exhibition. My
father used to chuckle over my first visit to West-
minster Abbey, how I made a bee-line for a spot in the
Poets' Corner and poked about for a slab on the floor,
and how on his asking me what I was looking for, I
answered " Mauculy's tomb," a queer corruption of the
great name of Macaulay. St. Paul's was, except for
its vast size, a disappointment to me. The organ stood
on a screen which cut the Cathedral in two, and that,
as I look back at those days, accounted for this feeling.
Wren was right when he railed at it. I know that it
destroyed the effect of the Church as I saw it then.
The only excuse for its position w^ould have been an
imposing case of a size proportionate to its surround-
ings ; as it was, it had the appearance of a mere box of
whistles. The singing was second-rate and sounded
sloppy, as did that in Westminster Abbey ; and the
Temple Church was far ahead of both of them. In one
respect the Thames of that day was more picturesque
than now, for Hungerford Bridge, now carted away to
span the Avon at Clifton, was a very different object
in the landscape from the unsightly and barbarous
structure which took its j)lace at Charing Cross. I
remember going to a musical party at Notting Hill at
the house of Mr. Arthur O'Leary (who this year gave
me my first lessons in composition), if only for the
annoyance of being stopped by two turnpikes on the
way.

I had pianoforte lessons from Pauer, principally in
Mozart, to which he gave special interest by telling
me that he was himself a pupil of Mozart's second son,
Wolfgang. Of the elder son, Karl, Joachim told me a

72 PAGES FROM AN UNWRITTEN DIARY

touching story which he had heard from Mendelssohn.
When Mendelssohn visited Italy in 1831, he had an
introduction to the wife of the military commandant
at Milan, Dorothea von Ertmann, the intimate friend
of Beethoven. Her name is immortalized on the title-
page of the Sonata, Op. 101. Mendelssohn was invited
to her house, and had played her own special sonata
and a great deal of Beethoven besides, when a little
modest Austrian official who had been sitting in the
corner came up and said timidly, " Ach ! Wollen sie
nicht etwas vom lieben Vater spielen ?" (Won't you
play something of my dear father's ?)

Mendelssohn. " Who was your father ?"

Austrian Official. "Ach! Mozart."

" And," said Mendelssohn, " I did play Mozart for
him, and for the rest of the evening." This little
touch of filial jealousy moved him deeply.

I was taken also to see Chorley, the redoubtable
critic of the Athenceum, whose eccentric ideas of
colour-schemes betrayed him into wearing a red waist-
coat, whether to show off or to soften the crudeness of
his red beard, I know not. Not having to write about
me in the newspaper, he was very kind and encouraging.
His name recalls one of Sir George Grove's favourite
stories : Chorley had during the Crimean War pro-
duced a play at the Haymarket Theatre ; he asked
Douglas Jerrold to dinner and took him to see one of
the later performances. When they entered their
box, the theatre was almost empty.

Chorley (looking despairingly round). "Ah ! Jerrold,
it's the war."

Jerrold. " No, Chorley, it's the piece .'"

THE THEATRES 73

The first private hearing of Sullivan's " Tempest "
took place at this time in Chorley's drawing-room, and
my parents were present, and foretold a future for the
composer (then twenty years old) at once.

My theatrical visits in 1862 were, naturally enough,
few. I saw Dion Boucicault at Drury Lane in the
" Colleen Bawn " (the real water gave me the cold
shivers), and in a terrible melodrama called " The
Relief of Lucknow " in which he played an Irish
patriot with a brogue, whose richness far transcended
any I ever heard in Ireland. The amount of gun-
powder expended in the course of the pieQ,e exceeded
anything I ever smelt before or since in any theatre.
It gave my mother such a headache that she took to
her bed for the next twenty-four hours. One per-
formance, to which I was not taken, roused such an
enthusiasm amongst all the male members of our party,
that I chafed at the limitation of my years. I was to
some extent mollified by a present of the printed play
in Lacy's edition, which I read so often that I believe
I could have acted any part in it without a prompter.
It was not great literature, but it was a collection of
the most appalling puns I ever saw in print. The
little yellow paper book however has never quite
consoled me for not having seen it on the stage with
the prima doniui who turned the heads of all the elder
generation in oui- house. The theatre was the Strand,
the piece was the burlesque of " Jilsmeralda," and the
'prima donna was the present Lady Bancroft. In this
particular alone was my London education woefully
neglected.

After these dissipations I returned to Dublin and

74 PAGES FEOM AN UNWRITTEN DIARY

the top schoolroom, sacred to the memory of BeWs
Life and Tom Sayers. My godmother had left Ireland,
and my next teacher was a curious, clever and some-
what eccentrically clothed lady, Miss Flynn by name.
She also had been a pupil of Moscheles at Leipzig, and
had studied, but with many tears, under Mendelssohn,
who was a most impatient teacher.* She did not copy
her master in this respect, at any rate with me. She
gave lessons in all weathers with very short sleeves
and a muff in which she kept a powder puff for fre-
quent use. Rumour had it that at one time she was
hopelessly devoted to Daniel O'Connell, the Liberator.
For Moscheles she cherished a most loyal affection,
and used frequently to tell a story of his tactful kind-
ness, which afterwards appeared without her name
and from his point of view in his Life. It may be
repeated here in her version. Miss Flynn, when a
pupil at the Leipzig Conservatorium, had been set
down to play a pianoforte solo at one of the students'
evening concerts, " Abend-unterhaltungen " as they
were termed. There was an inexorable rule that all
pieces should be played from notes and not by heart.
Miss F., being I suppose a little proud of her memory,
left her music at home and arrived at the hall without
it. Mendelssohn descended upon her, as she described
it, like a hawk ; sent her home to fetch it, and told
her that the audience should be kept waiting till she
came back. On her return she found to her relief that
the public was not in the least impatient or resentful,

* The Bishop of Limerick told me that in the course of a walk
at Interlaken in 1847 Felix confided in him his deep regret at this
failing.

MOSCHELES 75

After the concert she found out the reason. Moscheles
had immediately gone up on to the platform, struck a
chord or two on the pianoforte, made a wry face and
sent for the tuner. He deservedly earned Miss
Flynn's undying gratitude.

A somewhat more comic rescue was effected by him
at a later time, when, after the memory rule had been
abolished, a young lady played the Lied ohne Worte
usually called "The Bee's Wedding" without notes,
could not remember the change before the coda which
ends the piece, and in consequence kept going round
and round the unfortunate composition until the
repetition became a nightmare and threatened to be
prolonged to infinity. Moscheles, however, noiselessly
crept up behind her on the platform, and at the crucial
passage placed his fingers over hers and put a welcome
end to the labyrinthine struggles of the player, amidst
rounds of cheers, and roars of relieved laughter.
Miss Flynn had a most unholy aftection for the works
of Dussek, and, however good his music may be for
developing technique, I got so sick of them that I put
them in a back drawer as fast as I learned them.

When this excellent dame left Dublin, I found my
last Dublin masters in Stewart, who taught me com-
position and orchestration, and in yet another pupil of
Moscheles, then fresh from Leipzig, Michael Quarry,
the son of a learned clergyman in the county of Cork.
He opened my eyes to Schumann, whose music I had
never seen ; to the choral works of Bach, and to
Brahms. W(; spent liours over four-hand arrange-
ments of the Serenades, the Sextets, and the Hun-
garian Dances ; and he tauglit me the Handel

76 PAGES FEOM AN UNWRITTEN DIARY

Variations, and even the D minor Concerto. It was a
new world which opened to my eyes, when I first read
the score of the St. Matthew Passion, which till then
had never penetrated to Ireland. Until I saw it, I
did not even know that Bach had written anything
which was not a fugue for pianoforte or for organ.

The school to which I was sent to learn my Latin
and Greek must have a special account to itself : for
though only a day-school, it had a very unique
character of its own, and many of the most able Irish-
men of my day laid the foundations of their careers in
the training which they received there. It was for all
practical purposes a one-man school. There were no
under-masters save an obviously contemned mathe-
matician, for the chief had no love for either that
science or its practitioners. The master, H. Tilney
Bassett by name, was an Englishman who had been
educated under Valpy at Norwich, and had come over
to drive a little accuracy of scholarship into youthful
Keltic heads. A long, spare man with raven-black
hair, smoothed down and glistening, a keen eye and
clean-shaven face, he might have passed for the born
actor, which in fact he was. He could recite like
any professional, and roll out Homer and ^Eschylus
with all the declamation and tone-colour of a practised
tragedian. He at times reminded me irresistibly of
Mr. Micawber, though he had none of that hopeful
creature's flummery. He was a devourer of every
new book or classical edition, and must have half-
ruined himself in buying them, for his daily visit after
school hours was to Mr. McGee, the genial University
bookseller, and he seldom came out empty-handed.

SCHOOL AND SCHOOLFELLOWS 77

When I was first taken to the class, he came down
all smiles and geniality, told me how happy we should
be together, fathered me upstairs to a well-remembered
top room, full of rather scared-looking boys, and gave
me a Latin grammar to amuse myself with. But in
one dramatic moment all the scene changed, and I saw
with some dismay the reason of the nervous expression
on my companions' faces. He had evidently come
down to fetch me in the middle of a severe rating of
some ill-prepared youth, and he suddenly went for
him with what I can only call a yell of fury. Until I
got accustomed to his dramatic ways, I thought I
should witness some form of violence approaching wil-
ful murder. It was all magnificent acting, even to
the boxing of the ears in which he believed as the
best panacea for all shortcomings. I speak as an on-
looker, for there were a few favoured individuals whom
he never belaboured ; whether from some predilection
for them or from some orders behind the scene I know
not, for I am sure we all deserved an equal measure of
the whip and the spur. He had some wonderfully,
but grimly, comical ways of administering toko, such as
this little scene will illustrate :

Small boy makes some grotesquely bad shot at a
translation. Bassett, (in an enticing siren- like voice),
•' Come you here, you little hypocrite, come — you —
here " (long drawn out). Then, playfully to the class
and pointing, "Look at the little feet (leggicro), tripping
across the floor" (In a tragic crescendo) "to th(ur

DOOM."

Small boy has come U]), holding liis Virgil, in the
midst of a silence which might be felt. B.'s hand

78 PAGES FEOM AN UNWRITTEN DIARY

comes down like a thunderbolt on the book, which
falls, half-shattered, to the floor.

The next moment or two is occupied by manual
exercises upon ears and hands, which make one realize
what a resoundinsr tone the flesh of the human face
can produce when the palm of the hand comes into
rapid contact with it. Tears of the culprit, a short
silence, and B. is heard to say in a surprised and
lively tone, pointing the while at the ill-used volume,
" You've dropped your book 1"

In spite of all the alarums and excursions, tingling
cheeks and smarting hands, there are few of Bassett's
old pupils who do not remember him with both
aflection and gratitude. I think that many sound
reasons contributed to this feeling. He was always
just, and that most of all appeals to boys ; he could
be as tender as any woman if a youngster was in
trouble or sorrow at home ; he was so thorough in his
work that there is not a man amongst us who does
not feel the effects of it to this day. He did not
suffer fools with any gladness at all, but for all that
he rammed an unusual amount of knowledge into their
heads. We knew by his approaching step on the
stairs whether it was going to be a sunny or a stormy
morning. If a first-class actor visited Dublin, and he
had been at the theatre the night before, all was
smooth and the falsest quantities were corrected in
peace. When he left the room, pandemonium reigned
supreme. The stairs were steep and narrow, and the
descent for small boys had to be strategic. One lively
hero, now in high judicial office, used to take an
unholy pleasure in lifting the body in front of him

SCHOOL AND SCHOOLFELLOWS 79

with the well-aimed toe of his boot from the top of a
flight to the bottom, aud the helter-skelter down the
house was like a human avalanche, the juniors dodging
and running for their lives.

When I look back on that motley crow^d, I am often
amazed by the number of names of men who were in it,
who have left their mark on their time. Sir Conyng-
ham Greene, Ambassador to Japan ; Dunbar Barton,
Chancery Judge of the High Court ; Herbert Greene,
Fellow and Tutor of Magdalen, Oxford ; Arthur
Larcom, formerly of the Foreign Office ; A. D. Godley,
Fellow of Magdalen and Public Orator of Oxford
University ; S. G. Hamilton, of Balliol and Hertford ;
Thomas and William Lefanu (the sons of William the
genial brother of the novelist) ; Hercules West, the
witty author of the immortal " Edgiana " and a high
classic at Cambridge ; Woulfe Flanagan, and many
more were among my contemporaries ; and after us
came others of no less distinction, amongst them Lord
Plunket, late Governor of New Zealand, Sir Francis
May, Governor of Hong Kong, and Plunket Greene,
of whose quality I had an early taste when he was
about three years old. His brother Conyngham had
invited a large posse of fellow-Bassetians to an after-
noon scrimmage at St. Valdrie, near Bray, County
Wicklow. I was seized upon by the household to
show my prowess on the pianoforte, and while I was
engrossed in a show-piece, a small mischievous mite
in socks and petticoats crept silently up behind me,
and picking my pockets of a motley collection of con-
tents, held them up in triumph for the admiration
of the room. All my virtuosity w(ait for nothing.

80 PAGES FROM AN UNWRITTEN DIARY

The thief was bustled off and I saw him no more until
he appeared as a full-blown artist on the concert plat-
form ; but he has not lost his capacity for leger-de-
main or for a practical joke.

I had but one personal experience of the prize ring.
The boy, whose good fortune in being sent home
before the sermon I have already enviously alluded to,
had, after a chequered career at a public school, been
sent to the redoubtable Bassett to be disciplined. He
arrived in the top room, and proceeded to bully us
all in general, and, I suppose for auld lang syne, me
in particular. I bethought me of the great BelVs Life
drama, and its lessons had been reinforced by a more
recent study of " Tom Brown." So I confided my
woes to the butler at home, (he bore the historic name
of Patrick Ford, but was no relation of the notorious
admirer of this country), knowing that he was well
versed in the science of the clenched fist. By his
advice I endured all the kicks and cuffs for some little
time without apparent resentment, while every after-
noon, when we had the house to ourselves, he gave
me surreptitious lessons in the dining-room, taught
me various feints and defences, and generally equipped
me for the inevitable fray. He had the wisdom of the
serpent, and when he thought I was trained to a
proper pitch, gave the word to let fly. The oppor-
tunity was not long delayed, and when the expected
kick came, I " got home with my right." There was
only one round, for being small I could not hit my
bull's-eye, and nearly demolished a front tooth instead,
and so ended at one blow the kicks and discomforts,
and my first, and happily last, experience of that most

SCHOOL AND SCHOOLFELLOWS 81

UQcanay sensation, a sharp knuckle in contact with
an upper central incisor. It is odd how awe-inspiring
an effect a ridiculous set-to of this sort has upon the
most rowdy collection of boys. I was conscious of a
silence as in church, and of a hushed attention as
rigorous as that at Baireuth. When I knocked at
our door, Mr. Ford answered with an anxious rapidity,
and his relief at seeing his pupil with a whole skin
and eyes unimpaired was not untinged with paternal
triumph.

It was owinor to Bassett's insistence that I was sent
to Cambridge, for though he anticipated (with truth
as it turned out) that my music would eventually kill
my classics, he brought home, by arguments too
forcible to resist, that in either branch, it was wiser
to enlarge my horizon. He had at least driven into
my head the technique of languages, and so well were
all his old pupils grounded in the " harmony and
counterpoint " of them, the Latin and Greek grammar,
that whatever other classical sins we committed,
crenders and tenses were not of them. Some of his
pupils went on to Harrow, and on one occasion,
famous in Bassetian records, no less than five of their
names were read out by Dr. Montagu Butler, at the
top of the list of distinctions gained at the University
in one year. He was very fond in a dramatic way, of
music, and told me many tales of Bexfield, the organist
at Norwich in his boyhood, of his amazing stretch of
hand and g(3iieially abnormal style of playing, and of
his successor Zachai'iah J>uck who rivalled a. famous
Divine in the art of washiiijj; his hands with invisible
soap and imaginary water.

6

82 PAGES FROM AN UNWRITTEN DIARY

Buck was mainly devoted to teaching his choristers
how to shake, not in the manner of Bassett's pupils
but with their voices. He was a smooth-mannered
man with a great faculty for trying to say the things
which would most please his hearers. He put his foot
in it once badly. The Queen's Band had been engaged
to give an orchestral concert in St. Andrew's Hall,
and all the music-lovers of the town came to hear
the unaccustomed strains of a full orchestra, amongst
them a lady of very downright opinions and speech.
To the great disappointment of this dame, a whole
part of the programme was devoted, not to Beethoven
and Mozart as she hoped, but to the compositions of
a Royal Personage. Between the parts Dr. Zachariah,
who held her in great awe and respect, came up and
in his most unctuous tones said :

" Oh, Miss , is it not beautiful ? is it not

beautiful ?"

Miss {tartly and bristling I ij). " No, Dr. Buck,

it is not. And what is more you know perfectly tvell
that it is 710 1 /"

Exit Zachariah, with deprecating gestures and all
the airs of a distressed courtier.

During my school years, I had many opportunities
of building up musical experience. During the
summer vacations of 186-1 and 1868 we went to
Norwood, and lived close to the Crystal Palace, then
a centre of the best music to be heard. There was a
dinner at the hospitable house of John Scott Russell,
the famous engineer and builder of the Great Eastern,
where I first met Arthur Sullivan, Frederic Clay, and
that most unique of men, George Grove. Grove was

THE CRYSTAL PALACE 83

the heart and soul of Crystal Palace music, and
pioneered me into the gallery of the concert-room
now sacred to his and many other memories, showed
me where to sit and study the orchestral instruments
at rehearsal, plied me with full scores, and infected
me, as he did anyone who came into contact with him,
with his own enthusiasm. It was a queer mixture of
experiences. Tietjens, Giuglini, Trebelli, Santley at
operatic concerts in the transept ; Beethoven, Schubert,
Schumann, Strauss and Lanner in the concert -room,
with Blondin on the tight-rope and Leotard on the
flying trapeze thrown in. Blondin made me tremble,
but Leotard never. Such a graceful figure of a man
was never seen ; his most daring feats were accom-
plished with an ease and a certainty which made fear
impossible, and yet it was before the days of County
Councils, and he had no net. He was, I believe, a
French barrister, and a caricature of the time depicted
Disraeli in the garb of Leotard flying into court over
the wigs and gowns of judges and Q.C.'s. Our great
hero, however, was a still surer acrobat than he, the
chimpanzee, whose cage was in the tropical court.
It was he who one Sunday morning discovered the
fire which destroyed the end of the Palace, attracting
the attendant by his cries and pointing with quivering
finger at a wreath of smoke which was issuing through
the boards. He died afterwards of the fright, but he
saved the rest of the building. 1 liavu his photograph
still.

Ill Dublin we had flashes of good music. A chamber
concert now and then, an occasional visit from Joa-
chim, Piatti, Hallo, and one from Rubinstein whose

84 PAGES FEOM AN UNWRITTEN DIARY

extraordinary playing of Schumann's " Etudes Sym-
phoniques " at last awoke the town to the beauties
of that great master, whose works had been a sealed
book to the inhabitants, and caused a furore which
has seldom been equalled there. A few amateurs had
become devotees of his songs, owing to the influence
of a most cultivated tenor singer, Dr. (afterwards Sir)
William Stokes, the son of the famous physician who
was Petrie's most intimate friend. He tackled with
thorough artistry the whole of the " Dichterliebe,"
and never lost an opportunity of making all the
composer's songs known. One autumn he returned
from Dresden, fresh from the first performance there
of Wagner's " Meistersinger," bringing with him
many excerpts from the score, and also the five songs
which contained the studies for " Tristan and Isolde."
These were my first introduction to the music of
Wagner, and I confess that the beauty and mastery
in every line of them seriously handicapped me in
appreciating " Lohengrin " and " Tannhauser," when I
was able to procure them.

I remember the day when I saw " Lohengrin " in
a shop and carried it oft' in great excitement, expect-
ing to renew the delights of my first acquaintance
with the later works, and how curiously it dis-
appointed me, after I had revelled in the prelude and
the coming of the swan. I liked the drama far better
than the music : and both it and, in a lesser degree,
"Tannhauser" seemed to have an inherent weakness
in melody which I could not then define, in com-
parison with the later works. I can define it now, or
at any rate the cause which produced this eftect upon

MUSIC IN DUBLIN 85

me then, as it does still. In his earlier work he used
chromatic intervals as an essential part of a diatonic
tune. In his later they became purely ornamental.
A comparison between the melody of the song to
the Evening Star, and the March in " Tannhuuser,"
with that of the " Preislied " will illustrate my point.*
This early impression did not falsify itself in later
years, when I first heard these two operas in Dresden.
The odd feeling: of amateurishness which the earlier
melodies gave me at first was intensified, not dimin-
ished, upon the stage. I recognized the bigness and
atmospheric power of the man, but I was repelled by
his prolixity and by the slowness of the action. When
I heard Weber's " Euryanthe " almost immediately
after, it seemed, in spite of its involved and hopeless
plot, far superior to both " Tannhiiuser " and " Lohen-
grin " in their own line of business. I only record the
effect of these works on the mind of a boy of sixteen,
as compared with that of the later operas of the
master.

I was now not without considerable knowledge of
the technique and requirements of the operatic stage.
The opera company of Her Majesty's Theatre used to
pay a prolonged visit to Dul)lin every autumn. Many
standard works now relegated in this country to the
scrai)-heap, were given in first-rate style to one of the
most appreciative audiences to be found anywhere.
To all of these performances I went night after night,
standing in the queue for two hours at the pit door,

* See my treatise on Composition, pp. 45-47, where I give full
reasons for this view, and suggest the origin of Wagncr'.s early pen-
chant, which he afterwards .so sternly eliminated from his work.

86 PAGES FROM AN UNWRITTEN DIARY

(there were no stalls in the theatre), and fighting my
way in through a crowd which would rejoice the heart
of any impresario nowadays. In addition, my friend-
ship with Levey (O'Shaughnessy), who was leader of
the orchestra, enabled me to have the run of the house
at rehearsals, and I got, from close observation, my
first lessons in stage-management and in the tyranny
of the footlights. I used to watch all the tricks of the
trade, seated at the foot of a long ladder, at the top
of which was working a scene painter, with whom I
made great friends ; this great artist (for he was no
less) was John O'Connor who became the head of his
craft in later days in London, and whose delicate
water-colours were scarcely inferior in skill to his
scenic body-colours. We met again years afterwards,
when he painted the wonderful setting of the early
Greek Plays at Cambridge, and had many a gossip
over the humours of the Dublin Theatre Royal, which,
together with its more serious artistic aspects, I must
leave to the next chapter.

CHAPTER VI

The Dublin theatres — Operas and singers — An omnibus fatality —
Dr. Haughton and the science of humane hanging — Visits of
Royalties and Statesmen — Dublin street cries — Joachim and
Fenianism — Irish temperament.

The old Theatre Ptoyal at Dublin was a composite
structure, which was originally the home, if I am not
mistaken, of the Royal Dublin Society before that
body removed to its present quarters at Leinster
House. Although it was not built for the purpose
even of a lecture theatre, some genius transformed it
into one of the best houses for seeincr and hearino- that
I have ever had the sfood fortune to know. The stagfe
was large, the auditorium was admirably designed, and
its size was about midway between the Lyceum and
Drury Lane theatres in London. There were no stalls,
the pit filling the whole floor, and there were four
tiers. The occupants of the top gallery, where wit
and humour were concentrated, had a kind of heredi-
tary feud with the pittites, chaffing them everlastingly
and at times objurgating them so loudly that wise men
preferred to get as near the middle of the house as
possible in order to insure comparative safety from a
possible orange or other less savoury missile from
above. As the " gods " were in possession long before
the " Quality " arrived, they used to while away the
time partly by singing airs, more oft<Mi than not
belonging to the opera which th(;y had come to hear,

87

88 PAGES FEOM AN UNWEITTEN DIARY

quite as well as or better than they were afterwards
given on the stage, and partly by indulging in too
audible criticisms of the members of society as they
arrived. When one well-known lady, Mrs. W— — of

K -, fainted in the dress circle, they would call a

cruel attention to the fact that her cheeks had not lost
their rosy tinge ; when a well-known raconteur was
earnestly talking to a lady in a conspicuous red opera
cloak, a soft but clear whisper would come from Para-
dise like a warning angel, " Don't believe a word he's
sayin' to ye, Ma'am." These irresponsible wits used to
shout criticisms in a way sorely trying to the risible
faculties of the singers. A tenor whose voice was
somewhat thin, and who trusted for his final high note
to falsetto, had the mortification of hearing Micky on
one side of the gallery ask a friend opposite " Jim ! was
that the gas T Another, Tombesi by name, who
roared in taurine fashion and rushed to the footlights
to deliver himself, was pulled up by hearing an anxious
and soothing piece of advice, " Tom, be aisy !" The
gods had internecine quarrels also, mostly the sham
battles of the rival singers and their friends aloft,
whereat their old enemies, the pit, would rise en masse
and turn round with a roar of protest, drowning all the
proceedings on the stage the while. It was during
one of these demonstrations that the well-known
dialogue occurred : " Throw him over ! Throw him
over!" "Don't was(h)te him, kill a fiddler wid him !"
Most of these ebullitions took place in the entr'actes,
or when an inferior artist had irritated the deities.
In a really good performance there was a silence that
might be felt. The yearly visit of the Italian Opera

OPERAS AND SINGERS 89

Company was one of the chief events of the Dublin
year. " The Itahaus are coming !" was the cry, which
may be translated phonetically into the Dublin dialect
thus : " Ze Retadgfeds are cummid !"

The operas I heard were of all schools and were
thoroughly well given. The list, which I found in-
scribed in the fly-leaves of my Liddell and Scott Greek
Dictionary, may be interesting. "Don Giovanni" is
the first, the chief singers being Grisi, Mario, and
Ciampi. Grisi's voice was departing, but her splendid
acting and dignified stage presence was unimpaired by
years. Mario's singing of " Dalla sua pace" was
absolute perfection. Though his voice was, naturally
enough, past its prime, (so much so that he omitted
"II mio tesoro " to the resentment of the gallery), he
gave an object-lesson in the interpretation of Mozart
which I would not have missed, and could not forget.
That he was a past-master in all styles was evident
from his singing in the quartet " E scherzo " from
Verdi's " Ballo in Maschera," which was given the
next day at a concert. Even my father, who had
often heard him in early days, considered this per-
formance the equal of any of his former achievements.
In subsequent years came Tietjens, Sinico, lima di
Murska, Schalchi, Trebelli, Gardoni, Mongini, Bettini,
Santley, Bossi, Bagagiolo, Foli, and many more.

Of Tietjens it is almost unnecessary to speak ; a
grander voice and a more consummate artist it M'ould
be difficult to imagine. She worked so hard at her
techni(jUO (she practised her scales every morning to
the end of her life) that she almost turned her rather
intractal)l(^ dramatic organ into a coloratura soprano,

90 PAGES FROM AN UNWRITTEN DIARY

and even tackled with success such a florid part as
Semiramide. She once looked with kindly eyes on a
boyish song of mine, and sang it in public in Dublin.
I then had a personal experience of her thoroughness
in rehearsing. She took as much pains with it as if it
had been written by Beethoven, and insisted on three
rehearsals, which took the best part of an hour each,
in the middle of the operatic season. She had humour
too. A young lady of my acquaintance, who was
much cockered at home, was so wildly excited about
the coming of the diva, that she went to bed for some
days before her first visit to the opera, in order not to
catch a cold which might frighten her parents into
putting an embargo on the theatre. Between the acts
she was taken to see the great prima donna.

Miss B. (ecstatically). " Oh, Madame Tietjens, I
never heard you sing before."

Tietjens. " Ach, my dear, vare vere you born ?"
Madame Sinico was a most finished artist, of the
type which von Billow used to define as a first clarinet ;
brilliant, incisive, and thoroughly musical. lima di
Murska was perhaps the cleverest and most versatile
of them all. She had a phenomenal range, which
enabled her to sing the Queen of Night in the " Zauber-
flote " at its original pitch with ridiculous ease, and
was one of the best coloratura singers I ever heard. As
a proof of her versatility I have been told that her
conception and performance of Senta in the " Flying
Dutchman " was no less remarkable. She sang it at
the first London performance in Wood's short season.
Gardoni was a delicate tenor of the same class as
Mario, but not so powerful or magnetic. Bettini, the

OPERAS AND SINGERS 91

husband of Madame Trebelli, was a light tenor who
could sing scales galore, and who, therefore, was the
best Alniaviva (in the " Barber ") of the time. Santley,
the sole survivor of this galaxy, was in his prime.
Foli, a " Tipperary boy," Foley by name and recognized
as such by the gods, was vox et pra'terea little, but
the voice was of true bass quality. Mongini was a
robust tenor of the school of Tamagno. Trebelli was,
after Tietjens, the greatest artist of all the women.
With this company I heard the following operas : —

Mozart. '• Nozze di Figaro."

" Flauto Magico."
Beethoven. " Fidelio."
Rossini. "Barbiere di Siviglia."

Cherubini. " Les deux Journees."
Meyerbeer. "Robert le Diable."

" Les Huguenots."
Weber. "Der Freischutz."

"Oberon." (The quartet in this work,
with Tietjens and Santley, was a
feat to be remembered, and such a
rendering of " Ocean, thou mighty
monster " I have never heard since.)
Donizetti. "Figlia del Reggimento."

"Lucrezia Borgia."
Verdi. "Traviata."

" Rigoletto."
A. Thomas. " Hamlet " (with Christine Nilsson).
Gounod. " Faust."

" Mireille."

The performance of " Fidelio " was remarkable in
more ways than one. Carl Formes came over on
purpose to sing Rocco. He sang persistently Hat, but,
for all that, his supt^'b acting and grip of tlie intention
of the composer made me forget liis vocal sliortcomings.

92 PAGES FROM AN UNWRITTEN DIARY

Gardoni's Florestan was equally musical. Tietjens'
acting in the prisoners' chorus, and her singing of the
great concerted pieces in the second act brought very
different tears to my eyes from those which the
Philharmonic brass had evoked. Santley's Pizarro
was unsurpassable. Most surprising of all, the very
complicated ensemble in the first Finale (f time), which
is none too easy for an ordinary audience to grasp,
aroused such an enthusiasm that the performance had
to stop until the whole movement was perforce repeated.
The demonstration exceeded any I witnessed in other
operas, and Tietjens, when she went to her carriage was
met by a mob from the top gallery, who unharnessed
the horses and dragged her to her hotel. It was a
triumph for Beethoven's opera, the like of which has
seldom or never been seen. How Beethoven appeals
to the Irish mind, however untutored, was proved by
the account of a violinist friend of mine. He went
with a party of singers and a pianist on tour : and at
Limerick played, what they had certainly never heard
before, the last violin sonata in G. He had to repeat
the first movement in toto ! And the audience tried
hard to encore the remainder.

The dramatic performances at the Theatre Royal
were quite as interesting in their way. It was at the
time one of the few provincial houses which had a
company of its own, and went on the German principle
of " Gast-Vorstellungen," famous actors coming either
singly or with their own companies. The Keans,
Charles Mathews, Buckstone and in later days Irving
were constant visitors. My father saw Edmund Keau
play "Hamlet," and a harlequin on the same evening.

AN OMNIBUS FATALITY 93

I saw in the sixties Sothern in " Lord Dundreary," a
wonderful piece of fooling not unmixed with satire,
and many other first-rate players. Schneider horrified
the Mrs. Grundys in "La Grande Duchesse," but all
the same had all Dublin at her feet. After the death
of Harris the manager, the responsibilities of the
theatre were laid upon the able shoulders of Mr.
Michael Gunn, the son of a worthy old gentleman
who in my boyhood was the only reliable pianoforte
tuner in Dublin. He met his death in a curiously
Hibernian manner. He lived at Rathmines, and used
to come to his work every morning in the omnibus, a
cranky antediluvian old vehicle, which plied between
the suburbs and the centre of the town. Oiie morning
when it was crossing the bridge over the canal at
Portobello, the horses shied and the omnibus fell into
the lock. The water was at low level, and if a malign
ignorance of the laws of nature had not intervened,
the passengers would have escaped with a shaking and
a wetting. But the lock-keeper was so accustomed to
see barges rise with the water, that he opened the
sluices to float the omnibus, and drowned every one of
the occupants.

The Fenian rising at this time caused a certain
amount of mild excitement in Dublin circles. We
knew the race too well to expect anything so serious
as ]>arricades, and the native love of a scrimmage with
the " Polis " was the most we had to dread. One flash
of the pan at Tallaght near Dublin was the nearest
approach to a pitched battle. It lasted a few iiiiiiiit<'S
only, and a wag compared the Fenians to the Persians,
pointing out that the Persians fled from Greece, but

94 PAGES FROM AN UNWRITTEN DIARY

the Fenians fled from Tallaght (the village is pro-
nounced Talla). There were Homeric accounts in the
papers of three country policemen vanquishing an
army of three thousand, and the whole affair had a
strong family resemblance to Smith O'Brien's historic
cabbage garden. The more serious developments of
the movement were over the channel, at Chester and
Manchester. There was quite a crop of trials for
high treason, with the antique sentences of hanging,
drawing and quartering which were never carried
out.

But the frequent donning of the black cap set a
certain Fellow of Trinity thinking, and though his
humanitarian cogitations eventually took an all too
practical shape, he had no chance of putting them to
the test until a less patriotic and more vulgar criminal
provided him with his opportunity. Dr. Samuel
Haughton, mathematician, physiologist, ecclesiastic,
physicist, zoologist, geologist, an Admirable Crichton
in fact, who, though a Jack- of-all- trades, was certainly
master of some, had witnessed the hanging of several
murderers and came to the conclusion that the short-
ness of the rope used was ineffective and cruel. He
shut himself up in the company of cc's and ys and
evolved a formula, by which he insured the immediate
fracture of the neck by a fixed ratio between the
weight of the falling body and the length of the rope.
This is now known roughly by the term " Long Drop."
Unfortunately he made one mistake ; he decided upon
silk as the material of which the rope should be made.
The time came to put his theories into practice (such
opportunities are happily of the rarest in Ireland), and

DR. HAUGHTON 95

he persuaded the hangman to adopt his principles and
to use his silk rope. The result was appallingly illegal,
for he beheaded his man instead of conforming to the
prescribed sentence. The unhappy operator rushed to
Haughton's rooms in College to disclose the dire result ;
Haughton hit the table with his fist and exclaimed
" Begad, I forgot to account for the elasticity of the
rope." He rectified this little slip, and on the next
occasion he was triumpliantly successful, but very
nearly at the loss of his own life. In his anxiety to
verify the result of his own invention, he went down
into the pit below the trap-door, forgot the length of
his own calculations, and was all but brained by the
victim's heels. But, as he said to me in a vivid de-
scription which he gave me with his own lips, " There
wasn't as much as a kick in him." Haughton's merci-
ful discovery has been adopted ever since. His devotion
to animals was no less sincere than his labours for
suffering humanity. He was Chairman of Committee at
the Zoological Gardens, and all the beasts knew him
personally. My father went to one of the Committee
breakfasts at the Gardens, and he was taken off by
Haughton to see his " pet patient," which turned out
to be the biggest of the tigers. It had been suffering
from an ingrowing claw, which had caused a bad abscess
in the paw. The Professor had ordered him to be tied
down, and his paw to be drawn out below the bars.
He had operated coolly, unheeding of the terrific
growls and roars of the brute, and cured liiin. When
he took my father in to see him, the animal began to
purr like a cat, rolled itself against the bars, and
thrust out its paw for Haughton's inspection. It was

96 PAGES FROM AN UNWRITTEN DIARY

only the insistence of the keepers which restrained
him from going into the cage to stroke it at close
quarters.

When the Fenian bubble had burst, Dublin had a
more congenial excitement. The Princess of Wales
paid her first visit to Ireland accompanied by the
Prince, and had even momentarily disconcerting proofs
of the affection of the tattered crowds. An exception-
ally grimy old woman was reported to have insisted on
shaking hands with her with appropriately flowery
blessings as she drove through College Green. The
dou de la piece was the Installation of the Prince as a
Knight of St. Patrick, which took place, for the only
time in recent years, in the Cathedral. It was a most
picturesque ceremony, presided over by a Grand Master
of commanding presence and most regal mien, the late
Duke (then Marquis) of Abercorn. The Chancel of the
Cathedral was exclusively tenanted by the Knights of
the Order, the organist. Sir Robert Stewart, whose
seat was next the stalls, and by myself, whom Stewart
had smuggled in to turn over his music and to pull his
stops. As he played by heart, and was well furnished
both with composition pedals and very nimble fingers,
my presence was absurdly unnecessary ; but polite
fiction secured me the best view possible of a pageant,
and its medieval setting, which may never be seen
again. Shortly before Disraeli had visited St. Patrick's.
The Disestablishment question was becoming acute,
and Magee preached a most eloquent sermon, on the
text (directed full at the Conservative leader) "Come
over and help us." That brilliant piece of oratory won
him the Bishopric of Peterborough. Dizzy saw he

DUBLIN STREET CRIES 97

was too great a man to be isolated by the melancholy
ocean.

I cannot close my account of Dublin as I knew it with-
out a short tribute to two of its more obscure classes :
the beggars and the street vendors. Blind Zozimus,
the improvisaiore amongst beggars, who used to roll
out his spontaneous epics on Carlisle Bridge, I never
saw. Hughy, of the mincing voice, who always an-
nounced an approaching visit to his friend Lord Fingal
as a means for abstracting a penny towards his railway
fare, and Anthony Doherty who called every boy
indiscriminately " Master Richard " and carried a
basket, the contents of which were mythical and care-
fully hidden from the eye of man, were historical
figures. So also was Mrs. " Murphy," the flower-
seller, who had social aspirations, and married ; when
her husband prematurely died, this grande dame put
an announcement in the Daily E.vpress (the Morning
P(>6-^ of Dublin):

"Murphy. — On the 10th inst. at 101, Kevin Street,
Murphy, Esq. Deeply regretted."

She had never ascertained the Christian name of her
spouse !

Two wondrous old -clothes women used to visit
Herbert Street every morning, one at 7.45 a.m., the
other at 8 a.m The words of their calls were equally
indistinguishaljle, but that of the earlier visitor sounded
thus (ill a rich contralto):

i

Dow, flow, dow.

98 PAGES FEOM AN UNWRITTEN DIARY

and she went by the name of Dowdow. The latter
sang in a twittery treble :

:fe

^fcS

:p=^

Ee - wee, wee, wee, wee, wee.

and she was called Eewee. One fatal morning Dow-
dow was a quarter of an hour late, and collided with
Eewee opposite our house. The noise of Eewee's
vituperations echoed down the street, and on rushing
to the window, I witnessed the discomfiture of the
soprano by the overawing personality of Dowdow,
who, being an ample dignified dame, secured her
victory by preserving a complete silence, and dropping
a series of elaborate and satirical curtseys. This was
my first experience of the triumph of mind over
matter. Three curious street cries may be noted :

Strawberries.

S

:^=f^

^11=^

:^

^

i

Er-ripe stra'-ber - ries, ripe stra'- ber - ries.

Herrings.

/r\

E

^=^^m^

Fresh herd'ns, Dub ■ lin Bay herd'ns.

Freestone.

ip:

F-r-r-r-ree

Such was Dublin, the town of laughter mixed with
tears. Before I left it in 1870, its glory was beginning
slowly to depart, whether from increased facilities for

IRISH LEGISLATION 99

travelling or from tinkering legislation, who can say ?
Perhaps from both. My eldest aunt, Kate Henn, a
person of the broadest views and sympathies, and one
of the first pioneers of the higher education of women
in Ireland, ascribed the decadence to three things, all
of which she had lived through and the results of
which she had watched. She said that in her young
days the country parishes of Ireland could boast of
three cultivated men to guide them, the parish priest,
the Protestant vicar, and the landlord. Before 1840
the priests were of necessity travelled men, who had
had opportunities of rubbing shoulders with French-
men and Italians. The Maynooth Grant narrowed
their experiences and stunted their education. The
Irish Church Disestablishment worked in the same
retrograde fashion on the Protestant parson, and the
Land Bill expatriated the landlord. So the country
districts lost touch with any vivifying or elevating
influence : and she added with a fine irony a fourth
cause of friction, Dublin Castle, calling it a remnant of
the worst side of Home Pule, which had outlived the
Act of Union, and stood directly in the path of the
complete realization of the effects of that measure ;
the representation of Royalty becoming a mere mouth-
piece of Party, ia//*' stability, f^ans permanent know-
ledge of the country, sim.s dignity, sans- any of the
experience necessary to a responsible chief. This
sim})le and thorough statement always seemed to me
to Ije the acme of common sense, and I could see the
results of the ])olicy she so disapproved acting slowly
on every interest, })ractical and artistic, in Dubhn.

100 PAGES FROM AN UNWRITTEN DIARY

Even the flagstones became more and more out of the
square and collected more mud in the interstices.

A letter from Joachim to his wife written in March
1868, gives such an interesting view of the Irish
character as it appeared to an intelligent foreign eye,
that I quote the passage in full.

" Ich kam in Dublin nicht zum schreiben, die Con-
certe brauchten viel Probirens, mit zwei Irliindern !
und einem deutschen Cellisten, der ein Frankfurter
und recht gut ist, Eisner. Er lebt seit Jahren mit
Weib und Kind in Dublin. Das ist eine schone Stadt,
nur Schade, dass man so viel Armuth, Trunkenheit und
nackten Schmutz im Volk sieht. England hat da viel
auf dem Gewissen und fangt an, das zu empfinden.
Der republikanische Fenianismus ist aber von America
importirt, hat keine Zukunft in der griinen Insel, die
eigentlich ziemlich feudal scheint, gern Pomp bewun-
dert, und seine Aristocratic gern verhatscheln wilrde,
wenn man seine Eigenliebe pflegte und dem Volk auch
Aufmerksamkeit und Liebe zeigte. Von Aufgeregtheit
und Rebellion merkte ich keine Spur ; es lautet so was
in der Regel in der Feme schlimmer, als man nahbei
findet."

(" I had no time to write in Dublin, the concerts
needed so many rehearsals, with two Irishmen ! and a
German Cellist who comes from Frankfurt and is an
excellent player, Eisner. He has lived for several
years in Dublin with his wife and family. Dublin is a
beautiful town, the only pity of it is that one sees so
much poverty, drunkenness and naked dirt in the
people. England has much on her conscience, and is
beginning to find it out. But the republican Fenian-

miSH TEMPERAMENT 101

ism is imported from America, and has no future in
the green island, which seems to be essentially feudal
(in its tendencies), likes to admire pomp, and would be
glad to be close friends with its aristocracy, if they
were tender to its idiosyncrasies, and also showed
consideration and love for the people. Of excitement
and rebellion I saw no sign. It seems much worse
from a distance than at close quarters.")

Music, the favourite art, declined and languished,
and everything became tainted with politics, wire-
pulling and discontent. The only quality which
remained indestructible was humour. Unfortunately
England usually sent officials to manage Irishmen who
either had no sense of it, or a sense of the satirical and
biting side of it which appealed to them less than no
humour at all. Pat dislikes sarcasm however witty :
he thinks it purely ill-natured. He will laugh at any
joke, even a practical joke, if it does not hurt. He
will have none of it if it does. The cause of much of
the friction between the typical Irishman and the
typical Englishman always appeared to me to be easy
enough to diagnose. If one Kelt offends another and
apologizes, the injured party does not only forgive, he
entirely and completely forgets. Tempers in Ireland
are quick but not bad. The Englishman does not ap-
preciate this distinction; he may quite honestly forgive,
but he never forgets. In this natural disability lies,
I feel sure, in great things as well as in small, the true
source of the proverbial incompatibility of the Irish
and English temperaments. The late Lord Morris
(himself a strong Unionist) once summed up the Irish
question as " a stupid nation trying to govern a clever

102 PAGES FROM AN UNWRITTEN DIARY

one": I should have liked to answer that very out-
spoken dictum by substituting "slow" for "stupid"
and " quick " for " clever." The slowness, which in
England's history has mainly tended towards sureness,
develops a less valuable quality, when it produces a
constitutional inability to rub the sponge over the
slate, and to meet generosity of admission with
generosity of appreciation.

CHAPTER VII

Education of musicians — Cambridge in 1870 — Tbe German Keeds
and John Parry — Birmingham Festival — Cambridge Dons —
The C.U.M.S. — Sterndale Bennett — Musical undergraduates —
The lOUX Indians.

Walking up Regent Street in the spring of 1870
with my father, he suddenly stopped opposite Peter
Robinson's shop and put the momentous question
" what I was going to be ?" The answer came out quite
as promptly, " A musician." I knew his hankering
for the Bar, and also the traditional prejudice that
all Irishmen of his school had against an artistic
career : he was silent, but only for a moment, and
accepted the situation. But he laid down his con-
ditions, which were a general University education
first, and a specifically musical study abroad after-
wards. (There was at that time no means of getting
the best possible musical training in this country.)
He was no believer in specializing without general
knowledge, and experience has convinced me that he
was entirely and absolutely right. Without excep-
tion the greatest artists and composers I have known
have been men of all-round ability, wide reading and
a general education (even when self- acquired) on a
par with that of any University, or profession. This
is equally true of the most world-famous executants
as of the greatest composers. Liszt, Joachim, Hans
von Billow, to mention only three of the outstanding

103

104 PAGES FROM AN UNWRITTEN DIARY

names of the nineteenth century, were all highly culti-
vated men, who could hold their own in any sur-
roundings. When Joachim came to Leipzig as a boy,
he was placed by Mendelssohn under the care of Pro-
fessor Klengel for general education, and he afterwards
was a student at Gottingen University. Von Billow
was an Encyclopaedia in himself A master of Latin
and Greek, with a profound knowledge of philosophy,
he once amazed the Professor of Geology at Cam-
bridge by discussing the most technical branches of
that science, as if it had been his main study in life.
So it was with Mozart (an expert mathematician),
Beethoven, Schumann, Mendelssohn, Berlioz, Wagner
and Brahms. The Russian School of the present day
consists largely of men who have been trained for
other walks in life ; the navy, the engineers, the
foreign office have all got representatives in the list
of composers. Borodin was great in chemistry,
Rimsky-Korsakow was a distinguished naval officer.

In England this broad view of general culture for
the musical profession had not yet taken hold, save
in an isolated instance or two, such as Sterndale
Bennett and Hugo Pierson. After 1875 the atmos-
phere began to change ; the entry of many of my
colleagues who were public school and university men
into the profession could scarcely fail to raise the
standard of music as well as the status of its ad-
herents. The last forty-five years have witnessed a
revolution in the quality of the work and in the
appreciation of the workers, which, at times resisted
by short-sighted contemporaries who held that art
was only possible in the ranks of Bohemian ignora-

CAMBRIDGE IN 1870 105

muses, and as sturdily fought for by those of wider
views and more cosmopohtan experience, must have
its effect upon future generations and be rated by
them at its true value. A great deal has been written
about the Renaissance of Music in England during
the last half-century. The true seed of this develop-
ment is to be found in such a scheme of preparation
as my father held to be essential. True art must
have all-round education to back it. It must stand
accusations of "academicism," (the latest catchword
for the works of all men who learn their business
before they practise it), and such like pigeon-holed
epithets, without flinching from main principles, if it
is to worry through and make its mark. The work
of those who force their way through paths most
beset with drawbacks and difficulties, is the most
likely to live.

My father and I had come to London on the way
to Cambridge where I had entered for a scholarship
at Trinity Hall. I did not succeed in winning it, but I
laid the foundation of some valuable friendships. Alfred
Pretor, one of my examiners (the editor of "Cicero's
Letters" and of " Persius "), was an enthusiastic
musical amateur, who pioneered me into all the organ-
lofts, as a relief from iambics and hexameters : and I
found in the diapasons of Father Smith a great con-
solation after the scratching of quill pens upon paper.
We saw many faces of famous men who had hitherto
been but names to me : Adams, the discoverer of
Neptune, turned out to be as keen a rose-grower as
an astronomer, and found his way, through the
medium of "Senator Vaisse " and "Marshal Niel,"

106 PAGES FROM AN UNWRITTEN DIARY

straight to the gardener heart of my father. Miller,
the chirpy and seraphic Professor of Mineralogy, and
his artistic wife, whose pen-and-ink sketches were of
microscopic perfection, were hospitable figures in the
scene. " Ben " Latham, too, with his blunt contempt
for music ; did he not, when in later years he built
himself a lordly pleasure-house, ask an undergraduate
friend if it was absolutely necessary to include a piano-
forte among his list of furniture, and receiving a
decided answer in the affirmative, betake himself to
the house of Broadwood, order a grand, and add (with
his characteristic dropping of the r) " I should pwefer
one without works " ? A typical Saxon was " Ben,"
with the kindliest of hearts hidden away under a thick
armour of cynicism, apparently exulting in every
prosaic quality, only to disclose in the first chapter
of his book, " Angels," what a real poet he was.

As my father and I stood on the bridge of Clare,
two undergraduates moored a canoe by the banks of
the Fellows' garden, (it was vacation time and they
thought they were safe), placed a gorgeous rug on the
grass, and proceeded to discuss the contents of a large
silver cup. But, to my father's sporting indignation,
out came he who was then and still is the Master,
and they had to beat a hurried and hazardous retreat.
Phillips, President of Queens', and his most sym-
pathetic Irish wife, were the prime movers in deter-
mining my migration to Cambridge. An organist
scholarship, one of the first founded at the University,
was vacant at his College, which he placed at my
disposal, and this, with a classical scholarship to which
I was subsequently elected, enabled me to enter the

CAMBRIDGE IN 1870 107

University. Phillips was a tall commanding figure,
with a gentle twinkle in his eye, who took longer to
say a sentence of four or five words than the ordinary
man took over one of fifty. "It is er-er-er-er-Er (a
great effort here) a er-er very fine er-er-er-er-day,"
is a rough sample of his manner of speech. So slow
were his tongue and his gait, that the satirical
Thompson, Master of Trinity, seeing him walk or
rather crawl down King's Parade, said to a friend
" There goes old Phillips, he's slower than he looks.
He'll be as slow in dying as he is in living."

I had a momentary sight too of one face, which is
as living to me to-day as if I had seen it yesterday ;
the face of a unique man, with a head of Napoleonic
grandeur, a fleeting smile of extraordinary charm, and
a voice which betrayed in every accent and cadence
the sympathy which bubbled up in him for everything
and everybody, from angels to devils ; sitting in a
room so littered with letters and books that there was
scarcely room for his teapot ; the same face in 1870 as
I afterwards was ever grateful for having known in
later and more closely intimate days ; the face of
Henry Bradshaw. I only saw it for a brief minute
that spring, when I went to ask him for an order for
King's Chapel, but it left its mark on my memory,
and it was a good day for me when Hallam Tennyson
first took me to his rooms, and I saw my old friend the
china teapot, with the strainer hanging to the spout,
still standing in a nest of books, and experienced the
quiet welcome which was as second nature to him, and
wliich gave the impression that he had known his
visitor for years.

108 PAGES FROM AN UNWRITTEN DIARY

With these silhouettes fresh in my memory, we
went back to London, where we saw one entertain-
ment of a consumedly humorous kind given in the
hall where it was born and bred, the German Reeds
and John Parry in the Gallery of Illustration. They
were unassisted save by a pianoforte, but the per-
formance was complete and perfect in its miniature
way. They played a very funny piece, called " Out of
Town " ; John Parry, amongst other disguises, ap-
pearing as a fat schoolboy in nankeens, and Mrs.
German Reed singing a ditty called, I think, " In
Cheltenham," the refrain of which is still in my ears.
Parry, with that wonderful lock of hair falling
over his eye, gave sohs a sketch called " A Charity
Dinner," in which he peopled the stage with a host of
imaginary diners, made speeches in various styles of
ridiculous oratory, sang songs as a professional lady,
taking off a pair of visionary white gloves to accom-
pany herself, and ended by escorting a procession of
invisible orphans round the dinner-table, touching
some of them up with a white wand, boxing the ears
of others, all in a most conventional claw-hammer
evening coat. His pianoforte playing was masterly,
and he had a touch to rival Thalberg himself Before
this excellent trio left their old haunts, they added to
their company, and gave, amongst other musical
pieces of great charm, Sullivan's " Cox and Box." In
it I saw for the first time Arthur Cecil, whose singing
(with a tiny but wholly sympathetic voice) of the
Lullaby to the Bacon has never been excelled. The
little company visited Cambridge when I was an
undergraduate, and Mrs. German Reed came to tea

BIRMINGHAM FESTIVAL 109

with me. I took her to see the " Backs" of the col-
leges, where the footpaths are all entered by walking
between two iron posts. They were too close together
for Mrs. G. R.'s anatomy, and she kept ejaculating,
"Go on in front, my dear, while I squeeze Mrs. Heed
through."

Before going up to Cambridge I crossed the Irish
Channel once more to visit the Birmingham Festival,
in company with Stewart and some other Irish friends.
The hospitality of the place was unbounded. The
music, with the exception of the material of the
chorus, the individual excellence of the singers, and
the colossal quality of the strings (Costa had forty-
eight violins), was often dull. The inevitable "Elijah"
and " Messiah " were of course the main props of the
performance. I had never heard the " Elijah " per-
formed complete before, nor any of it under such
conditions. I felt then as I do still, that it was an
artistic mistake to prolong the work beyond the
ascent of the fiery chariot. " When a piece is over,
it is over " was the acute remark of a Leipzig stage-
manager to me in after-years ; he added that no opera
composer will ever realize this. This highly gifted
man was one of the first to think of the possibility of
staging the " Elijah," but he regarded this failing as a
barrier to the full effect it would produce in action.
Costa conducted his " Naaman " to a deservedly half-
empty house. It was an odd study of an open-air
Italian trying to conform to the traditions of the
stained-glass window. The performance of Mozart's
"Requiem," to whicli I had greatly looked forward,
was simply execrablr. With foui- first-class soloists

110 PAGES FROM AN UNWRITTEN DIARY

(lima di Murska was the soprano) who gave the im-
pression of never having rehearsed together, and a
chorus, languid from over- much work, the effect was
lamentable. In justice to everyone it must be said
that rehearsals in those days were both few in number
and interminable in length ; much therefore had to be
left to chance, and to the belief in Field-Marshal
Costa's right arm. The two most interesting figures
were Gade, an alert little man with a face curiously
resembling the pictures of Mozart, and Ferdinand
Hiller, whose Schumannesque "Nala and Damayanti "
was in too unfamiliar an idiom to admit of its proper
rendering under the conditions which then prevailed.
It was literally pulled through by the pluck of the
soprano, an admirable artist, Miss Edith Wynne, who
after an unaccompanied chorus had fallen the best part
of half a tone, came in plumb on the right note without
a help of any sort, and deserved the Victoria Cross for
countless other hazardous rescues. I stayed at the
Woolpack, next door to the room where Mendelssohn
and Bennett supped with my father in 1846.*

When I went up to Cambridge in October, I found
many old Dublin friends amongst my contemporaries.
The Butchers, the two most brilliant undergraduates of
my day, Lawson (the son of the fearless judge), Lee,
son of the Archdeacon, and Richard West, son of the
Dean. The last named who was considerably the
eldest of the party, was one of the wittiest, quaintest,
and most artistic of them all. He was so uncannily
well read that he did not need a Latin or Greek
Dictionary. It used to be a standing joke to try and
* See my " Studies and Memories," p. 122.

CAMBRIDGE DONS 111

catch him out with some obscure word in Liddell and
Scott, but he was never once stumped. He was a born
caricaturist, and painted a collection of Dons in a style
worthy of Pellegrini himself. Shilleto, standing with
his back to the fire, behind a rampart of red -silk
pocket-handkerchiefs, scattered across the hearthrug,
taking a pinch of snuff, and saying " I have a theory
about that word " : the chapel-clerk of King's, a most
unique figure : Dr. Guillemard, a very short man with
an immense head, whose proportions were verified by a
scale of feet, as in the maps : the cadaverous Paley,
and many others. The fame of this irreverent picture-
book reached the ears of Dr. Thompson, Master of
Trinity, who sent a regal command for its inspection,
and insisted upon West drawing a duplicate of Shil-
leto for him. Two of the examination stories of
our time were of special dehght to West. In the
Mechanics paper of the Little-go the question was
asked " Why cannot a pin stand on its point ?"
There were three answers of nearly equal merit :

1. " A. point is that which has no parts and no mag-
nitude ; myo a pin cannot stand on nothing."

2. "A pin cannot stand on its head, a fortiori it
cannot stand on its point."

3. (The prize answer) " It will, if you stick it in."
The other had an element of tragedy in it. Sitting

next West in the Senate House was a fellow- commoner
of mature years, whom either examination-mania or
the prospect of a family living had induced to try for a
University degree. It was a classical paper, and
West as he came out met me on the steps holding a
slip of paper, which after careful manoeuvring his

112 PAGES FROM AN UNWRITTEN DIARY

neighbour had, when the proctor was on another
scent, pushed over to him. On it was written these
agonized words : "I have a wife and six children.
For God's sake tell me the English of etiam."

Music in Cambridge was then in a disorganized
state. There was plenty of talent, but no means of
concentrating it for useful purposes. The University
Musical Society, which was one of the most ancient in
England, was at low ebb. Originally founded by
William Thomson (afterwards Lord Kelvin) and Mr.
Blow at their college, Peterhouse, in 1843, the society
had lived through days of varying prosperity, but
always numbered amongst its leading members men of
progressive views and active enthusiasm. Its early
programmes had been plentifully sprinkled with works
both new and unfamiliar. Schumann appears in the
lists with a first performance of the Overture with
the Rheinweinlied, and a (problematical) premiere of
the Pianoforte Concerto, at all events one of its first
appearances in an English programme : Wagner also,
with the Finale of the first act of " Tannhiiuser." Both
these were given about 1860. The means were prob-
ably inadequate, but the will and the enthusiasm were
there. The amateurs of those early days were men
who had studied the art and were often little if at all
inferior to contemporary professionals. Frank Hudson,
a most brilliant violinist who had won the approval of
Ernst, whom he visited when that great artist was a
guest of Bulwer Lytton, and his elder brother, Percy
(now Canon Pemberton, well known in more recent
days as the honorary conductor and founder of the
Hovingham Festivals) who was a skilled violoncellist,

THE C.U.M.S. 113

were pillars of the house. C. J. E. Smith, commonly
called Piano Smith, G. F. Cobb, William Austen
Leigh, were all pianists, who had studied their art
as well as their technique. Another Don, the Rev.
J. R. Lunn of St. John's, was a wild pianistic en-
thusiast. He began the day by putting his egg into
a saucepan, and timing its boiling by playing the
Overture to " Figaro." He copied out a pocket
edition of Bach's forty-eight Preludes and Fugues,
which he used to read as he took his constitutional : if
in the course of his walk he saw a friend, he would
rush across the street and splutter out "Do you know
the Recitativo piii Adagio in Beethoven's Op. 110?
It's Grand." I heard this worthy once at the York
Festival of 1872. He was put down, near the end of
a long programme, to play " Kreisleriana . . . Schu-
mann." I anticipated at most one of the set of eight
pieces. But he put the music in front of him, and went
right through them all. After the third the applause in
the room became more and more loud and prolonged,
in the hopes of the pianist taking a kindly hint that
they had had enough, but he accepted it all as well-
deserved homage, and the performance ended in a
mixed babel of coughs, jabber, and piano hammers.
Lunn was wont to treat his audiences as if they were
troublesome undergraduates at a lecture. He once
ascended the platform a few minutes ))efore the concert
began, sat himself dtnvn at the piano and, without
striking any notes, i)roceeded to go through an acro-
batic exhibition of wrist and finger exercises, ^^llich
caused a crc-sreudo of merriment amonirst the assem-
bling public. This was too much for him, and he

8

114 PAGES FROM AN UNWRITTEN DIARY

shook an angry fist at the audience, making a face of
concentrated fury the while, as he retired from the
fray. Amongst the names of singers, the Society's
records contain those of Arthur Coleridge, Spencer
Lyttelton, and R. Webster, better known now as Lord
Alverstone, who, despite a busy legal career, has been
a lifelong and devoted supporter of the art.

The difficulty which stood in the way of progress
was an obvious one. There were no sopranos save
boys ; the altos were a handful of choirmen ; the
Society was neither fish, flesh nor fowl. It did not
try to be a first-class MJinner-Gesangverein, for which
there were ample materials if they were properly
worked. The bad balance of voices damped the
enthusiasm of the men. There was but one hope of
salvation, the admission of women into the ranks.
I found a strong advocate for this move in Ashton
Dilke. He and I had the hardihood to propose the
revolution in 1871, and found ourselves in a minority
of two. Other methods had to be adopted to dish
the conservatives, and having put hand to the plough
there was no turning back. Hitherto no lady con-
nected with the University had dreamed of taking
her place in a chorus except in private. There was
Mrs. Grundy to fight as well as the Tory under-
graduate. But the hour had come, and with it the
woman. Mrs. Dunn, a contralto with a voice of
great richness and so well equipped musically that
she could sing the Arias of Sebastian Bach in a way
which earned the encomiums of Joachim, came to the
rescue and obtained the active help of several ladies
of wider views than had hitherto been countenanced

STERNDALE BENNETT 115

in the stiff severity of Cambridge ; and with a little
effort was founded a small choir called the " Amateur
Vocal Guild," which gave two public concerts and
scored an immediate success. At the second of these
performances was produced Bach's Cantata, " Gottes
Zeit ist die allerbeste Zeit," for the first time in
England. The effect of this rival society was such,
that the Tories of the C.U.M.S. rubbed their eyes,
and when they were offered a fusion, which was
backed up by a strong letter from Sterndale Bennett
(the University Professor of Music), the decision of
the previous year was exactly reversed. A little
later a private society " The Fitzwilliam," which had
done a great deal of quiet good in spreading a taste
for Bach, and other less-known composers, also joined
the old Society, and it became a flourishing choral
body of considerable numbers, with well-balanced
parts.

The first united concert was devoted, as in duty
bound, to a performance of Bennett's " May Queen,"
under the direction of the composer himself We had
a complete and excellent band, but so imbued was
Bennett with old memories of orchestral collapses
ill Cambridge, that no power on earth would induce
him to allow it to accompany the solos, a duty which
1 had to perform unwillingly on the pianoforte. I
assured him that the players knew the work by heart,
but all to no purpose. After tliis new start, the
Society I'etui'ned to its old progressive policy, and
with the help of a tirst-rate orchestra now within
its means, it began its mission of making known
new works as well as of making the audiences ffimiliar

116 PAGES FROM AN UNWRITTEN DIARY

with the best of the old. Schumann's "Paradise and
the Peri " was the first important revival, which was
followed by the first performance in England of the
same composer's " Faust " music (Part 3), and Brahms'
"Requiem."

Chamber music was also well to the fore, and the
public performances of quartets and concerted pieces
by finished players gave a speedy impulse to the
music -loving undergraduates, who formed a string
quartet of their own. This devoted four used to
practise assiduously, often into the small hours of
the morning, in rooms in the great court tower of
Trinity facing the chapel. They played steadily
through all the quartets of Haydn, and many of
those of other great masters ; I well recollect hearing
about midnight a blood-curdling sound issuing from
the upper windows, which resolved itself into the
" Terremoto " from Haydn's "Seven Last Words."
This little band of players, who numbered amongst
them W. Blakesley, son of the Dean of Lincoln,
F. 0. Bower, now Professor of Botany at Glasgow
University, and his brother, and later Mr. Abdy
Williams, the musical historian, eventually founded
a series of weekly concerts in connection with the
University Musical Society, called " The Wednesday
Pops," which gave abundant opportunities for talented
students to be heard both in vocal and instrumental
works. For more difficult and important compositions
a complete orchestra was brought down from London.
The committee at first considered me extravagant
in such things as the engagement of four horns, and
they had to be shown by ocular demonstration that

MUSICAL UNDERGRADUATES 117

those instruments were only capable of playing one
note at a time each, and that the omission of any
of them meant gaps in the sound. But a little
experience, and the good effects produced in the
exchequer by the consistently high standard of
performance, soon dissipated their qualms. They
were happy too in the possession of some excellent
vocalists among their members which minimized the
most expensive item in the budget. G. R. Murray
came up from Eton, a full-blown tenor, who made
his debut by one of the accidents which so often
discover great ability. At the first performance of
Schumann's " Paradise and the Peri," a most arduous
and difficult work then practically unknown in
England, the tenor singer engaged fell ill, and Murray
took his place, reading the long part at sight at
rehearsal, and giving it the effect of a finished reading
at the performance. If von Biilow had heard him,
he would have hesitated to class him amongst
" diseases," as he termed tenors in general. The
baritones too had a strong representative in H. E.
Thorndike, afterwards a well-known professional
singer.

Such is the short history of the regeneration of the
body known to Cambridge men, as the C.U.M.S.
Grove's " Dictionary of Music" did not say a word too
much, when it put on record that the society had
become a pioneer and a power in the country.

During a brief Christmas visit to Ireland in 1870, T
renewed some old friendsliips vvliich recalled earlier
days. There was a great gathering at Adare, wlierc I
saw Lord Dunraven lor tlie last time. 1 went on the

118 PAGES FROM AN UNWRITTEN DIARY

road home to stay with the Bishop of Limerick, where
a most comical and irresponsible dramatic entertain-
ment took place. A dramatic sketch (it could not be
called a play) had been written by the Bishop's three
sons, and I was called in to supply the music. The
orchestra available consisted of a pianoforte and a
gong. It was a skit on Darwinism, and the characters
were primitive men who had retained the Simian caudal
appendage. The plot was merely an exposition of the
manners and customs of a tribe called " The lOUX
Indians." Various folk-songs of this tailed crew were
included in the piece, notably a dirge at a cannibal
dinner, of which the refrain was :

"Pass the pepper, pass the salt.
Our insides shall be his vault !"

The crowning achievement was an lOUX National
Anthem, each verse of which was followed by a dance
of barbaric grandeur with gong ohbligato to which the
tail-whirling gave an original, or rather aboriginal
flavour. This hymn deserves quotation in full :

" Our native land is lOU.
Man-meat we're very partial to,
We drink both castor-oil, and glue :
We really do !
Chm'us. We really do !
And when we've none our tails we chew.

{Gong, three strokes, and dance.)

" Our dress consists of quills and tape.
Red blankets, postage stamps and crape,
For which we hunt the long-legged ape :
He can't escape !
Chorus. He can't escape !
These from his shoulder-blades we scrrrrape.

{Gong and dance.)

THE lOUX INDIANS 119

" Our manners are both mild and meek,
crescendo We shout and roar and scream and squeak,
pp And then sit silent for a week,
And play Bezique,
Chorus. And play Bezique,
Until our joints with stiffness creak.

[Gong and dance.)

" Then to the music of the Gong
A-combing of our tresses long,
We bound into the battle throng.
To wrong the right, and right the wrong !
Oh, come along !
Choi-us. Oh, come along !"

CHAPTER VIII

Trinity College in 1873— The Master— T. A. Walmisley— The
Schumann Festival at Bonn — Brahms — Paris after the Com-
mune.

The organist at Trinity College, Dr. J. L. Hopkins (a
cousin of Dr. E. J. Hopkins of the Temple Church)
became an invalid in 1872, just after the first rebuild-
ing of its renowned organ, and the establishment of
periodical recitals in the College Chapel. During his
enforced absence his place was taken by Mr. Gerard
Cobb, Fellow and Junior Bursar of the College, who was
a cultivated amateur, and I, on some occasions, helped
to fill the gap. Hopkins died in 1873, and I was
elected as his successor, the College having generously
accepted the condition that I was to study in Germany
after taking my degree.

When I migrated from Queens' to Trinity, I found
myself in a little world peopled by many old friends, and
governed by a race of remarkable rulers. Amongst the
Fellows were such well-known men as Adam Sedgwick,
the geologist, Munro, the editor of " Lucretius," E. W.
Blore, son of the architect and famous among old
Etonians as a cricketer, R. Burn, the archaeologist,
Coutts Trotter, learned in chemistry and physiology,
and my staircase neighbour and old friend B. C. Jebb,
a brother Irishman whose " oak " used to stand open
till the small hours, and with whom I had many an
illuminating midnight talk. His rooms and mine,

120

THE MASTER 121

which were on the first floor, were once the home of Sir
Isaac Newton, and below were two sets which had
been occupied by Thackeray and Macaulay. Amongst
my contemporaries were Frank Balfour, the pioneer of
Animal Morphology, who was killed on the Alps at the
zenith of his fame, his brothers Gerald and Eustace,
Hallam (now Lord) Tennyson, and his brother Lionel,
Charles Brookfield, A. W. Verrall the brilliant scholar,
Arthur Lyttelton (afterwards Bishop of Southampton),
F. Jenkinson (now the University Librarian), Henry
and John George Butcher and many more. Over us
all towered a tall, dignified and strikingly handsome
figure, W. H. Thompson, the successor of Whewell in
the Mastership.

This dua^ duSpcou, the contemporary and friend of
Arthur Hallam, Tennyson, Trench, Blakesley, Merivale,
and other great Englishmen of the thirties, filled the
post of head of the College with a dignity and impres-
siveness which was at once a parallel and a foil to that
of his colleague at Oxford, Dean Liddell. He con-
cealed, sometimes too successfully, a kindly heart under
sarcastic armour. The expression of his face was stern
when in repose ; a drooping eyelid and a downward
curve of his tight lips gave an impression of innate
satirical force which belied the humanity within. It
is obvious that he did not know himself the effect pro-
duced by his own facial expression. Herkomer painted
his portrait for the Hall, a most vivid and characteristic
work ; when the artist had reached the point of allow-
ing his sitter to see the picture, Thompson looked at it
with sad surprise, and said " I did not know tliat I
had sucli a contempt for mankind." 1 had an early

122 PAGES FROM AN UNWRITTEN DIARY

taste of both his kindness and his satire. Before my
election to the organistship, the Fellows paid me the, I
believe unique, compliment of asking me, an under-
graduate, to dine at the High Table. This required a
special vote of the Seniority, and Mr. Cobb, who was
present, told me that the Master's comment on the
proposal was, " Could we refuse anything to an under-
graduate who plays like St. Cecilia ?" Cobb added
that he hoped that I would not adopt the Saint's organ
technique, and keep my thumbs below the keys. But
Thompson had his little corrective ready. I had been
giving some recitals in the Chapel, and was no doubt,
as youngsters will be, rather exuberant in my style.
When shortly afterwards my election to the organist's
post was proposed, he said not a word till it was
carried, but when all was finally settled, he delivered
himself of this double-edged comment : " Mr. Stan-
ford's playing always charms, and occasionally . . .
astonishes : and I may add that the less it astonishes,
the more it charms." When I paid him my duty visit
after my appointment, I prepared to receive cavalry.
He masked his attack at first, and was all charm, but
the charge came right enough. After informing me of
the duties required, and the wishes of the College, he
embarked on my coming visit to Germany, and wound
up, as if it were a slip of the tongue, " And may I ask,
shall you have in Leipzig any recreation in the inter-
vals of organ-blowing ?" I formed square, and repelled
the attack by assuming that he had said "playing,"
and by a successful control of my risible muscles. His
idea of music was excessively vague, and he soon
showed that his judgment was not always founded on

THE MASTER 123

knowledge. It was the custom at the time for the
organist to play a set piece before the anthem on
Sunday evening. On one occasion I chose an arrange-
ment of an Aria from Bach's St. Matthew Passion.
He sent for Mr. Cobb the next morning and asked him
to request the organist not to play such secular music
in Chapel. Cobb, bubbling with inward laughter,
broke it to him gently that the piece was from one of
the most sacred works ever composed. The Master was
not to be beaten, and said, "Tell him then to confine
his repertoire to such music as is, I believe, played at
the Monday Popular Concerts." Cobb answered with
becoming gravity, that I was certain to conform to
such a broad-minded request.

Thompson was not always complimentary to the
musical profession. When the late Mr. Edmund
Gurney, a Fellow of Trinity and author of the " Power
of Sound " told him of his intention to enter its ranks,
he was surprised by the consolatory rejoinder, " Well,
Mr. Gurney, it is a grade better than dancing." He
gave a party to the recipients of honorary degrees in
1876, Avhen Macfarren, Goss, and Sullivan were pre-
sent in their doctors' robes, and he asked the Junior
Bursar "Who are all those painted jays?" He could
also be severe upon himself. When he held a canonry
of Ely Cathedral, then an appanage of the Greek
Professorship, he complained of the dampness of his
study, saying that even liis sermons could not keep
dry on the shelves.

On a later occasion I had to consult the Master
about the possibility of starting a scheme of pensions
for the choirmen, which would make it easier to dis-

124 PAGES FROM AN UNWRITTEN DIARY

pense, without hardship, of the services of singers who
were past their work. After a long and for him
somewhat dry discussion, the old wit peeped out. He
launched into a description of his early visits to Rome,
and wound up by saying " I often visited the Sistine
Chapel, and in my young days the singing of those
gentlemen, (j)ia7iissimo) if I may so term them, was
most beautiful." Some of the Master's best sayings
have, after the manner of the world, been diverted
from the real author and credited to other humorists
of his time. I have often heard the well-known " We
are none of us infalHble, not even the youngest amongst
us " ascribed to Jowett, though the saying is no more
like the style of the Master of Balliol than that of
Bacon is like Shakespeare's. As a matter of fact I
lieard this sentence reported, hot from the mint, out of
the mouth of one of the Fellows, as he came down the
stairs from a College meeting for the discussion of the
new statutes, when Thompson had said it. He made
another apposite jest at the same meeting ; he rang
for a glass of water, the butler brought it and as he
came in turned up the lights :

Thompson. " Hinc lucem et pocula sacra."
He very occasionally preached in Chapel. When he
did everyone was agog for some moment of pointed
wit. There was rarely more than one, and very often
the rest of the discourse was dull enough to show off
the gem. He preached on the parable of the ten talents,
and the moment came in the peroration, when he
addressed successively the Fellows, and the under-
graduates, saying to the former " To those of you who
have two, or even three talents," and to the latter " To

THE MASTER 125

those of you that have but one talent, and that, I
fear, occasionally hidden in a napkin." At the time
of the last University Commission, Coutts Trotter, a
big burly man, very shy and often gauche in con-
sequence, who was a tutor of the College and a leading
Radical, published a brochure quoting the emoluments
of College officers, and arguing for the abolition of
such expensive luxuries as Masterships of Colleges.
On his way to Chapel the Master met Trotter and the
skirmish began by "Good-morning, Mr. Trotter. I
have read your pamphlet, and, until I did, T did not
know how much you and I were overpaid." I heard
from the organ-loft the immediate sequel. He
preached, and I knew from the tone of his voice that
we were in for a good thing. His text, given slowly
and distinctly twice over, was " The law is our school-
master." The sting came, not in the tail of the
sermon, but in the opening sentence :

"The word translated ' school -master ' may perhaps
be better translated 'pedagogue,' or (looking round at
the stalls and especially at Coutts Trotter's) . . . tutor
. . . tutor. He was occasionally a civilized, but more
ordinarily quite a rude uncouth person." The excellent
Trotter gave a great heave in his seat, and a gentle
swish of smothered laughter came from the seven hun-
dred undergraduates. When I went up to the Univer-
sity, Charles Kingsley was Professor of Modern History,
and resigning shortly afterwards was succeeded by
Seeley. Thompson went to Seeley's first lecture, and
being asked by a friend as he came out what he
thought of it, kill«;d two birds with one stone thus, " I
did not know that we should miss Kingsley so soon !"

126 PAGES FROM AN UNWRITTEN DIARY

This double-edged satire was a favourite weapon of his.
When Dean Howson preached a University Sermon,
Thompson's criticism was " I was thinking what a very
clever man Conybeare must have been,"* Dean
Farrar, who was a most popular man in the University
Pulpit, but, alas, was no favourite of the Master's, was
staying at the Lodge, and his host accompanied him to
St. Mary's.

As Thompson was coming out of church he met a
lady who bubbled over to him in her admiration of the
Dean's oratory.

Lady. " What wonderful taste he has, Master !"

Thompson. " Yes, yes ! And unfortunately all of it
so very bad."

When he and Farrar returned to the Lodge, the
visiting-card of an Oxford magnate was lying on the
hall-table.

Thompson {picking it up and showing it to the Dean).

" That shows that Mr. came neither to see me

nor to hear you."

In those days Magdalene College, which stands at
the other side of the river Cam, largely consisted of
sporting men, some of whom were old Trinity under-
graduates who had failed in their May exams., and had
migrated thither. An Oxford Don on his visiting
Thompson asked him if there was not also a Magdalene
at Cambridge.

Thompson {icith the air of trying to remember). " Yes,
I believe there is. A transpontine Institution for fallen
undergraduates."

* Conybeare and Howson were joint-authors of a standard work
upon St. Paul's Epistles.

THE MASTEE 127

The Master was always in the van of University
progress, and, as J. W. Clark the Registrar told me,
never failed at a crisis, even when hampered by illness,
to record his vote. Before one crucial division he
came into the Senate House, stood in the doorway
surveying the serried ranks of country parsons who
had swarmed up to oppose his pet legislation, turned
to a neighbour and said, " Until I came here to-day, I
did not understand to the full the meaning of that most
excellent term, the ' Inferior Clergy.' " When the See
of Ripon fell vacant, and an unexpected appointment
was made to it, someone said to Thompson, " Who is
this man Bickersteth, who has been made Bishop of
Ripon ? "

Thompson. " I am told that he was a Queens' man
and a Junior Optime, and as far as I can ascertain, he
has done nothing unworthy of those antecedents."

He would scarify a Don who was over- particular
about his personal appearance : " The time Mr. — —
can spare from the decoration of his person, he devotes
to the neglect of his duties." He wrote from Marienbad,
where he was taking the waters, a pathetic complaint
that Society in that town consisted " rather of the
chosen than of the choice people." He could also
smooth down an offended spirit. The secretary of the
CCS. Society, best known as " The Apostles," the
foundation of which dati^d from the Master's under-
graduate days, was anxious to get photographs of all
the early members for collection in an album, and in
this project Thompson took a lively interest, helping
in every possible way. Amongst the answers was one
very crusty missive from Merivale, Dean of Ely, who

128 PAGES FROM AN UNWRITTEN DIARY

saw in the suggestion another sign of the general
decadence of the modern Cambridge man, and ex-
pressed himself accordingly. The secretary in distress
sent the epistle to the Master, who replied in a long
letter which entirely ignored the difficulty until the
postscript, which ran " Don't mind old Merivale's
growls : whom the Dean loveth etc." ! He could also
pay a pretty compliment. When my daughter was born,
he immediately christened her " The Tenth Muse."

He sometimes took a naughty joy in inspiring Mrs.
Thompson to make a joke, which he would afterwards
demolish. At one of his breakfasts Henry Butcher
and Lamb (a mathematical scholar) were placed on
each side of their hostess.

Mrs. T. " What a curious position I am in, sitting
between the butcher and the lamb !"

(Subdued titter of the undergraduates.)

The Master. "There is nothing in this world so
rude as to make jokes upon persons' names."

(Collapse of the audience, and a deathly silence.)

The last time I saw- him, he, a life-long Liberal, was
sitting in the Fellows' reading-room on the Sunday
morning in 1886 when the elections which sealed the
fate of the first Home Rule Bill were announced.
Another Don, equally Liberal and equally Unionist
was reading out the results of the pollings to him with
great gusto. When the list was finished, I said to the
Master, *' I wonder if Mr. Gladstone is reading the
lessons this morning ?"

Thompson. " If he does, he will choose the one con-
taining ' Curse ye Meroz, curse ye bitterly the inhabi-
tants thereof "

T. A. WALMISLEY 129

The organistship had in former days been held by
at least one exceptionally gifted musician, Thomas
Attwood Walmisley. He was almost the first English-
man to know and admire the B minor Mass of Sebas-
tian Bach, and told Arthur Coleridge as far back as
1850 that the " Confiteor " in this work was in his
opinion the greatest thing in music. He infected
Coleridge so thoroughly with his own enthusiasm for
the Mass that he unwittingly prepared the way for its
complete performance in England, which Coleridge
brought to pass in 1876, when, with the help of Mr.
Otto Goldschmidt, he founded the Bach Choir.
Walmisley unfortunately, like some others of his time,
was a victim of four o'clock dinners in Hall, and long
symposiums in the Combination Room after ; and
being a somewhat lonely bachelor, the excellent port
of the College cellars was, at times, more his master
than his servant. One catastrophe gave occasion for
an admirable witticism of his bosom friend, W. G.
Clark, the editor of " Shakespeare." There was once
such a crash of sound in the organ-loft at evening
Chapel, that popular imagination pictured Walmisley
sitting on the keys and playing on the seat. For this
anticipation of Schonberg he was summoned to appear
next day l^efore the Seniority. In the morning Clark,
who lived close by, came in to comfort and cheer him.
He found the dejected organist sitting gloomily by a
table on which was a tell-tale empty bottle, in a thick
atmosphere of tobacco.

Walmisley. " Oh what am I to say to them, Clark,
what am I to say to them ?"

Clark. " Nothing easier, my dear fellow. Say ' I

9

130 PAGES FROM AN UNWRITTEN DIARY

am become like a bottle in the smoke, yet I do not
forget thy statutes.'"

After Walmisley's death, the question was raised as
to the advisability of chanofina: the dinner-hour, and
preceding it by the evening service. This move was
precipitated by another accident in the Chapel itself,
not in the curtained recesses of the organ-screen. One
of the Fellows on reaching his seat, instead of going
through the usual formula with his College cap,
remained standing, beamed round upon the congrega-
tion with an engaging smile, slowly raised the sleeves of
his surplice and twisted them into a gigantic white tie,
before taking his seat. This sealed the fate of early Hall.

Curious things used to take place in the early days
at the far East end of the Chapel, which was known
by the name of " Iniquity corner." At that time no
awe-inspiring Don sat in that region to keep a watchful
eye on the frivolous youngster. There were rumours
even of secret rubbers of whist. Criticism on the
music and other subjects was freely bandied about.
One historical conversation there is still remembered.
Kinglake, the historian of the Crimean War, was
standing next a bigoted Low Church undergraduate
during the singing of the anthem, and the following
dialogue took place :

Low Church Undergraduate. " Do you approve
of this sort of thing, Sir ?"

Kinglake. " It seems to me very charming and
interesting."

L. C. U. {ancjrily). " Do you think that the Early
Christians would have approved of this sort of
thing ?"

THE COLLEGE CHAPEL 131

K. {soothingly). " My dear Sir, do please remember
what snobs those early Christians were."

This species of Sunday relaxation was not confined
to the Universities. Arthur Coleridge told me of a
boy at Eton, who was much devoted to racing, and
who used to invent any subterfuge which would
enable him to go to Epsom or Ascot, capturing two
caterpillars and conveying them into College Chapel,
where he caused a barrier of prayer-books, which he
called Tattenham Corner, to be built at the end of the
desk, and started the crawly creatures on a race. He
then passed down the order " At the words ' Lighten
our darkness,' turn the caterpillars round."

The relative merits of the youngster at the Trinity
organ, and his older neighbour at that of St. John's,
Dr. Garrett, used to be freely discussed by the under-
graduates. One such argument became a standing
joke :

Trinity Undergraduate. " You should hear our
man's mountains skip like rams and his little hills like
young sheep."

St. John's Undergraduate. " Oh, that's nothing :
you should hear ours grin like a dog and run about the
city."

My uncle, Mr, Thomas Kice Henn of Paradise Hill,
Co. Clare, once came to visit me in the organ-loft, and
most unwittingly did me an ill turn, for which T never
had the heart to chide him. He was the happy pos-
sessor of one of those natures to which every Ijelonging
is the best of its kind in the world. When he rejmr-
chased Paradise Hill, an old seat of tln^ Henns, upon
the shore of the tidal river Fergus (an alUuent of the

132 PAGES FROM AN UNWEITTEN DIARY

Shannon), he told my father that the view from the
house was the finest in the world. John Stanford
wickedly asked " What happens to the view when the
tide goes out, Tom ?" Tom said that there was a good
deal of mud, in truth, but that it was the finest mud
in Europe, and one barrowful of it made the best
manure in the three kingdoms. On the Sunday even-
ing that he came up to sit with me, fortune arranged
that the very tenor, whose superannuation and pension
I had just been discussing with the Master at the
Sistine interview above, should sing {sic) " Comfort ye
my people." The performance was truly awful, but
my uncle, taking the singer under his wing as if he
were part (through me) of his own property, said, " I
pledge you my word and conscience, that is the finest
tenor I have heard since Mario " ; and what was worse
he went down after the service and told him so. My
scheme of improvements became proportionately more
difficult of attainment.

Music in Cambridge was lucky enough at this oppor-
tune moment to be helped on its upward course by a
visit from one who was destined to be one of its most
powerful friends. A letter was received from Stern-
dale Bennett, expressing a wish that a concert should
be organized in aid of the funds for erecting a statue
to Sebastian Bach in his birthplace, Eisenach : and
stating that Joachim would give his services on the
occasion. It was the great violinist's second appear-
ance in the University town. His first was at a con-
cert given in the Senate House under Walmisley in
1846 at the Installation of the Prince Consort as
Chancellor. He was then a boy of fifteen. He

SCHUMANN FESTIVAL 133

described to me with a merry twinkle in his eye the
setting down he received from the undergraduates in
the gallery. He was playing the Mendelssohn Con-
certo and as he began the slow movement, the " boys "
called out " Oh pray no more !" This, for him, unique
experience was abundantly atoned for and wiped out
by the ringing cheers which greeted him at his yearly
visit in later days.

In the summer of the same year I went abroad
for the first time, and with my friend, Frank
McClintock (now Dean of Armagh), made straight for
the Schumann Festival at Bonn. We arrived in time
for the open rehearsals, and so heard everything twice
over. It was a memorable gathering. Joachim was
conductor ; Frau Joachim, Frau Wilt of Vienna, and
Stockhausen were solo singers ; Frau Schumann and
Ernst Rudorff the pianists. Amongst the audience
were a crowd of notabilities from all nations, including
a large contingent from Ireland. Brahms was there,
and Ferdinand Hiller, who had conducted the Beetho-
ven Festival in the same hall three years before.
There had been rumours that the programme would
also contain " The German Requiem," but the project
fell through, owing, I believe, to some local friction
which caused Brahms to interdict its performance, and
which probably accounted for his not being in the very
best of humours. Although we were disappointed of
this hope, the programme was a most interesting and
perfectly chosen one. The chief works given were —

1. "Paradise and the Peri" and the D minor
Symphony (the former work was conducted by von
Wasielewsky, the biographer of Schumann).

134 PAGES FROM AN UNWRITTEN DIARY

2. Overture to "Manfred." Nachtlied for chorus and
orchestra. The Pianoforte Concerto. The music to
" Faust," Part 3. The C major Symphony.

3. A chamber-concert, at which was given the string
quartet in A major, the Variations for two pianofortes,
and the Pianoforte Quintet, while Stockhausen sang
the " Lowenbraut " cycle.

The outstanding features of the Festival were the
inspired playing of the composer's widow, and the
singing of Frau Joachim and Stockhausen. The last-
named artist's performance of Dr. Marianus in "Faust"
was, as Grove truly termed it, divine. The phrase
" Gnade bediirfend," so trying for any singer, was
delivered with an ease and a reverence of which I
have seldom or never heard the like. The sur-
roundings of this gathering were in exact keeping
with the high ideal standard of the music and its
rendering. There was an atmosphere of pure art
about the place both in performers and in listeners,
which gave the indefinable feeling that it was good to
be there. It was a clean tribute to a clean man.
There was nothing which jarred, nothing of intrigue
or small jealousies. Everyone was doing his best,
however small his share ; famous solo violinists playing
at the back desks of the orchestra, no one grumbling,
everyone as sunny as the Rhine Valley. A more
marked contrast to the entourage of Baireuth as I
saw it later in 1876 it would be impossible to
imagine.

Bonn itself with its broad square dominated by the
Beethoven statue, its sweeping river, and its bands of
students singing four-part songs in the small hours of

BRAHMS 135

the morning made a perfect setting for the Festival.
There were of course drawbacks, principally the street
smells which assaulted the sensitive nose (Bonn was
innocent of any system of drainage) : some of them so
appalling that it was possible to see the slight mist
containing the odour a few yards ahead, and to pre-
pare for it with thumb and finger. The hotels too
were so overcrowded that the meals were intermin-
able. On the second day at the Goldener Stern, we
sat down to dinner at 11.30 a.m., and the banquet
lasted up to nearly 4 p.m. ; we could not well leave
before the end because we had barely enough to eat
as it was. My neighbour kept what he called a "log
of the dinner," and the intervals between the courses
worked out at about forty-five minutes each. On the
day after the Festival everyone went to Bolandseck,
and the beer flowed with a volume almost comparable
to the river below. I made the acquaintance of
Ferdinand Hiller, with whom I dined next day at
Cologne, in his pretty flat over the bridge, and met
there for the first time Brahms, then beardless, and (I
gathered from lack of love of his host) rather silent
and unapproachable. He looked lively enough at
Bolandseck.

I went on with my companion to Heidelberg and
Switzerland, leturning home by way of Paris, then
just l)eginning to recover from the disasters of 1871,
and with its empty shells of palaces still blackened by
the smoke of the Commune. I was lucky enougli to
see an opera in one building which was destroyed by
fire almost immediately afterwards, the old liouse of
the Grand Opera in the. Uuo Drouot. It was a

13G PAGES FROM AN UNWRITTEN DIARY

splendid house for sound, far better than the present
gorgeous building, and the performance was first rate.
The opera was Meyerbeer's "Prophete." The tenor
was, if I remember rightly, Achard by name, and
Fides was sung by Madame Devries. In spite of its
obvious appeals to the claque, I had an unwilling
admiration for much of the music, which I retain to
this day. The vulgarity, it is true, does not ring
with the sincerity of an early Verdi, and is therefore
all the more disturbing. But the invention and the
dramatic force, which Weber recognized, and the very
strength of which led him to deplore his contem-
porary's lapse into popularity hunting, was there and
self-evident.

I confess that I am a man of many likes, and I have
often been told that my likes are somewhat incom-
patible with each other. A well-known lady musician
sitting next me at the rehearsal of an early Richter
concert at which Brahms' 0 minor Symphony and
Wagner's "Meistersinger" Overture were given, when I
expressed my admiration for both, told me that it was
impossible for me to like the one if I liked the other.
My answer was that I was one degree happier than
she was, for I liked one thing in the world more than
she could. I cannot therefore join in the decrying of
Meyerbeer, root and branch. If he was a strayed
sheep, he certainly showed too many signs of repen-
tance, fitful it may be, to be permanently excluded
from the fold. One other opera I saw, Offenbach's
" Orph^e aux Enfers," given under the composer's own
direction at the Gai^te : a marvellous production,
mounted regardless of expense, and sung with a verve,

OPERA IN PARIS 137

a dash and a finesse such as only France can attain.
Impudent music perhaps but fascinating too. Offen-
bach always seemed to reflect in his work the spirit of
his " cheeky " reply to a questioner who asked him if
he was not born at Bonn. " No, Beethoven was born
at Bonn ; I was born at Cologne."

CHAPTER IX

Musical education in England — Societies and opera in London —
Leipzig in 1874 — The German theatres and concert-rooms —
Liszt — Wieniawski — The Thomas-Kirche.

The lot of the music student in this country at the
present day is a much smoother one than that of his
predecessors of forty years ago. There were then
practically no schools for composition in England ; the
leading composer, Sterndale Bennett, was driven to
teaching the pianoforte, and was, from his nature and
surroundings, wholly out of sympathy with any
modern music since that of his close friend, Mendels-
sohn. The only really valuable scholarship for musicians
was the travelling one, which had been founded by
Jenny Lind and others in memory of Mendelssohn.
Autres temps, autre s moeurs. These aids to education
have now multiplied to an excessive extent. The days
when the late Archbishop Temple forced his way to
the highest position in the land through the severest
deprivations seem to be gone. Most modern students
would rebel at an empty coal-scuttle, surreptitiously
filled by a neighbouring friend, or at an economy in
light such as necessitated reading by the gas lamp on
the staircase. It remains to be seen whether the
smoothing of early difficulties will result in a race of
hardy men. When England woke up to her deficiencies
and opened her purse, she spent the contents upon
education and forgot to insure the career, which
would ipso facto have furnished the incentive to work,

138

MUSICAL EDUCATION IN ENGLAND 139

and provided the school to prepare for it. To this
short-sighted British policy we owe the main reason
for our musical isolation. We remain and seem likely
to remain the only European nation without a National
Opera. Without such an institution at the head and
front of the art, there can be no incentive, and no
career, save for a few persons of outstanding gift.
The cream can always find a market, but unless
provision is made for an adequate supply of milk, there
will be no cream. The rank and file of orchestra,
chorus, and subordinate singers are the milk, and for
them there is no such certain livelihood in this country
as is forthcoming in the rest of the civilized world.
The composers find that in opera there is no opening
for them at all except in that type which a real artist
would consider a degradation of his ideals. " Wahn !
Wahn ! iiberall Wahn !" Which I will freely trans-
late " Scholarships ! Scholarships ! everlastingly
Scholarships !" Amongst my contemporaries there was
not one who had the advantages which a modern
young composer finds ready to his hand. How far
necessity of individual effort thrown on its own
resources makes for the strength and permanency of
work, and was responsible for the so-called " Ilenais-
sance of English Music," future generations of musical
historians and critics may have a weighty word to say.
Not only was there in England in the early seventies
a lack of means to teach composition — the man to
teach it, and the surroundings which enable a student
to hear and judg*^ ol' his own work, (a part of the
training which is even more important than word-of-
mouth tuition) — but the opportunities of hearing first-

140 PAGES FROM AN UNWRITTEN DIARY

rate music were far fewer. The Philharmonic Concerts
were given in Hanover Square Rooms, a hall which
though acoustically excellent, was, like the old
Gewandhaus at Leipzig, too small to seat many more
than the subscribers. The New Philharmonic Concerts
in St. James's Hall, which had started with some
success owing to the co-operation of Berlioz, had
fallen into the hands of a hopelessly incompetent con-
ductor. This worthy, on one occasion, had to conduct
the overture to " Der Freischiitz " and began the
Allegro at rehearsal by beating four crochets in the
bar, each beat at the pace of the minims. The
orchestra, seeing some fun in prospect, implicitly
followed his stick, and began the movement at twice
as slow a rate as the proper time.

The Conductor {tapping). "No! No! gentlemen,
that's not the overture to the ' Freischiitz.' "

(Begins again, same result ; same remonstrance
rather more accentuated.)

The Leader of the Violins [half whispering).
" Try two beats."

The Conductor. "Sh-Sh! Don't speak to me, Sir."

(Begins again, beating two. The Allegro proceeds
all right.)

The Conductor. " Ah ! gentlemen ! That's the way
to play the ' Freischiitz ' overture."

The only orchestral performances, which were at
once enlightening and progressive, were the Saturday
Concerts at the Crystal Palace. Here Grove and
Manns reigned supreme, and having no committee to
worry them, made Schubert, Schumann, Brahms and
Wagner household words in musical circles.

SOCIETIES AND OPERA IN LONDON 141

Chamber music was almost entirely restricted to
the Monday (and later Saturday) Popular Concerts,
which however did yeoman's service for it, as far as
works of the older repertory were concerned ; only
occasionally, under the pressure of Joachim, venturing,
not without heart-searching and apology, upon a later
Beethoven quartet or a work of Brahms. Progress in
this direction was made the more difficult by the
analytical programmes, in which Davison (the then
critic of the Times) used often to prejudice the
audience, by various clever quips and hints, against
the novelty they were about to hear. He was in this
respect the very antithesis of Grove, who made it his
first business to infect an audience, through his pro-
gramme notes, with his own enthusiasms. Both
extremes were on principle open to the criticism that
an audience should be allowed to judge for itself with-
out previous bias in one direction or the other ; but
these were early days and tyro hearers needed an
enlightening lead. No one can doubt whose was the
better way.

The Italian Operas (there were two of them) were,
save as to the gallery, closed to the limited purse of
a student : with the exception of an isolated couple
of performances of the " Flying Dutchman " no work
of Wagner's had been heard there. It was not until
1875 (twenty-five years after its production) that
"Lohengrin" made its first nervous appearance on a
London stage, to be rescued from mediocrity by the
Elsa of Madame Albani at Covent Garden, an imper-
sonation which earned even the difficult encomiums
of von BqIow, and by the Ortrud of Madame Tietjens

142 PAGES FROM AN UNWRITTEN DIARY

at Her Majesty's, where the hostile apathy of Costa
had permitted the orchestra to play from parts riddled
with literally hundreds of the most obvious mistakes.
When Richter a few years later conducted it there,
he spent hours in putting Costa's parts right.

The serious student of composition therefore had

both for tuition and experience to betake himself

abroad, and the centre which was most attractive was

Leipzig ; partly from its traditions, partly from the

apostolical succession of Englishmen who had gone

there, partly from the excellent opportunities it offered

of hearing all schools of music both in the theatre

and in the concert- room, and from the central position

which placed it within easy reach of Berlin, Dresden

and Weimar. Berlin at that time was a dismal,

ill-lit and second-rate city, with one good thoroughfare

(Unter den Linden) flanked by palaces and public

buildings of striking architectural aspiration but of

cold and even repellent effect. The other main streets

had on each side deep ditches, bad traps for the

unwary walker or driver in the dark, at the bottom

of which lay a stagnant deposit of a milky green

colour, occasionally veiled by duckweed. The opera

was poor, with a few good artists who stood out

amongst their colleagues like the palaces in the town.

There were no first-rate concerts and few attractions

for the student. Quantum mutatus ah illo. When I

first visited old Berlin in 1874, its rise as a musical

centre was just beginning. Joachim had taken the

direction of the Hochschule fiir Musik and had

gathered round him a strong body of professors of the

first rank, Kiel, Frau Schumann, Stockhausen,

LEIPZIG IN 1874 143

Rudorff, and others. He had formed his quartet, aud
given an early impulse to the start of the Philhar-
monic orchestra, of which the direction was later
taken over by Hans von Billow. Weimar was a
much smaller centre, dominated by Liszt and his
adherents, with no school save for the pianoforte, but
possessing an opera and an orchestra capable of
tackling the most advanced works with efficient, if
small, material. Dresden was mainly devoted to
opera, and there was no outstanding figure, except
Julius Rietz who was getting old, to attract a student
of composition.

Leipzig, then, was the best centre for him. The
orchestra was one of the best in Germany. The
concerts at which they played were given in the
Gewandhaus Saal, a somewhat small room, too small
indeed for works demanding much brass, but of per-
fect acoustical properties for such music as that of
Mozart and Beethoven. It was quite innocent of
windows (a wicked Russian wag of my time suggested
that they had been hermetically sealed, in order
to preserve the same air which Mendelssohn had
breathed), and was capable of a truly wonderful
Turkish-bath temperature. About half a dozen chairs
at the back and a small square room behind were
available for non-subscribers. The concerts were
given every Thursday in winter at half-past six, and
no one who arrived on the stairs, which were as
draughty and cold as the room was hot and stuffy,
later than half-past four or five had a chance of
getting in. Only twice in three years did I, by a
superhuman physical (ilfort ;iiid a timely sprint when

144 PAGES FROM AN UNWRITTEN DIARY

the doors opened, succeed in getting into one of the
six seats in the concert-room itself. The subscribers
were only very partially musical although they con-
sidered themselves paragons in critical judgment. This
was not surprising, for the seats were held by families
who retained them religiously for their descendants
and took the chance of their sons and grandsons
developing musical tastes. The only responsive
audience was to be found at the rehearsals, which
were open to students and others who were unable
to get into the concerts. How far behind London this
close corporation was in broadminded appreciation
was proved to me by two performances, the one at
Leipzig, the other at the London Philharmonic, within
a few months of each other, of Brahms' smaller
Serenade without violins. At the Gewandhaus it
went literally without a hand being raised to applaud :
at St. James's Hall two of the movements were so
vociferously encored that they had to be repeated.
At a concert devoted to the French School, Berlioz'
" Harold in Italy " was loudly hissed, in the very room
where the composer had been so hospitably welcomed
by Mendelssohn and Schumann. The form of the
programmes was practically a fixture. I can give as
a specimen that of March 4, 1875 :

PART I.

Overture Leonora No. 1 . . . ... ... Beethoven.

Aria for soprano, from " Davidde penitente " Mozart.

Violin Concerto No. 1 ... ... ... Max Bruch.

Songs with pianoforte accompaniment ... Jensen.

Adagio for violin ... . ... Spohr.

PART 11.
Symphony in C major ... ... ... Schubert.

GERMAN THEATRES 145

The first thing which struck me was the dead
silence which prevailed when any artist, no matter
how well known, ascended the platform. It was
chilling to the bone. Only in the very rarest of
instances did the orchestra make up for the lack of
welcome on the part of the stiff-necked public, by
a flourish of trumpets, " Tusch " as it is termed.
Franz Lachner, Joachim and Frau Schumann were
the only recipients of this honour in my time. Julius
Rietz, the predecessor of Reinecke in the conductor-
ship, could be nearly as chilling to the artists as the
audience. A soprano singer at rehearsal, whose in-
tonation was unusually poor, had a rough time at
his hands. After recommencing two or three times,
Rietz turned to the lady and said " Will you be good
enough to give the orchestra your A ?" Reinecke
was not quite so uncompromising in his methods, but
could not by any means be termed an inspiring con-
ductor. He was at liis best as an interpreter of
Mozart. Since then the new concert-room has, owing
to its much greater seating capacity, found room for
newer and redder blood.

The theatre was first-rate, both in operas and in
plays, which alternated on its adaptable stage. I'he
list of singers was very strong, including such artists
as Peschka-Leutner, a soprano of wide i)owers and
linislied technic^ue ; Ernst, ne})liew of the violinist,
a very tall handsome tenor with a most syni])athetic
timbre; Gura, facile 'pi'mceps as Hans Sachs, a ])aiiiter
as well ;is a singer, one of the best Don Juans and
Counts 1 have ever seen, an artist to his finger-
tips ; Elirke, tlie greatest of Beckmessers, and a

10

146 PAGES FROM AN UNWRITTEN DIARY

superlatively comic huffo^ whose face was, like John
Parry's, an irresistible laugh - raiser, and whose
attempts to be serious in tragic parts when his voice
was wanted to complete the caste, always quarrelled
with the twinkle in his eye. Most of this company
afterwards migrated en bloc to Hamburg, and carried
on their shoulders the first season of German Opera
at Drury Lane under Hans Richter. The great range
of the repertoire almost constituted an historical series,
and was of the highest value to a student. I give
a list of some of those I heard during my sojourn.

Mozart. " Don Juan," " Figaro," " Seraglio," " Magic

Flute," "CosifanTutte."
Beethoven. "Fidelio."

Weber. " Freischiitz," "Oberon," " Euryanthe."

Merschner. "Haus Heiling," "Vampyr."
LORTZING. "Czar und Zimmermann," " Wildschiitz."
Spohr. "Jessonda."

Rossini. " William Tell."

Meyerbeer. "Huguenots," "Prophete," "Africaine."
Schumann. "Genoveva."
Auber. " Fra Diavolo," "Masaniello."

Verdi. "Trovatore," "Rigoletto," "Aida."

Goetz. " Taming of the Shrew.'"

Wagner. All except "Tristan," "Parsifal," and the

"Ring," which was given in its entirety

in 1878.

Waf^ner came from Baireuth to hear " Jessonda "
in 1874. He sat, characteristically enough, in the
centre seat of the first row of the dress-circle, where
the Royal Box in a Court theatre is usually placed.
It was an interesting proof of his loyalty to Spohr,
who, by producing " The Flying Dutchman " at
Cassel, was one of the first to forward his work, and
who had fought tooth -and -nail for " Tannhiiuser "

GERMAN THEATRES 147

also when the Elector banned it, owing to the com-
poser's share in the revolution of 1849. A stall cost
three shillings, except in the last two rows, which
were the best for hearing, where it cost but eighteen-
pence. In addition to the operas, we had cycles
of the plays of Shakespeare, Goethe and Schiller.
"Egmont" was given with Beethoven's music, and
the "Midsummer Night's Dream" with Mendelssohn's.
The orchestra was the same as that of the Gewaud-
haus. The manager was that master actor, Friedrich
Haase, the only German, I believe, who was ever
invited to play at the Theatre Franfais. He wds
equally great in tragedy, comedy and farce. His
impersonation of Count Alva in "Egmont" remains,
with Salvini's Othello, one of my greatest stage
impressions. He looked like a living Velasquez
picture, his voice was sympathetic and his gesture
restrained and dignified to the highest degree. That
he could play with the light touch of a Frenchman
was proved by his performance of the part of the
old man in a short French piece, known in England
as "A Quiet Rubber." It is a singular coincidence
that his part in this little comedy was acted in
London by John Hare. (Haase is the German
word for Hare.) Haase had half a dozen ways of
clearing his throat when he was playing an old
man ; he suited the method to each part ; never
did it more than twice or thrice in the piece, and
unfailingly brought down the house every time.
The leading tragic actress was Frilulein Ellmenreich,
afterwards one of the most distmguislied of the
famous Meiningeu Company.

148 PAGES FROM AN UNWRITTEN DIARY

This mighty array of masterpieces was not always
congenial to the subordinate performers, a fact which
was one evening brought home to me most amusingly.
I was sitting in the front row of the stalls and, lean-
ing over the orchestra barrier between the acts, I
asked the second oboe player what his favourite opera
was, fully expecting to hear him say (at least)
" Fidelio " or the " Meistersinger." He looked up
at me with a sleepy and blase expression, and said
in broad Saxonese, " Liebestrank," (Donizetti's " Elisir
d'Amore "). After this shock to my enthusiasm was
past, it occurred to me that this opera represented
to him the minimum of work for his pay. I was
present at an appalling fiasco, " Santa Chiara," an
opera by the then reigning Duke of Saxe-Coburg-
Gotha. This farrago is principally remembered for
the sake of the witticism it evoked from Brahms.
It was given at Vienna, and after the performance
several friends of his began to attack the music in
no measured terms. "Sh-Sh!" said J. B. "You
must not speak like that of Grand Ducal Operas ;
you never know who may have written them."

From what one may call adventitious concerts I
had also an occasional thrill ; such as the meteoric
appearance of Liszt at a semi-private gathering in
his honour. He was only present as a listener,
but everyone so markedly refused to leave the room
after various young people had tremblingly performed,
that he happily took the hint and sat down at the
piano. The moment his fingers touched the keys, I
realized the immense gap between him and all other
pianists. He was the very reverse of all my antici-

LISZT 149

patlons, which incHned me, perhaps from the carica-
tures famihar to me in my boyhood, to expect to see
an inspired acrobat, with high -action arms, and wild
locks falling on the keys. I saw instead a dignified
composed figure, who sat like a rock, never indulging
in a theatrical gesture, or helping out his amazingly
full tone with the splashes and crashes of a charlatan,
producing all his effects with the simplest means, and
giving the impression of such ease that the most
ditHcult passages sounded like child's play. It was
the very reverse of the style of the young lady to
whom von Biilow, after hearing her performance, went
up with a deep bow and said " I congratulate you,
Mademoiselle, upon playing the easiest possible pas-
sages with the greatest possible difficulty." I and
my companion, a very punctilious person, were so
overwhelmed by the performance and the personality,
that we could not but "cap" him as he stalked
out into the street. He had a magnetism and a
charm which was all -compelling. We understood
how he could meet Kings and Emperors on an equality,
and fascinate with all the wiles of the serpent. He
had two smiles : the one angelical, for artists, the
other diabolical, for the satellite Countesses. How
innately kind he could be was proved by a little
incident which occurred in Berlin shortly after his
visit t(j Leipzig. A young lady pianist had announced
a recital, advertising herself (in the hope of attracting
a larger audience) as a " pupil of Liszt." As she had
never laid eyes upon hiin in hw life, she was horrified
to read in the papers on the morning of lier concert
that the Abbu had arrived in the city. The only

150 PAGES FROM AN UNWRITTEN DIARY

thing to be done was to make a clean breast of it ;
she went to his hotel and asked for an interview.
When she was shown in she confessed with many-
tears, and asked for absolution. Liszt asked her
the name of the pieces she was going to play, chose
one and made her sit down at the piano and play it.
Then he gave her some hints about her performance,
and dismissed her with a pat on the cheek, and the
remark " Now, my dear, you can call yourself a pupil
of Liszt." This was on a par with the exceedingly
astute and yet kindly diplomacy which he showed in
a small German town in his younger days, where he
was announced to give two recitals on successive even-
ings. At the first concert there was only a handful
of people present. Instead of showing annoyance
with those who did come, as is usual with human-
kind, he made a little speech, saying, that the room
was very large and cold for so small a gathering,
that he had an excellent instrument in his sitting-
room at the hotel, where everyone would be more
comfortable, and if they would do him the pleasure
to come round there in half an hour when he had
arranged for their reception, he would play them his
programme. They came and he provided them also
with a champagne supper. At the next concert crowds
were turned away at the doors, but there was no
champagne. His power of dealing with Kings, when
they did not show proper respect to him and his
art, was none the less effective because it was courtier-
like. The well-known story of his ceasing to play
at the Russian Court, because the Czar and his friends
were talking, was a case in point. When Liszt

WIENIAWSKI 151

stopped, an aide-de-camp came up and told him to
continue, but he repUed with the most dignified air
" Quaud le Czar parle, tout le monde se tait." I saw
Liszt only twice at close quarters, once at the un-
veiling of the Bach Statue at Eisenach, and once at
the Grosvenor Gallery (now the iEolian Hall) when
he visited England for the last time. Both Liszt
and Wagner had one common characteristic in their
physiognomy : a magnificent head from the nose
upwards and a repellent mouth and chin. A re-
nowned friend of both once said to me, " These great
men are better a little distance off."

Another great artist, Wieniawski, paid his last visit
to Leipzig when I was there. He had grown very
unwieldy, and the disproportion between the sizes of
the player and his violin must have recalled memories
of Spohr to those who knew that master. But his
skill and artistry were unabated. He played the
Beethoven Concerto in a wholly individual way. The
reading was quite as true to the composer in its style
as Joachim's ; and exemplified how Tennyson's dictum,
that " poetry is like shot silk with many glancing
colours, and every reader must find his own interpreta-
tion according to his ability, and according to his
sympathy witl) the poet," can apply with the same
force to music. If Joachim's effects were like flames,
Wieniawski's were like sparks. The brilliancy of the
Finale could not have been excelled. It was Beethoven
in an unbuttoned mood but none the less Beethoven.

Choral music was also to the fore ; its chief home
was, as was riglit and propei', under the shadow of the
Tliomas-Sclmli'. I''. F. Richter, th(i descendant of

152 PAGES FROM AN UNWRITTEN DIARY

Sebastian Bach in the Cantorship, directed the choir,
and every Sal^urday at midday, there was an excellent
performance of unaccompanied motets of all schools.
Larger choral works were given at intervals in the
Thomas-Kirche by a Gesangverein conducted by
Riedel. The historic church, now restored out of all
knowledge, was in 1874 in practically the same state
as it was in the time of Bach. It was hideous enough,
with its dirty green paint, but the acoustical
properties were admirable. The little galleries aloft
called "The Dove's Nest" whence the choristers sung
the Chorale in the opening chorus of the St. Matthew
Passion were still there. The Silbermann organ was
more or less untouched. To an English ear it seemed
all pedal reeds and manual mixtures. The quality
never appealed to me any more than the instruments
of the same builder at Dresden. The mechanism was
truly horrible, the keys almost needed a Nasmyth
hammer to depress them, and the pedals were so broad
and clumsy that it was a matter of luck to put down
a right note. After an experience of attempting to play
upon it, I recalled the Master of Trinity's prophetic
jest, and inwardly admitted a preference for "organ-
blowing," and the need for " recreation " in the intervals
of an even severer form of penal servitude.

CHAPTEE X

Leipzig ancient and modern — Reinecke and the GeAvandhaus —
Dresden in 1875 — The Leipzig fair — Student duels — Friedrich
Kiel.

Present-day visitors to Leipzig will find little of the
old charm left. The "milliards" of 1870 have done
their work, and destroyed the reverence of the Saxon
merchants for their ancient monuments. The impulse
to hack, mutilate and even exterminate every historical
landmark seems to have seized the rulers of the town.
Almost the only remnants of old days are the Altmarkt
and the Rathhaus, and this last building, comparable
in its quaint way with the architecture of Niirnberg
and Hildesheim, was only saved by a miracle. The
Thomas-Schule, home of Bach and his successors in the
Cantorship, a noble old house of nearly as many stories
as the ancient houses in Edinburgh, is razed to the
ground, and the younger generation have forgotten
where it stood. The unique triangular Pleissenburg
with its knife-like glacis has shared the same fate, and
its old moat is levelled up. The old Gewandhaus is
gone. Bach's two churches are restored beyond
recognition. In place of these deeply interesting and
picturesque monuments of their forefathers' taste,
blocks of Americo-Parisian flats have sprung up like
mushrooms. So mucli for the reverence of modern
Germany. And the Leipzigers had no excuse. There
was plenty of room on the outer side of the ring of

153

154 PAGES FROM AN UNWRITTEN DIARY

boulevards to work their sweet will in building every-
thing they wanted. The new Gewandhaus Concert
Hall (the best of their modern buildings) stands there
now, but the destruction of the old room with all its
memories and traditions was an inexcusable and
unnecessary vandalism. The old inner town only
needed underground treatment of a sanitary nature to
make it comfortable as well as habitable. The Brtihl,
a street where Shylocks innumerable with long curly
locks could be seen daily in the gaberdine, any one
of them fit to go on the stage for the " Merchant of
Venice " without additional make-up, had a few years
ago retained most of its character with one important
exception. There was one house in that street which
was famous for having seen the birth of Leipzig's most
famous son, Richard Wagner. That was enough for
the rebuilding magnates. Down it came, memorial
tablet and all, while its neighbours, unknown to history,
were allowed to stand in peace.

Before all these transmogrifications began, Leipzig
had all the charm and quiet attractiveness of a
University town mixed with the elements of pro-
gressive commercial prosperity. Everyone was there
to work, and the atmosphere encouraged it. Physio-
logists came to study with Ludwig ; the University
attracted historians, philosophers, and lawyers ; and
the musical facilities acted as a magnet to all parts of
the world.

The conditions of living were of the simplest, and the
student of ample means would have found it hard to
spend more money than his poorer brethren. My first
rooms were bare enough ; it was only after repeated

LEIPZIG ANCIENT AND MODERN 155

importunity that I permanently installed the luxury
of the mornincf tub. The basins were about double
the size of a saucer, the hot-water jug held about a
tumblerful, and had to be filled and poured out in
instalments. The beds everywhere were a torture to
anyone taller than five foot six, and recalled Dicky
Doyle's pictures of Brown, Jones and Robinson on
their Rhine tour. All the bedclothes were buttoned
up together in a sort of flat sack, with a huge and
pufiy down quilt, rather like a Gargantuan pillow,
which was put on top of all in winter ; the result
being that if the sleeper moved an inch, everything
collapsed into a lieap on the floor. There was no
carpet or rug, and an enormous stove turned the room
into a Turkish bath in the winter ; there were double
windows, of which the landlady never opened the
outer ; and if I succeeded in letting the air in when
her back was turned, she would rush in and expound
on the dangers of pneumonia. Her holy horror at
finding I had taken a cold bath one morning when
the temperature outside was 22 degrees below zero,
Fahrenheit, (the coldest day I can remember), was a
sight to see. The cofiee for breakfast was of a sort
known in Saxony as " Bliimchenkaffee " (Little flower
coffee), so called because when it is poured out, the
little painted flower at the bottom of the cup is plainly
visible to the naked eye. An amusing skit of von
Billow on tliis national drink is to be found in his
Letters, vol. vii., page GG. It is a song entitled (in the
Saxon ])rogue) " Neue Bliimchenkaffcepatrloten-
hymue." My fallow-students and I used to have an
unspeakable dinner at ont^ o'clock, described in glorious

15G PAGES FROM AN UNWRITTEN DIARY

language on the menu as *' Suppe, zwei Giinge und
Dessert" (literally, soup, two goes, and sweets), for
tenpence. How my digestion ever survived this meal,
I cannot imagine ; still less how our poorer brethren
thrived on one of a similar sort a few doors off which
cost sixpence.

In my second year we struck, and launched out into
comparative luxury, with ices on Sunday in the depth
of winter, at an hotel, for one and sixpence. At this
table d'hote I sat day after day for weeks next Robert
Franz, but conversation with him was impossible for he
was stone-deaf. Supper after the opera was of about
the same quality and cost as the dinner : so our com-
missariat expenses worked out at about three and six-
pence a day. We were regarded rather in the light
of extravagant British gourmets by our German
friends. I once nearly had experience of starvation,
through an absurd fault of my own. I forgot that it
took the best part of a week to get a reply from my
bankers in England : I ran short of cash, and had to
eke out a miserable existence, mostly upon chocolate,
for five days, because I was far too shy to ask anyone
to lend me a few shillings to go on with. When the
supplies arrived, I had a memorable feast which cost
the enormous sum of four shillings.

My master in composition was Karl Reinecke, to
whom Sterndale Bennett had given me an introduction.
Of all the dry musicians I have ever known he was
the most desiccated. He had not a good word for any
contemporary composer, even for those of his own
kidney. He loathed Wagner, once describing Elsa to
me as a young woman without brains enough to make

REINECKE 157

out the list of clothes for the wash, sneered at Brahms,
and had no enthusiasm of any sort. But he enjoyed
himself hugely when he was expounding and writing
canons, and had a fairly good idea of teaching them.
His composition training had no method about it
whatever. He occasionally made an astute criticism
and that was all. He never gave a pupil a chance of
hearing his own work, the only really valuable means
of training, and the better the music, the less he
inclined to encourage it. He was in fact the embodiment
of the typical " Philister." What progress I made
in my first two years in Germany was due rather to
the advice of my pianoforte master, Papperitz, a
broad-minded sympathetic teacher, than to " Reinecke-
Fuchs " as he used to be called. A visit which Joachim
paid to Leipzig, in the course of which he devoted an
hour into examining my work, led to my transferring
my training to that most delightful of men and most
able of teachers, Friedrich Kiel in Berlin.

In the autumn of 1875 after visiting Vienna and
tasting for the first time the joys of Strauss waltzes
under Strauss leadership, I took up my abode in
rather more homelike quarters in Leipzig, where I was
joined for some weeks by Arthur Duke Coleridge.
From my room in the Lindenstrasse, this enthusiastic
amateur worked all the preliminary organization of
the performance of Bach's B minor Mass in London,
and of the foundation of the Bach Choir. In company
with Mr. (afterwards Sir Charles) Alderson, we visited
Dresden and stayed at a Pension well known to all
Cambridge men in the liiicknitzstrasse. This visit
was made memorable to all our party by a little con-

158 PAGES FROM AN UNWRITTEN DIARY

cert which we organized for our fellow- visitors. The
programme was drawn up in true German fashion and
we had it printed at the theatre office. A repro-
duction is to be found on the opposite page, but for
the benefit of those who are unfamiliar with the
German language and the ways of their theatre bills,
I append a translation. It should be pointed out that
it was to a certain extent a skit on the ubiquitous
" Verboten " (Forbidden) which meets the eye at every
turn, and on the customary enumeration, at the foot
of opera announcements, of the enforced absence of
sinofers from the cast.

The last of the six regulations given was founded
upon a notice on the cages of animals at the Dresden
Zoological Gardens, and is reminiscent of a some-
what similar one which was pinned on the door of
a Fellow of Trinity College, Dublin, " You are re-
quested not to tease Mr. . He is placed here for

your instruction and amusement."

The Dresden Opera, which in 1874 was housed in a
temporary wooden building, pending the completion of
the present house, had owing to the cramped surround-
ings a smaller repertoire than the Stadt-Theater at
Leipzig. It had however preserved a tradition which
gave it a special position among its rivals in Germany,
that of presenting French Opera Comique with a
lighter touch and in a more finished style than was to
be expected amongst Teutons. The name of Auber
was seldom absent for long from the bills, and we saw
in the early days of its existence, not long after the
first production in Paris, " Le Roi I'a dit " of Delibes,
given with rare finesse and charm. In one opera, "Der

Mit aufgehobenem Aboimemeut.

jHiii ififftpii uiisfifr f(fffii Si'llil}

IM SAALE KRETZSCHMER

den 24. September 1875.

1. Hochzeitsmusik (vierhandig) von Jemm.

2. Scena uus iler Oper ..Genoveva" von Ji SclntmaiuL

3. Pianoforte -Solo.

4 Schlussgesang aus ..Lohengrin" von liich. U'agitfi:
5. Sarabande fur Pianoforte von Fent. Ilillcr.
0. Lieder von Felix Mendelssohn- BurlhoUUj:
a) Sehnsncht, h) Fruhlingslied.

7. Fantasia fiir Piunoforte von Cliojiin.

8. Aria aus ..Euryanthe" von C. M. v. Weber.

9. a) Ungarische Tanze, i ,,,.•,

, ^ ~^, , von Joh. Brahms, vierhandig.

b) Walzer, I

10. Lied von Llndblad.

11. Marsch aus „Tannhau.ser'' von Rich. Wugner

A.nfaiig um 0 Uhr. Ende ganz unbostimmt.

^B3^ AUesi HuNten, Mesen und Schwatzen ist bel 0 Tlilr. Strafe verbotcn. '"ap^g

Ks wini liiiflichst gebetcn, nicht zu rauclicn.
W&bffeDd dkr AufTubruti^ J«r Musik Mt^iben die Ttilrt-n frci.chlosiw'n und die Ohren :iiirgi-)i).'k<?ht.
iJMb Miltriugen von Hundeo. KHtzeri, K«gens.-hirnien und Oiiiiiniiscltuheii ist in jedrili K;ille untfrsiigl
l>ie Frftueu durfeii die baumwulleneu StrUinjifc ihri-r N'achliarn lichl blrideii.
U«o bittel, dit AufTtibrer nicbt zu iiet-keu

Ausserordentliche Preise der Platze.

Fraulein G /,

KrUulei/i ,1/ . . L . . . .
Friuleiij //

MITGLIEDER:

Signer Curio Saroldi,
Herr Hcjf-Kapellnx'istcr -S/oufoixi,
Jlerr K. K. Kaiiiiiiersaii);cr Cultndije
aus Ki-n.singtun (als Oast)

Krftfik: Herr Alderhitu. I'niiii\snrh : Herr RaHUns.
Cotitrjicttlt'b beurlaubt: HilT (^erurd V, C'ubb.

arc M.M.M. ft M.H. K««tC l.^>vb...

CON( EKT I'KOCKAMMK. I)KE>1>1,N, iSj.S-

DRESDEN IN 1875 159

Subscription List Suspended.

CONCERT

FOR THE BENEFIT OF OUR NOBLE SELVES

IX THE

KRETZSCHMAR HALL,
On September 24, 1875.

PROGRAMME.

Beginning at six o'clock. Eiui quite uncertain.

All coughing, sneezing and chattering is forbidden under a fine

of six thalers.

You are politely begged not to smoke.

During the performance of the music the doors remain closed
* and the ears open.

The with-bringing of dogs, cats, umbrellas and goloshes
is in all cases forbidden.

The ladies must not knit the woollen stockings of their neighbours.

You are requested not to tease the performers.

Extrawdinary pices of seats.

PERFORMERS.

Miss G. L. ... SiGNOR Carlo Saroldi.
Miss M. L. ... Mr. Hof-Kapellmeister Stanford.
Miss H. ... Mr. Imperial and Royal Chamber-Singer
Coleridge from Kensington (as guest).

Ill, Mr. Aldekson.* Indisposed, Mr. Rawlins.!

On leave by contract, Mr. Gerard Cobb. J

• Aftei-wards Charity Commis.sioner. t Now K.C.

X Late Fellow and Junior Bursar of Trinity College, Cambridge : an old
frequenter of the Pension Kretzschmar.

160 PAGES FHOM AN UNWRITTEN DIAEY

Freischiitz," Dresden, as in private duty bound, ex-
celled. So obsessed were English and Germans alike
in the old days by this masterpiece, that it became a
household word. When my mother with her family
visited Dresden as a girl about 1835, they were accom-
panied by an aunt, who was, save for a few words, very
innocent of the German language, but liked to exploit
those she knew. Coming down rather late for break-
fast (Frlihstlick) at the Hotel de Saxe, she called out
"Kellner! Freischiitz fiir ein." This large order for
one man, one opera, suggested an anticipation of the
idiosyncrasies of King Ludwig of Bavaria. The fame
of the Dresden performances was great enough even in
those days to induce an Irish family to drive across
Europe to see them and the renowned picture gallery
next door.

Dresden, as well as Leipzig, boasted an annual fair
called by the short name of " Vogelsch lessen " (Bird-
shooting). It took its name from a huge effigy of an
eagle raised high on a pole, at which competitors shot
bolts from a cross-bow, and received prizes when they
hit the mark. This very ancient custom can be traced
as far back as the early days of the Emperor Charles
the Fifth. Alma Tadema told me that one of the best-
remembered exploits of that monarch took place at the
opening of a " Vogelschiessen " in Antwerp, of which
the first act was to be the Emperor's shot at the effigy.
He aimed carefully, but turned round and shot the
heavy bolt into the crowd. It was more amusing
sport. At Leipzig the fair, or Messe, was a more
serious business than at Dresden. The giants and
adipose ladies were accessories rather than essentials.

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STUDENT DUELS 161

At the restaurants the sole topic of conversation which
reached the ear was commercial, expressed in terms of
thousands of thalers. A perfect army of Russian and
Polish Jews occupied the town. The boulevards were
thickly lined with hundreds of temporary booths, and
the mixture of languages competed with the tower of
Babel, The theatre gave itself up to spectacular
melodramas, the favourite being " A Journey round the
World in Eighty Days" of Jules Verne ; panoramas and
music-halls drove out all concerts, and the opera had
(save for a few old stagers like the " Trovatore ") to
take a back seat.

Of the " Mensur " or student duels I happily saw
nothing except the results on the seamed cheeks of the
men in general, and of the " grand coup " upon an
American friend, whom I found one day with his head
enveloped in a surgical yashmak which only allowed
his eyes to be seen. The "grand coup" is a semi-
circular cut which extends from the corner of the
mouth to the top of the scalp. By way of mitigating
the shock of this unansesthetized operation the patient
immediately consumes an unusual quantity of Lager
beer. How he survives is as great a mystery to me,
as the glorification in the proprietors' own estimation
of the most disfiguring scars. This type of student is
on the look out for the very slightest excuse for a
challenge. He resembles the noted duellist in Dublin
at the beginning of the eighteenth century, who in-
spired such awe that a young officer seeing him enter
the room at a party went up to liim and said, "Sir, T
apologize for anything I have said, am saying, or may

at any future time say !" T was standing one day

11

162 PAGES FROM AN UNWRITTEN DIARY

talking to a friend on the bridge over the ornamental
water in the Johannes Park. There had been heavy
snow and frost and the ice was crowded with skaters.
As I talked, my hand knocked off the parapet about as
much snow as would cover a five-shilling piece, which
fell unnoticed by me on the cap of one of these fire-
eaters. I saw this man make for the bank and tear
off his skates, and was still more surprised when he
made a straight line for me and demanded my card. I
happily had not got one, whereat he fired a whole
volley of abuse at me, of which I feigned as much
ignorance as if it were Hebrew. As he got no change
out of a foreigner on whom apparently his oratory was
quite thrown away, he eventually took himself off,
muttering curses upon British ignorance of foreign
languages, and I felt that the tip of my nose was saved.
An English friend of mine some little time later had
a similar experience, but tackled it in a far more heroic
manner. He accepted the challenge, but claimed the
right of naming weapons, and chose those of Sayers
and the Benicia Boy. Whereat the German denied
that fists were weapons at all and called him a coward.
Then the British blood got up, and named pistols over
a table : gave the time and place, and turned up, all
ready for his latter end, to find an empty room and no
opponent.

A more ludicrous finish to a similar incident occurred
at Heidelberg in 1876, which was witnessed by an old
friend of mine. An American from the Far West, of
great stature and physique, had a first-floor flat in one
of the old houses in the Market Place. A long flight
of stairs descended straight from his door and was

STUDENT DUELS 163

continuous with the stone steps outside. He was
pecuHar in his dress, and wore an extra wide Panama
hat, enduring without taking the least notice the various
saucy remarks which were levelled at him by the
Heidelbergers while he ate his dinner. How matters
came to a head can best be described in the dramatic
form of a play without words.

Scene : A restaurant filled with University students,
pegs along the wall on which they hang their caps.
C. P. S. (my friend) at a table r ; an empty table I.
Enter the American, who hangs up his Panama wide-
awake on a peg, not noticing that he displaces a
student's cap in doing so, and sits down at the
table r.

Two students rise and, taking out their visiting-
cards, place them beside the American's plate.

The American looks first at the cards and then at
the men, and sweeps the pasteboards to the floor with
a swish of his mighty elbow.

The students assail the American with the finest
excerpts from their rich minatory vocabulary.

The American, quite undisturbed, continues to eat
his Rindfleisch and Kartoffeln, as if he were stone-
deaf He finishes his repast, puts on his Panama and
sallies forth homewards. The two students follow him
still objurgating, C. P. S. bringing up the rear as an
interested spectator. The Colossus arrives at liis
house, ascends his stairs, unlocks his door and slams it
to. The students then plan an assault : Student A going
up to the door, Student B standing in support half-way
up the stairs. Student A pulls the loud and frequent
bell. The next sight which meets th^ expectant gaze

IG4 PAGES FROM AN UNWRITTEN DIARY

of a crowd of undergraduates collected in the Market
Place is a mingled mass of bodies rolling down the
stairs into the gutter : the American having lifted
Student A bodily into the air, and aimed this human
missile at Student B with deadly efPect. The upper
door slams again. Silence reigns and a careful diag-
nosis of the victims is made, to ascertain if their
features are too much destroyed to be of future use in
the " Mensur." The American next day eats his meal
in peace, and can knock down and even tread on as
many caps as he likes with impunity.

A well-known Dublin physician once escaped the
consequence of a duel by a very simple expedient. He
drove to the appointed spot in the Phoenix Park, and
when he emerged from his carriage appeared to the
amazement of his adversary as innocent of clothes as
Father Adam himself The seconds remonstrated with
him alleging that it was an additional insult to their
principal ; but the doctor, with great coolness, pointed
out that his opponent was a dead shot, and that the
bullet would carry with it portions of clothing into his
person, which might cause additional irritation to the
wound ; that he was prepared therefore to absorb lead
undiluted, but not lead mixed with cloth or tweed.
Solvuntur risu tahulce.

My third winter I spent partly at Berlin, and partly
at Leipzig, studying with Friedrich Kiel, in whom I
found a master at once sympathetic and able. As a
teacher of counterpoint, canon and fugue, he was
facile princeps of his time, but he was no dryasdust
musician. He could compose a specimen canon as
quickly as he could write a letter, (a gift which he

FRIEDRICH KIEL 165

shared with Brahms), but he could appreciate and
discuss with the enthusiasm of a young man all
the modern developments of his day. He was
not only respected but beloved by every pupil who
came under him : and from the accounts I have heard
of Cesar Franck, I feel sure that both these masters
had in their methods and in their natures very much
in common. It may interest contrapuntists to know
that he founded his teaching not upon the traditional
Canto Fermo, but upon Chorale tunes. He always
insisted upon the importance of doing unshackled work
alongside the technical, in order to keep the mind
fresh ; and had a fascinating way of criticizing the
effect of the technical work upon the free. His first
word to me was that an exercise or a canon was of no
use which did not sound well, that the best were those
which passed unnoticed. His second word was " Ent-
wickelung, Entwickelung, immer Entwickelung ! "
(" Development, always development!" or perhaps even
better " Evolution, always Evolution !") He would
illustrate this by pointing out the difference between
the real natural growth of a theme, as in Beethoven,
and its mere repetition or transformation, as in Liszt.
I never heard him say a hard word of anyone, and he
always tried to emphasize the best points even in the
works of men with whom he had the least affinity.
At the close of 1877 I ended my Wander-jahren and
returned to Caml>ridm3 and " ortran-})lo\vin2:."

O ft o

CHAPTER XI

Developments of Cambridge music — Brahms' "Requiem" — Baireuth
in 1876— Berlin — Joachim at Cambridge — Brahms' first Sym-
phony— James Davison — Wagner in London.

In the intervals of my Leipzig studies, I was able to
supervise the summer concerts of the University-
Musical Society at Cambridge ; and owing to the
increasing efficiency of the undergraduates it became
possible to produce many new and unfamiliar master-
pieces, amongst them Schumann's " Paradise and the
Peri" (1874), and the third part of "Faust" (1875).
The orchestra, led by Ludwig Straus, was complete
and the chorus was well balanced in tone. The
summer of 1876 saw the production of Brahms'
" Requiem." This masterpiece had made its first
visit privately at the house of Lady Thompson
(formerly Miss Kate Loder) under the direction of
Stockhausen. We had hoped to give its first public
performance in England at Cambridge, but were just
anticipated by the Royal Academy of Music, which
produced it at the Hanover Square Rooms under John
HuUah, and by the Philharmonic a short time after.
It created such an enthusiasm amongst the under-
graduates in the chorus, many of the best of whom
were first-class cricketers, such as the Lytteltons,
G. H. Longman, and others, that the matches used to
be arranged to permit of their attendances at the
practices. The final rehearsal was interrupted for a

166

DEVELOPMENTS OF CAMBRIDGE MUSIC 167

short space by the intervention of one of our best
student vioHnists, W. H. Blakesley. He was a con-
firmed snuff- taker, going so far as to lament on one
occasion that Nature had set the nose on the human
face the wrong way up ; for, he said, if the nostrils
had been set in the upward direction, they could have
been filled to the brim with his favourite form of
tobacco and even patted down. He had a particularly
attractive brand of snuff which was concocted from a
prescription used by George the Fourth, and he sent
his box round the band with fatal consequences, for I
had to stop the rehearsal for a sensible time to allow
the general sneezing to subside. The soprano soloist
was the same as at the two London performances, Miss
Sophie Ferrari (now Mrs. Pagden), who, by her perfect
phrasing and jjurity of style, gave a reading to the
difhcult fourth number which I have never heard
surpassed.

In the same summer I went to the long-expected
performance of the " Nibelungen Ring " at Baireuth.
I had secured places for the second cycle, which was a
fortunate choice as it was, by all accounts, superior in
every way to the first. To visit the head-centre of
modernity was in those days a perilous business.
Partisanship ran to such fever-heat that even friend-
ships were broken, and the friction was almost intoler-
able. Macfarren, the successor of Sterndale Bennett
in the Cambridge Professorship, roundly and loudly
rated me in a music-shop in Bond Street, wIkmi 1
informed him of my approaching journey : ending with
an expression of contemptuous pity for my having to
sit thi'ough an opera consisting wholly of tlie chord of

168 PAGES FROM AN UNWRITTEN DIAEY

E flat on a pedal ; a criticism which suggested that he
did not know much of it be3^ond the opening pages of
the "Eheingold." He and many others of his kidney
looked upon a pilgrim to the Wagnerian shrine as a
brazen-faced traitor to musical art. If feeling was so
strained in this country, it was a thousand times more
so ill Germany itself. France, still rankling under the
insult of the Aristophanic farce " Die Capitulation,"
which Wagner had published at the moment of her
greatest troubles, kept sternly aloof. There was but
a sprinkling of English and Americans. The mass of
the public consisted of the theatrical world, and of
such professional musicians as were identified with
Wagnerismus to the exclusion of every other contem-
porary writer.

The atmosphere was not sympathetic, and gave a
feeling of polemic prejudice which militated against
whole-hearted appreciation or valuable discrimination.
" He that is not with me is against me " was the
motto of the whole Festival. The theatre was not
finished as far as the exterior went ; the road up the
hill from the station was very much in the rough, and
after rain was a sea of mud. The town was hopelessly
unprepared for the incursion of so many strangers.
The commissariat department was nearly depleted
before the end of the week, and the quality of the food
was as poor as the quantity. We stayed opposite
Wagner's villa " Wahnfried," and could hear Liszt's
ebullitions of enthusiasm under our ground-floor win-
dows, as he took his constitutional after the per-
formances. We sat just behind him in the opera-
house, and we noted with some amusement the con-

BAIREUTH IN 1876 1G9

trariness which showed Itself in his obvious admiration
(real or feigned, who shall say ?) of the duller and
uglier passages.

The orchestra, of which the backbone came from
Meiningen, was admirable. Richter, then a young
fair-haired Viking, was in command. The stage
effects were, with a few exceptions, in advance of most
theatres. Steam was used, I believe for the first
time, for stage purposes ; but the noise of its escape
was so great that it often nearly drowned the music.
The close of the " Pvheingold," and the Walkiirenritt
were, scenically speaking, failures, as was also the end
of the " Gotterdiimmerung." The dragon, which was
made by " Dykwynkyn," the property man at Drury
Lane, was a gruesome beast, redolent of English
pantomime. The best sets were the depths of the
Rhine, the first two acts of the " Walkiire," and " Sieg-
fried." The outstanding moments in the music were,
then, as now, the first and last acts of the " Walkiire,"
the second act of " Siegfried," and the third act of the
" Gotterdiimmerung." It seemed to me then, as it does
still, far too long for the enjoyment of average human
nature. The theatre seats have not yet been devised
which will insure the hearer against overmastering
bodily fatigue, and certainly the cane-bottomed stalls
of Balreuth did not mitigate suffering.

Mr. Hercules McDonnell, who came from Dublin for
the Festival, put his clever finger on the weak spot of
the work, when he said that the underlying mlscliief
was the composer being his own liljrettist : the libret-
tist having no composer to keep him within bounds,
and the composer having no librettist to warn him of

170 PAGES FHOM AN UNWRITTEN DIARY

undue length. No one can now deny the prevalence
of the failing known as "stage- waits." A fad, which
first obtruded itself in " The Flying Dutchman," of
making the hero and heroine stand motionless and
stare at each other for the best part of five minutes,
grew upon the composer as he developed, and to such an
extent, that in " Parsifal " his chief figure has to stand
rooted to the ground for nearly an hour. This may
be all very well in theory and on paper, but just as
the long sitting tells on the audience, so the long
standing is a torture to the actor. Concerning all
these human failings, I preserved a stony silence and
felt even inclined to champion them when I heard the
fulminations of Davison, Joseph Bennett and others of
the ultra-Tory battalions, on a terrace outside between
the acts. It was as good as a play to see this little
band of malcontents, defending themselves as best
they could against the onslaughts of broad-minded
George Osborne, as he brought his best Limerick
brogue to bear upon them.

The cast was very unequal, some of the chief parts
being in the hands of artists who were histrionically
admirable, but whose vocal powers were below the
requirements of the music. This was markedly the
case with Albert Niemann (Siegmund), the Tann-
hiiuser of the Paris performance, who was head and
shoulders above all his companions as an actor, but
whose voice was long past his prime. Unger also, the
Siegfried, was not of sufficient calibre to carry out his
arduous role. The best of the men were Carl Hill
(Alberichj, Schlosser (Mime), Vogl (Loge) and Betz
(Wotanj. The women were far better. Materna,

BAIREUTH IN 1876 171

next perhaps to Tietjens in her hne, the two Leh-
manns (Rhine - daughters) and Marianne Brandt
(Waltraute) the cleverest of all, who reminded many
both in feature and in voice of Madame Viardot-
Garcia. Wagner appeared on the stage at the close
of the cycle, but happily did not make one of his
unfortunate speeches. I regretted seeing him in the
flesh. The music was the music of Jekyll, but the
face was the face of Hyde. Whatever magnetism
there was in the man, his physiognomy did its best to
counteract. The brow and head was most impressive,
the mouth and chin equally repulsive. Together they
made a most curious combination of genius and mean-
ness which exactly corresponded to the Wagner of
the Liszt letters, and the autobiography. In one
respect opera at Baireuth in the lifetime of the com-
poser had a virtue which has gradually tended to dis-
appear since his death. The composer did not permit
his conductor to exaggerate slowness of pace. This was
especially noticeable, when Levi directed " Parsifal "
in 1883 (the year of the composer's death). Dann-
reuther, who stayed at " Wahnfried " for the rehearsals
in 1882, told me that Wagner frequently called out
from the stalls, " Schneller ! Schneller ! Die Leute
werden sich langweilen " (Quicker, quicker, the people
will be bored). With the advent of Mottl, every
movement became slower and slower. His playing of
the Prelude was, by my watch, five minutes slower
than Levi's. The Ring sufi'ered in the same way,
unless llichter was at the helm. The disease of
exaggerated Adagios spread to an alarming extent,
and Mottl's fad became a cult.

172 PAGES FROM AN UNWRITTEN DIARY

After Baireuth I went to study with Kiel in Berlin.
He was a rare man and a rare master. He lived
alone in a top-floor flat, clad, for most of the day, in a
dressing-gown and slippers. His method of teaching
by criticism rather than by rule of thumb is one which
I have found of the greatest service in training young
composers. I learnt more from him in three months,
than from all the others in three years. While at
Berlin I was able to arrange for the first English per-
formance of Brahms' C minor Symphony (No. 1). The
University of Cambridge had offered honorary degrees
to Joachim and Brahms, which were to be conferred
in the spring of 1877; and the programme of the
concert, which was to be coincident with the cere-
mony, was thereby completed. The Symphony had
been first given at Carlsruhe, but was still in manu-
script. The autograph showed its age on the face of
it ; the first movement dated in its original form from
18G2. The final fixture was made after a concert of
the Joachim Quartet at the Sing-Akademie when the
same composer's quartet in B flat was produced. I
sat next a most interesting and communicative per-
son, who turned out to be Lasker, the leader of the
National Liberals, at that time the largest party in
the Reichstag.

During my stay at Berlin I saw many of the heroes
of the war of 1870, whose signatures I had noted in
the visitors' book of the Grand Hotel de Blois, when I
paid a visit to that town three years after the war.
The page in that now historical volume, was shown to
me by the head waiter, and contained the autographs
of Bismarck, von Roou, Moltke and the (then) Crown

BERLIN 173

Prince : the first three in stiff uncompromising German
characters, the last in French, " Frederic Guillaume."
I pointed out the pretty tactfulness of the Prince, and
the waiter repHed with a burst of evident affection,
" Ah ! ce cher Fritz ! II a partout fait comme ea !" I
saw also in Berlin one familiar face, that of Sir Michael
Costa, who had come incog, to swallow " Tristan and
Isolde," and looked as if the meal had disagreed with
him. The drains in the German capital were in
process of reconstruction, with somewhat deadly
results upon the unacclimatized inhabitants ; and I
changed my headquarters (none too soon) to Leipzig,
finding there an entirely new opera company, the
Haase regime having come to an end, and his singers
having migrated to Hamburg. The new personnel
was in most respects inferior to the old, but it con-
tained one most promising artist, who some years
afterwards became famous as a Wagnerian soprano,
Bosa Hasselbeck, who married Joseph Sucher the
conductor, a Viennese contemporary of Hans Ilichter.
The only opera with any claims to unfamiliarity which
I saw was Schubert's " HiiusHche Krieg," which in
spite of its weak libretto, was a fascinating specimen
of the purest Viennese type, and had a great success
with the pul)lic.

On my return to Camljridge in January 1877, I
found the organization of the Joachim-Brahms concert
well advanced and everything promised success for the
responsible undertaking. We were liowever to ex-
perience a severe disappointment. The rumour of
Brahms' approaching visit got al^out with disastrous
speed, and the Crystal Palace authorities publicly

174 PAGES FROM AN UNWRITTEN DIARY

announced that they hoped for a special concert of his
works conducted by himself. This ill-timed advertise-
ment reached his ears and effectually stopped his
cominp-. It had been a hard task to induce him to
consider the journey at all, and it had necessitated all
the pressure of Joachim and the humouring of Madame
Schumann to get him within range of an acceptance,
so greatly did he dread the inevitable lionizing which
he would have had to face. He intended to visit
Cambridge only, and to leave London severely alone.
Curiously enough he told Mr. John Farmer that his
chief interest in London would be to explore the East
End and the Docks. As soon as he saw what the
Crystal Palace meant to do, he retired into his shell,
and the opportunity was. lost for good. The concert
was fixed for March 8, and the programme was as
follows :

PART I.

Overture, " The Wood Nymphs," Op. 20 ... Sterndale Bennett.

Violin Concerto, Op. 61 (Joachim) ... Beethoven.

"A Song of Destiny," Op, 54 ... ... Brahms.

Violin Solos, Andante and Allegro in C major /. S. Bach.

Elegiac Overture (in memory of Kleist), MS. Joachim.

PART II.

Symphony in C minor (MS.) ... ... Brahms.

There was an orchestra of fifty-one, led by Alfred
Burnett, and a chorus of about 150. The two pre-
liminary orchestral rehearsals were held at the
Academy of Music in Tenterden Street, Hanover
Square : Joachim conducting the Symphony and his
own Overture. The Symphony gave a great deal of
trouble, partly owing to the short and somewhat jerky

BRAHMS' FIRST SYMPHONY 175

beat of Joachim, which his own men followed with
ease but which were enigmatical to English players
accustomed to Costa's definite sweep of the baton, and
partly owing to the inferior technique of the horn-
players, who were then the weak spot of British
orchestras. It was not until the later advent of Hans
Richter (himself an excellent horn-player) that this
department of the band reached the same level of
excellence as the strings and woodwind. It was
reserved for him to discover in Paersch and Borsdorf,
neither of whom had been known in the ranks of the
leading orchestras, the founders of the modern school
of horn-playing in England, which has grown and
prospered so markedly since 1880.

The London rehearsals attracted every professional
and amateur musician within reach, and also many
leading literary and artistic notabilities such as
Robert Browning, George Henry Lewes, Leighton,
Felix Moscheles, and other leading painters. A still
more representative gathering came down to Cambridge
to witness the conferring of the degree upon Joachim,
and to be present at the concert. Amongst the ranks
of musicians there was hardly an absentee, Grove,
Manns, Manuel Garcia (then a mere babe of seventy-
two), Osborne, Dannreuther and many more. Halle was
detained by a concert in Manchester. The perform-
ance of the Symphony, as of all the other pieces, was
worthy of the work and of the occasion. Joachim
wrote to Brahms " Deine Sinfonie ging recht gut, und
wurde mit Enthusiasmus aufgenommen, namentlich
das Adagio und der letzte Satz taten's den Leuten an
. . . Seit Cambridge ist das Schicksal des Werkes fur

176 PAGES FROM AN UNWRITTEN DIARY

England festgestellt, die Hauptbliitter sind alle sehr
warm, und je ofter sie nun geh()rt wird, desto besser
fiirs Verstandniss." This performance put the crown
on Joachim's unceasing and loyal efforts to win for
Brahms an abiding place in this country. Never had
a composer a more trusty friend. The newspapers to
which Joachim referred were represented by James
Davison of the Times, Joseph Bennett of the Telegraph,
Griineisen of the Afhenceum, and Ebenezer Prout.

There was a most interesting gathering in Coutts
Trotter's rooms at Trinity, when Joachim, Grove,
Robert Browning, and Hueffer (destined to be
Davison's successor as critic of the Times) had a
warm controversy on the subject of Beethoven's last
Quartets. The member of the party who talked most
and knew least about the subject, was, curiously
enough, Browning. I remember remarking sotto voce
to my neighbour that his arguments explained to me
that the true reason of the obscurity of many refer-
ences to music in his poems was the superficiality and
exiguity of his technical knowledge. When Jebb
was writing his masterly Greek translation of " Abt
Vogler," he too became well aware of this weakness,
and was able with infinite skill to o^loss over the
solecisms of the original. " Sliding by semitones till
I sink to the minor," is indeed the refuge of the
destitute amateur improviser. But Browning was too
consummate a master of his own craft to commit such
blatant blunders as others of his day, when they
ventured upon the perilous paths of an art they did
not know. Black wrote of " Mozart's Sonata in A
sharp," and even George Eliot, most careful of writers,

JAMES DAVISON 177

spoke of "a long-drawn organ-stop," comparing a
piece of wooden mechanism with a sound. The Times
too once described the organ on the Handel Festival
platform as possessing " wonderful ramifications of
fugues and diapasons."

With Davison I had, in company with Fuller
Maitland (then an undergraduate of Trinity) a most
interesting talk at his hotel. It was enough to show
that whatever prejudices he had, and they were many
and often none too genuine, his musical heart was in
the right place. He was cynical enough to dislike
wearing that heart upon his sleeve, and often did his
best to conceal his convictions under a cloud of witty
verbiage. But on this occasion he became human,
under the influence of his artistic surroundings. The
criticisms he made upon the Symphony were surpris-
ingly sound. The only weak spot which he saw in
it was one concerning which a good deal may be said,
and he did not insist on it so much as to give it a
disproportionate importance. He held that so great
were the first and last movements, that their mighty
wings were too large for the body of the intermediate
Adagio and Scherzo : and that the latter especially'-,
the charm of which he entirely endorsed, was painted
in too miniature a style to balance effectively its
overpowering companions. There is no doubt that
Davison, like his less-capable brethren, had liitlierto
mixed up Brahms and Wagner in one category of
hated " nmsic of the future," and that liis eyes were
opened by the Symphony to the true position of each.
He began to see that the two composers were as
distinct in their method and as different in llieir

178 PAGES FROM AN UNWEITTEN DIAKY

aims as were Beethoven and Weber ; and from that
day he altered his lead, followed of course by his
flock. The Musical Society followed up this historic
premiere in the following summer by two more works
by the same master which were new to England, the
Rhapsody for Alto Solo and male chorus Op. 53,
and the second set of Liebeslieder Waltzes. It also
revived an old classic, unknown in this country,
Astorga's " Stabat Mater."

In the autumn of 1877 Wagner came to England,
and with him Hans Richter. A series of concerts
were given at the Albert Hall, consisting mainly of
excerpts from the " Ring," for the purpose of paying off
the Baireuth deficit. They were musically successful ;
financially they failed in their object, at all events
temporarily. But there can be little doubt that they
carried on the pioneer work of Dannreuther and of
Walter Bache, who had spent time and money with-
out stint in making Wagner a known quantity to the
English pubhc. In that sense they paved the way
for the success which established the Baireuth Theatre
on a firm footing after 1882. Indirectly they brought
about the regeneration of the London orchestras ; first
by a visit as conductor of Hans von Billow, who directed
two Wagner concerts at St. James's Hall, and led the
players a dance with his thorough and uncompromising
methods ; and afterwards by the advent of Hans
Richter, whose mastery with the baton made an
instant success with players and public aHke, Wagner
was too old and too tired to carry through a concert
single-handed ; and although the old force and fire
showed itself in occasional flashes, such as the con-

WAGNER IN LONDON 179

ducting of the Kaisermarsch at the opening of the
Festival, the best results were obtained by his
lieutenant, who possessed the patience and the equani-
mity which the composer lacked. Wilhelmj led the
strings as at Baireuth. When the brass found them-
selves in difficulties owing to the novel technique,
Richter taught them by example as well as by precept
how to tackle them. The spectacle of a conductor
who could play passages on the Bass Tuba was a new
experience for the old stagers, and they appreciated
the training of a man who could be practical as well
as ornamental.

The attitude of the greater public was one rather of
curiosity than of enthusiasm. One section was accus-
tomed enough to operatic excerpts on the concert
platform, but of a more showy kind, and mainly for
the exploitation of star singers. Another section was
devoted to classical concerts such as the Monday
"Pops." and the Crystal Palace Saturdays, and did
not relish the incursion of the stage into the concert-
room. The day for " the Wagner Concert " per se had
not arrived, and the undertaking had to suffer the
inevitable loss consequent on breaking new ground.
The Press was mainly hostile at heart, for which
Wagner had his own sharp pen to thank, and his
personality did not magnetize the ol ttoWol. Two
of the most distinguished literary celebrities of the
day, George Henry Lewes and George Eliot, whom
I met during the Festival Week, and who could not
be considered lacking in appreciation of what was
either German or new, both spoke to me of this curious
lack of personal attraction at any rate to a casual visitor.

180 PAGES FROM AN UNWRITTEN DIARY

George Eliot said to me of the Wagners, " She is a
genius. He is an epicier f' a very curious and inter-
esting summing up of her impressions, which quite
supported my own distant view of this composite and
extraordinary man. When I ventured on challenging
her epithet as appUed to Wagner the composer, she
confessed that the personaUty prejudiced her as to
his work. If the strange case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr.
Hyde had been written, I think she would have
appreciated the parallel, which the autobiography has
finally brought home to the world.

CHAPTER XII

The Cambridge A.D.C.— J. W. Clark— Greek Plays— J. K. Stephen
—"The Veiled Prophet "—Ernst Frank— Hanover in 1881.

The dramatic world at Cambridge demands a place in
my records of the seventies. The club, known to the
world as the A.D.C., which was founded by Buruand,
had been nursed through a stormy and often chequered
career by the tender and sympathetic care of John
Willis Clark, its guide, philosopher and friend. This
least donnish and most cosmopolitan of Dons was able,
partly by ridicule and partly by diplomacy, to ward off
the frowns of hostile tutors and strait-laced Deans ; he
weaned the infant from its early burlesque playthings,
and brought it up to the point of producing the legiti-
mate drama. Any reader of the Life of "J," as Clark
was called by his intimates, will find a most illumina-
ting chapter from the pen of Mr. Walter Pollock
concerning his dramatic experiences and knowledge.
In a diminutive theatre of its own this body of student-
actors (often more actors than students) produced the
most ambitious plays in a surprisingly finished style.
They spared no pains, and took care to get the best
possible stage-managers to coach them. It was a
pleasure to hear the English language spoken without
the mouthings and contortions wliicli were only too
common among professionals in the early ])art of the
nineteenth century. 'J'Ik^ gestures miiy have been

often homely, but tiiey were genuine and sincere :

181

182 PAGES FROM AN UNWUITTEN DIARY

Clark's close acquaintance with the French stage in
general and the Theatre Fran9ais in particular had a
marked influence upon the little Cambridge stage.
The ladies' parts were the chief difficulty ; feminine
features often being marred by a raucous bass voice
which effectually destroyed the illusion of a love-scene.
One of the best " leading ladies " of my time was so
proud of his histrionic genius that he, being a man of
means, got a complete trousseau from a Paris milliner,
while a more modestly-minded colleague had to con-
tent himself with a curious medley of boating- flannels
and silk skirts. Budding actors were not rare.
Several became well known on the professional stage :
chief among them Charles Brookfield, who was facile
piinceps as a character actor, and made his mark in
such widely different parts as Sir John Yesey in
" Money," and the burglar in " The Ticket-of-Leave
Man." The cast of both these and successive plays
was remarkable for a list of names which are now
public property : James Lowther (now Speaker of the
House of Commons), Milnes (now Lord Crewe), Alfred
Lyttelton, Algernon Lawley, William Elliot, Charles
and Harry Newton, and many more.

Coe, the stage-manager of the Haymarket, came
down to rehearse " Money," but devoted himself
principally to perfecting the "Old Member" in his
request for snuff in the Club scene, and to teaching
"Stout" how to shake hands. This process involved
seizing with his left hand the right hand of a brother
actor, and raising his own right to a great height,
from which it should descend with a rush and a smack
into the receiving palm. Stout was absolutely in-

THE CAMBRIDGE A.D.C. 183

capable of a straight aim, and missed every time,
until Coe's " Dear Boy " gradually tended to melt into
more sulphurous epithets. The example set by these
carefully rehearsed and admirably acted plays had its
effect upon the succeeding generation, who did their
duty by Goldsmith and Sheridan, and even attained
to a most creditable performance of Shakespeare's
" Henry IV.," Part I. Their musical efforts were limited
to the production of Sullivan's "Cox and Box," in
which I officiated as the orchestra. Out of the parent
stem of the A.D.C. however sprouted an offshoot,
which found the ground prepared for it, and rapidly
grew in health and strength, the Cambridge Greek
Play.

In my undergraduate days there was but one theatre
in Cambridge, a ramshackle old house in the suburb of
Barnwell, interesting to an Irislnnan as having been
exactly modelled on the Theatre Royal in Dublin,
though of smaller size. This none too respectable
house was kept sternly closed during term-time, and
the only performances to be seen on its boai'ds took
place in the Long Vacation. The two plays I saw
there were " Macbeth " (with Locke's music so-called)
and "Richard III." The former recalled Hogartli's
" Strolling Players in a Barn." The latter was so
screamingly funny, that the whole theatre treated it
as a first-class burles(jue ; and the actor who played
the King had to interrupt his speech in the tent, come
down to the footliglits and impress upon l)is audience
that " Richard was one of the 'eaviest parts in the 'ole
range of the di i lama," a protest whicli only accentuated
the general merriment. A good Providence intfn'veiKHl

184 PAGES FROM AN UNWRITTEN DIARY

shortly afterwards ; the " Stadttheater " of Cambridge
became a Salvation Army Barracks, and the Proctors
breathed again.

But the taste for the drama was spreading, thanks
to the influence of Clark ; and a leading spirit in the
town, Mr. Redfarn, who took a deep interest in things
theatrical, built a temporary room with a workable
stage on the site where its successor, the Cambridge
Theatre, now stands. The University authorities gave
it their long- delayed countenance, and its position was
definitely consolidated by the production of Sophocles'
" Ajax " in the original Greek, the first of a series
which has been continued at regular intervals to the
present day. The temporary structure lent itself more
easily to the conventions of the Greek Drama than
does its more civilized successor. It was possible to
place the chorus on a semicircular platform in front of
the footlights, and thereby to give the actors full play
on the stage proper. The committee, of which Sir
Richard Jebb was chairman, were fortunate in finding
ready to their hand an ideal representative of Ajax in
James Kenneth Stephen, the most brilliant under-
graduate of his day, afterwards to become famous
as J. K. S., the witty author of "Lapsus Calami" and
a formidable rival of Calverley in his own domain.
Stephen had never given his most intimate friends
an inkling of his possession of dramatic gifts. He
possessed so strong a personality, that it seemed most
improbable that he would be capable of merging it in
the portrayal of another. Solid, four-square, with a
most determined mouth and chin, he gave the
impression of a budding Lord Chancellor rather than

J. K. STEPHEN 185

of a tragedian. But the wonderful charm of his smile
and the fire of his eye betrayed the poetic tenderness
within. Amongst his numerous skits and parodies it
is not possible to find one ill-natured line. He hit
hard, but always above the belt, and his unfailing
humour healed a wound even in the inflicting of it.
His premature death was as irreparable a loss to his
country, as it has been to his friends. I possess
a characteristic little poem, which he wrote as a
Christmas Card for my daughter (then four years old),
and which was illustrated by Mr. Henry Ford (then an
undergraduate). As the writing is somewhat small,
even in the original, I transcribe it here :

In the days of the past, which are dear to the poet,
When Ireland was happy and bristled with kings,

The men were all heroes, and knew how to show it
By constantly doing remarkable things.

All the women were fair to be seen,
From the peasant right up to the queen,

But I think I know one who is fairer.

In charm and accomplishments raier

Than any historical bearer

Of the glorious name Geraldine.

n.

But beauty is best when 'tis blended with glory.

Bright eyes should encourage the deeds of brave men,

And I want you to shine in our century's story,
And to cause Mrs. Markham to take up her pen ;
I hope you will sliortly be seen
Ascending the throne of a queen ;

You know you're of Irish extraction,

Your name is suggestive of faction,

And of many a wonderful action;

It's a glorious name, Geraldine.

186 PAGES FROM AN UNWRITTEN DIARY

III.

Ah well ! To discover the future is pleasant,
'Tis sweet to indulge the prophetical boast,
But, since Christmas is coming, let's think of the present,
And will you allow me to give you a toast 1

Here's the health of the fair Greraldine,
With seventeen times seventeen,
And some day, Ma'am, the flower of the nation,
Elate with judicious potation.
Will repeat with a wild acclamation

The glorious name, Geraldine.

J. K. 8.

Stephen's fellow-actors in the play included many
well-known scholars, whose dramatic gifts and mighty
stature gave a surprising dignity to the production.
The chorus was most efficient, and the orchestra
consisted of picked professional players. The music
was composed by Macfarren, who had considerable
difficulty in setting the original Greek, and was not
altogether successful in consequence. The first musical
triumph was achieved in the second venture, when
Hubert Parry wrote the music for " The Birds " of
Aristophanes. It became possible thereafter to appre-
ciate the proper balance of music in the scheme, and
to produce the plays of the greatest of all the tragic
writers, iEschylus, whose method so greatly depends
upon the intimate connection of the chorus with the
action. In " The Birds " again actors were found, who
were exactly suited for the parts of Peithetairus and
Euelpides, in Montagu James (now Provost of King's)
and Harry Newton, who had made a remarkable
success in the part of FalstafF at the A.D.C. The
scenery was a monument to John O'Connor's poetical
fancy. His conception of the second act (which was

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GREEK PLAYS 187

unfortunately lost sight of in a more recent repetition
of the play) was strikingly original. He painted a
bird's-eye view of the earth as seen through the clouds
which formed the wings, and gave the impression to
the audience that they were looking down a funnel of
vapour, across which the chorus of birds would fly
at intervals. An unrehearsed effect of exceeding
comicality was produced by one of the actors scattering
a quantity of corn on the front platform to keep the
chorus quiet. The "Eumenides" of ^schylus, and the
"(Edipus Rex" of Sophocles followed; after witnessing
the former of them, undoubtedly one of the greatest
practical dramas which exists, the Master of Trinity
(Thompson) paid a genuine and sincere compliment to
music, by saying that he had for the first time
appreciated the choric rhythms of ^schylus at their
true value. This play was also repeated in later days,
and the deep impression produced on the first occasion
was redoubled.

The list has since been amplified by performances of
the "Ion" and "Iphigenia in Tauris" of Euripides, the
"Agamemnon," and "The Wasps." The difficulty in
choosing the plays was considerably increased by the
impossibility of representing a female chorus by male
singers. The male speaking voice can be chosen so as
to minimize incongruity to a certain extent, but with
the sinp-intr voice this is not feasible. To hazard the
effect of fifteen baritones and tenors expressing feminine
sentiments in women's garb, would be too perilous in
its challejige to mirth among the audience. The
situation even amongst the actor contingent was some-
times dangerously strained. (h\ one occasion in the

188 PAGES FROM AN UNWRITTEN DIARY

great scene between Jocasta and OEdipus, Jocasta's
wig came oflP bodily, and the sensation of mingled
agony and amusement was overpowering ; so much so
that Miss Mary Anderson who was in the audience
buried her face in her hands and wept. The innovation
of a female chorus is yet to be tried, and it is the most
obvious method of widening the repertoire. Its adoption
would bring the Agamemnon Trilogy within the range
of practical politics, by rendering possible the production
of the most dramatic and poignant of the three, the
" Choephoroe."

A step forward in this desirable direction was made
by a performance of Gluck's "Orpheus," given under
conditions similar to the Greek tragedies. The per-
formers were mainly amateurs, the chorus wholly so.
The mounting and the colour design was supervised by
Alma Tadema, whose brilliant idea it was to dress the
chorus in the Elysian Fields in a stuff commonly known
as butter-muslin, which gave a tone of rich yellow to
the whole scene.

This performance was the first serious attempt in
this country to present Gluck's opera in the true Greek
spirit which permeates it ; and to those who had
only seen it in the pseudo- classic medley of Roman
and Eastern costumes for which Co vent Garden
ransacked the recesses of its ancient wardrobes, the
coup cVoeil was something of a revelation. What the
celibate Fellows of my in statu pupillari days would
have thought of the wives and daughters of their
Benedick successors taking part in a dramatic perform-
ance with all its incidental paraphernalia of powder
and rouge, I tremble to think. The make-ups were

" THE VEILED PROPHET " 189

patent In Cambridge Society for days after, for the
company were not adepts at the removal of adventitious
colours, and there was even a malicious guess or two
that the bloom upon the forbidden fruit was too
becoming to be at once obliterated. Certainly Orpheus
proved his power of taming that most intractable of
animals, the old-fashioned Don.

In 1877 I prevailed upon a Cambridge under-
graduate, now the well-known musical historian and
bibliographer, Mr. Barclay Squire, to convert Thomas
Moore's poem "The Veiled Prophet," from " Lalla
Rookh," into a libretto for a grand opera. When we
had nearly completed our labours I awoke to the fact
that there was no opera-house to produce it. The
only chance seemed to be in Germany, and I bethought
me of the conductor who had brought out Goetz'
" Taming of the Shrew " at Mannheim, and who had
recently been appointed by Devrient to be chief Capell-
meister at the Frankfurt Stadt-Theater, Ernst Frank.
He treated my letter, although it was backed by no
introduction, in precisely the same kindly spirit, as
that in which he received Goetz : and cordially invited
me to bring the score to him at the first available
opportunity. When Goetz toiled up the stairs to see
him at Mannheim, the following conversation took
place, of which I had a verbatim report :

Goetz. " I am {nCimlick) Hermann Goetz from
Zurich."

Frank. " What can I do for you ?"

Long silence, during which Goetz looks so shy that
he seems to wish for the earth to swallow him up.
At last —

l^O PAGES FROM AN UNWRITTEN DIARY

GoETZ (apologetically). " I have {luimlich) written
an opera."

Frank {cheerily). " So much the better."

GoETZ {witJi a gulp of relief). " You are the first to say
that to me. All the others say, so much the worse 1"

This little scene gives the measure of the man. He
was ever ready to encourage and, if he believed in his
man, to act. He carried through the " Taming of the
Shrew," and he did the same for me, but under cir-
cumstances of far greater difficulty. I paid my first
visit to him in the late summer of 1878 ; he gave
me invaluable help in the reconstruction of some of
the scenes, and undertook, when the score was com-
pleted, to submit it to Devrient the manager.

The year following, just as the opera was finished,
he wrote to say that Devrient had resigned the
Directorship under circumstances which obliged him
as a loyal friend to do the same, but recommended me,
though with the added advice " Blessed is he that
expecteth nothing, for he shall not be disappointed,"
to try elsewhere, pending developments. He armed
me with an excellent German translation, which he
had prepared himself. I went to Berlin, and Joachim
arranged for a Star Chamber consisting of Eckert and
Radecke, the two chief conductors of the Opera House,
to sit upon it in his drawing-room. It was a very hot
afternoon, even for Berlin, and I ploughed through the
score in one of the most stiff and unsympathetic at-
mospheres it was ever my misfortune to endure.
After the three acts had ended in a silence so oppres-
sive that I longed for a request, accompanied by suit-
able expletives, to take myself and my music away to

ERNST FRANK 191

a still hotter climate, we adjourned to a supper of
crayfish, which evidently appealed more to the Capell-
meisters' taste ; and I went back to my hotel in total
ignorance of the verdict. As the silence remained un-
broken, I bethought me of a desperate step and wrote
to Liszt asking if I might bring the score to Weimar.
I felt as if I had been somewhat rash in trying to ford
the Rubicon. But Weimar was silent, and I confess
to a feeling of relief that it was. I do not believe to
this day that Liszt was ever allowed to see my letter,
and one of his closest friends and admirers assured me
that his silence was in itself sufficient proof that my
request was intercepted by some secretarial busybody.
Anyhow I steered successfully between the Scylla of
Tory Berlin and the Charybdis of Radical Weimar,
though I returned home empty.

But my suspense did not last long. On a fateful
occasion Hans von Billow, then conductor at Hanover,
suddenly exploded one of his verbal shells from his
seat in the orchestra. At a performance of ' ' Lohengrin,"
Anton Schott, the tenor who provided von Billow with
the axiom that a " tenor voice is a disease," sang the
title-part in a way so antipathetic to him, that he
called out " Schweinritter," (Knight of the Swine), and
had such a quarrel with the knight of the swan that
he was obliged to retire. In his place was appointed
Ernst Frank, who had not been at his post more than
a few days before he wrote to me to bring the opera
to Hanover. 1 went in the spring of 1880; experi-
enced with him and his most kindly chief, Hans von
Bronsart, a very different seance from that at Berlin,
and the opera was accepted for the ensuing winter. I

192 PAGES FEOM AN UNWEITTEN DIARY

went over at Christmas and Frank speut as much
labour and trouble over the work as if it were an
established masterpiece instead of a " first kitten " : he
was full of hints for improvements and those ever-
blessed helps to theatrical success, cuts ; giving me
every opportunity of testing orchestral, solo, and choral
effects, and of working out the dramatic points of the
ballet. He was highly amused at my comparison of
the stage-door of the Hof-Theater with those at home,
and at my appreciation of the fact that it was as
dignified an entrance to the house as that provided for
the public.

The singers one and all worked for the piece and not
for themselves. There was no discontent, no requests
for vocal emendations or additions to appease any
individual singer. The orchestra, of which the violin-
ists were mostly old pupils of Joachim, was one of the
best in Germany. The players spared time even for
individual study. On one morning I heard a curious
sound in the dark theatre, and peering round from the
stage I saw the drummer all alone practising the entire
opera by himself. The chief so^jrano, Fraulein Burs,
was the singer in whose musicianship Blilow trusted so
implicitly that he called her his first clarinet. The
tenor was Schott, (the "swine-knight"), who certainly
needed no such epithets from me. The baritone was
the weakest spot, both vocally and intellectually.
After the first performance, Frank stood still in the
street, took off his broad wide-awake, made a low bow
and said, " Denken sie mal, meine Herrn und Damen,
die Oper ist ja aufgefiihrt."

Though the opera was successful enough with the

HANOVER IN 1881 193

public to gladden his kindly heart, it met in the
Hanoverian Press with the fate which all the theatre
magnates anticipated. The local papers were at war
with the Prussian Intendant ; he despised them and
let them know it, with the natural consequence that
anything he brought out was ipso facto written down.
In addition they hated von Blilow, who was von Bron-
sart's close friend, and thought that an opera, so
speedily produced, must be a legacy from the " ver-
flossene Capellmeister " as they termed him. Added
to these damnatory facts was the final touch that the
opera came from England, and there was no music in
England and never could be. Fortunately for Frank,
the Hanover Press was alone in its attitude, and he
got the reward for his single-minded pluck and enter-
prise in all the reports of the correspondents from
Vienna and elsewhere.

While at Hanover, I experienced a warm welcome
at the hands of General von Zglinitzki and his family.
His wife and sister-in-law were direct descendants of
Mrs. Siddons. Grove, who knew the trio well, pictur-
esquely described them as Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva.
Minerva had an extraordinary resemblance to her
famous ancestress. Prince Albrecht of Prussia, at
that time the Regent of Hanover, was very fond of
music, but his taste stopped short at Gluck. Mozart
he tolerated but considered somewhat futurist in his
tendencies. The Tnt(;iidant, with a touch of waggery,
composed a Bach polka, founded on two fugues of the
forty-eight, to suit a Court Ball. The opening phrase
ran thus :

13

194 PAGES FROM AN UNWRITTEN DIARY

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It was a worthy companion of his friend von Billow's
Quadrilles on themes from Berlioz' "Benvenuto Cellini."
But I fear that neither of these strokes of genius
attained the dignity of a performance. The Prince
had a rare knack of making his state concerts musi-
cally interesting. At one of them I heard an excel-
lent rendering of the complete Second Finale to
Mozart's " Don Juan," which had for years been wholly
neglected. No doubt it is, from the ordinary theatrical
standpoint, as redundant as the entry of Fortinbras
after Hamlet's death. But that serious thinker and
true artist, Forbes Robertson, realized the dramatic
fitness of Shakespeare's own ending to the play, and
restored it. Mozart's colossal ending is slowly but
surely making its way back to its proper place. It
was first given in England at the Lyceum Theatre,
when the students of the Royal College of Music per-
formed the opera. The Munich authorities have re-
placed it, and there is yet hope that devils and red
fire will not always give the cue for hats and cloaks.
This irreverent tampering with masterpieces is nothing
new. The fifth act of the "Huguenots" is fast becoming
a dead letter. Rossini's '* William Tell " was so hacked
and cut about during the composer's lifetime, that
when a friend told him that it was announced for

HANOVER IN 1881 195

performance one evening by itself at the Grand Op^ra,
he asked in irony, " What 1 All of it ?" In theatres
like that at Hanover, which were not wholly depen-
dent upon the whims of the public, and could afford to
educate them to a higher level of taste, vandalisms
such as these were rare. In Dresden, for example, I
have seen the "Huguenots," the "Prophete" and "Tell"
produced with as much piety and care as the " Ring "
or " Tristan " : neither there nor at Hanover was there
any distinction of persons.

Such is the inner value of subvention. It makes for
education, enables the serious-minded section of its
public to see the historical plays of Shakespeare, the
tragedies of Lessing, Goethe and Schiller, and so to
keep their acquaintance with the classics green. The
house is not lit up by a superfluity of diamonds, nor is
its policy governed by the passing fads of fickle Society.
Music is placed on a par with its sister arts, and
its masterpieces are as easily within the reach of every
section of the public, as those of Raphael and Michael
Angelo. In no country can this be done without State
or Municipal support, any more than school education
can be independent of the rates and taxes. The future
of music is safe only where it is considered, as the
Greeks in their wisdom considered it, part and parcel
of a nation's educational welfare. In England it has
too long suffered under the neglect of those who, like
Thompson of Trinity, considered it only " a grade
better than dancing," and relegated it to the position
of a luxurious amusement. To rescue it from centuries
of this misguided and distorted judgment needs public
spirit and money, and the man to foster the one and to

196 PAGES FROM AN UNWRITTEN DIARY

dispense the other. In Germany this was accomplished
partly by the strong advocacy of Martin Luther, partly
by the wisdom of the heads of small principalities. In
EnPfland native music has to recover from the ban of
Oliver Cromwell and from the lack of any genuinely
artistic support from Society and its chiefs. As Luther
discountenanced painting and so killed for centuries in
Germany an art for which DUrer and Cranach had laid
the soundest of foundations, so did the Puritans destroy
music in this country. Its rescue depends upon the
foundation, support and sure continuance of a National
Theatre, and a National Opera.

CHAPTER XIII

Richter Concerts — Hermann Franke — Brahms at Hamburg — Costa
— Birmingham Festival of 1882 — Gounod — Meyerbeer — Parry's
" Prometheus "— R. C. Rowe.

In the winter of 1878-79, a year after Wagner's visit to
the Albert Hall, an interview took place at my house
at Cambridge which had far-reaching eflPects upon
orchestral concerts and upon orchestral playing in this
country. A former pupil of Joachim, Hermann Franke,
who had settled in Loudon about the year 1873, had
made great efforts to widen the sphere of chamber
music, and had given several series of concerts at the
Royal Academy concert-room, in which he not only
produced works passed by at St. James's Hall, but also
looked about for unknown British work, and had the
courage to perform it. He had organized the orchestra
at the Wagner Festival, and sat at the first desk with
Wilhelmj. In appreciation of his work Wagner gave
him his photograph with the poetical inscription,

" Hermann Franke,
Zum owigoii Danke.

"K. W."

Franke's enthusiasms and ambitions were far more
enjoyment to liim than I)laying the violin, and they
speedily overshadowed his instrumental powers. Like
the rest of the orchestra, he M'^as fascinated by the
personality and dominant force of Hans Kichter, and
laid his plans to secure him for further concerts where

197

198 PAGES FROM AN UNWRITTEN DIARY

he could show the British pubUc his mastery of the
works of other composers besides Wagner. Franke
came down suddenly to Cambridge, and consulted with
me as to the possibility of establishing a series of con-
certs in London under Richter's conductorship. The
way seemed clear enough for such an undertaking.
The Philharmonic was in somewhat feeble hands, the
only other orchestral body was directed by Dr. Wylde,
the hero of the "Freischlitz" overture episode described
in a former chapter. Manns, practically the only
metropolitan conductor of merit, confined his energies
to the Crystal Palace, Halle to Manchester. The out-
come of our conversation was the establishing of the
Richter Concerts, in which I was able, thanks to
my personal acquaintance with several enthusiastic
amateurs of means, to assist by building up a guarantee
fund.

The first series took place in May, 1879, and consisted
of three orchestral and one chamber concert. The Third,
Fifth and Seventh Symphonies of Beethoven were
given with a perfection which was nothing less than a
revelation to the public, too long accustomed to per-
sistent mezzofortes, and humdrum phrasing. Richter's
popularity with the band was increased by his quaint
efforts to express himself in English. Le Bon, the
oboist, who played an A natural instead of an A flat
was so startled by hearing Richter call out "As" (the
German for A flat) that he began to pack up his instru-
ment and take up his hat, until a German neighbour
assured him that there was no allusion to long ears.
A pizzicato which gave the impression of being pro-
duced by nail power, he corrected by the request to

RICHTER CONCEETS 199

play " not with the horns but with the meat." " Do
not hurry with the syncopes (dissyllable) " was another
of his axioms. The concerts were so successful artisti-
cally, that they established themselves for years, not
however without serious pecuniary difficulty. The
Guarnerius fiddle of the plucky founder had, it was
said, to be sold for the cause, but the sacrifice was
made without a murmur from its possessor.

In course of time Frauke found it impossible to carry
the whole weight of responsibility on his own shoulders,
and posterity has done him the usual kindness of for-
getting the fact that the inception of the whole scheme
was his, and his alone. I once heard Richter in-
dignantly condemn this injustice by saying, " Er hat's
gewagt," (He dared to do it). The eventual success of
the venture led on to a series of German opera per-
formances, the first which had been given in London
for half a century, which took place at Drury Lane
Theatre in the summer of 1882. The company in-
cluded most of my Leipzig favourites, Peschka-Leutner,
Gura, Ehrke and others, and the repertoire contained
such masterpieces as "Fidelio," "Euryanthe," (not heard
since the visit of Schroder-Devrient), and the "Meister-
singer," which made its first English appearance on
May 20. The season was, of course, financially as
disastrous as most of such new ventures are ; but it
did its work for the good of the country, and made
possi})le the subsequent developments in a similar
direction which are now so familiar a part of London
life. All tliis great advance was due to tlie single-
minded energy of one man, whose artistic iduids were
too strong to admit of sufficient grasp of business

200 PAGES FROM AN UNWRITTEN DIARY

detail, and who had by retiring from the fray to leave
the fruits of eventual victory to others, and to pay the
wholly undeserved penalty of public oblivion.

During the winter of 1880 I went with a highly
gifted Fellow of Trinity, the late Richard C. Rowe, to
Hamburg, and we chanced by good luck on a concert
at which Brahms played his Second Concerto in B flat,
then a novelty. The reception given to the composer
by his native town was as enthusiastic as we antici-
pated. His pianoforte playing was not so much that
of a finished pianist, as of a composer who despised
virtuosity. The skips, which are many and perilous in
the solo part, were accomplished regardless of accuracy,
and it is not an exaggeration to say that there were
handfuls of wrong notes. The touch was somewhat
hard, and lacking in force-control ; it was at its best
in the slow movement, where he produced the true
velvety quality, probably because he was not so
hampered by his own difliculties. But never since
have I heard a rendering of the concerto, so complete
in its outlook or so big in its interpretation. The
wrong notes did not really matter, they did not disturb
his hearers any more than himself. He took it for granted
that the public knew that he had written the right
notes, and did not worry himself over such little trifles
as hitting the wrong ones. His attitude at the piano
was precisely that in Professor von Beckerath's sketch.
The short legs straight down to the pedals, which they
seemed only just to reach, the head thrown back and
slightly tilted as if listening to the band rather than
to himself, the shoulders hunched up and the arms
almost as straight as the legs and well above the key-

BRAHMS 201

board. His figure was curiously ill-proportioned. He
had the chest development and height from the waist
of a muscular man of five foot ten, but his legs were so
short as to reduce him well below middle height. His
eyes were, I think, the most beautiful I ever saw ;
blue, and of a depth so liquid that (as I once heard a
friend of his say) " You could take a header into
them." This was my only experience of Brahms as a
pianist. As a conductor 1 saw him at Leipzig in 1881,
and late in his life in Berlin in 1895. At Leipzig he
conducted the performance of the Tragic and Academic
Festival overtures, and at Berlin the two concertos
played by D' Albert.

At Leipzig he was always a little "out of tune."
He never quite forgave the first reception of his
D minor Concerto at the Gewandhaus, and he used to
vent his bottled-up wrath by satirical remarks to the
Directors. One of them, a tall and rather pompous
gentleman who wore a white waistcoat with all the
air of Augustus Harris at his zenith, asked Brahms
before the concert with a patronizing smile, " Whither
are you going to lead us to-night, Mr. Brahms ? To
Heaven ?"

Brahms. " It's all the same to me which direction
you take."

His conducting of the D minor Concerto threw an
entirely new light on the whole composition, especially
as regards the rhythmical swing of tlie first movement.
Written in the troublesome tempo of 4', most con-
ductors either take it too quickly by beating two in a
bar or too slowly by beating six. Brahms beat it in
an uneven four (-rj-u), which entirely did away with

202 PAGES FROM AN UNWRITTEN DIARY

undue dragging or hurrying, and kept the line of
movement insistent up to the last note. His tempo was
very elastic, as much so in places as von Billow's,
though more restrained, but he never allowed his
liberties with the time to interfere with the general
balance : they were of the true nature of ruhato. He
loathed having his slow movements played in an in-
exorable four-square. On one occasion at a perform-
ance of his C minor Symphony he was sitting in a box
next to a friend of mine, and in the Andante, which
was being played with a metronomic stiffness, he
suddenly seized his neighbour by the shoulder and
ejaculating " Heraus !" literally pushed him out of the
concert-room.

Just before leaving Hanover in 1881, I received an
invitation to compose an orchestral work for the
Birmingham Festival of 1882. I wrote the Serenade
in G, and knowing that it would require at least two
rehearsals, I luckily anticipated the rush of the
Festival preparations by a preliminary canter on my
own account. This invitation led to my first meeting
with Costa, whose last Festival it was destined to
be. I got a message from the great man to call upon
him at Eccleston Square, and found him in his study
clad in a rather antique dressing-gown and surrounded
by what looked like architectural maps and plans. He
quite belied my anticipations of a haughty and stand-
off reception, and was most genial and hospitable. He
apologized for not conducting my work, on the score
that he never made himself responsible for living
writers' compositions, though he had none the less
read through my MS. He then produced the plans,

COSTA 203

in order to instruct me where each instrument was
placed, and who the players were. He had the seating
(to an inch) both of St. George's Hall, where the
London rehearsals were held, and of the Birmingham
Town Hall, and described to me with great accuracy
the height of the players above the conductor at the
latter room. When I went up to rehearse in St.
George's Hall, he planted himself at my elbow follow-
ing every note of the score, and giving me a secret
prod when he wanted a passage repeated which I had
passed over. The first movement (in | time) ended
with a long accelerando, which I could not get to move
on to my satisfaction. It was my own fault, for I
continued beating three to a bar. Costa prodded, and
whispered to me under his breath " One beat will do
it." So it did, and his next prod was one of satis-
faction accompanied by a most un-Costa-like wink.
His care not to let the band know that he was coach-
ing me was excessive, and both in London and in
Birmingham I had good reason to be grateful for his
tactful kindness.

He was not at all so kindly to Gounod, who conducted
the first performance of the "Redemption" on tlie
same occasion. He disliked the Frenchman's pose and
resented the suggestion of "The Assumption of
Gounod " which his attitude pictured. I fully ex-
pected to see a miracle : the opening of the Town Hall
ceiling and the ascent of the composer into a layer of
Bl;ick Country fog. Tliere was nearly an open breach
about the number of harps. Gounod wanted six,
Costa would only consent (with many grumbles) to

204 PAGES FROM AN UNWRITTEN DIARY

four. The secretary came to Costa in despair saying
that " M. Gounod insists on six harps."

Costa. "The old fool! he thinks that he will go
to Heaven with six harps ! He shall have four "
{hanging the table).

When it came to the final rehearsal, somehow six
harps were there ; but the orchestral steward went in
fear of his life. The next morning Costa chose a
silent moment to score off him, by suddenly turning in
his seat and calling out " Where that fool ?"

Costa loved a big noise, but he had a sense of pro-
portion. In spite of his forty- eight violins and the
rest to match, when he directed Mozart's G minor
Symphony he surprised me by playing it with a small
picked band of forty-five. Gounod sat in front of me
at this concert, and his ravings over Mozart were too
exaggerated and theatrical to ring true. I could not
help recalling the description given to me by Charles
Hall6 of his powers of blague. Halle had visited Paris
to give a recital, which took place at the Salle Erard
in the afternoon ; and he had gone to a party in the
evenino; where he met Gounod. Gounod seized him
by both hands and thanked him profusely for the
pleasure his recital had given him, instancing one
passage in a Beethoven Sonata which he hummed,
which proved to him that " No one — no one, my dear
friend, except you could have interpreted that passage
in so masterly a way. Even with my eyes shut, I
should have known that Halle was playing." Im-
mediately after up came Madame Gounod, who began
by apologizing for her and her husband's absence from
the concert owing to a previous engagement. Halle

COSTA 205

used to act to perfection the slow and silent vanishing
away of Ch. G. after this expose.

Costa was a martinet, but could be a very kindly
one. He was in his place to the second both at
rehearsal and at concert, and woe to any player who
was late. His first bassoon was once an hour behind
time, and when Costa asked the reason, excused him-
self by reporting the arrival of an additional future
bassoon in his family.

Costa. " Very well, Mr. , I will excuse you

this time, but do not let it occur again."

Manns once borrowed the parts of Beethoven's
Mass in D from the Sacred Harmonic Society. All
went well until the Benedictus, when the trombones
did not play. Manns' wrath was appeased by the
explanation that the parts were pasted over. By his
order the paper was torn oflP, and Beethoven restored.
Shortly after the Sacred Harmonic Society gave a
performance of the same work, and at the Beiiedictus
the trombones played. Fury of Costa, who had cut
them out. Trombones explain that there is no cut.
Costa. " Send for the librarian."
(Enter that official trembling.)
" What have you done with my parts ?"
LiBRAiiiAN. " They were lent to the Crystal Palace,
and Mr. Manns must have restored them."
Costa. " You are dismissed !" (And he was.)
On the other hand orchestral players had no warmer
champion and friend. He fought their battles tooth
and nail, and raised both their pay and their position
in the profession. He cordially disliked Wagner and
all his work, i iiave already recorded how he left

206 PAGES FROM AN UNWRITTEN DIARY

so many mistakes in the parts of "Lohengrin" that
Richter, on succeeding him, could only account for them
by malice prepense. His rancorous battle with Stern -
dale Bennett is well known. His Italian blood must
have had a Corsican strain, for he never relinquished
a vendetta. He was G.C.O. in his own territory.
When Meyerbeer came over for the rehearsals of the
" Proph^te," and made some suggestions he ordered
him off the stage and out of the theatre. This must
have sorely tried that most punctilious of Hebrews.
Alfred Mellon, who rehearsed his March for the
opening of the Exhibition of 1862, thought it would
gain effect in the big building by the addition of some
instruments of percussion. After great pressure
Meyerbeer added them and brought the parts over
himself in his hand-bag. The morning after the
function, when Mellon was sleeping soundly after his
labours, his servant knocked at 7 a.m. and said a
gentleman wanted to see him. Mellon told him to
send his early visitor to a hot place, and that he could
call later. The answer came back that it was Mr.
Meyerbeer on his way to the Paris mail. He ran
down in a dressing-gown, to find that gentleman
demanding his extra percussion parts, for fear that
Mellon would use them again at a subsequent per-
formance in a smaller room : and he refused to go
until he got them.

After the 1882 Festival we went to Monte Generoso,
and had experience of the worst floods I have ever
seen. After a long spell of doubtful weather, three
thunderstorms met over our devoted hotel, and over
most of the rest of the range of mountains to the

PARRY'S "PROMETHEUS" 207

North of Italy, and deluged the plains below. We
got with difficulty to the station outside Verona, and
made our entry into the town between two banks of
mud standincr three feet hig-h on either side of the
streets. The only bridge left was the old Roman
structure. The buildings on each side were mostly like
dolls' houses with the front taken off. Two or three
fell into the Adigfe as I watched. Going: on to Venice
the next day, we were turned out at Padua and had
to drive along an interminable road between two
muddy lakes, which extended at least half-way to the
sea-city, in a most rickety vehicle, drawn by a shying
horse. Venice made up for the risky journey, and
the floods to an unusual extent counteracted the per-
fumes at low tide. There was a pleasing uncertainty
as to our exit ; so many were the broken bridges, and
so dangerous the sunken and (far from) permanent
way on the railways. But we contrived to escape
from an unduly long imprisonment by way of Trieste
and Vienna. I saw one sight in Venice which alone
repayed the journey : Charles Hallo in a frock-coat and a
white top hat reading the Ddily Telegraph while seated
in a gondola and floating under the Bridge of Sighs.

Meantime music in Cambridge was progressing
steadily, and was leading the way in the encourage-
ment of native music. Hubert Parry's remarkable
setting of scenes from '* Prometheus Unbound," a
work far in advance of any choral work of the kind
which had hitherto been created by any Englishman
since the days of Henry Purcell, had been brought out
at Gloucester, and was attacked by the greater part of
the Press, headed by Joseph Bennett, mainly on the

208 PAGES FROM AN UNWRITTEN DIARY

score of its pronounced sympathy with modern
developments. The University Society cared nothing
for their fuhninations, and produced it, with the
success anticipated by less prejudiced musicians, in
1881. It is both amusing and informing to compare
the later attitude of the Hanslick of the Daily Tele-
yraph, and his compliments to the " English Bach " as
he termed him, with the denial of any ability and
the lack of foresight displayed in his criticism of
" Prometheus." But the music had the stuff to enable
it to " worry through," albeit, as usual, against the
collar ; and it marked the first forward English step
in the modern development of native choral music.
The Cambridge performance very properly resulted in
an invitation to the composer to write a second sym-
phony (his first had been produced at Birmingham),
and he wrote for them the work in F major, known as
the Cambridge Symphony. This was given in 1883.
Parry's name was familiar to Cambridge men from the
early seventies, when his earlier pianoforte pieces and
songs frequently figured in the performances. His
duet for two pianofortes in E minor was a particular
favourite, and had been repeated on several occasions.
The Chamber Concerts included the whole of the
later quartets of Beethoven, led by Joachim, at a time
when it was a matter of difficulty to get an occasional
hearing of one of them in St. James's Hall ; they were
supposed to be unattractive to the paying public, and
Joachim only succeeded in getting them played by
arranging a special " Pop." on an off day for the
benefit of the " superior person," as J. W. Clark used
to describe him. The exclusive amateur however

MUSIC AT CAMBRIDGE 209

attended in such numbers that the management
shortly awoke to the fact that these quartets were
anything but " caviare to the general." At Cam-
bridge a performance of any of them meant a sold-out
house. The chamber music of Brahms was given fre-
quently from 1874 onwards.

In 1880 Mr. Richard Gompertz, one of Joachim's
best pupils, settled in Cambridge, and was of the
greatest help in organizing the talent of student-
players. Mr. Galpin (now well known as one of the
greatest authorities upon the history and construction
of antique wind instruments), who was an exception-
ally gifted clarinettist, was equally indefatigable in
working up a local orchestra, which by his indomitable
efforts reached the number of eighty-two, so complete
in every department that it performed, and most
creditably, the Kaisermarsch of Wagner in 1882,
and several symphonies of Beethoven and Mozart,
besides taking part in a private performance of some
movements of Beethoven's Mass in D. The efficiency
of this band was entirely due to the drastic metliods
employed by Galpin to insure attendance at re-
hearsals. He used to make quasi-proctorial rounds
of the Colleges and lodging-houses at breakfast-time,
or even at bath-time, and obtained what almost
amounted to affidavits from half-dressed players that
they would be present in the evening. What pains
and penalties he threatened, or wliat rewards he
offered, I inner knew : Ijut the orchestra was to all
appearances always complete, and any hapless per-
jurers got a wigging the next morning.

What Galpin did for orcliestral playing, l{. C. Itowe

210 PAGES FROM AN UNWEITTEN DIARY

did for chamber music. Rowe came up to the Uni-
versity a finished pianist, but carefully concealed the
fact even from his most intimate friends until he had
taken his degree ; he came out third wrangler and
was bracketed Smith's prizeman with Mr. (now Sir)
Donald Macalister and Mr. Parker Smith. His great
talents then suddenly disclosed themselves to an
astonished world, who little dreamt that they had
been nourishing a pianist of the first rank in their
bosoms. His playing of such difficult works as
Schumann's Fantasia in C amazed so fastidious a
critic as Joachim himself. He could read anything at
first sight with consummate ease. The morning on
which the printed copy of Brahms' Second Concerto
arrived, he played the solo part straight off with an
insight into its character and construction which was
almost uncanny. He had a perfect touch, which
belied the description he used to give of his German
master's early criticisms upon it. "Your tosh (touch)!
it is not zat you have a bad tosh, you have no tosh at
all ! Your somm (thumb) ! it is von pokare." If that
was true of his youthful pnpil, the master certainly
succeeded in manufacturing one of the very best of
touches. Rowe had something of the " Undine " in
him ; he could produce the most divine and ideal
eifects, and suddenly destroy them all by some elfish
somersault. I witnessed a well - deserved revenge
upon him once, when after playing quite angelically
the F sharp major Romance of Schumann, the sound
had scarcely ceased before he, as if ashamed of his
own poetry, banged down a chord of F major in one
hand and E major in the other. This was too much

R C. ROWE 211

for the nerves of one of his entranced listeners, who
promptly and angrily seized a book and threw it at
his head. His only protest was a little cynical " Ha !
ha ! ha !" which only made matters worse. Many
people would have characterized him as a freak, for
his home surroundings gave no clue to the artistic
temperament which overflowed in him. An Anglo-
Saxon of the Puritan type in appearance, he was as
warm in expression and in colour as any Southern
Italian. He never, to my knowledge, composed a
note : but I am confident that he could have done so
if he had chosen. He remains in my memory as an
intensely interesting and entirely unsolved enigma.
He died young, not much over thirty years of age, in
the autumn of 1884. I put him among the small
category of unique personalities whom I have known.

CHAPTER XIV

Foundation of the Koyal College of Music— Scholarships — Belaieff
and music publishing — George Grove.

In 1882 the movement initiated by the Prince of Wales
and the Duke of Edinburgh for founding an endowed
music-school in London began to take shape. The
attempts to combine forces with the existing Royal
Academy had definitely failed, and meetings were held
all over the country to obtain funds for the proposed
new Institution. At the head and forefront of this
eflbrt was the ever-enthusiastic George Grove, whose
views of the possibilities of music in this country were
less hide-bound and more cosmopolitan than those of
most of the leading professional musicians of the day.
The movement was an unqualified success : whether it
would have been wiser to have imitated the policy of
France and other European countries is a question
which can now be discussed without affecting the
future of the Institution, which the campaign resulted
in founding. Other countries began by providing the
place where music is produced, and followed it up by
creating the schools to educate composers to write for
and artists to perform in it. In Paris there was a
State Opera in 1672, but the Conservatoire only came
into existence 123 years later.

Foreign nations provide a career before they educate
for it, and do not risk turning out shoals of artists the
majority of whom find, when they have completed their

212

ROYAL COLLEGE OF MUSIC 213

pupillage, that they have no outlet for their talents.
England, I take leave to think, began at the wrong
end. If the great effort made in 1881-82 had been
directed towards founding a National Opera, there
would have been no lack of proper education to prepare
for it. Men and women of gift and grit, but of small
means, would have pinched themselves to qualify for
it here as they do elsewhere. Scholarships would have
been less easy to obtain, less numerous to compete for,
and would be looked upon more as necessities than as
ornaments. The provision of scholarships has been a
sort of epidemic in the country, to the imperilling of
individual effort. The world is being made much too
easy for its youth. We are beginning to pay the price
of overpampering by the overcrowding of the ranks of
the profession and by feeding them with the all too
numerous survivors of the unfit. The first sign of
danger is the decrease of male pupils, due to the
inexorable law that the man is the bread-winner, and
that he is obliged to take to professions which pay or
promise a career, and to shun those which do not. At
the present time our music institutions are steadily
tending towards becoming ladies' schools. The male
element is chiefly confined to departments for which
there is a market and a demand, the orchestra and the
organ-loft. In the philanthropic desire to provide for
the taught, the teachers are forgotten ; and the great
bulk of these have to give casual lessons wherever they
can, at almost starvation wages, which hold out little
or no prospect of providing a competency for their old
age. The taught in their turn exchange the certain
emoluaienLs ul their scliolai'ships fur tlie uncertain

214 PAGES FROM AN UNWRITTEN DIARY

pickings of the teacher. The larger the number of
teachers the smaller the pickings. Unless, then, the
educational movement is soon capped by another to
provide what all other civilized countries have had the
wisdom to insure, a career, the attractions of the
musical profession will wane in proportion to the
decrease of its earning power, and the plethora of
scholarships may lack a sufficient number of com-
petitors to fill them, or at best fall to those who only
desire them for temporary instruction and amusement,
or for boasting a small handle to their names.

A superabundance of scholarships has other sequelae.
Only too frequently the less thinking of their holders
forget or ignore the fact that their tuition is being paid
for by the public. Having no pecuniary responsibility
themselves, they are tempted to adopt an attitude of
freedom and laxity as to their duties, which they
would never assume if they or their families had to
pay hard-earned cash out of their own pockets for their
training. I have even known cases of less- educated
scholars, who seemed to consider it a concession to per-
form their duties with any regularity at all, and to
look upon elasticity of treatment as a right. These
instances are happily so far rare, but they point
inexorably to the danger of multiplying to excess
endowments which tend to diminish personal responsi-
bility, and individual initiative. Grove saw this when
he earnestly consulted the Masters of Trinity and
Balliol, Thompson and Jowett, about the possibility of
confining the endowments of scholars to those who
absolutely needed pecuniary assistance to receive an
education at all. Both advised him that any such

ROYAL COLLEGE OF MUSIC 215

differentiation by pocket was, as the world went, Im-
possible, and that only differentiation by brains was
practically feasible. He had, with the greatest reluct-
ance, to follow that advice : modifying it as far as he
could by the addition of a sura for maintenance over
and above the tuition fees which the scholarships
provided, and adapting the amount to the need of
each individual.

These dangers were apparent to some men of fore-
sight in the eighties; but so much dust had been raised
by old- standing controversies as to the relative values
of existing Institutions, the best place on the map of
London for their locale, and other such small questions,
that the bigger issues were clouded and forgotten.
The proverbial luck of this country may enable her
music, like her War Office, to muddle through. By dint
of the enlistment of private enterprise, it has suc-
ceeded in doing so at a quicker rate of progress than
prevailed before 1880, in spite of the absence of any
such State encouragement as has been at the disposal
of her sister art of painting. As soon as private
enterprise does as much foi- the encoui'agement of
the educated as it has hitherto done for their
education, the rate of progress will surprise its
supporters.

There were two meetings at the inception of the
plan for founding the Iloyal College, one at St. James's
Palace and one at the Office of the Duchy of Corn-
wall. The former was principally remarkable for the
presence of many political notabilities, who were more
or less constrained by tlie impetus of the movement
to come and show their sympathy with it. Mr. Glad-

216 PAGES FROM AN UNWRITTEN DIARY

stone made a speech, which, after his manner, con-
cealed the vaguest of nothings under a cover of most
facile verbiage. He blessed the proposal and em-
})hasized the love for music in the country, while
keeping free of any suspicion of tangible support,
beyond the £500 a year which the Royal Academy
of Music already received, talked charming fables
about the smiles which pervaded the faces of small
children tripping gaily to school to sing their little
songs, and sat down without saying one syllable about
the larger policy of founding a central Institution for
production, which would refine the masses through
the medium of the one art which can most easily
reach their hearts and illuminate their lives. It was
charming piffle, but piffle none the less. At the later
meeting, which consisted mainly of musicians, old and
young, the questions discussed were mostly those of
organization and method. The wisest speech was
that of Benedict, then an old man, who could re-
member Beethoven whom he visited with his master,
Weber. He laid down two vital principles, the first
that it would be a vast mistake to cheapen the cost
of training, for the reason that such a policy would
cheapen also the estimation in which the training
was held : the second, that the term of training
should be of sufficient length to permit of efficiency
being attained, and that no pupil should be accepted
who did not undertake to go through the course.
He carried the meeting with him, and it is not too
much to say that to the adoption of his principles,
albeit not carried out in their entirety, the success
of the Royal College has been largely due. Endow-

ROYAL COLLEGE OF MUSIC 217

ment of education having triumphed over endowment
of production, it must be admitted that the poHcy
adopted was thorough!}^ well carried out, and was
successful, as indeed it was bound to be, in unearthing
a surprising amount of hidden talent in the British
Isles.

The first election of scholars was a most dramatic
and moving occasion. The examiners sat round a
large horseshoe table in the Council Room of the
Albert Hall, and had first to hear the performance
of some of the candidates whose merits were too equal
to be decided upon by the preliminary judges. When
the soprano singers were brought in, Madame Gold-
schmidt (Jenny Lind) did not test them at the piano-
forte, but sang from her seat a series of amazing
roulades and cadenzas which the trembling young-
women had to imitate as best they could, divided
between anxiety for themselves and astonishment at
the Chopin-like passages w^hich came so easily out
of the throat of an elderly lady at the table. Some
of them made surprisingly good attempts at the
ordeal. When the names of the successful fifty were
decided upon, they were ushered into the room in a
body. By some misunderstanding outside, as I after-
wards ascertained, they were one and all under the
impression that they were those who had failed.
When Grove told them that they were the schoLirs,
this motley crowd of boys and girls, of every walk
in life from the mill and the mine up to the educated
school, gave simultaneously what I can only call a
colossal gulp. The effect of it was so touching tliat
Madame Goldschmidt's ilice collapsed into her pocket-

218 PAGES FROM AN UNWRITTEN DIARY

handkerchief, and most of us had a curious lump
in our throats.

I have always regretted that no shorthand writer
was present to take down the memorable speech with
which Grove diofnified and grave the true note to the
proceedings. It was worthy of the friend of Tom
Hughes, and of Hughes's master, Arnold of Rugby.
In the short ten minutes which it took to deliver,
it placed the whole of English musical education on
the highest plane, and gave a lofty tone to the
Institution which it could not fail to live up to.
There was no pedantry, and no exclusiveness. He
set out to impress the young minds with the supreme
importance of general culture in the attainments of
the best art : and he ended with insistence upon the
necessity of loyalty as great on the part of the
taught as on that of the teachers. His last sentence
I remember well. It had a touch of homely bathos,
which went home far more effectively than any flowery
peroration. To appreciate its effect upon paper is
impossible, and divorced from its context it seems
almost a trivial truism ; but it suited its mixed
audience and everyone felt that the sentence was the
right thing in the right place. " If you do well, you
will be praised for it ; if you do badly, you will be
punished for it." The sentence crystallized one of
Grove's greatest gifts. He never stinted his praise,
when it was deserved, or closed his mouth to grati-
tude or appreciation. In that none too British quality
lay the secret of the affection and the reverence in
which he was held, and of his extraordinary faculty
of getting not merely the best work out of his men,

ROYAL COLLEGE OF MUSIC 219

but even more and better work than his men thought
themselves capable of doing.

Not the least of his successes was his complete
triumph over the one unpleasant difficulty in the
path of his new post : the soreness which the foun-
dation of the College had (from the days of Sterndale
Bennett) caused in the hearts of the friends of the
Hoyal Academy. Macfarren's antagonism was a hard
nut, but Grove's tact and irresistible goodness of
heart cracked it. He never lost an opportunity of
smoothing natural susceptibilities, and by the time
Mackenzie took office at the Academy there was no
more antagonism between the two Institutions, than
between Trinity and King's, or Balliol and Christ
Church. Grove loved healthy rivalry, but had no
stomach for petty jealousies.

The very fact that the College was new, and there-
fore had its own traditions to make, was an advantage
to those who administered it. In my department,
that of composition and the training of the orchestra,
I was fortunately able to profit by personal experience
of the obvious lacunas in the curricula of foreign
conservatoires. Two of the most glaring faults I was
able to make impossible. Young composers were taught
abroad upon paper, and only the most picked and
finished examples of their work ever reached the point
of a hearing. We went on the principle that a hearing
of a composition is the best lesson the writer can get,
and that the perspiration and agony from which a com-
poser suffers when he hears the sounds of his own in-
experience is tlie most valualjle part of liis training.
School orchestras abroad were seldom complete, and

220 PAGES FEOM AN UNWRITTEN DIAEY

were restricted in their repertoire to the most classical
music, all modern developments being stringently-
placed upon the Index Expurgatorius. We adopted
the principle that for effective training the players
should know everything, old and new (provided that it
was genuine music), irrespective of all individual likes
and dislikes, and so make themselves competent to
join any orchestra after completing their studies with
a fair measure of knowledge of any music they would
be called upon to play. The provision of scholarships
for wind instruments made this policy all the easier to
carry out ; and in this department the players who
have been educated at the College have seldom or
never been stranded in after-life.* The complexion
of the lists of players in our concert orchestras, once
international, has become practically national. This
praiseworthy care for our own compatriots was warmly
supported by Sullivan, who, having the exclusive
choice of his orchestra at Leeds, made it entirely
English, with results which somewhat amazed foreign
composers when they visited that Festival. I heard
Humperdinck say to him after a very smooth reading
of a new work that he supposed that there were many
foreigners in the band, and Sullivan was able to
answer " Not one," with an amused and not un-
triumphant smile.

The foundation of the College orchestra, and the
choice of good singers who were attracted to the
school, made it possible to go a step farther and pro-

* Out of twenty-six wind-instrument players in the Philharmonic
Orchestra this year (1914), eleven are old scholars of the Royal
College.

BELAIEFF AND MUSIC PUBLISHING 221

duce annually a complete opera on the stage. The
choice of unfamiliar works was large, and the list of
those hitherto given is a thoroughly representative
one. Many of the singers have reached the top of the
ladder, and have been main supports in Wagnerian
and other performances, showing what might have
been the consequences of the endowment of a National
Opera.

The composer's lot has been a harder one. In a
country where the royalty ballad commands the pub-
lishing market, the writer of serious music has but an
exiguous chance. Trained in the writing of orchestral
and chamber works he emerges from the chrysalis to
find that there is little chance of seeing his work
printed and accessible, and none of getting any
financial return for it. He is therefore driven to
lower himself to write rubbish, or to amuse himself by
filling his shelves with dust-attracting manuscripts.
We might drive a coach-and-four through hide-bound
traditions in the schools, but the royalty ballad with
its large profits and quick returns was too insuperable
a barrier to negotiate outside. The type of publisher
who had an eye to the dignity which some good music
gave to his catalogue, even if the cost took longer to
recoup, such as Birchall, who brought out and paid for
the works of Beethoven when his name was still the
possession of the few, had practically disappeared.
Germany was taking care to bring its best work before
the eyes of the world. Krance was not far l)ehind.
Russian music had found a IViond and a business man
in Belaiefi", who grasping thn fact that the music of
his country was a sealed book to Western Europe, set

222 PAGES FROM AN UNWRITTEN DIARY

up a house to print and publish it, with the far-reaching
success which all the musical world knows. Amour
propre and patriotism did their share elsewhere ; the
size of the banker's balance was the only consideration
here. Book publishers, with wider minds and broader
views, knew that English literature demanded to be
fed by something more tangible than the yellow-back
or the "shilling shocker," and gave histories, biog-
raphies and scientific masterpieces their chance even
when profits were problematical or temporarily small ;
conscious that the literary as well as the financial
credit of this country had its claims to active support.
If their houses had been ruled by the principles M^hich
govern those of their brethren of music, we should
have had no Darwin, no Herbert Spencer, no Lecky,
no Tennyson, and no Browning to enrich the world's
libraries, and to keep up the name and fame of the
country.

Foreigners often quote " English music is no music."
I cannot blame them for so classifying work which
they are not able to see, and are quite justified in not
taking on trust. The stray publication of an isolated
work or two, even if it possess special merit, is of no
use. What tells is, as Belaieff proved, the weight of
numbers and the comprehensiveness of the catalogue.
It was not until the Russian publisher could show a list
of imposing size containing all manner of compositions,
of varying value but of consistently high aim, that the
rest of Europe began to rub its eyes and make practical
use of its contents. Thirty years ago it only knew
vaguely of Glinka and of Rubinstein. A few students
had heard the name of Tschaikowsky. Of the living

BELAIEFF AND MUSIC PUBLISHING 223

masters of the Russian School the world in general
knew as little as it did of the Russian opera and
ballet, or even of the existence of Moussorgsky. It
was print and the consequent accessibility to their
compositions which did the work ; print and print
alone can do the same for the buried manuscripts of
this country. Without it the task of training gifted
young men in the highest walks of creative music will
be destined to suffer the fate of Penelope's web. This
is only another instance of the danger of providing
education before insuring a career. Efforts of various
kind have been made to meet this crying necessity,
some of them at least on a comparatively large scale
and with the best possible intentions : but they are all
mainly in the direction of the sporadic performance of
manuscript works, which are heard but once, go back
to their shelves, and are forgotten in a week. Belaieff's
policy was to print and purchase such works as were
considered by his advisers to deserve publication, and
it was only in after-years that he founded special con-
certs for their performance. Thirty years of experience
in directing the studies and watching the subsequent
development of composers has only accentuated year
by year in increasing force my convictions of the prime
necessity of a strong move in the direction I have
indicated, if the system and even the fact of training
them is to be justified in the eyes of the artistic world
by tangible and visible results.

Curiously enough Grove, with all his winning charm
and bioad mind, never in his heart believed in the
creativ(.' work of liis own country. He was steeped
in Beethoven and Schubert, and in later days

2U PAGES FROM AN UNWRITTEN DIARY

guaixledly admitted Brahms and fractious of Wagner
into his fold. But the long years from 1830 to 1880
were as a millstone round his neck which left their
mark upon him. A half-century of barren mediocrity
had accustomed him to look abroad for anything and
everything. The occasional oases which he sighted
only made the desert seem more arid : when the
promised land came in sight, he was too old or rather
(for he was never old) his opinions were too set, and
his consequent prejudices too fixed, to allow him to
trust his own eyesight, and he mistook it for a mirage.
But this was a trifling defect of judgment in a keen
and powerful personality. For singers and singing
he had not the same interest as for instrumental
music. The singing department at the Royal College
was always a trial to him, and the vagaries of some
of the vocal pupils were perpetual pin-pricks. He
could not understand why attendance at the choral
classes should be less regular than at that of the
orchestra, a feeling which many of us cordially shared.
On one occasion he burst out to Sir Walter Parratt :
" Oh ! these singers ! You may praise them, you may
blame them, you may coax them, you may threaten
them, you may blarney them, you may curse them
. . . tJieifll heat you in the end f

His multifarious interests kept him in every other
respect in perpetual possession of that rare quality,
an open mind. His was a nature and a force that
had a power of setting men in other walks in life
thinking. When he ferreted out the possibility of the
existence of another Schubert Symphony, which his
own enthusiasm had exalted into a certainty, the

GEORGE GROVE 225

insistence of his pet theory ahnost roused that most
equable of Hbrarians, C. F. Pohl of the Gesellschaft
der Musikfreunde in Vienna, to active wrath. When
I visited Vienna he complained to me bitterly that
Grove's statements practically amounted to an accusa-
tion of carelessness in the administration of his
library.

I spoke of this to Henry Bradshaw on my return,
with a hint from myself that " G." had strained his
conclusions beyond the justihcation of his premises.
Bradshaw replied that it did not matter if he did ;
the main point was that it would make people look,
and if they did not find what he bargained for, they
would probably find in the course of their search
something else, perhaps just as important. Such men,
he said, kept the world alive. Grove's fascination was
extraordinary. I felt it from the first evening I saw
him ill the Scott Russells' drawing-room in 18G4.
Nature had made him from the painter's and the
sculptor's point of view the reverse of beautiful. His
intellect made him more attractive than many an
Adonis. His walk was once graphically described to
me as one of a man with two left legs and somebody
else's arms ; but it had more character in it than that
of the best-drilled ofiicer of the Guards. Never was
Britisher less British. If he got a nasty or a hasty
letter from an old friend, he would send it back saying
that he would rather not have it, and would wait for
a nicer one. He made such hosts of friends tliat he
once wrote me an answer to a request to come and
dine at a liouse where we were staying of which the
hosts were unknown to him, saying that he liad so many

15

226 PAGES FROM AN UNWRITTEN DIARY

old friends that he was positively afraid to add more
to the number. I don't believe that he had one
enemy : if he had, it was certainly the enemy's fault.
Costa was once very angry with him, but vented it
all upon Sainton o A set of classical concerts were
given under Costa's conductorship in the early days
of the Crystal Palace. The rehearsals were taken by
Sainton, and the Field- Marshal only appeared at the
performances. He asked Grove to name any work he
would particularly like to hear. Grove asked for
Beethoven's Overture to " Coriolan," and Costa ordered
it to be put in as the last piece in the programme.
He did not know it, and after the concert flew at
Sainton, saying, " Tell Grove, I will never play that
w^ork again : it ends pianissimo /" Grove in his turn
fell upon Costa for his tea-garden big drum and
cymbals in " Israel in Egypt."

He had a quaint method for suggesting his mild
contempt for persons whose vogue was greater than
their abilities. It consisted of alluding to them with
the prefix of the epithet " old " to their names. The
adjective had nothing to do with age, for he applied it
to people far younger than himself, but the tone in
which it was said always suggested a certain pity for
incompetence. Poetry had almost as much attraction
for him as music. The little green books, with which
from time to time Tennyson enriched the world, were
to be seen in his hand within five minutes of publica-
tion. He seized me one morning as I came into the
College, hurried me into his room, and read to me,
with the tears running down his cheeks, the last lines
(about Edward Fitzgerald) in " Teiresias." I think

GEORGE GROVE 227

his two special pets were Schubert and Tennyson. He
was one of the first to recognize the force and the
genius of Rudyard Kipling, and welcomed " Reces-
sional" as a true descendant of the royal line. In a
word he was unique : like nobody else in the world,
and both from contrast and by personal force one of
the most vivid and vivifying influences in English life
in general, and in the musical section of it, to which
his later years were devoted, in particular. From his
opening speech at the College to the day he resigned,
he kept the highest ideals steadily before the eyes of
every man and woman within its walls, and by his
insistence, by example as well as precept, upon general
culture, raised the niveau of musical education in
England to a height to which it had never before
attained. This fact alone is a monument to his
memory, and to an influence which succeeding genera-
tions may find it difiicult to emulate but impossible
to destroy.

CHAPTER XV

Tennyson — Irving — Browning — Leighton and Millais — Fred Walker
and Thackeray — R. Pendlebury — Church music at Cambridge.

In the Christmas vacation of 1879 I was saddled with
the appalling burthen of examining some thousand
papers on music for the local examinations of the
University. Knowledge of the art at that time
amongst the youth of the country was limited in
extent and superficial in quaUty. The dulness of the
process of paper-marking was however relieved by
some " howlers " which still live in my memory :
notably the names of three oratorios, which were cited
in answer to a request for the names of some of the
choral works of Handel and Mendelssohn. The three
novel titles were " Jacabenus," a portmanteau word for
"Judas Maccabaeus" and "Jack and the Beanstalk"
which was worthy of Lewis Carroll himself, another
version of the same oratorio dubbed " Judius Macabeth,"
and best of all a modest general-servant title of a
score, which would only need to be written to command
instant success, and even acceptance at the Albert
Hall, "Eliza."

I migrated to the Hotel at Freshwater to get some
Atlantic air in the intervals of this penal servitude.
From my window I saw on the first morning a figure
in a large cloak with a broad- brimmed wide-awake
pounding up the avenue in the rain and wind, in
company with a young man and a grey Irish deer-

228

TENNYSON . 229

hound. It was Tennyson. I had ah-eady had ex-
perience of his kindness, when I was an unknown
student at Leipzig. He had heard of me through his
sons, and asked me to write the music for " Queen
Mary," when that tragedy was produced by Mrs.
Bateman at the Lyceum Theatre. His friendly in-
tentions were defeated at the last moment by the con-
ductor who, as it appeared, desired the commission for
himself, and by the manageress who discovered rather
late in the day, and after I had been instructed what
instruments were available and had scored it accord-
ingly, that there was not sufficient room for the
players without sacrificing two rows of stalls. Tenny-
son privately, and without telling me a word, offered
to pay for the loss of the stalls for a certain number of
nights, but his offer was refused. When the perform-
ance took place, there turned out to be as many
players in the orchestra as the score required. It was
my first experience (and unhappily not my last) of
stage intrigue. Henry Irving, who played Philip, but
who had not at that time any voice in the manage-
ment, was as perturbed about the matter as the poet
himself, and took care when " Becket " was produced in
1893 to make more than ample amends for the dis-
appointment.

Irving was the most generous of men. His stage-
manager, Loveday, told me one day that when Mrs.
Bateman gave up the management of the theatre,
Irving, who succeeded her, had to dispense with many
of her stage hands and replace them with more effi-
cient successors, but continued to pay everyone of them
his full wages. My experience of hiin was as follows :

230 PAGES FROM AN UNWRITTEN DIARY

I had a visit from genial Bram Stoker, his secretary,
who told me that Irving had visited Lord Tennyson a
short time before his death in 1892, had arranged to
produce " Becket," and that Tennyson had expressed a
wish that I should compose the music for it, to which
suggestion Irving had warmly agreed.
Bram Stoker. " Will you undertake it ?"
C. V. S. " Nothing would give me greater pleasure."

B. S. "Very well. The Chief dishkes talking busi-
ness, so will you tell me what your terms will be ?"

C. V. S. " No terms. It will be of the greatest
interest to me to write it, and if only out of respect
and affection for Lord Tennyson, I should not ask for
anything."

B. S. " The Chief won't let you do that."

C. v. S. " He will, if you tell him what I say."

B. S. " He will not. I know him. You had better
tell me what you think fair."

C. V. S. " If he must, he must. I don't know what
to say : you know what he gives other people for such
work."

B. S. " Would you accept (for the performance right
only of course) two hundred pounds ?"

C. V. S. " It's a great deal too much."

B. S. " The Chief won't let you take less."

C. V. S. " He's an impossible man. Well, so be it."
B. S. " Then you are to come down and see him to-
morrow morning, and he will go through the points of
the play with you."

I go down to the Lyceum Theatre next day, and
Irving shows me everything he wants. But at the end
of the discussion,

mVING 231

Irving. " I am much obliged to you for agreeing to
the terms Stoker suggested."

C. V. S. " They are a great deal too much."

I. " They are not ; two hundred pounds was it ?
We'll make it three."

C. V. S. "You will not."

I. " Then you shan't write the music. I mean what

II >
say.

C. V. S. " You're an impossible man !" \_Exit.

When the music was delivered, the cheque was for
three, not two hundred, and for guineas not pounds.
He gave me as many rehearsals as I wanted, and the
whole atmosphere of the theatre from the leading
actor down to the call-boy was one of consideration,
thoroughness, and unruffled temper.

Irving thought " Becket " the finest tragedy since
"King John." He played it in my opinion with greater
insight and picturesqueness than any of his parts. So
imbued was he with the spirit of the play, that an
actor-friend of mine who went to see him after a per-
formance and found him sittino- in his room in the
Archbishop's dress, when he had finished his business,
was dismissed (quite genuinely) with a " God bless
you " and an uplifted hand accompanying an Episcopal
benediction. Irving told me that he never missed
coming down behind the curtain to hear the last
entr'acte (the funeral march), and curiously enough it
must have been the very last note of music which he
heard.

As Tennyson was the first to give me a helping hand
in 1875 in his first theatrical ventui'e, so his final
kindly act was to express a wish that 1 should be simi-

232 PAGES FKOM AN UNWRITTEN DIARY

larly connected with his last tragedy. There never was
a more loyal friend. He was seventy when I first saw
him on that stormy morning at Freshwater, but the
mind was that of a man in his prime, and he had the
rare faculty of adapting his age to his surroundings, a
boy with boys and a man with men. He knew little
about music, but was a past-master in an art which has
a vast deal to do with music, declamation. He in-
stinctively felt how words should be set, and his fine
ear could detect the slightest slip in an accent, or a
stress which was faulty or ill-balanced. I often accom-
panied him in his clockwork constitutional from eleven
till one, and the different personalities of all sorts and
kinds in various walks in life, who used to appear at
intervals and join the little procession, gave additional
interest to our peregrinations over the Downs. Some-
times it was a poet like the deft and delicate William
Allingham, or the keen-witted Sir Alfred Lyall; some-
times a broad-minded cleric like Dean Bradley, Jowett,
Montagu Butler (now Master of Trinity), or the poet's
sunny neighbour Father Hathornwaite, the Roman
Catholic priest at Freshwater, whom Tennyson would
chaff about the Inquisition and Papal Infallibility with-
out hurting a hair of his head ; sometimes a diplomat
like Cecil Spring Rice, and in earlier days Lord
Dufferin, for whom he had the most warm admiration.
If a divine were too obviously clerical, he would shock
him sometimes and whisper " I thought that white tie
wanted some of the starch to be taken out of it." He
came to Trinity once in later life, after his son Lionel's
death, and stayed in the College guest-room, visiting
his haunts for the last time. The Vice-Master, who

TENNYSON 233

knew that he appreciated good port, unearthed a bottle
of the famous '34 for his consumption. Tennyson,
after his custom, put it in a tumbler and added hot
water, to the horror of his hosts. He heard of their
wounded feelings, and charged me to tell them that
" Horace mixed water with his Falernian." He once
told me of a conversation he had with the late Queen
Victoria, which is so touching that it should be put on
record. He was walking up and down the terrace at
Osborne with her, and was so silent that the Queen
asked him what he was thinking about. He said " I
was thinking how lonely Your Majesty was up there."
" And," he said, "she cried, and I was sorry I had said
it, but it was uppermost in my thoughts and out it
came."

When he wrote the "Carmen Sseculare " for the
Jubilee of 1887, he sent for me and asked me to set it.
It was at the Queen's suggestion that he added the final
lines (which are the finest in the poem) and he sent
me the MS. of the final draft, with the new ending.
It was he who suggested its complete performance at
Buckingham Palace, when the Queen was paying one
of her rare visits to London : and the orchestra and
singers so outnumbered the listeners as to suggest the
solitary operas given before King Ludwig of Bavaria.
The Queen appreciated the humanity of Tennyson as
she did that of downright old Adam Sedgwick, the
geologist. Sedgwick was the first person she sent for
after the death of Prince Consort. What manner of
man he was can be gauged from a short and sharp
conversation lu- had on his return to Cambridge from
Windsor with the somewhat frivolous and gossijrtng

234 PAGES FROM AN UNWRITTEN DIARY

wife of the Master of a College whom he met on King's
Parade.

Frivolous Mistress. " Oh, Professor Sedgwick, I
hear you have been to Court."

Sedgwick. " To Court ? No, Ma'am. I've not
been to Court, Ma'am, I've been to visit a Christian
woman in her affliction, Ma'am." [Stalks away.)

Robert Browning I first met at Cambridge, and
afterwards saw many times at Arthur Coleridge's.
He was to all superficial observers the very reverse of
what his admirers pictured him in their mind's eye.
No one who met him without knowing him would have
guessed him to be a poet. His matter-of-fact society
manner, and his almost dapper appearance, belied the
inner fire. His shell was very thick, and his oddly
rasping voice gave the impression of its being very
hard as well. Leighton had a shell also, but it was
of velvety smoothness. I had the good-fortune to
penetrate both, especially that of the latter, and to be
able to appreciate the concealed force and humanity
within. They were both boys, Leighton markedly
so. In many ways these two opposite poles closely
resembled each other. They had the same detesta-
tion of humbug, though their own shells unwittingly
gave the unfamiliar and unthinking a hint of that
commodity in themselves. Those who had once broken
the shell were never again conscious of its existence.
Browning shed it when he came to see the "Eumenides"
at Cambridge ; when his last word to me was a request
to use my influence to let him see the " Cyclops " of
Euripides before he died. This wish was unfortunately
never fulfilled, owing I believe to the ultra-scholarly

LEIGHTON 235

hesitation about producing a Greek play with a corrupt
text. I venture to think that the drama would
succeed in spite of lost words and obscure emendations.
Leighton shed his shell when he came down to the
University in 1893 ; I spent a whole morning in
showing him at his request all the nooks and crannies
of Cambridge which few visitors trouble about, and
even residents are too familiar with to admire. He
was a keen and far-si^fhted critic of music. His visit
coincided with that of Tschaikowsky to the Univer-
sity ; and though the work of that composer was then
an unfamiliar quantity in English ears, Leighton laid
his finger on the weak spots in the Russian's armour
with unerring judgment. He did not deny a certain
picturesqueness to his work though he suspected a
tendency to brutality, but he looked upon it as in-
herently superficial, and more likely to attract most
when heard first. Tliis opinion curiously enough was
similar to that of one of the most able of American
musicians, who told me that the first time he heard
the Pathetic Symphony, he thought it was one of the
greatest symphonies in musical literature, the second
time he felt very uncertain of its real intrinsic value,
and after the third time it was worn out for him, and
he never wanted to hear it ai^ain. Leighton was a
devotee of finish, and an inveterate enemy of sloven-
liness. He carried this conviction to such a pitch that
it affected his own work. I always felt that if he had
left a picture as it was a week before he considered it
finished, it would have been an infinitely moi'e vital
work of art. B(;autiful com])l(^xions do not re(|uire
enamelling, and he, in his ahiiost excessive devotion to

236 PAGES FROM AN UNWRITTEN DIARY

detail, deceived himself as to the point where finish
was complete, and over-elaboration began. Another
instance of my stage-manager's dictum " Wenn ein
Stiick aus ist, es ist aus."

Millais, on the other hand, the incarnation of a
hearty John Bull, with his colossal technique and his
vivid range of styles, was the very converse of his
friend. He needed no shell ; his outspoken tongue
and sea-breezy temperament told in an instant what
the man was made of Never a thought, much less a
word, of jealousy or envy disturbed the close friend-
ship of this great pair. They are a standard example
to the artistic world to live and let live. They held
out a hand to every rising man who deserved it, and
even to some who did not. To visit either of them
was to hear in abundance warm appreciation of their
colleagues and successors, expressed without stint and
without afterthought.

Through Millais, I chanced to learn the true version
of an incident concerning Fred Walker and Thackeray,
which I had heard from a close friend of Walker's,
Watts the translator of " Don Quixote." I will give
first Watts's version as Walker described it to him,
and afterwards Millais'. Walker in his early days
was anxious to get illustrating work, and went to
Thackeray to know if he might see him on the
subject. When he was shown into Thackeray's room,
after a few preliminary words as to what he wanted,
his host turned his back upon him at the fireplace
and said curtly, " Draw my back." Walker nettled
at what he took for extreme rudeness, did so, and
told Watts that when Thackeray saw his drawing,

LEIGHTON 237

he completely changed his tone, and became most
helpful and kindly. Millais had the true version
of the story from Thackeray himself He said that
the shy youth came in almost trembling, and hardly
able to o-et a word out. He saw that if he looked
at him he would be paralyzed, and hit on the ex-
pedient of turning his back on him and asking him
to draw it. This put the boy at his ease, and he
got the admirable result which he expected from the
very look of his face as he entered the room. I told
Watts this, and he lamented bitterly that Walker
was not alive to know the real truth of the story.

In one of the last of the many talks I had with
Leighton, he spoke with the greatest interest of
Charles Furse, then a little-known artist, whose work
was more smiled upon at Munich than at Burlington
House. It was just after his small portrait of Lord
Roberts had been hung at the Academy, in the same
year that G. F. Watts exhibited " The Rich Man who
had Many Possessions." I had gone through the
galleries with Piatti, the great violoncellist, who was
one of the soundest critics of painting, and had as
an unerring eye for engravings and drawings as for
the maker and authenticity of a violin. When we
had finished our inspection, Piatti said " There are
two pictures in the Academy which will live, Watts's
' Ilich Man ' and Furse's ' Lord Roberts.' " He re-
marked how Watts had succeeded so admi)-ably in
surmounting what Apelles considered the greatest
difHculty to a painter, suggesting the expression of
a face which is turned away : and he pointed out the
why and wherefore of the solid " old master " feeling

238 PAGES FROM AN UNWRITTEN DIARY

of Furse's small canvas. Leighton was highly im-
pressed by this work ; he knew of Furse's diatribes
against Royal Academy methods and begged me to
bring him to see him, saying "Tell him I won't bite
his head off, and I am sure he will not bite off mine."
Unfortunately Furse's illness, which obliged him to
go abroad for change of climate, prevented this most
interesting meeting between Leighton and the
descendant of Sir Joshua Reynolds's sister.

Furse was in the Transvaal soon after the Jameson
Raid, and painted a sketch of the field from the
English position. When he took it at Kruger's
request to show it to him, Kruger was too ignorant
of the laws of perspective to understand why the
English close by should be bigger than the Boers
in the distance, and rebuked him for not painting
his warriors on the same scale as the painter's
countrymen. Furse's description of the Boer Presi-
dent's habitat was most picturesque. He sat in a
long gallery-like room, the floor was covered with a
brilliant Maple carpet, and a circle of chairs was
set round the fire, occupied by old Boers, who were
as broad as they were long, all smoking " Mein Heer
van Dunck "-like pipes ; their end of the carpet having
degenerated owing to their Hannibal ChoUop-like
habits, from blazing scarlet flowers into a dark surface,
shining and greasy enough to suggest a strip of
ancient and fish-like linoleum.

The catholicity of Leighton's taste and powers was
more reflected in his work than the casual observer is
aware of He not only valued the best qualities of
so-called impressionism, but could paint an impres-

LEIGHTON 239

sionist picture if he liked. There is at least oue
in existence, a landscape in Algiers, which is so
unlike his familiar style as to baffle the cleverest
expert. He only hated a sort of impressionism
which was an excuse for weakness or sloppiness of
drawino- or was used as a cloak for inferior
technique. He never mentioned to me the post-
impressionist craze, although there is little doubt that
he saw the first-fruits of it in Paris, when as far
back as 1894-95 the same pictures (sic) were exhibited
there, which worked their way by force of notoriety
to the Grafton Galleries some fifteen years later. The
repertoire of these gentry was small, and when 1 saw
the collection in London it was not substantially
different from or larger than that which I had visited
with Maurice Bouchor in Paris. Leighton, who was
alive to every novelty, might quite easily have seen
it, but it is not surprising that it did not call for his
comment any more than other negligible freaks.
Happily perhaps for himself he did not live long
enough to see how the power of till-filling can be
developed by well-advertised ugliness, and organic
pictorial disease. As a figure-head Leighton was
unsurpassable. During his Presidency I sat next
Burne Jones at an Academy dinner, and B. J. burst
out suddenly, " Look at him ! Look at Jupiter
Olympus ! Who on earth can ever succeed liim ?"
I sometimes wonder that it luiver entered into the
head even of the unimaginative governments of this
country to follow the precedent of Ilubens, and make
him Hii ambassador. He had all the equipment for
such a post at his fingers' ends ; spoke German,

240 PAGES FROM AN UNWRITTEN DIARY

French and Italian like a native, even so far as to be
an adept at foreign slang, and was a born diplomat
with an iron hand in his velvet glove. His death was
almost as great a loss to the art of music as to his
own. His active sympathy with every musician of
high aim and sincerity of purpose brought together
the two professions in closer relations than they had
ever experienced before. He set thereby an example
which was followed by many of his brethren to the
great mutual advantage of both branches of the
artistic world.

In the smaller world of Cambridge the bequest of
Lord Fitzwilliam had furthered a similar good work.
The Fitzwilliam Museum, which he founded, contained
treasures of music even more valuable than those
of the sister art. Priceless manuscripts of Henry
Purcell, Handel and the early Italian masters were
placed within reach of students, and the initiative of
the founder was carried on by Mr. Pendlebury, a
famous Senior Wrangler and Fellow of St. John's,
who presented the museum with a practically com-
plete collection of the works (in full score) of modern
masters, a roomful of treasures which he took care to
keep complete by annual additions up to the end of
his life. Pendlebury 's researches in the course of
forming his library were so thorough and world-wide,
that he was probably the first man in this country
to discover the modern Russian School, and the
shelves of the collection contain all the important early
works of Tschaikowsky, which he sent to Russia to
acquire as far back as the seventies. He was a silent
quiet enthusiast, devoted to problems, music, and the

CHUECH MUSIC AT CAMBKIDGE 241

Alps. He climbed Monte Rosa from the Italian side,
had his head split open by a falling rock, and came back,
so covered up with bandages as to be unrecognizable, to
comfort himself with a full score by his own fire. His
favourite instrument was the double-bass, and in order
to play as little out of tune as possible he accurately
measured out distances and cut depressions on the
finger-board to guide him to the desired notes.

In the department of Church music it was not
possible to effect much at Cambridge either in the
way of reviving the best of the old or of producing
the best of the new. Sporadically an old masterpiece
of Gibbons or Purcell would creep in, but the hum-
drum policy of a deep-set conservatism stood as a brick
wall to keep out progress in one direction and educa-
tion in the other. The ideals of Deans were that
" the daily round, the common task (of repeating old
chestnuts) should furnish all we ought to ask." No
amount of persuasive eloquence, that the youth of
England ought to hear the finest English work or get
the advantage of knowing what the best masters of
the Cathedral School of this country could accomplish,
made the least impression. An unknown Gibbons
anthem was looked on as providing a possible excuse
for non-attendance at Cha|)el. The principle was to
attract with "Ijriglit" services: "brightness" too
often being synonymous with " tinsel." The organ-
loft however sometimes welcomed very interesting
guests. My only mee^ting with Charles Darwin was
there, when lie came up to hear some Bach, ;iii(l
beamed upon the music with his kindly smile and

marvellous eyes. Another visitor was IWon Bram-

16

242 PAGES FROM AN UNWRITTEN DIARY

well, who disliked church -going but was devoted to
music. He was on circuit with Mr. Justice Denman,
and was staying at the Lodge (which is a Royal
Residence, and therefore used as the Judges' Lodgings).
Thompson had had his little joke at Bramwell's
expense in the afternoon, when Denman had explained
that he was going alone to the University sermon
(a function which the Judges of Assize customarily
attended), saying that his brother Bramwell had
looked up precedents and found that it was sufficient
if one of them was present in state. Denman added
that " we are both of one mind in the matter."

Thompson. " May I ask if you are both also of one
soul ?"

Bramwell's one expressed wish to me was not to
play him any Bach, for the reason that he " preferred
Offenbach to Bach often." I believe that Arthur
Coleridge, who was a great friend of his, inveigled him
once into going to hear the B minor Mass, and that
finished off the Judge, as far as Bach was concerned,
for good and all.

Another distinguished visitor was DvoHk, who was
nearly driven crazy by the chanting of the psalms, which
he thought simply a barbarous repetition of a poor
tune. One of my most picturesque and dignified guests
was Francois Devouassoud, the famous Alpine guide
who accompanied Mr. Douglas Freshfield upon most
of his mountaineering expeditions : a tall, handsome,
solidly built figure of a man, to whom the most nervous
giddy head would trust itself with a sense of complete
security. I played for him the big Toccata in C major
of Bach, whether well or ill I forget ; but the compli-

A SWISS VISITOR 243

ment he paid me at the close gives the idea of the
grace and finished courtesy of this nature's gentleman.
I translate the French, and unfortunately thereby rob
the sentence of its native charm. " If, Monsieur, you
were to climb an ice-slope as easily as you play those
pedals, you would be the first mountaineer in Europe !"

CHAPTEK XVI

Hamburg in 1884— Richter at Birmingham— Vienna— The Bach Fes-
tival at Eisenach — Leeds in 1886 — Ireland in the Early Eighties.

In the spring of 1884 I went to Hamburg at the
invitation of Pollini, (the manager of the Stadt-
Theater), and of Josef Sucher, the conductor, to be
present at the first performance of my opera " Savon-
arola," which was to be produced on the occasion of the
conductor's benefit. The performance was careful and
admirable in every detail. The title-part was sung by
Ernst, whose stage appearance was an exact repro-
duction of the well-known portrait, and the cast
included three artists well known at Baireuth, Frau
Sucher, Krauss and Landau. If I had been a born
Hamburger I could not have met with greater kindli-
ness than I was shown by everyone concerned.
Riccius, the veteran critic and friend of Schumann,
asked me to his house, and was as interesting and
helpful in his arm-chair as he was a week afterwards
in print. A more unprejudiced and judicially minded
writer I could not imagine. His fault-finding was as
good as a lesson from a first-rate master, and his praise
correspondingly valuable. His two other colleagues,
Armbrust (the doyen of Hamburg organists) and
Krause, a first-rate blind musician, were in their way as
knowledgeable and as courteous. Pollini was not wrong
when he told me that the Musical Press of Hamburg was
the most independent and the most able in Germany.

244

HAMBURG IN 1884 245

" We are on velvet here with such critics," was his
comineut. I had to return immediately to London for
the premiere of my " Canterbury Pilgrims," which was
excellently given by Carl E-osa at Drury Lane.

Rosa, the best friend whom English Opera ever had,
who came nearer to establishing it on a permanent
basis than any other manager, was carrying out a
policy of encouraging British work for the stage, and
had begun by producing Goring Thomas's " Esmeralda "
and Mackenzie's "Colomba." A first-rate man of
business, he had perforce to keep a careful eye on the
main chance. The London Press was at best patroni-
zing in its tone, and was under the control of ancients
who were wedded by long custom to the Italian
reerime. One of these was a writer who was the
reverse of English both in race and in methods ; he
rivalled a Berlin writer whom von Billow wittily de-
stroyed with an epigram : " Der T ist fiir so wenig

bestechlich, dass er beinahe an die Unbestechlichkeit

grenzt " (T is bribable for so small a sum, that

he almost borders upon the unbribable). His London
counterpart, whom I had fortunately been warned
against years before by my father, had put out ten-
tacles in my direction which I ignored, and as a
consequence conducted a campaign against both the
"Canterbury Pilgrims" and "Savonarola," when the
latter opera was given, with maimed rights, a bearded
hero, insufficient rehearsals and incompetent stage-
management, at Covent Garden iji the summer. In
addition the owner of the libretto having refused to
allow it to be sold in the theatre, the public knew
nothing of its meaning in a foreign tongue, and I

246 PAGES FKOM AN UNWRITTEN DIARY

scarcely recognized the opera I had seen at Hamburg
a few weeks before. (A legal " draughtsman " summed
up the situation in the annexed sketch.)

O I

This cleverly unscrupulous critic worked his caucus
well ; but he sometimes made a slip even when
eulogizing those whom he took under his wing. On
one occasion, in the course of an article upon Arthur

A MUSICAL CRITIC 247

Sullivan, he wrote a (probably mythical) account of an
(equally fabulous) interview in former days with that
genial composer : couching part of it in queer scriptural
language. He told how Sullivan once drove up to his
door in a neat brougham (I wonder he did not describe
it as a fiery chariot) and came into his room bearing a
bunch of early asparagus. " Here," said Arthur
Sullivan, " is some asparagus which I have just
received from abroad. I have made me three por-
tions, one for my mother, one for myself, and the third
I bring you." This paragraph suggested an epigram,
the writing of which was too tempting to resist.

" In times of ancient Greece, the bean

Was made forbidden fare,
In case the spirit of a friend

Had transmigrated there.
Some latter-day philosophers

Profess a faith analogous ;
The spirit of a five-pound note

May lurk within asparagus."

L. E. loquitur.

" A bribe in vegetable guise
Is surely not a sin,
Conveyed in language Biblical,
And innocent of tin."

The Public loquitur.

"Where fools might hesitate to tread,
An P]ngel rushes in."

The gentleman had, as was not unanticipated, to
rush out not long after, and to seek security from the
English Law in a French attic. The late Canon
Ainger very properly rebuked me for rhyming "ana-
logous" to "asparagus," but admitted that even
Byron, the discoverer of rhymes to " Jehoshaphat "

248 PAGES FROM AN UNWRITTEN DIARY

and "Sennacherib," would have found it difficult to
hit ou any better word for the purpose.

In 1885 the Birmingham Festival authorities
secured a successor to Costa (who died the previous
year) in Hans Richter, who remodelled the orchestra,
rectified the balance of strings and wind, and made
the programmes of the evening concerts, which had
mostly consisted of a farrago of operatic airs and
selections, as artistically interesting as those of the
morning. This Festival set an example of sufficient
rehearsal and preparation, and of the selection
throughout of worthy music, which has since been
followed by all other gatherings of the kind. A com-
parison between the second part of an evening Festival
Concert at Leeds in 1858 under Costa, and at Birming-
ham in J 897 under Richter, will show the progress
which was made in forty years. The principles of
selection of the type of 1858 ruled unchallenged until
1885, when such a conglomeration of unsuitabilities
became for ever impossible.

LEEDS FESTIVAL OF 1858.

Overture in D major

... J.S.Bach

Song, "Phoebe Dearest"

. . . Hatton.

Duo " Lasciami " (" Tancredi ") . .

. . . Rossini.

Aria, " Convien partir "...

Donizetti.

Fantasia for Pianoforte ...

. . . Thalherg.

Brindisi, " 11 segreto " ...

. . . Donizetti.

Song, "As burns the charger"

. . . Shield.

Duo, " Quanto amore " ...

Donizetti.

Aria, " Non piu andrai "

. . . Mozart.

Ballad, " The Green Trees "

... Balfe.

Prayer from "Mose in Egitto"

. . . Rossini.

Overture to " Oberon "...

Weher.

RICHTER AT BIRMINGHAM 249

Imagine John Sebastian looking down from the
Elysian fields on his name figuring at the head of this
olla podrida of rubbish, and comforting Weber with
the assurance that he left a good taste in the mouth
of such audience as was left him, or which was not too
busy finding its hats and coats to listen : Mozart
meanwhile rubbing his hands that he only kept the
public waiting three minutes before it got back to its
Balfe. Compare this with the

BIRMINGHAM FESTIVAL OF 1895.

Overture, Leonore, No. 3
Scena, "Ocean, thou mighty monster"
Variations on a theme of Haydn . . .
Liebeslied from the " Walkiire" ...
Overture, "Medea"

BeetJioven.

Weber.

Brahms.

IVagiier.

Cherubim.

The appointment of Richter at Birmingham caused
a certain amount of heart-burning amongst some
English musicians, but the ciying need for reform
necessitated the leadership of an exceptionally strong
man, who could speak with European authority ; for
the Birmingham Festival was as important in its way
as the Festival of the Lower Rhine, and as such
affected our musical position amongst other nations.
Apart from his great gifts as a conductor, his power
of getting the best work out of his orchestral players,
of saving time, and of minimizing grumbles was in-
valuable at such a moment ; he was too international
in his tastes and policy to justify any permanent
feeling of grievance on the ground of patriotism. The
appointment at tliis crisis turned out to be no hin-
drance l>ut rather a great help to English music and
Eni^lish artists alike.

250 PAGES FROM AN UNWRITTEN DIARY

After the Festival I visited him at Vienna, and saw
many of the musicians, amongst others Rokitansky,
the witty son-in-law of Lablache. I made also my
first near acquaintance with Brahms, who lived in the
Carlgasse, No. 4, in a house now (of course) pulled
down.* I sat with him through a dress rehearsal of
" Alceste " at the Opera. He was much tickled by a
conversation I had had the previous year with the
landlord of my hotel, the " Matschakerhof " in the
Seilergasse. In the old Viennese hotels there are two
dining-rooms, one on the ground floor, and one on the
first. The food is identical, but the price is higher
upstairs. Beethoven used to eat his midday dinner
in the lower dining-room of this house, and I thought
I would find out if the landlord knew of this histori-
cally interesting fact. I got my opjoortunity on the
stairs one day.

C. V. S. " Do you know that Beethoven used to eat
his dinner in there ?" {pointing out the room).

Landlord {puzzled). " Beethoven ? Beethoven ? I
don't know the name at all."

C. V. S. " Surely you know Beethoven, the great
composer."

Landlord {with a sudden spurt of memory). " Oh,
yes ! I know the gentleman. Der Herr ist verreist "
(The gentleman has left).

a V. S. " Yes, I know. He left in 1827."

This interview I related to a number of the orches-
tral players, who were dining together at the Erz-
Herzog Carl, and by a curious coincidence when I

* The account of my first visit to Brahms I have described in
" Studies and Memories," p. 112 et seq.

BACH FESTIVAL AT EISENACH 251

returned to Vienna in 1885 I picked up in the same
room a copy of the Leipzig Signale, containing the
whole story in quite correct terms, but ascribing the
experience (of course) to another person, like the fate
which befell the sayings of Thompson.

After visiting Vienna in 1 884 I went on to the Fes-
tival at the unveiling of the Bach statue at Eisenach.
It was a most interesting concourse of Sebastian lovers
which gathered in the little picturesque Thuringian
town. Two concerts were given in the church opposite
to which the statue stands. One was devoted to the
B minor Mass, and the other had a miscellaneous
programme. The orchestra came from Meiningen and
from Berlin ; the chorus was local and extremely
resonant and intelliofent, Joachim conducted and
played the Chaconne. Weimar sent a large contingent
of artists to the ceremony, headed by Liszt, whose
first greeting with Joachim after years of estrange-
ment (consequent upon the 1860 manifesto) I wit-
nessed at close quarters. Herr and Frau von Milde,
Joachim and Liszt stood in one group. The first
Telramund, the first Elsa, the first concert-meister,
and the first conductor of the first performance of
"Lohengrin." vSo the Wagnerians and anti-Wag-
nerians sunk their differences under the shadow of
Sebastian Bach, tramped up in the afternoon to the
scene of Tannhiiuser's and Wolfram's songs, and looked
across the valley at the VenusVjerg. When the date
of the unveihng ceremony was fixed, the committee
discovered that two old Miss Bachs of the same family
as the Cantor were still living in Thuringia, and
invited them to be present. But the old ladies replied

252 PAGES FROM AN UNWRITTEN DIARY

that they had never heard of such a person as
Sebastian Bach, and that there must be some mistake.
Spitta himself was unable to convince them of the fact.
I was able to compare the singing of the Thuringian
chorus with that of the Birmingham and Leeds Festivals
of 1885 and 1886. The mass of tone in England was
greater, but the colour, word-declamation, and preserva-
tion of pitch were then (happily now no longer) superior
at Eisenach. The chorus trainer at Leeds, James
Broughton, who had brought his singers to a high
pitch of excellence, had become an invalid and retired.
His successor was not built on the same lines, and
had not the same force, or control over his material.
After the first performance of the " Revenge," in which
the chorus fell once or twice slightly and were not
dead sure of their intonation, I met James B. in the
lobby, who said, with tears in his eyes, " To think that
my children should lose their pitch like that !" I
comforted him as much as I could by pointing out
the passages in which they excelled, and the difficulties
of getting four hundred singers to declaim a ballad
written in an unfamiliar style. Broughton, who was
a thorough Yorkshireman, rough and ready in speech,
had most refined tastes and was an indefatigable curio -
hunter. His small house was a veritable museum ; so
numerous were his watches and clocks, so delicate his
china, and so space-consuming his antique bedsteads
and hutches that it was scarcely possible to turn round
without destroying some fragile work of art.

My host was a generous, large-hearted amateur.
Walker Joy, who had been one of the prime movers in
the foundation of the Festival of 1858. He told me

WALKEK JOY 253

many anecdotes of his difficulties in dealing with the
Committee of that time, who were mainly composed of
business magnates, with little or no artistic sensibili-
ties. When the conductor's and singers' fees were
being hotly discussed, there was a general idee fixe
that they might be offered guineas, but given pounds,
the odd shillings to be considered as commission. Joy
had some trouble in making them see that Sterndale
Bennett would neither understand nor appreciate this
local custom : still less foreigners like Piccolomini
and Alboni. Joachim was present as Bennett's guest
at the Festival, but though he frequently played at
chamber concerts in the town in after-years, his first
appearance at a Festival was in 1901. Walker Joy
was devoted to organs and organ-building. He was
Schulze's right-hand man when that master erected
the organs at Doncaster and Leeds Parish Churches.
His description of Schulze's ways and methods re-
called the type of German who made Nuremberg
famous in old days. Even his form of liquid nourish-
ment was medieval, and to the modern working-man
unthinkable : light Rhine wine, mixed with hot water
and brown sugar. While building the Leeds organ,
he got a telegram telling him of his wife's death. Joy
found him working away with the tears rolling down
his cheeks, but, he said, his return to Germany could
not bring her to life again, and he would not desert
his loved organ.

He built another fine instrument for Mr. Kennedy,
a great lover of organs and a keen Alpine climber, who
not infrefjuently at(! liis Cliristmas dinner on Mont
Blanc. Kennedy built a special barn-like outhouse for

254 PAGES FKOM AN UNWRITTEN DIARY

this organ. When it was completed he had a surprise
visit from S. S. Wesley, who travelled north to see it.
After dinner Wesley asked for the key of the outhouse,
locked himself in and played away, leaving his host to
hear as much as he could through the cracks of the
door, and went off the next morning at cock-crow.
This organ eventually found a home at Armley Church,
where Joy had it rebuilt and restored with loving
care. Another instrument which Schulze built for
Charterhouse School, I was happily able, with Joy's
help, to rescue from the scrap-heap, to which a modern
firm, who had been consulted, wished to consign it in
favour of one of their own make ; following thereby
the example of the Durham Cathedral authorities and
their destruction of Father Smith's organ in favour of
a brand-new one. Such vandalism, said Joy, was only
comparable to lighting the fire with a Stradivarius.
The generosity of this typical North Countryman was
unbounded, but he hid his light under a bushel. He
was one of the chief financial supporters of the choir
in Leeds Parish Church in the days of Dr. Hook and
Dr. Woodford, but would pretend that he only " paid
for the washing of the surplices." He nursed S. S.
Wesley through the severe illness from which he
suffered after breaking his leg while fishing, and was
one of the very few with whom that cantankerous
genius never quarrelled. Music in the North never
had a better friend.

During the troublous years in the early eighties
which came to a climax in the Phoenix Park murders,
I had paid a few visits to Ireland. The developments
which followed this crime came very near home to me,

IRELAND IN THE EIGHTIES 255

from an incident which closely affected my mother.
She lived in Fitzwilliam Square, and had let her
stables to a most respectable cab-proprietor who was
wont to keep his cab at a stand at the corner of the
square, from which the whole length of Fitzwilliam
Street was visible. Mr. Justice Lawson, who with
Forster and others was the most threatened man in
Dublin, lived on the East side of the street, and used
to start on foot every morning at 10.30 or so to walk
to the Four Courts. One morning the cab-driver saw
a doubtful-looking person pacing up and down opposite
Lawson's house, and guessed that he was up to mis-
chief He proved to have good reason for his sus-
picions. Shortly afterwards Lawson came out, and as
he started towards Merrion Square the man shadowed
him. But the cabman left his cab to chance, and
followed them picking up a policeman as he went.
Just as Lawson was passing Kildare Street Club, the
assassin rushed at him with a knife, and was just
seized in time by his two pursuers. The knife turned
out to be one of the same make and pattern as those
used in the Phoenix Park, and helped to convict the
murderers. Shortly after, the cabman came to my
mother and told her that he had been bombarded with
so many threatening letters that he would have to
leave the country, and she got up a private subscription
to start him and his family in Canada.

I had many talks aijout this crisis with Lord Justice
Murphy, who was then Crown Prosecutor. He gave
me a most terribly dramatic account of one day in the
preliminary inf{uiry at the Police Court. The dock
was filled with a row of the accused, in the centre of

256 PAGES FROM AN UNWRITTEN DIARY

which stood Carey and at the end Brady. At the far
end from Brady was the witness-box, which was a
chair, placed upon the Counsel's table below the dock.
Every day the prisoners laughed and chaffed, knowing
as well as Murphy did that the evidence so far avail-
able was not sufficiently conclusive. The moment
came on the morning when in the midst of their usual
hilariousness the row of conspirators became aware
that Carey was not there. There was a sudden silence
which could be felt. Murphy, who was sitting close
to the witness-chair, saw Brady quietly changing
places with each of his neighbours in turn and work-
ing his way silently to his end of the dock. When he
arrived opposite the witness-chair, Murphy rose and
asked the Magistrate for a special reason to have the
witness-chair removed to the other end of the table.
Brady at once leaned over and said to him : " You
were right to do that, Sir ; I was going to break his
neck over the edge of the dock." " And he would
have done it too," said Murphy, " for a more magnifi-
cent specimen of muscular humanity I never saw, nor
a finer fellow with a more open honest face ; only a prey
to morbid fanaticism and distorted patriotism. " He told
me that he ascertained that Brady, when driving away
from the scene of the murder, kept saying: "I am sorry I
had to kill that other gentleman," meaning Lord Fred-
erick Cavendish. Not long after this appalling crisis,
there was a rapid revulsion to comparative quiet. The
odd mixture of feeling amongst the lower classes was
exactly voiced by a car-driver who drove Hans Richter
through the Phoenix Park in after-years. As the out-
side car passed the spot, the jarvey leaned down to

IRELAND IN THE EIGHTIES 257

Richter, pointed with his whip, and said : " That's
where the Uttle accident was, Sir." Richter's aston-
ished reply was " Grossartig !"

But for all the tragedy, the humorous Irish withers
were unwrung ; laughter and tears, as ever, were close
together. I was, a short time after, holding an exam-
ination in Dublin where players of the national
instrument, the harp, were largely represented. Two
rough fellows of the baser sort brought the harp
into the room, and I, wishing to see if they could
be drawn, said to them " I see the harp, but where's
the crown V The answer came like lightning, accom-
panied by a real Hibernian wink, "It's the haJf-crown
we want." And this repartee was quickly followed by
another. In my list, the surnames of examinees were
placed first, and the Christian names second. It was
one of the rules that examiners should ask the name
of the candidate on his or her entering: the room. One
name which attracted my attention from its un-
familiarity was entered, " De Vine, Annie." When the
bearer of this patronymic entered the room, I saw
from her face that she had humour and gently asked
" Are you De Vine Annie, or are you Annie De Vine ?"
Immediate answer ({?i a soft brogue) "You'll be able
to tell that after you have heard me play !"

17

CHAPTEE XVII

The Queen's Jubilee in 1887 — The Irish Symphony — Hans von

Billow — Dvordk.

The year of Queen Victoria's Jubilee, 1887, was a
memorable one for all sorts and conditions of Britons.
It brought this island into a closer touch with the
rulers of other nations than it had experienced since
the beginning of the century. Men saw with their
eyes the ideal incarnation of Lohengrin riding down
the London streets, the tragic figure of the German
Crown Prince, and a crowd of other Kings to come, all
doing honour to a lady, smaller than any of her guests
in stature, but head and shoulders above them all in
experience and in large-hearted sympathy. She
ranked first in dignity, in the charm of her smile and
in the clearness and beauty of her speaking voice. I
met Manuel Garcia during the second Jubilee in 1897 ;
he was then ninety-two, running upstairs with a lighter
foot than most men of thirty-five, and with a mind as
alert and as young as his physique. I said to him that
he ought to round off the celebrations by going down
to Windsor and giving the Queen a singing lesson (she
still could sing with the purity of voice and intonation
of which Mendelssohn wrote in 1842). Garcia
answered " That would not do, for I never taught her.
Lablache was her master. But I s<hould like to go
down and teach her how to live to ninety-two."

258

THE QUEEN'S JUBILEE IN 1887 259

The Royal College Orchestra was commanded to go
down to Windsor and give a concert after one of the
banquets. One of the professors, who held pronounced
republican opinions, sorely disgusted Grove by insist-
ing on wearing a black tie, and would not even admit
that the same courtesy should be shown to the Queen
as was due to any lady at an evening party in her own
house. But I observed with some amusement that he
did not turn his back on the late King of Denmark
when he came up and talked to him, but rather enjoyed
the distinction so much that his republican tenets went
by the board. The orchestra was about seventy-five
strong, and when we arrived in the dark at the Castle
we were directed to an entrance which led into a
perfect labyrinth of passages. Grove headed the pro-
cession, and began by making for a likely -looking door
which landed us in the kitchen. He was equal to the
occasion, smiled round upon the army of white-capped
officials, and ejaculating " Too many cooks," fled from
the sacred precincts. We were eventually shepherded
into a drawing-room, where the band occupied nearly
half the space. The voices of the guests were soon
heard approaching, the door was thrown open and the
Queen came in. She gave one look at us, turned round,
made a sweeping gesture with her arm, summoned an
equerry (who looked very uncomfortable at what she
confided to him) and departed. We were promptly
ordered out again, and with a swiftness which would
have done credit to Aladdin's Djinn, we found our-
selves in an adequate space in the Waterloo Chamb(;r.
Grove's delight at the welcome change was as great as
his misery had been a few minutes before at our having

260 PAGES FROM AN UNWRITTEN DIARY

to play in a room which would have been roofless after
the first chord. The concert opened with an overture
which was a great test for the audience, Beethoven's
" Coriolan," for during the opening bars there are
several pauses and silences. The back rows were not
prepared for these cessations of sound, and the Babel
of conversation which had gained in volume during the
fortissimo chords was caught at its loudest each time.
The memory of Liszt and the Czar crossed my mind,
but even Liszt would have been nonplussed that even-
ing : he would have had to say to the audience,
" Quand la Reine se tait, tout le monde doit se taire."
The greatest personality in the room gave an example
of reverence for the art, which might well have been
followed. I wondered if Lablache had ever confided
to his Royal pupil the blow which he struck at the
ostracism of artists in society houses, which finally
abolished such invidious distinctions. At his first
private engagement at Apsley House, he saw, as he
went up to sing, a rope stretched between the platform
and the guests. He lifted up his giant foot and kicked
it over. It was never replaced.

The society functions at the Castle very nearly
imperilled the first performance (under Richter) of my
Irish Symphony. At the last moment several of the
best players in the Richter orchestra, who were also
members of the Queen's band, were ordered down to
Windsor : and if it had not been for the unique sight-
reading powers of their deputies and for Richter's
vigilant eye, the difiiculties of the work might well
have brought about a catastrophe. But happily, no
flaw was observable. The performance of this symphony

THE IRISH SYMPHONY 261

led to my making my first acquaintance with one of
the most remarkable men, if not the most remarkable
man, in the world of contemporary music, Hans von
Billow. Joachim suggested my sending him the score.
He answered in a characteristic letter, which his
polyglot pen wrote in French.* He had just accepted
the conductorship of the Berlin Philharmonic. He
pointed out the difficulties in the way of a performance,
*' une formidable concurrence pour les ' novelties ' de la
part des compositeurs indigenes, lesquels profitent de
la tres regrettable tendance actuelle du ' chauvinisme '
pour protester contre mes principes cosmopolitiques en
maticre d'art," and therefore could make no promises.
I heard no more for months and assumed that the
matter was forgotten and dropped.

In the following January I heard accidentally through
a friend that the symphony was to be given at Ham-
burg in a few days. I had had no word from von Bulow,
but I packed my bag and made straight for the Elbe,
arriving late on the night before the rehearsal, Mr.
Walter Ford (who came from Berlin to meet me) and I
found out the concert-room, went " on the sly " after
breakfast, and eiisconced ourselves in the dark under
the gallery. Hans was hard at work on the symphony.
Whether it was second sight or brain- wave I know
not, l)ut we had not been there for a few minutes
before he turned round, peered into the dark recesses
at the back of the room, and called out my name. He
had not heard a syllable about my coming. The
Hamburg performance was intended by him as a trial

* This letter will be found in the seventh volume of von liiilow's
Letters, No. 122.

262 PAGES FROM AN UNWRITTEN DIARY

trip for Berlin, where he had almost arranged for its
production a week or two later. After the concert he
told me that it was in the Berlin programme, and asked
me to remain in Germany for it. It was not until the
last volume of his Letters was published that I knew
how consistently and perpetually he had bombarded
the Berlin authorities to include it. In the course of
reading these highly entertaining missives I happened
upon one which proves up to the hilt the innate kind-
ness and thoughtfulness of the man, even for an artist
whom he had never seen. The Irish Symphony and
Brahms' E minor Symphony (No. 4) were written
simultaneously. The slow movement of Brahms' work
begins with a phrase which is note for note identical
with a passage in the slow movement of mine. But
the passage

^

±L

m

is from an old Irish lament in Petrie's MSS. In
October, 1887, von Bulow wrote to Wolff the agent in
Berlin " Brahms No. 4 E moll spukt ein klein wenig
darin — doch ist die Reminiscenz im Adagio vom Com-
ponisten — im Vorwort — als eine nationale Melodie
bezeichnet, ivorauf 0. E. aufmerksam zu machen locire "
(" Brahms No. 4. E minor, haunts it a tiny bit — but
the reminiscence in the Adagio is pointed out by
the composer in the prefatory note as a National
melody. — 0. E. ought to have his attention called to
this,'' the italics are mine). 0. E. was Otto Eichberg,
a prominent critic in the Berlin Press. Such was the

HANS VON BtTLOW 263

thoughtful care of the conductor for a young com-
poser.

While at Hamburg I went with him to see a per-
formance of " Figaro," whereat he railed, and said,
" What we want in Germany is not a ' Busstag ' but a
' Bussjahr ' [all the theatres are closed on the Busstag,
or fast day] ; then the singers would have time to for-
get all their parts, and would have to learn them all
over again." His quick eye saw the face of a young
man in the audience whom he pointed out to me as
Richard Strauss, and he told me of his " Don Juan "
which had just been written. " He will interest you,"
he said, " I will catch him between the acts." He did
so and introduced him in these words : " This is
Strauss, not the waltz king ! Ein geschickter Kerl, geht
aber viel zu weit !" The last sentence with a touch
of humorous irony, delivered straight at his friend. I
went on with him to Berlin, where he amazed me by
conducting both the rehearsals and the performance
from memory. I asked him how on earth he could do it,
and he would only say " Good for the newspaj)ers."

George Osborne told me one extraordinary instance
of his demoniac power of memorizing. He met him in
Bond Street opposite Lamborn Cocks's music-shop, and
Billow said he was going down to give a recital the
same evening at Brighton.

Osborne. " Of course you are going to play some-
thing of Sterndale Bennett s ?"

VON BiJLOVV. " Why ?"

O. " It's his birthday."

V. B. " I don't know anything of his, tell me
something."

264 PAGES FEOM AN UNWRITTEN DIARY

O. " We are at his publisher's door. Come in and
choose for yourself."

V. B. ( Turns over several pieces and picks out " The
Lake;' " The Mill Stream," and " The Fountain:') " I
will play those."

He learnt them by heart in the train and played
them from memory in the evening. The fact that he
did so was vouched for to me by a musician then
resident in Brighton, the late Dr. Sawyer, who was at
the concert. His wit, like his appearance, was that of
a Frenchman rather than that of a German. It never
failed him either in repartee or on paper.

Dannreuther told me of the torture he went through
for a brief moment when von Biilow came to a party
at his house. A lady asked her host to introduce her
to the great man, and began her conversation with the
question, " Oh ! Monsieur von Biilow, vous connaissez
Monsieur Wagner, n'est ce pas ?" While the drops of
perspiration were bursting out on Dannreuther's fore-
head, Biilow made a low bow and answered without a
sign of surprise, "Mais oui, Madame, c'est le mari de
ma femme." At an orchestral concert in St. James's
Hall he sat down to rehearse a Beethoven Concerto.
After the opening tictti, he did not begin, and
everyone was agog to see what would happen. He
solemnly walked up to the conductor's desk, removed
his full score and replaced it with the piano part which
was lying beside him.

The stories of his wars with Count von Hiilsen, the
Intendant of the Court Opera House at Berlin, give
many instances of his caustic and drastic tongue and
pen. The campaign began after a performance of

HANS VON BtJLOW 265

the "Prophete," conducted I believe by Deppe (a
musician whom H. v. B, christened the Prince of
Deppe-Litmold), the sloppiness of which roused his
ire. Before a pianoforte recital which he gave next
day, he addressed the audience, saying that he had
the previous evening visited the Circus Hiilsen and
after his experience of the playing of the March, he
thought it only fair to Meyerbeer to begin his recital
with a proper rendering of it. He was immediately
called upon by the Government officials to apologize in
the Press. He did so with alacrity, but the apology
took the form of an expression of regret, not to von
Hiilsen, but to Messrs. Benz and Wolff (the proprietors
of two famous Circuses in Berlin) for having compared
their excellent entertainment to the Court Opera.
The next move in this Gilbertian battle was his re-
moval from the honorary position of Hof-Pianist (Court
Pianist). He answered this by putting upon his visit-
ing card " Hans von Billow, Volks-Pianist " (People's
Pianist).

On the next occasion that he visited the Opera the
Count had him summarily ejected by the attendants ;
but the satirical musician got the better of him again,
not by word of mouth, but by opening a pianoforte
recital next day (which was crammed by people
expecting some reprisals) with the opening bars of
Figaro's song,

" Se vuol ballare, Signer Contino,
II chitarriiio lo suonor6."

The whole audience took the joke, and roared with
laughter which was echoed all over Berlin in a few
hours.

266 PAGES FROM AN UNWRITTEN DIARY

Von Billow's epistolary style was as original as his

nature. When he wrote in English, he was just as

vivid and amusing as in his own language, and he

delighted in grubbing up words which are to be found

in the Oxford Dictionary, but are quite unfamiliar to

the average English ear. One letter, which he wrote

to me shortly after the death of the two Emperors of

Germany, is well worth printing as a specimen. I had

asked him if he would pay us a visit at Cambridge in

the summer of 1888, and give a pianoforte recital for

the Musical Society, and had inquired if he would tell

us precisely what his professional terms would be.

This was his reply :

"Hamburg,
" Dear Sir, ''March 13, 1888.

" Illustrissimo !

" A few hours after your kind note I received also
the three piano scores you announced. Accept my
hearty thanks for the friendly record you kept of the
German conductor of the Irish Symphony.

" In spite of the general funeralism I must start to-
morrow morning for Berlin to prepare the next Phil-
harmonic Concert accordingly to the exceptional cir-
cumstances. Whilst travelling I shall read your
melodrams* which most highly excite my interest.

" As for my trip to London nothing as yet is
definitively fixed. In no case I would come before the
1st of June, the month of birds, cats and poets being
devoted to the cure of my neuralgies at Wiesbaden.

" I should feel most happy if during my stay in
L., I could be of any use to the ears of your residence.

* They were the scores of the music to the Greek Plays.

HANS VON BtJLOW 267

Please dispose of my ten fingers — and do not mind
your treasurer's nightmares. A visit to Cambridge
would not be ' matter of business ' for your

" Most sincere admirer,

" Hans v. Bulow.

" Will you kindly excuse the involuntary laconisms
of this line ?"

He came and played in King's College Hall a pro-
gramme which was chosen (at his request) by Parry
and myself. We sent the pieces, but not in order of
performance as he thought. The first on the list was
a work of Chopin. His answer was that to begin a
concert with Chopin was like "preluding to a dinner
by Rhubarb-pie." This, like most of his funniest
quips, was in a postscript. Another specimen I
possess is couched as follows : —

" Please don't shoot the organist : he is ' doing his
best ' — alias : excuse my bad English, I lack leisure
for consulting the ' Anti-barbarus.' "

It is impossible to estimate the services which "this
poor would-not-be composer " (as he described himself
to me) did for the good of art. He had no prejudices
which were so set that he could not correct them. He
was never ashamed to acknowledc:e himself in the
wrong, as witness his letter to Verdi concerning the
" Recjuiem."* His extraordinary loyalty to Wagner's
efforts on behalf of German opera, in the teeth of the
greatest wrong wliich one man can do to another, was
one of the most convincing proofs of the greatness of
mind which was in him. He laid many of the bricks

* See Billow's Letters, vol. vii., No. 412.

2G8 PAGES FROM AN UNWRITTEN DIARY

of the Baireiitb Theatre with his pianoforte recitals.
He did not cease to do so, when the composer made
his home desolate ; for he knew and said that his
work was being done for the music and not for the
man ; the advice of friends and the sneers of foes had
no power to dissuade him from his purpose. But he
never saw the Baireuth Theatre until after Wagner's
death, if then. Quixotic perhaps he was, in the eyes
of the man of the world, but instinct with real un-
adulterated nobility. He was to his finger-tips a
great gentleman. He could be, M^hen the humour
took him, dangerous, but a straight retort or a timely
jest would disperse the thundercloud in a moment.
An instance of this occurred at Weimar, where he
used frequently to give his services at the annual
concert for the Pension Fund of the Orchestra. Ar-
riving for one of these functions, he was met at the
station by Miiller-Hartung and Strauss. He looked
very cross, and began by saying, " Schaiisliches Nest,
Weimar !" (Horrid hole, Weimar !). They tried to
soothe him, but he went on "You play no Brahms
here." They assured him that, only shortly before,
one of Brahms' Symphonies had been played. " Aber
wie ?" (But how ?) was his answer. He went on to the
rehearsal, which was conducted by Lassen, an old
friend of his. After the first movement of the Beet-
hoven E flat Concerto, in the course of which he had
given vent to a good deal of satire at the expense of
the band, he called out to the players who were slowly
taking out their mutes, " Jetzt, meine Herrn, mit
Sardinen, ohne Oel " (Now gentlemen, with sardines
without oil). Lassen leaned down and said smilingly,

HANS VON BtTLOW 269

" Und bitte, lieber Biilow, ohiie Essig " (And please,
dear B., without vinegar). Biilow got up and led a
round of applause for the repartee ; recovered his
temper and was as merry as a sandboy for the rest of
the visit. He told me that he was playing this same
concerto in America, and had to request the conductor
to get his band to put more life and colour into their
reading. The conductor rapped his desk, and with a
nasal twang, which v. B. imitated to the life, said, " A
taste more ginger, gentlemen, please !"

Rockstro, who was at Leipzig with Joachim and
Otto Goldschmidt, described to me how the two lads
used to have internecine encounters, which they sank
when v. B. appeared on the scene to stay w^ith his
relative, Frau Frege. They joined forces to defend
themselves from v. B.'s satirical tongue, and gentle
Bockstro had to pour such oil as he could upon the
troubled waters. They were all then in short jackets,
but they managed to make it appear that their coats
had tails to tread on. Joachim and v. B. were the
protagonists. The boys were fathers to the men.
They kept up their altercations of squabbles and
reconciliations to the end of their lives. The most
serious breach was after the Weimar manifesto, when
V. B. (as he afterwards confided to Joachim in an
affectionate moment) considered the advisability of
purchasing a pistol to shoot him at sight. But they
had a deep underlying respect and admiration for each
other, though their natures were so diverse as to make
frictions unavoidable. He nevc^i- stinted his praise.
Joachim rarely expressiid his. TluTein lay the kernel
of the whole matter. Tlie one pined for outspoken

270 PAGES FROM AN UNWRITTEN DIARY

appreciation, which the other never volunteered. So
it was with their predecessors at Leipzig, Mendelssohn
and Schumann. There is scarcely a word of acknow-
ledgment of Schumann's genius to be found in the
whole range of Mendelssohn's voluminous correspon-
dence. There is no nobler instance of generosity than
Schumann's never- failing tributes to his contemporary's
powers.

In 1891 Dvorak visited Cambridge to receive an
honorary degree. He conducted a concert of the
C.U.M.S. when his " Stabat Mater," and Symphony in
G Major (No. 4) were performed. Madame Albani
came down to do honour to the composer, and sang
both the " Stabat " and an Aria from the " Spectre's
Bride." The composer and his wife stayed at my
house, and proved to be inconveniently early risers.
I heard a noise in the garden in the small hours and
saw the pair sitting under a tree in my garden at
6 a.m. He and Brahms must have had in common
the gift of being satisfied with from four to five hours
of sleep. Dvorak's interest in contemporary music,
was, as far as I could gather, very limited. The only
composer of his time who seemed to rouse his en-
thusiasm was Verdi. Of Brahms, to whom he owed
all his public recognition, he scarcely spoke, and that
little was not what I expected him to say. He struck
me more as a wonderful melody-making and music-
weaving machine, and gave no outward sign of the
flaming spontaneity which must have been within.
He did not show much interest, however much he felt,
in anything outside his own metier. This may ac-
count to some extent for the lack of self-criticism, and

DVORAK 271

the necessity for the pruning-knife which is obvious
even in his very best work. There was a curious
resemblance in his musical organism to that of Franz
Schubert. Both were simply bubbling with invention;
both found the expression of it a matter of astonish-
ing ease ; both had the same weakness of not knowing,
at all events in their longer works, when to stop.
Brahms once said to Joachim that he wished that
he had half Dvorak's invention. Beethoven might
almost have said the same of Schubert, but Brahms
wrote wholesome truth, when, after Dvorak had sent
him a work which was not flawless in its workman-
ship, he answered " We cannot any longer write as
beautiful music as Mozart did ; so let us try to write
as clean " (" So schijn wie Mozart konnen wir nicht
mehr schreiben ; versuchen wir also so rein zu
schreiben ").

Simrock, the Berlin publisher, described to me the
first visit he paid with Brahms to Dvorak in Prague,
just after Brahms had discovered the beauties of his
work. They found him in a small room littered
with manuscripts, and I can scarcely remember how
many of the now well-known works were carried off in
Simrock's portmanteau for printing. Amongst the
pile on the piano was the " Spectre's Bride," which
Simrock did not believe in and would not print. As
regards his own country he was right, for it has never
made any mark in Germany. He always classed
Dvorak's choral work far below his orchestral and
chamber-music compositions. Events are so far tend-
ing to prove that the publislier was wise. The sym-
phonies, the quartets and the songs, have already

272 PAGES FROM AN UNWRITTEN DIARY

outlived the " Requiem " and that curious excursion into
semi-conventional oratorio style, " St. Ludmila." The
American sojourn of the composer resulted in some
works, which, however beautiful and poetical in them-
selves, proved his lack of acquaintance with the musical
literature upon which he founded much of it. He
assimilated nigger-tunes as he did the folk-songs of his
native Bohemia, but did not know that many of them
were only nigger translations from the Irish. His
pictorial power was so great that he did not trouble to
find out where his material came from. So it was
with many of his themes. Many of them are, as far
as notes go, almost common property ; but if he had
chosen the scale of C for one of them, he would have
expressed it in a way which identified the writer. He
is one of the phenomena of the nineteenth century, — a
child of nature, who did not stop to think, and said
on paper anything which came into his head. I once
asked him whether he wrote as fast as his music sug-
gested. He answered that he generally completed six
pages of full score in a morning, that if six was multi-
plied by 365 the result was 2,190 pages, "which is far
more music than anyone wants to listen to."

CHAPTER XVIII

Eobert Bridges and "Eden" — W. S. Rockstro — Rome and Florence
— The Jubilee of the Cambridge University Musical Society —
"Falstaff " at Milan and elsewhere — Verdi and Boito — Bach in
Paris — Madame Viardot-Garcia.

Amongst the many treasures in the library of Trinity
CoUege, Cambridge, there is one more interesting than
any to literary men, the original rough draft in dramatic
form of Milton's " Paradise Lost." I was reading one
day through this very fine scenario, when it occurred
to me that it would be possible to take the sketch as it
stood and found a dramatic oratorio upon it. There
was happily one poet, as interested and knowledgeable
in music as in his own craft, who was steeped to the
lips in Milton, and whose style was more indebted to
that master than any of his contemporaries, Mr. Robert
Bridges, now Poet Laureate. To him I confided my
idea, and it appealed as strongly to him as it did to
me. The plan was in accordance with the sclieme of
a Masque, but it was divided, as the manuscript
synopsis was, into Acts. The joint result was the
oratorio of " Eden " which came out at the Birmingham
Festival of 1891.

Bridges, who had a thorough knowledge of sixteenth-
century music, suggested that the characteristics of
the first act (Heaven) would Ijc best attained by early
modal methods, so as to contrast with the modern
colouring of the second and thii-fl (He]] and Earth).

273 18

274 PAGES FROM AN UNWEITTEN DIARY

To do this with thoroughness necessitated my renew-
ing my days of studentship, for in matters modal my
education had been neglected by every master I had.
The centre point of this neglect was the influence of
Mendelssohn at Leipzig. He himself had never been
trained on those lines, and never troubled about them.
All the great composers up to his day had been so
grounded, but Wagner, almost alone of Mendelssohn's
contemporaries, had absorbed from Weinlig the prin-
ciples which afterwards asserted themselves in " Lohen-
grin " and still more markedly in " Parsifal." The close
of the latter opera is purely modal in style. Brahms,
who was a past-master in sixteenth-century music and
methods, imbibed his learning in Hamburg from Marx-
sen, and through him was a lineal descendant of Bach,
as was also Wagner through Weinlig. Kiel may have
known the business, but he did not teach it.

There was one musician in England who had the
traditions at his fingers' ends, and had learned them
all thoroughly before he went to study with Mendels-
sohn at Leipzig, W, S. Rockstro. I went off to
Torquay to suck his brains, and worked away with him
to repair this omission in my early training. Rockstro
was a kind of nineteenth-century Era Angelico. He
had the best qualities of a pure-minded recluse, with
a copious admixture of humour which enabled him to
sympathize with the feelings of less saintly men. His
prejudices, which were many, were never so rooted as
to be impervious to argument. Some of them, such as
his open dislike of Wagner, he completely put away in
his latter years. His early musical education had
been in the hands of an old London organist, who had

W. S. ROCKSTRO 275

his traditions straight from Handel, and began his
training upon the sixteenth-century models. Rockstro
confessed to me his astonishment at Mendelssohn's
entire ignorance of them, and lack of sympathy with
them ; short of that, he would hear no word against
the work and influence of his friend, for friend he was,
rather than master. With Rockstro's help and advice
I was able to overcome the difficulties of that most
fascinating study, and to understand the power, which
he claimed for it outside its own sphere, of enabling a
writer to stay in one key until its possibilities were
exhausted ; he used to instance the opening of the
Finale of Beethoven's C minor Symphony as a case in
point. He had a great contempt for mock-modal
writing, and for allowing harmonies foreign to the style
to creep in. " To do that," he would say, " was to put
a bonnet on the Venus de Medici." The result of my
Torquay visit was, happily, to extend his influence
upon the younger generation. I induced Grove to
appoint him at the Royal College in order that the
composition students might have the advantage of
early training in this most vital part of their equip-
ment. Dr. Walford Davies amongst others had the
benefit of it, and wrote a very vivid account of his
intercourse with this singularly charming and child-
like man of learning.

During a visit to Rome in 1892 I made my first
acquaintance with the singers of the Sistine Chapel, who
sang the " Lamentations " at the Church of St. Jolm
Lateran in Holy Week. After the adverse criticism
I had heard of their performances, and the head-
shakings of pessimists over their decadence, I was

276 PAGES FROM AN UNWRITTEN DIARY

most agreeably surprised. The tenor solos were sung
(I was told) by a young monk whose voice would have
made his fortune on the stage. The soprano was but
little inferior to him, though memories of the Master
of Trinity recurred to me, and rather took the taste
away. The polish of the choral singing was remark-
able. There were no rough edges, no apparent lacunae
for breath-taking, no easy-going humdrum phrasing.
The true spirit of smoothness, which is the glory of
the Roman school as compared with the Venetian and
the Neapolitan, was preserved throughout. I visited
in Rome one survivor of the great bel-canto singers,
Contessa Gigliucci, better known as Clara Novello,
who had sung at the first London performance of " St.
Paul." She was as lively as a girl and full of reminis-
cences of her early days ; " But," she said, " I won't
ask you about any of my old friends, for they are
either all dead or too old to be presentable."

On our return we spent a week at Florence. The
first morning I was standing at the top of the stair-
case of the Uffizi, talking to a friend about Hans von
Billow, when as if by magic he came up the steps,
seized me by the arm, and rushed me along the
passages to the room where the portraits of painters
from their own brush are hung. He took me straight
up to those of Leighton and Millais, and said " There
you have the characters of the two men as they are."
Then he pointed to that of Watts and said " Your
English Titian." In the afternoon he carried me off
to see Madame Hillebrand, the widow of the author
who translated the first English edition of " Grimm's
Fairy Tales," beloved of my youth. While I was

FLORENCE 277

talking to her, Biilow crawled round the bookshelves
on his hands and knees until he discovered the well-
known volumes, and deposited them on my lap. That
most interesting lady was a daughter of Mrs. Taylor
of Norwich, and had been Billow's lifelong friend and
champion ; after her death another, whom she had
befriended in his earlier and poorer days, did not
scruple to cast undeserved stones at her in his auto-
biography,— Richard Wagner.

Bulow regaled us with a most racy account of an
opera he had seen the night before, in which " there
was one performer of the first magnitude, the drum-
mer." Billow's most famous exploit in Italy had been
with a drummer at a rehearsal of the Ninth Symphony
of Beethoven. The unfortunate man could not get
the rhythm of the solo in the Scherzo,

j-^.

m.

After various objurgations —

BtJLOW. " What is your instrument called ?"

Drummer. " Tympani."

BiJLOW. " There you have it. Timpani ! TympitnT !"

The drummer grasps the rhythm and triumphantly
smacks his drums as loud as possible.

Bulow. " Fortt /"

The drummer puts more force into it.

BtJLOW. " Forte ! !"

The drummer nearly bursts the vellum.

Bulow. " FOTITE ! ! 1 Not forfis.mno /"

The last I saw oi' this witty, brilliant, and broad-
miiidod man was the waving of liis liaiidkerchief from

278 PAGES FROM AN UNWRITTEN DIARY

Madame Hillebrand's steps. The world will be much
older before it contains his equal.

In the spring of 1892 we set on foot the organization
of the movement to celebrate the Jubilee of the
University Musical Society in 1893. The first step
taken was the invitation of Verdi and of Brahms to
become honoris causa Doctors of the University, and
the programme outlined was Verdi's " Requiem " and
Brahms' C minor Symphony. It was decided that if
either of these composers accepted no other should be
included. The answers of both were unfortunately in
the negative. Verdi regretfully declined on the score
of his age and the illness of his wife, and Brahms'
answer, a most charming and appreciative letter,
which is printed in the last volume of Kalbeck's
Life, made it clear that the long journey was hateful
to him. We had therefore to consider the claims of
the other officers of the musical army, and determined
to make the invitation include one leading representa-
tive of each nation. The choice was not difficult to
make. Saint-Saens was chosen for France, Max Bruch
for Germany, Tschaikowsky (then far less known in
England than since his death) for Russia, Boito for
Italy, and Grieg for the North. They all accepted
and came, with the exception of Grieg, who had,
through illness, to postpone his visit to the following
year. The programme contained one specimen of each
composer, chosen by himself. Saint-Saens played the
solo part in " Africa," Bruch conducted the scene of
the Phoenicians from " Odysseus," Boito the prologue
to " Mefistofele," Tschaikowsky the symphonic poem
" Francesca da Rimini " which, as he wrote to me, he

CAMBRIDGE MUSICAL SOCIETY 279

considered to be his best work in that style. Grieg
was represented in absentia by " Peer Gynt." The
functions passed off without any hitches or difficulties.
Whatever friction there might be between the com-
posers' respective foreign offices, there was in Cam-
bridge an entente cordiale which embraced the whole of
Europe.

The only debatable question arose as to the order
of precedence at a banquet which was given to the
new Doctors in King's College Hall. It fell to my
lot to propose their healths, and after much heart-
burning I found the solution of my difficulties in
Lumley's " History of the Opera." When Lumley was
director, he produced the historically famous pas de
qucdre, in which Taglioni, Carlotta Grisi, Fanny
Elssler and Cerito danced. They each had a solo and
each lady insisted on having hers first. Threatened
with a wreck of his great scheme, Lumley hit upon
the simple device of giving the solo dances in the
order of the dancers' ages ; the eldest to come first,
and the youngest last. He was nearly checkmated
again by the claims of each dancer to be the youngest,
but, presumably with the help of a biographical
dictionary or of some baptismal certificates, he stuck
to his ship and weathered the storm. I adopted his
principles with the happy result that France, the
country which was the most likely to feel a slight,
came out first, Germany second, Kussia third, and
Italy fourth. I confessed in my after-dinner speech
the method by which 1 had tried to avoid complica-
tions which might cause a European war, and Saint-
Saens in liis reply most wittily thanked me for

280 PAGES FROM AN UNWRITTEN DIARY

comparing four weather-beaten composers to *' quatre
jolies femmes." He was equally quick in appreciating
a suggestion that the international difficulties were
enhanced by the music which they had chosen to
represent them, the Frenchman having invaded
Africa, the German Greece, the Russian Hell, (by way
of Italy), and the Italian Heaven, (by way of Ger-
many). The audience was as diplomatic as could be
wished. Whatever may have been their sympathies,
their reception of each composer was so similar in
warmth and in length that it might have been timed
by a watch. Henschel's singing of " Mefistofele " was
a tribute alike to the composer, to the work, and to
his own artistic conception. Boito had never con-
ducted it before, and had never heard the prologue
given except upon the stage. He was highly de-
lighted with the effect it produced in the concert-
room, where no subtle detail of his intricate score was
lost, and the sonority of the choral writing was en-
hanced tenfold.

Tschaikowsky stayed with the late F. W. Maitland,
who spoke to me with enthusiasm of his culture and
grasp of extra-musical subjects. He reminded me,
in more ways than one, of his countryman Tourge-
niew, whom I once met at Madame Viardot's. He had
none of the Northern roughness, was as polished as a
Frenchman in his manner, and had something of
the Italian in his temperament. These international
qualities may have been due to a dash of Hebrew
blood, for Tschaikowsky means the " Son of Jacob."
For all the belief which he had in himself, he was to
all appearances the acme of modesty. A very curious

CAMBRIDGE MUSICAL SOCIETY 281

conversation took place in the train to Cambridge
between him and a musical friend of mine. He told
my friend of his having written the Pathetic Sym-
phony (which had not yet been performed) ; that it
originally was designed in three movements, but that
after he had finished the third, something compelled
him to add a tragic slow movement at the end ; and
he added that perhaps it was prophetic. It was ; for
he died the following year, and the cause of his death
is to this day as mysterious as his prophesy.

I was able to give this European quartet a hearing
of some of the best madrigals and part-songs of the
English school, which the Magpie Minstrels, conducted
by their founder Mr. Lionel Benson, sang admirably
in the garden of my house in London. The evening
was none too cold for any of the performers, but even
so was rather trying to the draught -fearing Bruch,
who looked like an Arctic explorer, having armed him-
self with goloshes, a waterproof wideawake and a
thick mackintosh to combat the rigours of an English
June.

In the early days of 1893 we were invited by Boito
to be present at the premiere of Verdi's " Falstaff."
The Scala Theatre was a wonderful sight, crammed to
the roof with an audience gathered from the four
corners of the earth. The excitement was so tense
that the least little point of danger set everyone on
edge. So keen were the listeners for the success of
the old hero, that they resented a single lapse from
perfection. The performance had not started for two
minutes before Maurel produced a high note in a way
which displeased the stalls. In an instant they all

282 PAGES FROM AN UNWRITTEN DIARY

shouted out " Basta ! Basta ! Basta !" in most angry-
tones. I thought the next thing would be a rapid
descent of the curtain, but Maurel paid no attention
and went ahead. A few bars farther on he sang the
same note with the right effect. " Ah ! Ah ! Ah !"
said the stalls, equally loudly, with the unmistakable
suggestion in their voices that he had better go on in
the same style or it would be the worse for him. It
was not ill- nature, obviously ; the interruption sprang
from pure and simple eagerness that everyone should
do his level best ; and it was the first and last hostile
outburst of the evening. The number of times which
Verdi had to appear were impossible to count, but on
each entry he preserved the same dignified demeanour;
he might have been a king receiving his subjects at a
lev^e. There was no suspicion of arrogance, no sug-
gestion of false modesty. He knew that his audience
understood him and he acknowledged their tribute
with the grace and nobility of a born leader of men.
" Evviva Verdi !" sounded on all sides, recalling the
old days of '48 and '59, when the walls of Austrian
Milan were covered with this legend, and his name
became the symbol of United Italy. ["Evviva V.
(Vittorio) E. (Emanuele) R. (Re) D' I (d' Italia)."]
His chief recoo-nition at the hands of the monarch had
been his nomination as a Senator in the Upper House.
He had no taste for practical politics, and mainly
amused himself by setting " Divide ! Divide !" (al Votl !
ai Votl !) as a choral libretto, using the orders of the
day as music paper. He had no taste for titular dis-
tinction. The morning after the performance I went
to see him with Boito, and he was pacing the room,

VERDI'S "FALSTAFF" 283

thoroughly out of temper, Boito asked him what was
the matter and he tossed a telegram to him from the
King. It contained the offer to make him Marchese
di Busseto.

Boito. " Well, Master, what have you said?"

Verdi. " I have answered him, ' Musician I was born,
musician I remain.' "

Having delivered his soul the Italian quicksilver
asserted itself, and he beamed upon us again.

The return from the theatre to our hotel (where
Verdi was also staying) was not unmixed with danger.
The crowd which surrounded and followed his carriage
was too densely packed for the narrow street, and it
needed strong arms and wary elbows to preserve the
ribs from fracture. A supper which the composer
gave was not a little interesting from the presence of
Madame Stolz, one of his greatest interpreters, who
sang the soprano part at the first English performance
of his " Requiem " when he conducted it at the Albert
Hall.

I was destined to see three more premieres of " Fal-
statf," in Paris (when the composer was present), in
London, and in Hamburg. Of these the French per-
formance was the best, and was memorable for the ex-
traordinary vivacity and charm of Mdlle. Delna, who
sang the part of Dame Quickly. Maurel too, was
more at home in his own language, and the house (the
Th(jatre Lyri(pie, which tlien was the home of the
burnt-out Opdra Comique) was of a size far more
suitaljle to the style of the work tlian either the Scala
or Covent Garden. The women's (piartet in the
second scene was musically audible, whereas in Italy

284 PAGES FROM AN UNWRITTEN DIARY

the vibrato of each and all of them was so excessive
that it was literally impossible to distinguish a single
note. This disease, which I had noticed as obsessing
Paris in 1873, had been stamped out in France, but
had extended to Italy. The German rendering was
slow and heavy ; it gave no hint of the fizzing
champagne-like quality which is so imperative if the
music is to receive its proper due. I saw Verdi for the
last time after the Paris performance, and he talked to
me at length and with the deepest interest of the
modern strides which England had made in the art.

I was fortunate enough to hear one more Verdi
premiere, the first performance of his " Stabat Mater,"
" Laudi alia Virgine," and " Te Deum" at a special
Conservatoire Concert given in the Grand Opera.
The composer was not present, but Boito came and sat
with me in a stage box. I felt then, as I do still, that
the composer would have been better advised to place
the " Te Deum " first and the " Stabat " last. I wrote
to him after the performance a short account of the
Concert, and told him, apologizing for my temerity,
that I thought the effect of the three pieces would be
enhanced by the transposition of these two numbers.
He wrote to me by return a letter which I transcribe
here, which shows in every word the open-mindedness
and simplicity of the man.

" G^NES,

" Cher M. Stanford, "I9^rf,i898.

" Je ne connais pas bien la langue anglaise, mais

j'ai pu comprendre que vous jugez avec une grande

indulgence les trois morceaux que vous avez entendu

k Paris. Je ne m'en plaigne pas, et je vous en reraercie.

BACH IN PARIS 285

"Quant a la disposition du ' Te Deum' et 'Stabat'
je ne suis pas completement de votre avis, mais vous
faites des observations profondes et peut-etre vous
avez raison !

" Je suis un peu fatigue, et je vous demande pardon
si je vous ecris brievement.

" Agreez mes sinceres compliments et mes remerci-
ments.

" Avec estime et amitie,

" G. Verdi."

In Paris I renewed my acquaintance with a French
poet whom I had first met in London, when he came
over to hear a performance of the B minor Mass of
Bach, Maurice Bouchor, This ardent Bach-worship-
per was one of the leading spirits in popularizing
Sebastian in Paris ; he had translated many of the
Cantatas into French (as Bo'ito did into Italian), and
succeeded in getting many of them and of the longer
works performed at the Conservatoire and elsewhere.
He took me into nooks and corners of the city of
which most travellers are totally ignorant, regaled me
at a vegetarian banquet of indescribable oddity and
indigestibility, being (as he said) " a sort of Buddhist
who did not eat meat," and showed me a side of
simple citoyen life which is unknown save to its
own denizens. He christened his son Jean Sebastien
so that his initials might be J. S. B. I spoke about
him next day to Madame Viardot-Garcia, asking her
if she knew a poet of the name. She corrected me at
once, '^ in pobte ? It poete." He has reaped his
reward in the Parisian love of Bach's works. When

286 PAGES FROM AN UNWRITTEN DIARY

the Leeds Chorus went over to sing in Paris, I wished
to include the Motet " Singet dem Herrn," but hesi-
tated to perform it complete. (It takes nearly twenty
minutes to sing.) But Richter, whom I consulted
about it, and who knew his Paris, told me not to fail
to give it in its entirety, as the French audiences
would resent any shortening of the work. His advice
was followed, and the wisdom of it was proved by the
event. I have seldom witnessed such enthusiasm as
followed the performance ; handkerchiefs and pro-
grammes were waved in the air, and the Frenchmen
cheered like Britons at a football match.

In the course of a long talk with Madame Viardot
she told me many interesting stories of Meyerbeer,
and of the extraordinary precautions he took to insure
a success for his operas. He always sat at the final
rehearsal next Pere David, the " Chef de Claque,"
and arranged with him the places where the applause
was to come in. He even altered passages which
David did not think quite effective enough to give
him his cue. He used to wander about the back of
the stage to hear if the scene-shifters had any criti-
cisms to make amongst themselves, and to note if they
whistled or hummed any of his tunes. I hoped, while
she was on the subject of Meyerbeer, to lure her on to
tell me herself the story of her tooth, and to show me
its memorial, but I failed. I had not impudence
enough to ask her to tell me the true version. The
tale, as I have heard it, was that she had a disfiguring
front tooth which somewhat protruded. She had been
cast for the part of Fides in the " Prophete," and
several of her intimes begged her to have it out, with-

MADAME VIARDOT 287

out success. At one of the final rehearsals Meyerbeer
came to her and said that with infinite regret he must
take the part away from her unless she had the
offending incisor removed. This was too much for
her ; out it came, and she sent it to the composer.
After the first performance, Meyerbeer came round to
her room and presented her with a bracelet in the
centre of which was a white enamel set in precious
stones ; the white enamel was the front tooth.

Madame Viardot was in every respect the ideal
picture of a French Marquise of the old regime. In
her youth her genius gave her face, which was natur-
ally almost ugly, a greater fascination than regular
features or picturesque beauty would have given it.
She spoke nearly as many languages as Cardinal
Mezzofanti. She was equally at home in Italian
jioriture, in Gluck, Wagner, Meyerbeer, Schumann or
Brahms. For the last named she had a deep admira-
tion, and was the first person to sing (at sight) from
the manuscript the Alto Ilhapsody, when the com-
poser was visiting Frau Schumann at Baden-Baden.
When I was in Paris for the concert at which the
Leeds Chorus appeared, she was most anxious to know
and to hear Plunket Greene, who was singing some of
the solos. She was too delicate to come to the concert,
and the weather was too cold for her to risk going into
hot rooms (she was well over eighty), but she asked
us to dine, and to induce Greene to come in after
dinner and see her. It was a small })arty, only Paul
Viardot, Duvernoy the pianist, and ourselves. Just
as we had finished dinner a ring came at the bell.
She whispered to the servant, who brought her a tray

288 PAGES FKOM AN UNWRITTEN DIARY

and poured out a glass of champagne. She rose and
said " Now I am going to make an effect," motioned
to the servant to throw open the door, went in alone
with all the bearing of a tragedy queen, walked up to
my astonished friend, dropped a low curtsey, and held
out the tray. I inwardly wished for a Kodak. It
was a small incident, but to the onlookers a most
picturesque one, and it showed to perfection the
reverence that one great artist can have for another,
however much her junior. She did " make an effect,"
and one which will long live in the memories of those
who saw it and her for the last time.

CHAPTER XIX

The Bach Choir and Leeds Singers — An additional chapter of
Mr. Labouchere's Biograpliy.

Although I belong to a family which for generations
has been steeped in the study and practice of the Law
I have always had a holy horror of law-suits, and have
been fortunate enough to pass my life with a minimum
of their discomfort and worry. The only active ex-
perience I have had was an injunction against me to
prevent the performance of a work of which I held the
performing right, and it collapsed in a few minutes.
I was however once put in the disagreeable position of
having to obtain an apology or bring a libel action.
The circumstances, annoying enough at the time, were
so humorous in their sequel that they are worth
inflicting upon my readers, if only for the fact that
they furnish, in a way, an additional chapter to
Mr. Labouchere's biography, and illuminate somewhat
amusingly his style and methods as a journalist. The
little story requires a preamble, explaining the events
which preceded and gave rise to the controversy.

I had been for some years Conductor of the Phil-
harmonic Society at Leeds, a body which, altliough
containing many singers wlio had l^een and might be
selected to sing in the Festival chorus, had no connec-
tion either ofiicially or musically with the Festival
organization. I was also Conductor ut" the i^onelou

289 19

290 PAGES FROM AN UNWRITTEN DIARY

Bach Choir, a society which from its foundation had
to engage some professional tenors and basses in order
to preserve the proper balance of voices. The Com-
mittee, on my recommendation, thought it best to
bring up these extra tenors and basses from the
Philharmonic at Leeds, both on account of their
excellent voices, and of their knowing and being well
accustomed to my beat. This system had been
adhered to for some time before 1900, the year in
which Sullivan resigned the conductorship of the
Leeds Festival, shortly before his premature death.

In that year I conducted a performance of the
B minor Mass at a Bach Choir concert under the old
conditions. I picked up a copy of Trutli at my club
and rubbed my eyes when I saw a paragraph in the
music column concerning the Bach Choir concert,
calling attention (without mentioning my name) to
the fact that many of the Leeds Festival {sic) Chorus
had been brought up to London to sing in it, and that
this " had no connection — no of course not — with the
vacant Conductorship of the Leeds Festival." The
inference was so obvious and the insinuation so clear
to everybody in touch with the musical body politic,
that I had no option but to strangle the terminological
inexactitude in its cradle. I knew that Sir George
Lewis was Labouchere's solicitor, and telegraphed to
him for an appointment. He fixed it for the same
afternoon and I went off to Ely Place with the copy
of Truth in my pocket. He must have wondered
what mess I had been getting myself into, but speedily
discovered that the mess was nearer Westminster than
Kensington. Although I can lay no claims to being a

LABOUCHERE 291

playwright, the various scenes which ensued are best
described in dramatic form.

ELY PLACE.

Sir G. L. at a table. Enter C. V, S.

G. L. Good afternoon. What can I do for you ?
S. I came to see you about a paragraph in this {produces the copy
of 'Truth").

G. L. You must not come to me about that, I am Mr. Labouchere's
solicitor.

S. I know, that's why I came. I don't want to have trouble
about this, and thought that you might be able to prevent it,
G. L. What is it?

(S. shows tlie offending sentence to L. and explains the true cir-
cmnstances as above.)
G. L. I think the best course would be to see Mr. Labouchere
yourself. Do you know him 1

S. I have met him at the Italian Lakes.

G. L. Go and see him then, you will find him very agreeable.

S. Yes, if you make the appointment.

G. L. I will. Just give me that copy.

(L. finds tlie paragraph and underlines " No " before " connec-
tion,'" and ''No of course not.")
G. L. When you see Mr. Labouchere, show him that copy, and
tell him 1 underlined those words.

(L. whose attitud,e throughout has been most kind and sympathetic,
dismisses me with a legal benediction.)

*****

When the pencil was drawn under those words, I
began to guess that the sentence might be more
dangerous than I previously thought. I went from
Ely Place to the Athenajum Club, and by a fortunate
chance met in the liall no less a legal luminary than
my cousin lierm Collins, then Lord Justice and after-
wards Master of the Rolls. I told him of my visit to
Lewis and of my impending interview with " Labby."

292 PAGES FROM AN UNWRITTEN DIARY

H. C. (ivho was a great angler). You have a difficult fish to play ;
you had better see to your tackle. Show me the paragraph.

(S, shows it to him.)

H. C. Do you know what this is'? It's a libel, and a very bad
libel. It is much worse by being put in the negative, and by the
omission of your name.

S. ! ! !

H. C. Who underlined those words with pencil?

S. Sir George Lewis.

H. C. Exactly. Those are the words which constitute the libel.
Now you've got your stout tackle. Go and play your fish.

As this advice came from one of the soundest legal
heads in the country, and from a man who would have
been the first to discourage any litigation that was
not absolutely imperative, I shotted my guns before
the coming battle at Westminster, arranged for a con-
sultation with Sir Edward Clarke and drew up with
him the form of apology on which I was to insist.

The appointment was made for the next morning.
I could not write shorthand or take surreptitious notes,
but so vividly was the dialogue phonographed in my
memory, that I wrote it down without difficulty
immediately after leaving the house. I transcribe
the notes here.

Scene. — Mr. Laboughere's stwhj. Mr. L. smoking a cigarette,
advances smilingly and greets S. warmly.

L. How do you do 1 Glad to see you.

S. Rather a different climate from where we met last, Cadenabbia.

L. Yes, indeed. Now what is this " par " ? I have never seen it.

I suppose it was written by as is ill and away.

S. No. It is written by the musical critic in the music column.
L. Who is the musical critic ? I am sure I've forgotten.

S. Mr. P B !

L. B of course, to be sure. Well, what has he said 1

S. There is the "par." You will notice some words underlined

LABOUCHERE 293

in pencil. Sir George Lewis did that, he asked me to show them
to you.

L. (reads). H'm. Well, what does it mean 1

S. The circumstances are these. The Leeds Festival Conductor-
ship is one of the most important musical posts in England. I have
been conductor of the Leeds Philharmonic Society (which is an
entirely different organization) for the last three years, and during
that time the Committee of the London Bach Choir, which I also
conduct, have supplemented their men's voices by engaging some of
the Leeds Philharmonic singers, because thej'^ knew my beat, and
were accustomed to sing under me. This has been done ever since.
Sullivan resigned the Leeds Festival Conductorship only last
October. The remark therefore, has, on the face of it, no truth in
it. My name is not mentioned, but everyone who knows the
musical world would tell you that it can only refer to me.

L. How?

S. Because I am the only professional musician connected with
the Bach Choir who could be even mentioned for the post.

L. What is there to object to in it 1

S. It accuses me practically of bribery and corruption in order to
get the vacant post.

L. (laughs). This is not politics but music. I don't understand
music, and don't know who Bach is. How can it possibly hurt
you?

S. I have already explained exactly. It accuses me of an
unworthy scheming to obtain an important place.

L. Not at all. You would be only doing what Ministers, and
City men and even Judges are doing every day. Why should you
not employ the Leeds singers, if by so doing you would get a
better chance of the Conductorship? You would be quite justified;
anyone would. In politics it is done every day.

S. Then I am thankful that I am not a politician.

L. / see no harm in it.

S. Our codes of morality are therefore different. I see very
great harm in it.

L. When I was Member for Middlesex, a man whose vote was
of importance to me wanted a post for which he was quite unsuited.
I went to the Whip and asked for it. The Whip asked me if he
was a suitable man for the position. I said "Not at all," but
that his vote was of importance. He got the place. 1 was (juito
light.

294 PAGES FROM AN UNWRITTEN DIARY

S. I can only repeat that I am very glad that I am not a
politician.

L. Now, look here. I am going down to a meeting at North-
ampton to-morrow. A very stupid vestryman I know of will be in
the chair. He will make some futile and idiotic remarks, and I
shall get up and say that I have listened with much interest to the
weighty words of our friend, the Chairman ; that I shall find them
most valuable, and lay them to heart when I return to Westminster.
What do you call that 1

S. I don't like to say anything offensive to you in your own
room, Mr. Labouchere, but you have a sense of humour and will
not take it amiss if I call it humbug.

L. It is humbug.

S. You are a cynic in fact.

L. Yes, I am.

S. But not right through. There is something hidden up at the
back of you that does not approve of that sort of thing.

L. (testily). There is not. I thoroughly approve of it. I think it
is the best thing to say of the vestryman.

S. But supposing you got the vestryman an important salaried
post for the purpose of securing his vote, how about your next
election ? Your paper has accused me, not of humbug, but of
bribery.

L. {changing his tone). Now, take it that this business should come

into court, what would happen ? My Counsel (C for instance)

would get up and say how touchy musicians and artists generally
are. Here is a piece of chaff in a newspaper, obviously meant as
chaff. No malice in it ; nothing serious is imputed, and so on.

S. It has nothing whatever to say to music. It is a question of
a salaried and important post for which your paper says I am
scheming in an underhand and corrupt manner. It has nothing to
do with the touchiness of musicians.

L, I am only putting the case as if it was a libel and got into
court.

S. It is a libel, and a very bad libel. I did not mention the
word until you did.

L. It may be a libel, but it is not a bad libel.

S. I have perhaps one of the very best authorities on English
law for saying that it is "a libel, and a very bad libel." The
authority is that of a person I should not employ, and who could
not have anything to say to the case.

LABOUCHERE 295

L. I don't believe in all that lawyers say.

S. You would probably respect the opinion I got if I chose to
name the person who gave it.

L. Well, I dare say something could be said by the correspondent
to the effect that no harm was meant.

S. That would not do at all. That form of apology would be
worse than none.

L. What form do you want ?

S. My own form of apology as it stands, printed at the head of
your next music column.

L. I never did and would not do such a thing.

S. I am sorry to hear it.

L. Let me see your form of apology. (Reads it to himself.) I
would rather have an action for libel than insert this.

S. I say again that I am excessively sorry to hear you say so :
that was precisely what I came here to-day hoping that you would
not say.

L. No editor could put in such a "par," for we have touchiness
in the Journalistic profession also, and I have to consider it.
(Hands back the farm.)

S. I cannot see that. When one gentleman offends another or
unwittingly does him an injury, it is rather to his credit to apolo-
gize. Why should it not be to the credit of a newspaper to do the
same ? There is nothing to be ashamed of.

L. Look at this sentence " reflects on the honour, etc." It does
not. I don't consider that it does.

S. I have already said that we must agree to differ on that point.
I say that it does, and that it would equally reflect on the honour
of any man who was eligible for such an important post, and was
said to have used such unworthy means to obtain it.

L. Is it an important post ?

S. It has been termed one of the blue ribands of the musical
profession.

L. But look at this point. If this apology was inserted, Mr.
P B (or whoever he is) would resign to-morrow.

8. That's no affair of mine, but Mr. P B has the hide

of a rhinoceros, and I am willing to lay a bet that ho would not
resign.

L. If it was my City Editor ho would have to resign and I could
not keep him.

S. That I understand. The money article might mean thousands

296 PAGES FROM AN UNWRITTEN DIARY

to investors. This only concerns one individual who has his char-
acter to keep, and his own professional position to safeguard.

L. I could not keep him if I put in this apology.

S. Well, when I came into this room I was well aware that I was
within my rights in demanding his dismissal ; but he has, I believe,
a wife and family and I do not wish to lose him his place. If you
put in the apology I will go so far as to personally request you not
to dismiss him.

L. Does he know anything about music ?

S. (laughs). Not much, I think. He is a clever journalist with
what the Germans call a Nase for hitting on the right thing or the

plausible thing to say. A H had the same faculty, but he

had generosity to back it, instead of malignity and innuendo.

L. This is not meant maliciously.

S. Is it not ? Ask him. Ask him here in this room in front of
me. "Confrontez moi avec cet homme !" I shall be delighted to
hear his explanation. I could ask nothing better. This remark is
founded on guesswork meant definitely to hurt and injure me. It
is kite-flying of a malignant kind.

L. Well— let me read that thing again. (Beads.) Will you come

and meet me at the office and discuss it with V and B 1

I can assure you that it is nothing of a trap or anything of that
sort; it would be private, and nothing that you said would be
quoted.

S. No, my interviews on the subject end in this room.

L. Well, will you meet us at Lewis's ?

S. No. That would be a legal matter, and I have come to you
personally and privately.

L. (with an inex'prq,ssibly sly and dangero2is look in his eye). You
know if I have any business of this sort in a court, I never (ahem !)
go into personal matters, nor suggest that my Counsel should cross-
examine a man unfairly or about extraneous matters.

S. (recalling the "no, of course not" style). It would not matter to
me if he did, Mr. Labouchere. If he tried he could not find any-
thing to cross-examine about, and it would only injure his own side.
You need not lay any such conditions on your Counsel. It would
give him needless trouble.

L. (rapidly changing the subject and his expression of countenance).
When Archibald Forbes once brought an action against me, it was
for some words in an article which I had struck out in the proof,
and the idiot of a printer took it as a line underneath and printed

LABOUCHERE 297

the words in italics! If I had said so in conrt and it was solemn
truth, no one would have believed me.

S. ! ! !

L. Well, will you send me a letter demanding the insertion of
the apology? Write it "Dear Sir, I demand, etc.," and keep a
copy.

8. I always do keep copies of important letters.

L. Well, send me that, and I will take it to V and discuss it

with him.

S. On one condition.

L. What?

S. That you give me your word, that if this form of apology does
not go in, nothing else shall go in.

L. (Long pause.) Very well, nothing else shall go in if yovirs
does not.

S. Thank you, good-bye.

L. Good-bye, very glad to have seen you. Hope we shall meet

again some day at Cadenabbia.

[Exit S.

So ended a duel which fairly exhausted both sides,
but to which " Labby " afterwards alluded as a very
pleasant and agreeable interview. He did insert an
apology, but I am sorry to say that in spite of his
final promise, he altered it in his own favour : so
slightly however that the matter was not worth
pursuing fartlier. He had an unmistakable attractive-
ness in spite of his cynical professions of faith or
unfaith. Tt was impossible not to see that he was
au fond a gentleman. If he offended against the
canons of his class, he did so from sheer love of the
outre. Try as hard as he could, he could not even in
the most strenuous moments of our battle, conceal
that he had once breathed the air of the playing-fields
at Eton. For all his crooked politics and thinly
veiled threats, I came away with the feeling that 1
could not help liking the man. No one could help

298 PAGES FROM AN UNWRITTEN DIARY

admiring the rapidity and keenness of his intellectual

powers. I was not a little sorry that Mr. P B

had let him in for such a tussle and so nearly got him
into a difficult and expensive mess. I never saw
him again, but I have no doubt that, if I had, the
greeting would have been as cordial as it was in his
own house. The journalist who flew the libellous kite
did not resign, but Mr. Labouchere did not take my
bet, and so lost nothing in material cash. The music
column was carefully edited thereafter, and its atti-
tude during Mr. P B 's regime, if not exactly

bordering upon friendly, kept strictly, if with difficulty,
within the bounds of legality. The mouse had had his
playtime in the absence of the cat, and during the
illness of the kitten. So the Irish Terrier had to
intervene.

CHAPTER XX

Modern tendencies and modern audiences — Colour- worship —
von Billow and his views — The Church and its duties to the art
— The influence of the Mohi proprio decree — Hymn tunes —
Concert-rooms and the Government — Financial policy and
musical societies — National Opera — Conclusion.

During the years covered by these records, there was
little or no sign of the " touchiness " which Mr.
Labouchere attributed to musicians as well as to his
own profession. One of the strongest points of the
forward movement which began in the seventies was
the loyalty with which each and all of the leading
spirits stood shoulder to shoulder in the advance.
Another was the patent fact, on which Grove often
laid special stress, that no two of the leaders were
alike in method or in style. In aims they were one,
in the methods of attaining them they were as diverse
as were their tastes and brains. There was no
Wagnerlaner or Brahmsianer split in the British
Islands. The motto was " Live and let live." The
problem for the future is whether this consolidation
will be allowed to continue. There are not wanting
signs of cliquism, and even of antagonisms, which are
always stones in the path of progress, and need to be
cleared away rather than l)i]ilt into walls. A cli({ue
is a boon to the ready writer, and provides liim willi
pepper and spice, which is morr attractive than plain
and wholesome, fare. 'I'lie process of setting people

299

300 PAGES FROM AN UNWRITTEN DIARY

and styles by the ears is too highly amusing to be
sternly resisted. Headlines have become the staple
fare of the newspapers, grown now so large that a
real catastrophe would require a whole page devoted
to it in letters a foot long, in order to produce
any effect upon the public eye. Men's nerves are so
highly strung in an age of telegrams, telephones,
motors, biplanes, and seventy-miles-an-hour expresses,
that they find it an effort to take any pleasure in the
quieter walks of slow and sure progress. This feverish-
ness has resulted in the modern tendency to deride or
at best to tolerate what is old and tried, and to draw a
dividing- line between those who preserve their venera-
tion for their forebears (however open-minded they
may be concerning the experiments of modernity),
and those who have or pretend to have no sympathy
for them at all, and to have learnt nothing from them.
Such an expression of opinion as "Beethoven was an
old rotter " would have been unthinkable amongst my
contemporaries, even when we were sowing our wildest
oats.

It has also resulted in pushing experiment, an
admirable thing in itself, beyond the bounds of beauty,
and in suggesting an appeal to sensationalism and
morbidity rather than to sane and sober judgment.
The first necessity of an explorer is to make sure of
his base : the more intrepid he is, the more secure
must his base be. If he is unduly rash, the motive
of his exploration will generally prove to be egoistic ;
love of personal notoriety rather than of future useful-
ness to the community. If the rashness has a fatal
result, he gets the reward of inch-long headlines, but

MODERN TENDENCIES 301

only for a day. After that, Lethe. The mass of the
public cares nothing for these things. An impression-
able minority, which allows itself to be blown this way
and that by fads and fashions, is the only fraction
which is affected. This minority believes itself to be
marching in the van of progress, but it is really
skirmishing on its own account, to find some new
excitement when the effects of the last are exhausted.
The mass meantime has begun, mirabile dictu, and in
England too, which takes so many kicks lying down,
to hiss. Three hisses from a British audience, so
steeped in courteous propriety, are the equivalent of
torn-up benches in a Southern climate. We suffer
fools, and those whom we know in our hearts to be
fools, far too gladly. A little inoculation of the
" Basta ! Basta !" with which the Scala audience kept
its singers up to the mark would do our own public
infinite good, and slay some of the more malignant
bacteria. By a peculiar perversion of judgment, this
first sign of protest is being itself turned into an
additional advertisement of the article which provokes
it ; the minority bubbles up in indignation at the bad
taste of the mass, but the mass will last the longer,
and the frothy minority will fizzle out.

The chief test of a new coin is the soundness of the
metal of which it is coined. No capable musician can
fail to discern j)o\ver of invention (and true conviction
in expressing it) even in the most complicated and
irmlti-coloured work. New methods of expression are
too fascinating a study to any thinking artist to per-
mit him to pass by on the other side. What he has
to determine is wliether those methods have sufficient

302 PAGES FROM AN UNWUITTEN DIARY

inventive material to be worth the expression of them,
or are but iridescent colours without solidity to back
them ; bubbles from an infinitesimal layer of soap. If
a man allows himself to be so fascinated by the beauty
and variety of the changing tints as to peer into
them too closely, his eye will suffer when the bubble
bursts.

The worship of colour for its own sake is the rock
upon which modern superficial taste is in danger of
splitting. The amazing development of orchestral
technique since the days of Berlioz, and after him of
Wagner, has resulted in permutations and combina-
tions of such beauty of sheer physical sound, that the
casual listener can find no time to analyze the structure
or to diagnose the material upon which that sound is
superimposed. The musicians who are well accus-
tomed to the fascination of the orchestral siren can do
so, but they are necessarily few and far between, and
for the nonce are but raising their voices, if they are
so minded, in the wilderness. As in all showy beauty,
the colour will either fade or be superseded (if that
be possible) by more blazing tints, and there will be
in the future only the substratum of solid invention
to keep the art-work alive. The true test of the
modern colour-movement therefore is not now, but
fifty years hence. We can only argue from the past.
The world of music is not substantially different from
what it has been. It has always exalted those of its
contemporary composers who dealt in frills and fur-
belows above those who considered the body more
important than its clothes. Only a few wise heads
knew of the existence of Bach. Rossini w^as rated by

COLOUR-WORSHIP 303

the mass of the public far higher than Weber, Spohr
than Beethoven, Meyerbeer than Wagner. Simrock
himself said that he made Bohm pay for Brahms.
The coloratura of the voice in Mercadante and in
Rossini played the same role in the past that the
colour of the orchestra does now. Waefner killed
vocal rockets ; and instrumental Catherine - wheels
have taken their place. But where is Mercadante
now ? and the bulk of Rossini, except the immortal
"Barber" and "Tell"? Dead as mutton, even for
singing masters.

The one and only positive test which can be applied
to a modern orchestral score is that of proving its con-
tents upon a colourless instrument. Pictures can be
similarly tested by photography or by copying in black
and white. No amount of masterly colouring can
conceal bad drawing or inferior technique or faulty
design when the inexorable camera comes into play.
If Sir Joshua Reynolds had relied on his pigments,
and scamped his drawing, his pictures would have
been in the scrap-heap long ago. So it is with
orchestral music. Apply the same test from which
the Beethoven symphonies, the arrangements of
Wagner's operas, the chamber and orchestral works
of Brahms have emerged triumphantly, arrange them
for what Billow contemptuously called the " Hammer-
kistl," the domestic pianoforte, and if they give real
pleasure to listen t(; as music under these black and
wliite conditions they will have proved their inherent
value. I once went to a pianoforte recital in Germany
given by a great artist, in company with a conductor of
ultra-modern tastes. The pianist played an astounding

304 PAGES FROM AN UNWRITTEN DIARY

arrangement of his own of one of my friend's favom-ite
war-horses in the orchestra, one which when played
upon the instruments for which it was written has a
most striking and brilhant effect. The piano arrange-
ment, which was appaUingly difficult, contained almost
every note of the score, and was as close a repro-
duction as it was possible to imagine. When the
piece was over I looked at my neighbour and saw
mingled surprise and disappointment in his face. He
ejaculated "I had no notion it could sound so ugly.
Schreckliches Stlick !" It was only a photograph, like
one of myself which I once showed to Ernst Frank,
expressing my disappointment at its non-prepossessing
appearance. " Don't flatter yourself," said Frank.
" It's exactly like you." So was the piano arrange-
ment, exactly like its prototype's score.

The fascination of this class of music does not merely
attract the listener ; it is quite as powerful in its
magnetism for conductors. The technical difficulties
are usually so great that the drilling of the players
and the gradual emerging of the composer's effects are
in themselves a joy to the wielder of the stick (who
has not got to negotiate the hard passages himself,
and cannot play wrong notes or out of tune). To the
wittier and wiser of them the pleasure goes when the
study and the practice is over, and when the high
lights have been put on. Then the work begins to
pall, as some of the greatest of them have candidly
admitted. If that is so, the inherent value cannot be
commensurate with the technical difficulties. The
effect produced must be one rather of astonishment
than of charm. It is the haute ecole and acrobatic con-

YON BULOW'S VIEWS 305

tortious of a horse rather than the natural grace of its
career across country.

That Billow, who was a modern of the moderns,
foresaw the dangers of this cult is clear from a most
illuminating English letter which he addressed to
Mr. Asger Hammerich in Baltimore. Hammerich
had evidently sent him some compositions by a pupil
or friend which were written with more regard to
being " up-to-date " than to good workmanship and
musical invention. Billow's answer is scathing, but
not lacking in ironical fun. He advises that the young
man be sent to a "musical orthopaedic institution":
states that he has no liking for " ugly preposterous
mock music," that " the world frn di 7ioi has enough
of one * Hector ' "; and winds up by saying that the
young man would do better to " avoid his criticisms."
This from the pupil of Liszt, the worker for Wagner,
and the first fighter for Richard Strauss, comes with
the force and impact of a Dreadnought shell. As a
pronouncement from a Reinecke or a Hiller it would
have had no weight ; from one of the high-priests of
the modern religion, it is as irresistible as it is con-
vincing. It hits the flaw in the young composer's
armour : his tendency to scamp his technique or neglect
it, while relying upon instrumentation to cover his
musical nakedness. Thackeray, when he pictorially
satirized Louis XIV., unwittingly put his finger on the
weak spot in many other walks in life. Rex, Ludovicu^,
and Ludovicus Rex wore the titles of three little
sketches which stood in ;i frame for many years on
Henry Bradshaw's mantelpiece. Rrx was the full-
bottomed wig, gorgeous robes, gold- headed cane and

20

306 PAGES FROM AN UNWRITTEN DIARY

buckled shoes of a King without any figure inside
them. Litdovicus was an old, wizened, and bent figure
of a man in thin underclothing. Ludovicus Rex the
miserable little object put into the magnificent gar-
ments of the first sketch.

It must not be imagined for a moment that the cult
of colour and the neglect of invention is carrying all
before it in the country. In the perhaps exceptional
outlook upon the younger and coming men which I
have been privileged to possess, I have not noticed any
predilections for it in sound and really artistic tempera-
ments. The " wild men " have generally been those
who disliked the necessity of learning their letters
before they could read, and preferred to write before
they could spell. But they are and always have been
in the minority. Most of them find wisdom by eating
their bread with tears. All of them are the better for
suffering, through aural experience, from their own
shortcomings, than from dogmatic tutoring and mis-
application of the terms "right" and "wrong." The
material in this country is surprisingly large. The
best of it will take long to worry its way through into
acceptance, as the best always does. If the country is
not in too great a hurry, it will get its reward. If
it is impatient, it will " discover " only flashy and
ephemeral talent, and in its disappointment will delay
the success of the more solid stuff. The main con-
sideration in the upbringing of young students, is, I am
convinced, the destruction of any Index Expurga-
torius. If the fruit is forbidden, they will eat it in
secret, and probably before they give the wholesomer
kinds a fair trial. I always recommend to them

THE CHURCH AND MUSIC 307

a variant of an old adage, " Say your prayers and keep
your ears open."

The Church says its prayers, but it does not suffi-
ciently fulfil the latter portion of this injunction. It
does not even always keep its ears clean. I am far from
denying that in respect of performance, of demeanour,
and of general efficiency the conduct of the musical
part of the service is an immense advance upon the
conditions which prevailed thirty or forty years ago.
So far the Church has moved with the age, but only
so far. It has troubled itself far more over externals
than essentials. The essentials are the musical works
which are performed. The world would expect that
an Institution which more than any other has kept
alive musical art in this country, and is alone in
having a free hand, unhampered by the financial con-
siderations of a box-office, to produce not merely the
masterpieces with which English composers endowed
them in past ages, but the best and soundest of modern
work, would be as reverential in its preservation of the
old as it was eclectic in its selection of the new. An
unfamiliar novelty, which perhaps needs many hearings
to win appreciation and which therefore, if written for
a concert-room or a theatre dependent on its receipts
for existence, fails to bring home its appeal perhaps for
years, ought to find in the Churcli the chance of an
unshackled repetition, and a speedier acceptance. Just
as a subvention enables G(n-man theatres to give cycles
of the historical plays of Shakespeare, and of master-
pieces of Goethe, Schiller and Lessing which appeal
mostly to the cultured few, but ai-e wisely looked
upon as a necessary stimulus to Education, so in

308 PAGES FROM AN UNWRITTEN DIARY

England is the Church, and the Church alone, in a
position to fulfil the same office for its own art-posses-
sions. Is it fulfilling this duty ? I can only answer in
the negative.

The late Bishop of London (Dr. Creighton) in his
opening speech at the discussion of Church music,
when the Church Congress met at the Albert Hall,
lamented, with some admixture of sarcasm, that the
authorities at St. Paul's had chosen for the opening of
an English Congress in an English Cathedral in the
English Capital, an anthem by Brahms, and another
by Spohr. Excellent composers, as he said, but had
England none of her own ? He seemed to have heard
of such names as Tallis, Byrd, Purcell, Blow, Boyce,
and the Wesleys, and to wonder whether their works
had been relegated to the waste-paper basket. This
speech was the one hopeful sign in recent ecclesiastical
oratory : but I fear that it fell for the most part upon
deaf ears. Sugary sentimentalism is the order of the
day, and unhappily music of that quality can be and is
turned out by the bushel. The more syrup supplied,
the more the craving for it : but it brings gout nearer
every moment.

The movement which started a short time ago at
the Vatican for the better presentation of sixteenth-
century music, for the revival and study of Palestrina
and others of the polyphonic vocal school, and for the
expunging of irrelevant and unsuitable music, came
none too soon. The initiative, in all probability, came
from Ratisbon, where the traditions of the Sistine
Choir had been more zealously and effectively pre-
served by Proske and others than they were in their

THE CHURCH AND MUSIC 309

own home. It was a one-sided policy which left more
recent music and orchestral accompaniments wholly
out of account, and swept or endeavoured to sweep all
later work, good and bad together, into the dust-heap.
From a preservative point of view it was invaluable ;
as a preventative it will probably act more slowly.
The spirit in Italy which sees no incongruity in a per-
formance of Rossini's Tarantella " Gia la Luna" played
as an outgoing voluntary after Benediction (an
experience which I had at Como), will be difficult to
discipline. Even more recently at the English home
of the monks of Solesmes, famed for their printing
of early Church music, I was startled to hear
the organist burst out into the lively march
from Bizet's " L'Arlesienne " in the middle of
vespers : — an Etty Venus in the centre of a group
of Bellini Madonnas. A more curious foil to the
very plain Chant which preceded and succeeded it
could not be imagined. The drastic attitude of
the Roman purifiers is therefore the more compre-
hensible from the glaring abuses with which they
have to deal near home, and it is not surprising
that they should rush to the opi)Osite extreme in
exclusiveness. The banning of Haydn, Mozart and
Beethoven is a sorry proof of the danger of too much
zeal. Richter once picturesquely contrasted the
Church music of these masters with that of Northern
climes, by t\u-, analogy of their respective climates.
They suited the o\H'n air and a sunny sky, he said ;
while the iimsic of th(; Nortli needed Gothic arches and
stained-glass windows. I find it difficult to believe
that the Hof-Kirche at Dresden and the Hof-Burg-

310 PAGES FROM AN UNWRITTEN DIARY

Kapelle at Vienna will readily acquiesce in the aboli-
tion of their staple food.

The Motu proprio decree has had its effect in
this country in rousing a desire amongst the more
serious and cultivated Church musicians and amateurs
to bring back the masterpieces of the early English
school into our choir lists. By the republication of
semi-forgotten works, and the consistent pressure of
individual enthusiasts, matters are slowly improving.
But equally strong pressure will become necessary if
the inclusion of inferior contemporary compositions is to
proceed apace, unchecked and uncensored. The worst
sign of the times is the modern hymn-tune. It repre-
sents for the Church the equivalent of the royalty
ballad for the concert-room. We have masses of fine
solid melodies, harmonized with dignity and reticence
by their writers, dating from Elizabethan times, as
representative of the English Church as the German
Chorales are of the Lutheran. The majority of these
have had to make way for whole stacks of sentimenta-
lized rubbish, decked out in gewgaws, and as ill-suited
to their surroundings as a music-hall song in the
Baireuth Theatre. Their genesis is not far to seek,
for many of the hymns to which they are set are
little better, " more remarkable for their piety than
their poetry " as was wittily said of them, equally
devoid of simplicity and of good taste. Not a few of
these tunes are disguised dance music, waltzes and
polkas which only need a rhythmical bass to expose
their true nature. They degrade religion and its
services with slimy and sticky appeals to the senses,
instead of ennobling and strengthening the higher

HYMN-TUNES 311

instincts. Such tunes are the most insidious des-
troyers of taste. They are easy enough to catch the
ear of the most remote congregation in a country
parish. They are flashy enough to seduce the un-
tutored Hstener, and to spoil his palate for wholesome
and simple fare ; much as the latest comic song will
temporarily extinguish the best folk-tune.

Our hymn-books are about four times too large.
Our population is smaller than that of Germany, but
Germany finds a fraction of our number of tunes quite
sufficient for her purpose. Her Chorales were the
feeding-bottle of Sebastian Bach ; and upon the
foundation of their influence his music was built.
Imagine the style which an English Church composer
would develop whose early taste was formed by
familiarity with " 0 Paradise !" and such-like tunes !
If ever a censor was wanted, it is here ; an authority
who would not only wipe out the rubbish, but insist
on the proper speed. Fine modern tunes like S. S.
Wesley's " The Church's one Foundation " are rattled
through at a pace which would make its composer
turn in his grave. The older melodies, written by
men who had a sense of fitness and decency to back
their musicianship, are played and sung as if the
whole congregation had to catch a train. The per-
formance recalls the feat of a famous Dublin parson,
who was gifted with such a genius for clear elocution
and vivid declamation that he could get through the
Morning Prayer including the Litany, when he was so
minded, in twenty minutes. It did not make for
reverence, but it gave him tlie distinction of making a
record.

312 PAGES FROM AN UNWRITTEN DIARY

The outlook in our concert- rooms is more satis-
factory, and the increase in the number of first-class
instrumentalists has led to the formation of several
admirable orchestras. Forty years ago there were
only two, one in London and one in Manchester.
Although concerts of orchestral music were given by
several Societies, and by Manns at the Crystal Palace
" Saturdays " (who had a smaller and independent
band of his own on other weekdays), the rank and
file of the players was always the same. Now we
have enough players to supply the country. Birming-
ham has a large and improving band. Godfrey has a
small but most efficient body of players, permanently
stationed at Bournemouth, with which he performs
every composition of every nationality including his
own. Scotland is provided for. What is most wanted
is decentralization. London is overcrowded with
players, whom provincial cities with a little of the
enterprise and foresight of those on the Continent
could employ to the better education and refinement
of their inhabitants. If Britain's music has not in
recent years (outside patriotic Bournemouth) received
the consideration which British societies and organiza-
tions ought to give to it, the fault largely lies in the
fact that it is produced by fits and starts, is seldom
repeated sufficiently to become familiar, and is too
often unrelieved by contrasting specimens from the
music of other nations. When Jullien conducted the
promenade concerts, immortalized by Dicky Doyle in
" Mr. Pips his Diary," the mass of the public was
wholly unfamiliar with Beethoven's symphonies, which
were only known to the few hundred frequenters of

CONCERT-ROOMS 313

the Philharmonic. An enthusiastic admirer of Beet-
hoven, Jullien determined to make him a household
word. He did so, not by giving "Beethoven evenings"
which would have meant playing to empty benches,
nor even by performing a whole symphony at a time,
but by introducing one Beethoven movement into a
popular programme. It was not long before the single
movement grew into whole symphonies, and his aim
was accomplished. The mistake which is now made
about native productions lies in expecting a full house
for wholly unknown or very partially familiar work,
instead of providing an attractive general programme
in which one native work shall have a carefully chosen
place. The only conductor who carried out this prin-
ciple was Manns, and he did more for the encourage-
ment of native work than any of his London successors.
The " Apathy of the Public," so often quoted when a
silly All-British programme naturally fails to attract,
would speedily disappear with careful nursing by its
concert-givers on those lines.

The demolition of the best concert-room in London,
St. James's Hall, was a most serious blow to musical
London. It had the uimsual advantage of suiting
both orchestral and chamber music. Without it the
Monday Popular Concerts would have been an im-
possibility, for it held enough to pay well. It has no
successor. It was a going financial concern which
returned large dividends (even after the opening of
Queen's Hall) to its shareholders. When it was
pulled down, 1 flctermined to tak(^ the bull by the
horns and to see whether a |)aternal Govei'nment would
at last do for music a tithe of what it does for her

314 PAGES FHOM AN UNWRITTEN DIAHY

sister arts. The opportunity had come in the removal
of the War Office from its old quarters in Pall Mall to
Whitehall. No better site for a concert-room could
have been imagined. Of a capacity large enough to
provide two halls, one for Orchestral and one for
Chamber music, as in the New Gewandhaus at Leipzig,
it was far away from bells and other distracting noises,
while within close reach of omnibuses to all parts of
London. I imagined also the possibility of founding
under its roof a sound agency for artists. The Govern-
ment would have at its command a Hall admirably
suited for such political matters as Colonial Conferences
or other receptions. To clinch the argument, I was able
to produce the balance-sheets of the extinct St. James's
Hall, which proved that such a building, with proper
management, would result in sufficient profit to pay
off its own cost within a reasonable period.

Armed with this proposal I made the plunge, and
had a long and most interesting interview with the
late Sir Henry Campbell - Bannerman, the Prime
Minister. I laid the whole facts and figures before
him, and showed him the architectural plans of the
Leipzig Gewandhaus, pointing out what had been
unquestioningly and ungrudgingly done in a town
inhabited by thousands instead of milHons. I also laid
stress on the important point, that if this undertaking
were carried out, music, the most neglected of all the
arts by English Governments, would be the only one
of them to show a profit on its balance-sheet. Other
points, such as the possibility it would give of en-
couraging societies by providing them with a less
costly habitat, and of reaching the ears of the music-

CONCEKT-IIOOMS 315

loving poorer classes, were self-evident. The analogy
of the Government treatment of such Art Institutions
as the National Gallery, Tate Gallery, Victoria and
Albert Museum, and others, furnished what is always
so necessary in political departments, a precedent.
Finally it involved no taxation, but rather suggested
a good business proposition. The Prime Minister was
and continued to be deeply interested in the idea. It
got as far as the Treasury. The Treasury, which is
now allowing the disbursement of unproductive mil-
lions, put its foot down upon that of a few productive
thousands. It did so on the truly amazing grounds
(as I was afterwards given to understand) that the
plan had a dangerously socialistic tendency. The
chief executioner was, by the irony of fate, the only
official in that Department who had musical attain-
ments enough to obtain a musical degree. He did a
bad day's work. In the course of my conversation with
the Prime Minister, I told him of the unique suitability
of the War Office site, and foretold that if it were not
taken advantage of, its place would be taken by yet
another Club caravanserai. He deprecated warmly
such an idea, but the prophecy is come true. The
Automobile Club is incomj)lete without a tablet to the
Treasury Bachelor of Music, whose dread of Socialism
insured it its palatial residence.

Since those days the lavish expenditure of public
money and the consequent excessive taxation has
affected music more disastrously than any other profes-
sion. Always liable In this country to be classed rather
as a luxury than as an educational and refining factor,
it is one of the first to sullcr from reduced banker's

316 PAGES FEOM AN UNWRITTEN DIARY

balances. Subscribers to Societies throughout the
country have retired, the committees which used to
engage first-class artists were forced to draw in their
horns and content themselves with those of less ex-
perience and smaller cost. Those who, from their
position in the profession, command larger fees
cannot reduce them without penalizing their younger
brethren, and many of them are left with a tithe of
their former income. Many useful local organizations
are closing down altogether. The leading Festivals,
which until recently were drawing large sums over and
above their expenditure, are now almost invariably
heavy losers ; the losses are traced, not to the casual
visitors, but to the formerly reliable bulk of local sub-
scribers of the middle classes. Their committees try
every conceivable method of attracting them, but
their balance at the bank is, of necessity, the primary
consideration. To some extent this falling off may
be due to the increase of good local music in inter-
vening years. The days when Sullivan spoke of a
Festival town as a boa-constrictor, which ate a large
meal once in three years and slept for the rest of
the time, are gone. On the other hand, the excellent
and numerous concerts of Cologne, Aix-la-Chapelle
and Diisseldorf have in no way affected the receipts
of the Lower Rhine Festivals, which are held by
turn in each of these cities. Competition Festivals
are flourishing, but they are of little or no value as
media for the performance of great works. They have
a sporting element to back them, and cup-hunting has
its attractions even for seriously minded choral bodies.
As long as the prize fever is discouraged, and the sport

NATIONAL OPERA 317

is kept subsidiary to artistic considerations, they will
accomplish their share of general good in the future as
they have in the past.

Of the Opera there is but little to say, which has
not alread}^ oeen said. As far as London is concerned
it is and remains an exotic. Its supporters are not the
greater public but a fraction of Society, the list of
whose names does not take up more than half a
column of the newspapers. Without them the edifice
would fall, for there is nothing national about it save
the orchestra and a few singers. The forei2:ner looks
upon it as a Tom Tiddler's ground, as he does upon
the United States. And yet so persistent is the talk
about the need of a National Opera and so numerous,
if spasmodic, the attempts to attain to it, that there
is always a substratum of hope that something will be
done before long. If it is, it will have to be the work
of private enterprise, sufficiently large and sustained
to see the institution outgrow its infantile ailments
and attain maturity. The other arts have found their
benefactors in this country, and some day perhaps one
will arise whose tastes lie in the direction of National
Opera. He will have the advantage of being first in
a new field, without any competitors to dispute his
title ; and will earn and deserve a niche to himself
in English History.

Here my unwritten diary comes to a full stop. If I
fvere to turn over to the next page I might find all
sorts and kinds of opinions which would deserve to be
placed upon the Index, or classed with forbidden
fruit.

318 PAGES FEOM AN UNWRITTEN DIARY

There are many mountains close around, which, as
Robert Schumann wisely said, need to be more distant
before one can estimate their relative heights and
appreciate the beauty of their formation. It is easy
enough to write impressions of twenty to forty years
ago, but hard indeed of days close at hand without
perhaps unwittingly touching some too tender spot,
and overrating, as well as underrating, men and things
with a judgment too undigested to be of any value.
One of the characteristics of old age is to remember
clearly enough the happenings of youth, but to forget
names, places and events of its own time. Although
I cannot yet claim the privileges of senility, this not
unkindly provision, which Nature has made for
veterans, has given me a timely hint to write Finis.
A friend of mine, when he heard of my temerity in
undertaking to write down my memories, told me that
I had no business to do such a thing at my age, and
that I should in decency wait till I was over seventy.
But time flies, and my memory might have fled with
it. Perhaps I should have been wiser to follow his
counsel ; my readers will be the best judge of that.
Any criticism which they consider unduly harsh, they
will at least believe to have been put down from con-
viction ; this will smooth over many a rough place,
and blunt the edge of too sharp a word. Not a few
books of reminiscences contain but a half- penny worth
of bread to an intolerable deal of sack. The present
volume, I fear, follows Falstafl"s recipe only too
closely. It may therefore, like his, deserve to be
written down as " Monstrous f My only hope is that

CONCLUSION 319

there may be a few crumbs of incident or record to
comfort the reader and redeem the book from useless-
ness, and that they may recall to some of my con-
temporaries a few happy memories of old times,
old haunts, and (best of all) old and valued friends.

INDEX

A

Abeecorn, Duke of (the late), 96
Abergele accident, the, 6
Academy of Music (Irish), 33
Adam, the brothers, 2
Adams, Professor, 105
A.D.C., the, 181 ct seq.
Ainger, Canon, 247
Albani, Emma (singer), 141
Albrecht, Prince, of Prussia, 198
Alderson, Sir Charles, 157-159
Allingham, William, 232
Alverstone, Viscount, 114
Anderson, Mary, 188
Anderson, Mrs. (pianist), 44
Antient Concerts, the Society of

the (Dublin), 23, 31
"Apostles," the (the C.C.S.), 127
Arnold, Dr., of Eugby, 218
Auber, 158
Austen Leigh, William A., 113

B

Bach, ,J. S., 47, 61, 66, 75, 114, 123,
129, 132, 152, 249, 250 et seq., 285

Bache, Walter, 41, 178

Bagagiolo, Enrico (bass singer), 89

Baireuth, 134, 167 et seq.

Balfe, W. M., 21, 50, 249

Balfour, Professor Frank, 121

"Ballo in Masclicra, 11" (Verdi), 89

Bancroft, Lady, 73

liar, the Irish, 6 ct seq.

"Barber of Seville," the, 91

Barnwell Theatre, the, 183

Barton, Mr. Justice Dunbar, 79

Bassett, 11. Tilney, 76 ct acq.

Jiateman, Mrs., 229

Beaumaris, 53

"Becket" (tragedy), 229 ct seq.

Beethoven. L. van, 33, 46, 56, 57, 61,
67, 72, 92, 136

Belaiofr (music publisher), 222

Bell's Life, 64, 74, 80

Benedict, Sir Julius, 216

32

Bennett, Joseph, 170, 207

Bennett, Sir W. Sterndalc, 104, 110,
115, 132, 138, 156, 253, 263

Benson, Lionel, 281

Berlioz, Hector, 50, 66 ct seq., 144,
194

Berwick (Judge of the Court of
Bankruptcy), 6

Best, W. T., 49

Betz (bass singer), 170

Birchall (music publisher), 221

Birmingham Festival, the, 109, 202,
248

Bizet, Georges, 309

Blackburne (Lord of Appeal), 6

Blakesley, W. H., 167

Blondin, 83

Blore, Kev. E. W., 120

Blow, Dr. John, 47

Boito, Arrigo, 47, 278 et seq.

Bonn Festival, the, 133 et seq.

Booth, Su- Kobert Gore, 28

Borodin, 104

Burs, Thoma (soprano singer), 192

Bossi (bass singer), 89

Bouchor, Maurice, 239, 285

Boucicault, Dion, 73

Bower, Professor F. 0., 116

Bower, H. M., 110

Bradley, Dean, 232

Bradshaw, Henry, 27, 107, 225

lirady. Sir F., 19

Brahms, Johannes, 50, 57, 75, 116,
133, 144, 148, 166, 172 et seq., 200
et seq., 250, 268, 270 et seq., 278,
287

Bramwcll, Baron, 29

Brandt, Marianna (soprano singer),
171

Brewster, Abraliam (Lord Chan-
cellor), 6

Bridges, llobert, 293

Bronsart, Hans von, 191, 193

Brooklicld, (;. II. E., 121, 1H2

Broughton, James, 252

" Brown, Tom," 80

1 2i

322

INDEX

Browning, Robert, 176, 234

Bruch, Max, 278 ct scq.

Buck, Dr. Zachariah, 82

Buckstone, 92

BuUer, Charles, 11

Biilow, Hans Guido von, 35, 61, 90,

101, 141, 143, 149, 153, 178, 261

et scq., Til et seq., 305
Bunting, 11, 20
Burke Thumotli, 10, 19
Burn, Rev. Robert, 120
Burnand, Sir Francis, 181
Burton, F. W., R.H.S., 19
Bussell, Henry, 55
Butcher, E. (Irish surgeon), 9
Butcher, J. G. (M.P.),'9, 110, 121
Butcher, S. H. (M.P.), 9, 110, 121,

128
Butcher, Dr. S. (Bishop of Meath),

12
Butler, Lord James, 13
Butler, Dr. H. Montagu (Master of

Trinity), 81, 232

Cambridge University Musical

Society, the, 112 et seq., 166 et

seq., 207, 278 et seq.
Campbell, Sir Edward Fitzgerald, 52
Campbell, Pamela, Lady, 52
Campbell-Bannerman, Sir Henry,

314 et seq.
Catch Club, the Hibernian, 4
Cecil (Blunt), Arthur, 108
Cherubini, Luigi, 91
Chopin, Frederic, 58, 66
Chorley, H. F., 72
Christ Church Cathedral, 38
Christian Science, 12
Church Congress, 308
Church music, 307 et seq.
Ciampi (bass singer), 89
Clarendon, the Earl of, 26
Clark, John WilUs, 127, 181 ct seq.,

208
Clark, William George (public

orator), 129
Clay, Frederic, 82
Cobb, Gerard Francis, 113, 120, 122

et sec/.
Coleridge, Arthur Duke, 54, 114,

129, 131, 157, 159
Coleridge, S. T., 2
'• Colleen Bawn," the, 73
CoUes, Abraham (surgeon), 8
Collins, E. Henn, afterwards Lord,

5, 291, 292

Cologne, 2, 135, 137
Colour music, 301 et scq.
Competition Festivals, 316
Conservatoire, the Paris, 212
Conservatorium, the Leipzig, 74
Cooke, Grattan, 31
Corrigan, Sir Dominic, 9
Costa, Sir Michael, 109, 142, 178

202 et scq., 248
Crawford, G. A., 24
Creighton, Dr. Mandell (Bishop of

London), 308
Cries, Dublin street, 97, 98
Crivelli (singing master), 27
Crocks, the Prince of, 65
Cruise, Sir Francis (physician), 9
Crystal Palace, the, 82 et seq., 140
Cusack, Dr. (surgeon), 9
Cusins, Sir William G., 44

D

Dabs, 53

Dannreuther, Edward^ 171, 178,

264
Darwin, Charles, 241
Davies, Dr. Walford, 275
Davison, James W., 67, 141, 170,

176, 177
De Beriot, 67
Delibes, Leo, 158
Delna, Madame (singer), 283
Denman, Mr. Justice, 242
Devil's Glen, the, 10
Devouassoud, Francois, 242
Devrient, Otto, 189,' 190
Devries, Madame (singer), 136
Dickinson, Dean, 13, 14
Dickson, Dr. Benjamin, F.T.C.D.,

15
Dietrichstein, Prince, 60
Dilke, Ashton, 114
Disestablishment, Irish Church, 96,

99
Disraeli, B. (Earl of Beaconsfield),

69, 83, 96
Doherty, Anthony, 97
" Don Giovanni " (Mozart), 28
Donizetti, Gaetano, 68, 91
" Dowdow," 97
Doyle, Richard, 155, 312
Dresden, 157 et seq.
Drury Lane Theatre, 70
Dufferin, the Marquess of, 232
Dunn, Mrs. (amateur singer), 114
Dunraven, the (late) Earl of, 28,

65, 117
Duprez (tenor singer), 67

INDEX

323

Dussek, 75

Dvorak, Antonin, 270 et seq.

" Dykwynkyn," 169

E
" Eewee," 98

Ehrke, H. (bass singer), 145, 199
Eisenach, 132, 151, 251
"Elijah" (Mendelssohn), 23-25, 30-

32, 54, 55, 109
"Eliot, George" (Mrs. G. H. Lewes),

179-180
Ellmenreich, Franziska (actress),

147
Eisner, Wilhelm (violoncellist), 33,

100
English policy and temperament,

101
Ertmann, Grafin Dorothea von, 72
"Esmeralda" (burlesque), 73
" Euryanthe " (Weber), 85, 146, 199

" Falstaff " (Verdi), 281 et seq.
Farrar, F. W., Dean of Canterbury,

126
"Faust" (Gounod), 91
Fenian Rising, the, 93, 100
Ferrari, Sophie (Mrs. Pagden), 167
" Fidelio " (Beethoven), 91, 146, 199
" Figlia del Reggimento " (Doni-
zetti), 91
Fitzgerald, Baron, 6
Fitzgerald, I.oid Edward, 52
Fitzgerald, Mr. Justice J. D., 6
Fitzgibbon, Master in Chancery, 6
Fitzwilliam Society, the, 115
Flanagan, J. Woulfe, 79
" Flauto Magico, II " (Mozart), 91
" Flying Dutchman," the (Wagner),

90, 141
Flynn, Miss Henrietta, 74, 75
Foli, T. (bass singer), 89, 91
Folk-Hong, Irish, 18 et acq.
Ford, Henry J., 185
Ford, Patrick, 80
Ford, Walter, 281
Formes, Carl (bass singer), 91
Franck, Cdsar, 56, 165
Frank, Ernst, 189 el seq., 304
Franke, Hermann (violinist), 197

et HCq.
Frankfurt-am Main, 189
Franz, Robert, 156
"Froischiitz, Dcr" (Wobcr). 140,

146, 160
Frero, Mrs., 48

Friedrich, the Emperor, 170, 258
Furse, Charles, 237

G

Gade, Niels W., 110

Galpin, Rev. F. W., 209

Gandon, James (architect), 2

Garcia, Manuel, 258

Gardoni (singer), 89

Garrett, Dr. G., 131

Geale, Mrs. Josephine, 35

Gewandhaus, the Leipzig, 23, 143,
201

Giuglini (tenor singer), 83

Gladstone, Rt. Hon. W. E., 128

Godfrey, Dan, 312

Godley, A. D., 79

Goetz, Hermann, 187

Goldschmidt, Madame. See Jenny
Lind

Goldschmidt, Otto, 129, 269

Gompertz, R. (violinist), 209

Goss, Sir John, 123

Gounod, Charles, 91, 201

"Grande Duchesse, La," (Offen-
bach), 93

Graves, Dr. Charles (Bishop of
Limerick), 4, 12, 19, 118

Great Eastern, the, 54

Greek Plays, Cambridge, 183 et seq.

Greene, H. Plunket, 79, 287

Greene, Herbert, 79

Greene, Sir W. Conyngham, 79

Grieg, Edvard, 278

Grove, Sir George, 72, 82, 140, 212,
223 et seq., 259

Grundy, Mrs, 93, 114

Griineisen, C. L., 67

Guillemard, Dr., Ill

Guinness, Sir Benjamin Lee, 19, 38

Gunn, John, 93

Gunn, ]\richacl, 93

Gura, H. (baritone singer), 145

Gurney, Edmund, 123

H
Haase, Friedricli (actor), 147, 173
Habeneck, 68, 69
Hahnemann, Dr., 52
Hallam, Arthur II., 128
Hall.'. Sir Charles, 65, 83, 198, 204
Hamilton, John (surgeon), 9
Hamilton, S. G., 79
"Hamlet" (A. Thomas), 91
Ilammorich, Asgor, 205
Ilandcl, George Frederick, 1, 11, 24,
41 et seq.

324

INDEX

Hanging, the Science of, 94

Hanover, 191 et seq.

Hardwicke, the Earl of (Lord-
Lieuteuant), 22

Hare, Sir John (actor), 147

Harris, Eenatus (organ builder), 38

Hathornthwaite, Father, '232

Haughton, Dr. Samuel, F.T.C.D.,
94 et seq.

Haydn, Josef, 20, 309

Haymarket Theatre, 72

Headfort, the Marquess of, 22

Healy, Father, 9

Heenan (the Benicia Boy), 64

Heidelberg, 162 et seq.

Hemsley (alto singer), 42

Henn, Christiana (Kate), 99

Henn, Jonathan, Q.C., 4 et seq., 70

Henn, Thomas Rice, Q.C. (Recorder
of Galway), 19, 191

Henn, William (Master in Chan-
cery), 4

Henschel, Sir George, 280

Herbert, 3

Herkomer, Sir Hubert von, R.A.,
121

Hill, Carl (baritone singer), 170

Hillebrand, Madame, 276

Hiller, Dr. Ferdinand, 110 133,
135

Holden (Irish folksong collector), 19

Hopkins, Dr. J. L., 120

Howson, Dr. (Dean of Chester), 125

Hudson, Rev. F. W., 112

Hudson, Dr. Henrjs 19

Hughes, Thomas, 218

" Hughy," Dublin beggar, 97

" Huguenots, Les " (Meyerbeer), 91

HuUah, John, 166

Hiilsen, Count von, 265

Humperdinck, Engelbert (com-
poser), 220

Hungerford Bridge, 71

Hymn tunes, 310 et seq.

Indian Mutiny, The, 52
Indians, the lOUX, 118
"Iniquity Corner," 130
Irish Symphony, the, 260 et seq.
Irving, Sir Henry Brodribb, 92,

229 et seq.
Ishbibenob, 8
Italian Opera in Dublin, 85, 89

et seq.
Italian Opera in London, 141, 317

James, M. R. (Provost of King's),

186
Jebb, Sir Richard Claverhouse,

M.P., 120
Jellett, Dr. (Provost of T.C.D.), 12
Jenkinson, Francis (Cambridge

University Librarian), 121
Jerrold, Douglas, 72
" Jessonda," opera, 146
Joachim, Amalie, 133, 139
Joachim, Josef, 32, 34, 47, 61, 71,

83, 100, 101, 114, 132 etseq., 141,

145, 151, 157, 172 et seq., 208,

251, 253. 269
Jones, Sir Edward Burne, 239
Jordan, Rev. Mr., 14
Jowett, Dr. (Master of Balliol), 124
Joy, Walker, 252 et seq.
JuUien (conductor), 312

K

Kauffman, Angelica, 1

Kean. Edmund and Charles, 92

Keatinge, Mr. Justice, 8

Kelly, Grattan (bass singer), 42

et seq.
Kelvin, Lord, 112
Kenmare River, 12
Keogh, Mr. Justice, 8
Kiel, Friedrich, 142, 157, 164 et seq.
Kinglake, A. W. (historian), 130
Kingsley, Charles, 125
Kiphng, Rudyard, 227
Kruger, Paul, 238
K , Mrs. W , of, 88

Lablache, Luigi (bass singer), 28-30,

238, 260
Labouchere, Henrj^, M.P., 289 et

seq.
Lachner, Dr. Franz, 145
Larcom, Arthur, C.B., 79
Lassen, Edward (conductor), 268
Latham, Rev. Henry (Master of

Trinity Hall), 106
Lawley, Hon. A., 182
Lawson, Mr. Justice, 8, 255
Lear, Edward, 65
Le Bon (oboist), 198
Lee, Archdeacon, 13
Leeds Festival, the, 2'^8, 252, 289

et seq.
Lefanu, Joseph Sheridan, 54
Lefanu, Thomas, 79

INDEX

325

Lefanu, William, 79

Lefroy, Lord Chief Justice, 6

Lehmann, Lilli (soprano singer),
170

Leighton, Lord, P.E.A., 70, 234 et
seq., 270

Leinster, Duke of, 19

Leipzig, 153 ct seq.

Leixlip, 2

Leotard (acrobat), 83

" Les Deux Journees " (Cherubini),
91

Levej', Richard (O'Shaughnessy),
33, 34, 85

Levi, H. (conductor), 171

Leviathan, the, 54

Lewis, Sir George (the late), 291

"Liberator," the, 74

Liddell, Dr. (Dean of Christ
Church), 121

Liffey, the River Anna, 2

Lind, Jenny, 26, 54, 217

Liszt, Franz, 59, 60, 143, 149 et seq,,
191, 251

Lockey (tenor singer), 54, 55

" Lohengrin " (Wagner), 84

Long Drop, the, 94

Lovetts of Liscombe, the, 6

Lower Rhine Festivals, the, 249,
316

Lowther, the Right Hon. J. W., 182

" Lucknow, the Relief of " (melo-
drama), 93

" Lucrezia Borgia " (Donizetti), 91

Ludwig, Professor, 154

Lumley (impresario), 279

Lunn, Rev. J. R., 113

Luther, Dr. (homeopathic phy-
sician), 4, 52

Lyall, Sir Alfred, 232

Lyceum Theatre, the, 229

Lyons, Dr. Robert, 19

Lyttelton, Hon. Alfred, 182

Lyttelton, Hon. G. W. Spencer, 114

M

Macalister, Sir Donald, 210
Macauiay, T. V,., 71, 121
Macdonnell, Emily. 25, 26
Mafdonnell, Hercules, 20, 50, 169
Ma-donnell, John, 19
Mace, Jem (pugiliHt), 9
Macfarren, Sir George, 123,167
Mackenzie, Sir Alexander C, 219,

245
Magee, Dr. (Archbishop of York),

12

Maitland, J. A. Fuller, 177
Maitland, Professor F. W., 280
Manns, Sir Augustus, 140, 198,

204, 312 et seq.
Mario (tenor singer), 34, 89
Marrable, Canon, 14
Marsh, Su- Henry (physician), 9
Materna, Frau (soprano singer),

170
Mathews, Charles, 92
Maurel, Victor (baritone singer),

281, 283
May, Sir Francis (Governor of

Hong Kong), 79
Mayne, Sir Richard, 70
Maj^nooth Grant, the, 99
McCHntock, F. G. le P. (Dean of

Armagh), 133
Meeke, Miss Elizabeth, 56 et seq.
" Meistersinger, Die " (Wagner), 84
Mellon, Alfred (conductor), 206
Mendelssohn Bartholdy, Felix, 31,

32, 55, 72, 74, 110, 138, 270
" Mensur," the, 161
Merivale (Dean of Ely), 121, 127
Merrion Square, 2
" Messiah " (Handel), 1, 41 et seq.
Meyerbeer, Giacomo, 136, 206, 286
Micawber, Mr., 76
Milde, von, Herr and Frau, 251
Millais, Sir J. E., P.R.A., 70, 236,

276
Miller, Professor, 106
" Mireille " (Gounod), 91
Monahan (Chief Justice), 6
Monday Popular Concerts, the,

141,313
Mongini (tenor singer), 89
Moore, Thomas, 19
Morgan, Lady, 26
Mornington, the Earl of, >' 3
Morris, Lord (Lord of Appeal), 8
Moscheles, Ignatz, 56, 57, 74
Mottl, F. (conductor), 171
Motu Proprio decree, the, 310
Mozart, Karl, 91
Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus, 28, 71,

109, 204, 249
Mozart, Wolfgang (fils), 71
Mullen, Benjamin (bass singer),

42
Murphy, Lord Justice, H, 255
Murphy, Mrs. (flower-Hollor), 97
Murray, George Rigby, 117
Murpka, Ilnia di (soprano singer),

89 90, 109
MusKau, Prince Puckler, 25

326

INDEX

N

New Philharmonic Society, 67,

140
Newton, Harry, 186
Newton, Sir Isaac, 121
Nourrit (tenor singer), 67
Novello, Clara Contessa Gigliucci

(soprano smger), 276
" Nozze di Figaro " (Mozart), 91

O

"Oberon" (Weber), 91

O'Brien, Smith, 94

O'Connell, Daniel, 4

O'Connor, John (painter), 86

Offenbach, Jacques, 136

O'Leary, Arthur, 71

Opera. See Italian Opera

Opera, National, 139, 196, 213, 317

Opera, Paddy's, 37, 41

" Orphee aux Enfers " (opera), 136

" Orpheus " (Gluek), 188

Osborne, George Alexander, 66 et

seq., 170, 2.3
O'Shaughnessy, Pdchard. See Levey

Paddy's Opera, 37, 41

Palestrina, Pierluigi da, 308

Palliser, John, 66

Palliser, Colonel William, 66

Parknasilla (Co. Kerry), 12

Parratt, Sir Walter, 224

Parry, Sir C. Hubert, 186, 247 ct

seq., 267
Parry, John, 108
" Pas de quatre, le," 279
Patti, Adelina, 62
Pauer, Ernst, 71
Peel, Sir Robert, 5
Peele, Dr. John (tenor singer and

physician), 42
Pellissier, Mr., 57
Pemberton, Canon, 112
Pendlebury, R., 241
Peschka-Leutner (soprano singer),

143
" Peter," 35

Petrie, Dr. George, 9, 19
Philharmonic Society, Dublin, 55
Philharmonic Society, London, 140,

149
Phillips, Dr. (President of Queen's

College), 107
Phoenix Park murders, the, 8, 255

et seq.

Piatti, Alfredo (violoncellist), 83,

237
Pierson, Henry Hugo, 104
Plays, Cambridge Greek. See

Greek
Plunket, Lord, 79
Pohl, C. F., 225
PoUini, H., 244
Pollock, Walter, 181
Post-impressionists, 239
Pretor, Alfred, 105

Q

Quarry, Michael (pianoforte

teacher), 75
" Queen Mary " (tragedy), 229

R

Reed, Mrs. German, 108
Reinecke, Karl, 145, 156
Riccius (musical critic), 244
Richter, Dr. E. F., 151
Richter, Dr. Hans, 142, 146, 169,

178 et seq., 191 etseq., 248 et seq.,

256, 260, 309
Rietz, Julius, 143, 145
"Ring des Nibelungen, der"

(Wagner), 50
"Robert le Diable" (Meyerbeer),

91
Robertson, H. Forbes (actor), 194
Robinson, Dr. Francis, 45, 56
Robinson, Joseph, 23, 45, 54
Robinson, William, 45
Rockstro, W. S., 269, 274 et seq.
Roe, Mr. Henry, 14
Rokitansky (bass singer), 30, 250
Rosa, Carl, 245

Rossini, Gioacchino, 43, 66, 68
Rowe, Richard C, 200, 209 et seq.
Royal Academy of Music, the, 219
Royal College of Music, the, 212

et seq.
Rubinstein, Anton, 59, 83
Rudersdorff, Madame (soprano

singer), 24
Rudorff, Ernst, 133
Russell, John Scott, 82

S

; Sainton, Prosper (violinist), 67
; Saint- Saens, Camille, 278 et seq.

St. James's Hall, 313
I St. Leonards, Lord, 6

St. Patrick's Cathedral, 37 et seq.

St. Paul's Cathedral, 71

INDEX

327

St. Stephen's Church (Dubhn), 6,

28 et seq.
Sale (pupil of Handel), 43
Salisbury', the Marquis of, 27
Salmon, Dr. George (Provost of

T.C.D.), 11, 12
Santley, Sir Charles, 83, 89, 91, 92
Sauret, Emile (violinist), 70
" Savonarola " (Opera), 244 et scq.
Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, Ernst, Duke of,

148
Saj'ers, Tom (pugilist), 64, 74
Schalchi, Madame (contralto singer),

89
Schlosser (tenor singer), 170
Scholarships. 139
Schott, Ante ^tenor singer), 191
Schroder - Devrient, "\Vilhelmina

(soprano singer), 199
Schubert, Franz, 173, 271
Schulze (organ builder), 253
Schumann, Clara, 56, 133, 145
Schumann, Robert, 50, 75, 83, 112,

116, 133, 270, 318
Schweitzer, 47
Sedgwick, Dr. Adam (Professor of

Geology), 120
Seed, Stephen (Crown Solicitor), 63
Seeley, Professor J. B., 125
Seymour, Canon Edward, 40
Sharp, Becky, 26
Simrock (music publisher), 271
Sinico, Madame (soprano singer), 89
Sistinc Choir, the, 134, 275
Smart, Sir George, 44
Smith, Rev. C. J. E., 113
Smith, "Father" (organ builder),

38, 105
Smith, Dr. John, 22, 56
Smith, Right Hon. J. Parker, 210
Smith, Richard (baritone singer), 42
Smith, T. B. C. (Master of the

Rolls), 6
Smyly, Sir Philip (physician), 9
Society of Antient Concerts. See

Anticnt
Society, New Philharmonic. See

New
Society for the Preservation of Irish

Music, 19
Solesmcs, the monks of, 309
Sothcrn (actor), 93
Spohr, Louis, 146
Spring Rice, Sir Cecil, 232
Spring liicc, Hon. Slcidicn, 66
Squire, W. Barclay, 189
Staudigl (bass singer), 29, 32

Stanford, John, 26 et seq., 31, 32,

40, 110, 132
Stanford, Mary, 56, 65, 255
Stephen, James Kemieth, 184 et seq.
Stevenson, Sir John, 19
Stewart, Sir Robert Prescott, 17, 24,

46 et seq., 75, 96
Stockhausen, Julius, 133, 134, 166
Stoker, Bram, 230
Stokes, Dr. William (physician), 9,

19
Stokes, Sir William (surgeon), 84
Straus, Ludwig, 53, 166
Strauss, Johann, 33
Strauss, Richard, 263, 268
Street, E. (architect), 39
Sucher, Joseph (conductor), 173, 244
Sucher, Frau Rosa (soprano singer).

173, 244
Sullivan, Sir Arthur, 54, 73, 82, 108,

123, 247, 290

T
Tadema, L. Alma, R. A., 160
Tallaght, Battle of, 93
Tamagno (tenor singer), 91
" Tannhiiuser " (Wagner), 84
Temple, Archbishop, 138
Temple Church, the, 71
Tennyson, Alfred, Lord, 66, 151,

226, 231 et scq., 239
Tennyson, Hallam, Lord, 107, 121
Tennyson, Hon. Lionel, 28, 121, 232
Thackeray, W. M., 26, 121, 236, 305
Thalberg, Sigismund, 60
Theatre Royal, Dublin, 86 et seq.
Thomas, Ambroise, 91
Thompson, Lady (Miss Kate Loder),

166
Thompson, Dr. W. H. (Master of

Trinity), 107, 111, 121 ct seq., 187,

242
Thorndike, Herbert E. (baritone

singer), 117
Thumb, General Tom, 30
Tietjens, Therose (soprano singer),

83, 89 et seq., 141
Todd, Dr. J. H., 12, 19
Tottenham, Charles (of Bally-

ciirry), 9
Trebelli (contralto singer), 83, 89
Trench, Arclibishop, 10, 11, 121
"Tristan and Isolde" (Wagner),

84
Trotter, Rev. Coutts, 120, 125
Tschailiowsky, Peter lltitch, 278 et

seq.

328

INDEX

V

Vordi, Giuseppe, 89, 136, 267, 278,

281 et seq.
Vere, Aubrey clc, 25, 6G
Vere, Mary Lucy, Lady de, 25
Verrall, Dr. A. W., 121
Viardot- Garcia, Madame, 285 ct

scq.
Victoria, Her Majesty Queen, 26,

233, 258 ct scq.
Vieuxtemps, Henri (violinist), 61
Vogl, H. (tenor singer), 170

W

Wagner, Bichard, 50, 58, 67, 84,

112, 136, 146, 151, 154, 167 ct seq.,

196 et seq.
Walker, Fred, A.R.A., 236
Wallace, William (composer of

Operas), 21, 50
Walmisley, Professor T. A., 129 et

seq.
Wasielewsky von, 133
Waterford, Christina, Marchioness

of, 45
Watts, G. F., E.A., 70, 237, 276

Watts, H. E. (author), 236

Weimar, 191, 268

Wellington, Arthur, Duke of, 63

Wesley, Dr. S. S., 46, 49, 254

West, Dr., Dean of St. Patrick's, 8

West, Hercules H., 79

West, Richard W., 110

Westby, Minor Canon of St. Pa-
trick's, 15 et seq., 23

Westminster Abbey, 71

Whately, Archbishop, 10

Whiteside, Lord Chief Justice, 7

Wieniawski, H. 67, 150

Wilhehnj, August (violinist)^ 174

Williams, C. F. Abdy, 116

■Williams, Miss (Mrs. Lockey, con-
tralto singer), 55

Wilt, Marie (singer), 133

Wordsworth, William, 66

Wylde, Dr., 198

Wynne, Edith (soprano singer), 110

Z

Zglinitzki, General von, 198
Zoological Gardens, the Dublin, 95
Zozimus, 97

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AUTUMN
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4'«'»

LETTERS OF CLARA SCHUMANN AND
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Edited by Dr. BERTHOLD LITZMANN.
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school of German musicians, while the latter has probably never
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Edward Arnold dc Co.^s Autumn Announcements. 3

ing of Canberra, the new capital of Australia, afford a fine example
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FIELD-MARSHAL LORD NAPIER OF
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One Volume. Demy 8vo. With Illustrations and Maps.

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4 Edward Arnold <fe Go.''s Autumn Announcements.

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HELLENISTIC CIVILISATION.

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HOMER'S ITHACA.

A VINDICATION OF TRADITION.
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The island now called Ithaca or Ithaki has always been identified
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A BRITISH GARDEN FLORA.

A CLASSIFICATION AND DESCRIPTION OF THE GENERA

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6 Edward Arnold d; CoJ's Autumn Announcements.

which are or have been in use. Yet with the aid of the various
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By LEON W. COLLET, D.Sc.

Pkofessob of Geology and Paleontology in the IJNrvERSiTY

OP Geneva.

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Edward Arnold ds Co.'s Autumn Announcements. 7

and the Aosta Valley. By reading beforehand the section dealing
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By E. M. FORSTER.

Fellow of King's College, Cambridge.
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English Literature.

8 Edward Arnold do Go's Autumn Announcements.

ARISTOPHANES :-

"THE BIRDS" AND "THE FROGS."

Translated into Rhymed English Verse by
MARSHALL MACGREGOR.

Reader in Greek est the University of London.
Author of " Leaves of Hellas," etc.

Crown 4to. 12s. 6d. net.

Before entering upon his entertaining and scholarly translations
of the two Plays, the author provides the reader with a vigorous
Introductory Essay on the form and spirit of Aristophanic Comedy.
Then follow in order, translations of " The Birds " and " The Frogs,"
which must be read for their value to be appreciated. After the
Plays comes an Appendix on the Interpretation of certain passages,
the meaning of which has presented difficulty. Mr. MacGregor's
previous volume, " Leaves of Hellas," won golden opinions and
one cannot but admire the resourcefulness and humour which are
so conspicuous in his clever translations of these wonderful Plays.

MODERN SKMNG.

By ALAN H. D'EGVILLE.

Member of the Alpine Ski Club, British and Swiss IlNivERsmES
Ski Clubs and the British Ski-Jumping Club.

With over 100 Illustrations and Diagrams.
Demy 8w. 12s. 6d. net.

Mr. d'EgviUe's name is so well known to all devotees of the
grand sport of Ski-ing, that his book needs no introduction. His
experience has been long and varied. During fourteen winters
spent on the snow, he has seen an enormous amount of Ski-ing of
all kinds and has studied many schools, from all angles, first as a
beginner in the Black Forest and later in tours from the principal
centres in Switzerland and the Tyrol. He has competed fre-
quently in races, has been a candidate for the British Ski tests,
has acted as Judge, Course-setter, Referee and Organizer of
Championships, etc.

In this volume the technique of good ski-ing as practised to-day

Edward Arnold dh Co.'s Autumn Announcements. 9

is described in clear and well-chosen language, and profusely
illustrated by a large number of photographs and diagrams pre-
pared specially for the book. The author himself arranged the
pose of each photograph in such a way as to show the exact sequence
of movements in the diflferent practice exercises and turns, and
the diagrams — also drawn by the Author — further elucidate the
text and make it a simple matter to follow the verbal descriptions.

The first few chapters deal with the preliminary operations
of Rimning Position, Traversing and Stemming. These are
followed by chapters describing in detail the different Ski-ing
Turns — the Stemming Turns, Christiania Turns, Jump Turns,
Telemark Turns, etc. Then come the important auxiliary prin-
ciples of Ski-Turning, Weight-Shifting, Leaning, and the work
of the Knees, Back, Shoulders and Heels. The uses of the Stick
are expounded at some length, and the concluding chapters are
devoted to Racing, Course-Setting and Touring.

The interest and value of the book are so great that it will form
an indispensable part of the equipment of every follower of the
art of Ski-ing, both novice and expert.

KENYA DAYS.

By M. ALINE BUXTON.

Demy 8vo. Illustrated. 12s. 6d. net.

Mrs. Buxton has lived for several years in Kenya, and is
admirably qualified to satisfy the curiosity of people at home
about the country itself, its natives and its European population,
the lives they lead and how they lead them. " It is the value
of these pages," says Major Crowdy, a well-known resident in
Kenya, " that apart from the colour and movement which pervade
them, they give a fresh and frank presentation of the things which
are done daily by different classes of the community." Mrs.
Buxton has no political axe to grind, nor is she an advocate of
any theory for dealing with native races. She simply describes
things from the stand-point of a young English lady, whose lot
has been cast in the Colony and who resolves to get the best out
of life there. She knows how the farmer lias to struggle for his
crops against the vagaries of weather and insect pests ; she has
felt the joy of a " Safari " into the blue ; she can smile at the
curious inconsequence of the native mind ; she can sympathize
with the work of the Ollicial and ap|)re(;iate the troubles of the settler.
Every chapter in the book Ls vivid with an actuality which only
experience can impart.

10 Edward Arnold S Co.^s Autumn Announcements.

THROUGH TIBET TO EVEREST.

By Capt. J. B. L. NOEL.
Small Demy 8vo. With many Illustrations. 10s. 6d. net.

As long ago as 1913, Capt. Noel, who had already accomplished
a good deal of mountain travel on the borders of India and Tibet,
set before himseH the alluring goal of seeking out the passes that
lead to Everest and if possible coming to close quarters with the
great mountain. He penetrated far into the mysterious land, but
was forcibly turned back by the Tibetans after getting within forty
miles of Everest. The journey, however, enabled him to observe
many interesting features of Tibetan, especially monastic, life
and habits. After this came the Great War and it was not until
1921 that leave was granted for the first famous expedition to
Everest, led by Col. Howard-Bury. This expedition was in the
nature of a reconnaissance, but war had been declared upon the
mountain, and the assault began in earnest in 1922 under the
leadership of General Bruce. In the second expedition Capt. Noel
had the good fortune to be chosen as the Official Photographer,
and being a shrewd observer and a vivid writer he throws much
new light on what happened that year. In particular, the account
he gives as an eyewitness of the disaster to the porters who were
overwhelmed by an avalanche is most arresting and terrible.

Again in the third and latest expedition of 1924, Capt. Noel had
the privilege of acting as photographic historian, and this time
he produced his famous film, " The Epic of Everest," which has
been exhibited all the world over. He was also instrumental in
preparing the unique Everest postage stamp, greatly prized as a
remarkable souvenir.

There is much in this volume that has not appeared in any of
the other books on the Everest Expeditions. Capt. Noel describes
them from the point of view of an onlooker on the spot and has
many valuable observations to make. The illustrations from his
photographs are extraordinarily beautiful.

AMONG OUR BANISHED BIRDS.

By BENTLEY BEETHAM.

Small Demy Svo. Illustrated. 10s. 6d. net.

This is an accoimt of the Author's wanderings in different parts
of Europe for the purpose of studying numerous colonies of beautiful

Edward Arnold d; Co.'s Autumn Announcements. 11

birds in their chosen haunts. It may come as a surprise to the
reader to learn that in former days most of these birds had breed-
ing grounds in our own island, and there is little doubt that they
would return if they could find sanctuary and protection in this
country. Among the species described are the Avocet, the Spoon-
bill, the Godwit, the StUt, the Buff-backed Heron and others.
The Author is an enthusiastic photographer and has obtained
some remarkable pictures, acquired in the face of extraordinary
difficulties. One has only to read his interesting chapter on The
Marisma in Spain to appreciate the arduous nature of his quest
and the rich reward he reaped. The great interest of the book
is due to its being entirely a record of first-hand observations in
the field by a naturalist thoroughly well-equipped for pursuing a
hobby of unfailing delight. He possesses also a vivid and attractive
style and his sympathy with the birds will endear him to all nature-
lovers.

NEW FICTION.
A GIRL ADORING.

By VIOLA MEYNELL.

Author of " Young Mrs. Cruse," etc.

Crown Svo. 7s. 6d. net.

This beautifully WTitten novel is an illustration of the unappre-
ciated fact that truth is much more interesting than fiction. The
story of " A Girl Adoring " is merely the story of how a girl, sensitive
and uncalculating as only youth can be, falls in love ; but because
Miss Viola Meynell is an artist, her study of Claire is not only the
portrait of a very charming personality, but also a subtle and
individual commentary on life. The sketches of Claire's lover,
her gentle sLstcr-in-law to whom everything matters because
nothing does, her brother a well-organized and thorough -going
egoist, arc entertaining anci illuminating revelations of human
nature. They are very ordinary ]K'(jple leading the quiet, not to
say monotonous life of gentlemen-farmers in Sussex ; so were
the Miss Dashwoods and Mr. Collins and Fanny and Anne ordinary

12 Edward Arnold d; Co.'s Autumn Announcements.

people, yet whose affairs could be more passionately interesting ?
That genius for observation of the everyday human scene which
makes Jane Austen's novels so adorable, is also possessed by Miss
Meynell. It is a novelist's most precious gift, for it creates life
anew. That gift, together with a power of expressing her thoughts
and perceptions in precise and lovely language, make this an
enchanting novel. Miss Meynell may share a quality with Jane
Austen, but she is like no one else but herself.

POOR FISH.

By VIOLET KAZARINE.

Crown 8vo. 7s. 6d. net.

A first novel, which gives a remarkably interesting study of an
English girl who marries a Russian. The period is the present
day, and the family of Janet, the heroine, are spending the wmter
in Cairo where they meet Alexei and his sister, who appear to be
Russian grandees, in exUe since the revolution. Acquaintance is
made and love soon follows ; but marriage discovers the weakness
of two incompatible characters. The author dissects the situation
with relentless perspicacity ; the superficial glamour of Alexei's
personal attractions, which were irresistible to Janet in love,
fades beneath the pressure of financial straits and domestic worries.
Once more we feel the sad truth embodied in Kipling's famous
■wrords — " East is east and west is west," the truth that the Russian
psychology differs poles asiinder from our own. How it all ends
the reader learns as the story develops. It is a briUiant and con-
vincing study of character, a drama without a dull scene in it.

RECENT NOVELS.

A SILENT HANDICAP.

A TALE OF THE DEAF AND DUMB.

By ANN DENMAN.

Crown 8vo. 7s. 6d. net.

" The common phrase applied to realistic fiction — ' a slice of life ' — can
seldom have been so truly exemplified as it is in this novel. . . - The story
achieves all the success that must inevitably accompany a narration so con-
vincingly detailed, and enlivened by so many true and sympathetic glimpses
into character. There is a love story — and very moving it is." — The Times.

" A very sound piece of work. . . . Nothing is emphasized for the sake
of effect, and the result is poignantly impressive." — Morning Post.

" A story to read and ponder over. Withal, it is a most cheery, whole-
some and exceedingly well-told tale." — Western Mail.

Edward Arnold dh Co.'s Autumn Announcements. 13

THE CLUE.

By Mrs. J. 0. ARNOLD.
Crown 8vo. 7s. 6d. net.

" Something simple and charming and old-fashioned lingers about this
etory of a humble girl's love-affair in France about twenty years after the
Revolution." — The Bookman.

" A very pleasing romance. . . . Mrs. Arnold has chosen her characters
with great skill and developed them with much literary adroitness." — Daily
Telegraph.

" A good mystery tale, well-written and strong in atmosphere." — Spec-
tator.

" A true romance, written with careful art. It has the additional merit of
blending beauty with the thrills." — The Sketch.

THE SLIPXOACH.

By CUTHBERT BAINES.
Crown 8vo. 7s. 6d. net.

Attthor of " The Down Train," " The Blue Poppy," etc.

" Mr. Baines is too good a literary craftsman to content himself with the
bare-bones style of most detective stories. His characters are no mere auto-
mata, and furthermore he has some ideas about contemporary life. The
result is a detective yarn of more than usual interest." — DaUij Telegraph.

" He mitigates his thrillers with humour and scholarship. ' The Slip-
Coach ' is no exception." — The Observer.

" What distinguishes Mr. Baines from most crime story-tellers is that he
has brains and ideas." — Review of Reviews.

" The clever entertainment is produced with unusual literary skill." —
Morning Post.

Cheap Editions of Novels by the late Mary J. H. Skrine.

SHEPHERD E ASTON 'S DAUGHTER.

Thirleenlh Impression.
Popular Edition. Crown, Svo. 3s. 6d. net.

A STEPSON OF THE SOIL.

Popular Edition. Crown Svo. 3s. 6d. net.

" Mrs. Skrine's admirable novel is one of those unfortunately rare books
which, without extenuating the lianl facts of life, maintuin and raise one's
belief in human nature. The story is Him[)Io, but tlio miuiticr of its telling
is admiraVily uncommon. Her portraits are quite extraordinarily vivid." —
Spectator.

14 Edward Arnold & Co.'s Autumn Announcements.

BECENT NOTABLE BOOKS.

FRANCE, SPAIN AND THE RIF.

By WALTER B. HARRIS, F.S.A., F.R.C.S.
With Illustrations aiid Map. Demy 8vo. 21s. net.

" Mr. Harris has written about as good a book as covild have been written
on the troubles in Morocco during recent years. He writes out of a vast
knowledge of Morocco, and with a vivid narrative gift." — Daily News.

" A most able and interesting account, written by one intimately acquainted
with his subject." — The Times.

" None can write with greater authority, and Mr. Harris has literary gifts
which orJy too many ' authorities ' are denied. This is an admirably vivid
narrative." — The Observer.

A HISTORY OF EUROPEAN DIPLOMACY,

1914-1925.

By R. B. MOWAT, M.A.

Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Oxford. Author of " A History
OF European Diplomacy, 1814-1914," etc.

Demy 8vo. 16s. net.

" Mr. Mowat is already well known as an historian of modern diplomacy,
and the book before us must further enhance his reputation. It is a very
clear and reliable account of the diplomacy of the war and the peace, with
which we are still, every one of us, so vitally concerned." — Liverpool Post.

" Will meet the needs of the average reader who desires a general account
of the eventful years since July, 1914." — Manchester Guardian.

" We cannot mistake the moderation and good sense that pervade this
book. Both as a compendium of diplomacy and a collection of narratives it
deserves all praise." — Cambridge Review.

NEW IMPRESSION.

THE WANING OF THE MIDDLE AGES.

A STUDY OF THE FORMS OF LIFE, THOUGHT AND ART IN
FRANCE AND THE NETHERLANDS IN THE FOURTEENTH
AND FIFTEENTH CENTURIES.

By J. HUIZINGA.

Professor in the University of Leiden.
Demy 8vo. With Illustrations. 16s. net.

" Professor Huizinga's methods of approach are original, and even when
one is not inclined to agree with some of his generalizations, his argument is
so well illustrated from contemporary records that refusal is not enough." —
Daily News.

" With what eyes, Professor Huizinga asks, did men look at life and God
and the world in these centuries, when the splendid sunset of medisevalism,
mingled with the pale dawn of the Renaissance ? To answer his question
he draws with equal felicity upon poets, painters, moralists and historians.
The result is a remarkably vivid picture of an age, the very complication of
which gives it much of its attraction." — The Nation.

" The author guides and instructs us with a practised pen. His thoughtful
and well-ordered book deserves careful study. The illustrations are delightful,
and have evidently been selected with great care and judgement." — The
Times Literary /Supplement.

Edunrd Arnold cfc Co.'s Autumn Announcements. 15

THE POLITICAL IDEAS OF THE

GREEKS.

By Dr. J. L. MYRES, F.S.A.

Wykeham Professor of AxciEinc History in the University of Oxford.

Demy 8vo. 14s. net.

" Professor Myres' new book may be warmly commended. It will show
how our comprehension of the Greek attitude has been widened and deepened
by modem historical and anthropological research. The special value of the
book lies in the constant reference to parallel ideas and usages in non-Hellenic
communities, whether ancient or modem, primitive or advanced." — Daily
Telegraph.

" Professor Myres writes with vivacity and with a sense of life that enables
him to bring home the social existence of the ancient Greeks to our imagina-
tion."— Daily News.

THE WILDERNESS OF SINAI.

By H. J. L. BEADNELL, M.Inst.M.M., F.R.G.S., F.G.S.

Survey of Egypt.
Author of " An Egyptian Oasis," " The Fayum Province of Egypt,"

etc.

With a Foreword by

Dr. D. G. HOGARTH.

President of the Royal Geographical Society.
Demy 8vo. With Illustrations and Maps. 10s. 6d. net.

" Seldom is the desert traveller so well equipped both for ' describing the
waste and telling how it was made.' " — Scotsman.

" Mr. Beadnell is a good guide to the geology and sport of the Sinaitic
Peninsula for those who care to take a short holiday with a spice of discom-
fort, or even of danger." — The Times.

" A pleasant mixture of geological science and travel pictures in a land of
august and ancient memory. A word of praise must be given for the beautiful
illustrations." — Manchester Otiardian.

THE EPIC OF MOUNT EVEREST.

By Sm FRANCIS YOUNGHUSBAND, K.C.S.I., K.C.I.E.

First Chairman of the Mount Everest Committee.
Fourth Impression. 8vo. Illustrated. 7s. 6d. net.

" The Mount Everest Committee are to be congratulated on having found
at hand in their first Chairman, Sir Francis Younghusband, a bard excep-
tionally qualified both by his knowledge of the Himalaya and his enthusiasm
for mountain exploration to do full justice not only to the dramatic incidents
of the Groat Adventure, but also to the spirit that prevailed among those
who took part in it. In a comparatively Hmall volume Sir Francis Young-
husband has been successful in weaving the events of the throe campaigns
against Mount Everest into a consocutivo and engrossing narrative." — The
Geographical Journal.

16 Edward Arnold d: Co.'s Autumn Announcements.

A GARDEN IN WALES.

By A. T. JOHNSON.
Demy Svo. With 16 pages of illustrations. 16s. net.

" One of the best-written and most delightful garden books we have read
for a long time. It is full of good things. ... A really charming volume,
which we recommend to all garden-lovers." — The Field.

" This is a pleasant example of the books about gardening which mingle
lively conversational description with sound practical advice." — The Times.

" A book which is both pleasant and exceedingly useful. Although situated
in North Wales, the garden is like many another, and the reader will find
that much of the information will apply equally well in his own case." —
Country Life.

IN BLACK AND WHITE.

By SYDNEY HOLLAND, VISCOUNT KNUTSFORD.
Fourth Impression. Demy Svo. With Portrait. 21s. net.

" A veritable treasure-house of entertaining anecdotes." — Morning Post.

" The ' man in the street ' should beg, borrow or steal Viscount Knutford's
book. Every page has a laugh in it, yet all the time the reader is having
revealed to him the charming personality and actions of one of our greatest
doers of good." — Daily News.

" Among the notable books of reminiscences of the year, that of Lord
Knutsford, by reason of its humour, its wisdom, and its loving-kindliness,
is the one that will remain longest in the memory and lie closest to the heart
of the reader." — Queen.

ON WRITING AND WRITERS.

By the late Sir WALTER RALEIGH.

Author of " Style," " Milton," " Wordsworth," etc.
Second Impression. Crown Svo. 6s. net.

" Professor Gordon's admirable editing has produced a volume not only
well worth reading, but which finally may prove to be among the most endur-
ing of the books of the late Sir Walter Raleigh." — Saturday Review.

" A book which recalls with vivid emphasis the charm and human quality
of Raleigh's scholastic oratory." — The Times.

" This is a sparkling and stimulating book by a brilliant and wiKul writer."
— Daily News.

" Opinions, observations and reflections on books and on writers, all of
them containing the marks of the rich mint in which they were struck." —
Scotsman.

London : Edward Aknold & Co., 41 & 43 Maddox Stbeet, W.l. ■

'3 8 6

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