dJorncU Iniuetoitg library 
 
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 FROM THE 
 
 BENNO LOEWY LIBRARY 
 
 COLLECTED BY 
 
 BENNO LOEWY 
 
 1854-1919 
 BEQUEATHED TO CORNELL UNIVERSITY 
 
B Cornell University 
 
 M Library 
 
 The original of tliis book is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924022432607 
 
•.. ^,, Cornell University Library 
 ML 417.D55 
 
 Musical memories. 
 
 3 1924 022 432 607 
 
 MUSICAL MEMORIES 
 
MUSICAL MEMORIES 
 
 M. DI EH L 
 
 (awce mangold) 
 
 LONDON 
 RICHARD BENTLEY AND SON 
 
 ^ablishcrs in fflrbinars iff 3S« #:aj«st2 the <Siuitn 
 '"^ 1897 
 
 [A II tights reserved ] 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 Paris in the early sixties — The Conservatoire : its 
 organization, etc.- — -The Pasdeloup concerts — 
 The various societes for chamber music — Con- 
 cert-rooms — The establishment of Pleyel — The 
 Pleyel pianofortes — Messrs. Erard's warehouse 
 — Sebastian Erard — Madame Erard — Her circle 
 — Madame de Spontini — Ernst Lubeck — Fran- 
 cois Plante — Evening with Madame Erard in the 
 Rue du Mail — Theodore Ritter — Hans Seeling 
 — Vincent Adler — Tragic end of Lubeck — 
 Death and its ravages l- 
 
 CHAPTER ir. 
 
 Chopin's pupils — Monsieur Teleffsen — The Princess 
 Czartoryska at home — Monsieur Fontana — Bio- 
 graphy in brief of Frederic Chopin — His career 
 as an artist — Matrimonial engagement — Meeting 
 with Madame Dudevant (George Sand) — Failure 
 of health — Visit to Majorca — Rupture with 
 
viii Contents 
 
 George Sand — Visit to England — Personal remi- 
 niscences of Chopin during his visit to London, 
 communicated by Mr. A. J. Hipkins, F.S.A., 
 etc. — Miss Stirling — Her part in Chopin's last 
 illness — Story of the bank-notes — His death — 
 Funeral as related by an eye-witness — Miss 
 Stirling's Chopin museum — Fate of the relics — 
 His compositions — His pupil Filtsch 23 — 53 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 The Paris opera-houses — ' Tannhauser ' — Graziani 
 and Mario — The pianist Ascher — Hector Berlioz 
 — His life — His compositions and literary works 
 — Failure of ' Les Troyens ' — Domestic troubles, 
 illness, and death — The writer's personal remi- 
 niscences of him — The brothers Galignani — 
 M. de Lesseps — Mr. Wyld, the English painter 
 — Mr. and Mrs. Wittering — Rossini 54 — 73 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Adolphe Henselt— His birth and education — Resi- 
 dence in Weimar under Hummel — Emancipation 
 — Self study, visit to Karlsbad, and first appear- 
 ances — Henselt in public— Marriage — Visit to 
 London in 1850 — Personal appearance and cha- 
 racteristics — His playing— Visit to London in 
 1867, and recital at Messrs. Broadwood's— Hen- 
 selt in his castle in Silesia — The Frau von Hen- 
 selt— Henselt as teacher— The effect of his 
 teaching— Life at Gersdorf— Henselt at the 
 
Contents ix 
 
 PAGE 
 
 piano — Schloss Waldau — Henselt's work in 
 Russia — His system and compositions — His 
 death 74 — 100 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 Music in England in the Sixties — The various concert 
 societies — Symptoms of a musical revival — 
 English musical art — Its position compared with 
 that of the music of other countries — English 
 vocalists and instrumentalists — Madame Arabella 
 Goddard — Her life and her talents — Sir Charles 
 Halle — The Monday Popular Concerts and Mr. 
 Arthur Chappell — Mr. H. F. Chorley and the 
 old Philharmonic — The Musical Union and its 
 director — Personal reminiscences of Mr. Ella — 
 His meeting with Henselt — Monster concerts — 
 'Benefit' concerts — Instrumental 'recitals' — 
 Herr Ernst Pauer, etc. - 1 01 — 124 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 The musical critics and their work — Mr. H. F. 
 Chorley — His birth, parentage, and education — 
 His introduction to London — Established as 
 critic to the Atherifsum — Ella and Chorley — 
 Virginia Gabriel — Chorley's works — -His death 
 — James W. Davison — His gifts and charac- 
 teristics — Davison and Weist Hill — Messrs. 
 Howard Glover, Desmond Ryan, and Suther- 
 land Edwards — A 'little dinner' — Some of 
 Davison's written opinions — Hisfuneral — Messrs. 
 Gruneisen, Hogarth, and Lincoln — The musical 
 critics of to-day 125 — 156 
 
Contents 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Two remarkable prodigies — Anton Rubinstein — His 
 boyhood — Incident on the Rhine — His student 
 life — Visits to England — Chorley on Rubinstein 
 — An eventful soiree — Subsequent career- 157 — 169 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 A musical season thirty years ago — The opera-houses 
 and principal concerts — English vocalists — Pablo 
 Sarasate — ' Angelina ' — Virginia Gabriel — The 
 Earl of Dudley — His life as musical amateur, 
 etc. — Lord Dudley and Hiram Power — The 
 ' Greek Slave '—Mr. F. H. Cowen— Mr. Tom 
 Hohler — The Marchioness of Downshire — Mrs. 
 Sargood — Mrs. Sargood's musical evenings — Ser- 
 geant Sleigh, Sir George and Lady Lewis, Miss 
 Amelia B. Edwards, Miss Hosmer, Mr. Home, 
 etc. — Dr. Black — Dr. Black and the Erard 
 pianofortes — The great medal of the Exhibition 
 of 185 1 — Soiree at Dr. Black's — Miss Elizabeth 
 Philp — A musical tour in Cornwall 170 — 200 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 Musical evenings in Queen Square — ' Arthur Napo- 
 leon,' Ernst Lubeck, Martin Lazare, Sigismund 
 Blumner, Mr. Scotson Clark, Mr. H. F. Parry — 
 Ole Bull — A Beethoven violin sonata — ^Jenny 
 Lind — -Meeting at a dinner at the Mansion 
 House — Jenny Lind and ' Auld Robin Gray ' — 
 Introduction to Thalberg— His playing — Made- 
 
Contents xi 
 
 PAGE 
 
 moiselle Titiens in opera and at home— Madame 
 Rudersdorff — Mademoiselle Liebhart — Signor 
 Bevignani and his betrothed zoi — 222 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 Leopold Jansa — Memories of Beethoven — Ferdinand 
 Hiller — His life, etc. — Hummel, Mendelssohn 
 — Killer's compositions and literary works — 
 Hiller in London — Meetings with Hiller — His 
 friendships — Mrs. Joseph Robinson — Killer's 
 letters - 223 — 237 
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 The pianists of the sixties — Liszt in the forties — 
 Liszt in the eighties — Clara Schumann and her 
 husband — Schumann and the Kenselts — Madame 
 Schumann's playing — Ker pupils — Alfred Jaell 
 — Herr Ernst Pauer — His arrival in England — 
 His playing — The musician's life in London — 
 Mr. Henry Broadwood and pianists — The Broad- 
 wood pianofortes - - 238 — 255 
 
 CHAPTER XIL 
 
 The violin and violinists — The sisters Milanollo — 
 The sisters Ferni — Paganini — Joseph Joachim — 
 Vieuxtemps and Ernst — Wieniawski — Jean 
 Becker and Aloys Kettenus^Blagrove and Car- 
 rodus — Camillo Sivori — A winter at Nice — 
 Sophie Cruvelli (the Viscomtesse de Vigier) — 
 Artists at Nice — Arnateurs at Nice — Various 
 
xii Contents 
 
 soirees — Collectors of stringed instruments — Cap- 
 tain Grindlay — ^The visitors — The doctors — 
 Jeffrey Prowse — Magnanimity of a physi- 
 cian - - 256 — 290 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 English composers in mid-century — Michael Balfe 
 — Vincent Wallace — John Barnett and his rela- 
 tions — Sterndale Bennett — Sir Arthur Sullivan 
 — Mr. F. H. Cowen — Conclusion 291 — 311 
 
MUSICAL MEMORIES. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 Paris in the early sixties — The Conservatoire : its 
 organization, etc. — -The Pasdeloup concerts — The 
 various societes for chamber music — Concert-rooms — 
 The establishment of Pleyel — The Pleyel piano- 
 fortes — Messrs. Erard's warehouse — Sebastian Erard 
 — Madame Erard — Her circle — Madame de Spontini 
 — Ernst Lubeck — Francois Plante — Evening with 
 Madame Erard in the Rue du Mail— Theodore 
 Ritter — Hans Seeling — Vincent Adler — Tragic end 
 of Lubeck — Death and its ravages. 
 
 Most lives, however ordinary, have their 
 chrysahs and butterfly stages. Perhaps it would 
 be more to the purpose to say that we can all 
 compare certain scenes in our Jives with those 
 in some pantomime, when, after the darksome 
 
 I 
 
Musical Memories 
 
 shades of some gloomy cave, there is suddenly 
 brightness, life, animation. 
 
 To a young artist, toiling for years shut up 
 in a London room alone with an instrument, 
 practising hour after hour, day after day, with- 
 out intermission — to debuter in the then gayest 
 capital of the world was truly a transformation 
 scene. 
 
 Leaving London in the grip of a black, frost, 
 and swathed in the most gruesome of yellow- 
 black fogs, we journeyed to Newhaven, and 
 crossed the Channel one January night in the 
 early sixties, to awaken in bright sunshine at 
 Dieppe. Blackness and smoke were left behind 
 us in murky London. Here all was white 
 or gay colouring in the brilliant sunlight : 
 the blue blouses of porters, the red and blue 
 uniforms of the gendarmes, the various tints 
 of the houses, were patches enlivening the 
 glistening frost which lay thick on ground and 
 trees. Then into the train — and a journey 
 through a glittering white fairyland of frosted 
 poplar-trees in straight rows dividing the frozen 
 fields ; then Paris and its myriads of lights. 
 
Imperial Paris 
 
 Imperial Paris, seen next day in the glare of 
 a winter sun, was truly a brilliant city. It had 
 the air of being perpetually en fete. Work 
 proceeded briskly enough : great white mansions 
 were building, the busy workmen swarming up 
 the ladders and about the unfinished piles of 
 masonry ; and the streets were alive with busy 
 people, blue-bloused men and white-capped 
 women. But they bore their burdens and hurried 
 on their errands gaily, and sang and shouted 
 as if this were some huge mid-winter fair. 
 Then display, luxury, reigned everywhere. 
 Richly-dressed women drove in the well- 
 appointed carriages, with their men-servants 
 swathed in furs. The shops were gorgeous ex- 
 hibitions of articles de luxe. Sounds of martial 
 music were audible as one drove along the 
 boulevards or into the Champs Elysees. Now 
 and then detachments of soldiers were to be 
 met, their uniforms spick and span, their horses 
 groomed to perfection. In this, the last decade 
 of the Empire, no sign of an approaching decline 
 and fall was perceptible. No one would have 
 dreamt that this enchanting city was to descend 
 
 I — 2 
 
Musical Memories 
 
 from her pinnacle of perfection to be less than 
 queen among her compeers. 
 
 All was absolute order, for all was im- 
 mediately under the Imperial thumb ; and 
 whatever the rale of the third Napoleon might 
 have been later, it was then to be felt in all 
 branches — in industries, science, as well as in 
 the government of the people and in art. 
 
 Music was ruled, perhaps more lightly and 
 under the surface — but still ruled — by the Im- 
 perial sceptre. Each year the Emperor com- 
 mented upon its progress, and in an address 
 showed how completely au fait he was with 
 what had been, what was, and what was con- 
 templated for the future. He was interested, 
 paternal, and, above all, well-informed. Each 
 year he bestowed decorations or distinctions 
 upon a. score or more of musicians. That 
 which impressed the neophyte was the complete- 
 ness of the musical organization of the city. 
 
 Firstly, there was the renowned Conservatoire, 
 like some gigantic ship to carry students to 
 their desired land of perfection — manned almost 
 entirely by Frenchmen, as a national school 
 
The Conservatoire 
 
 should be manned by native talent. But the 
 list of professors contained numbers of names 
 known to music students throughout the world. 
 With Auber, the veteran composer — almost an 
 octogenariati — ^at its head, such names occur 
 amongst the list of vocal, instrumental or 
 theoretic professors as Marmontel, Le Couppey, 
 Wekerlin, Alard, Dancla, Massart, Pasdeloup, 
 Duvernoy, Clapisson, Revial, Carafa, and others 
 too numerous to mention. Eight concerts were 
 regularly given on Sundays during the season, 
 with two extraordinaires. The programmes 
 were classical to a fault ; Beethoven — at that 
 time elected musical god for the worship of the 
 faithful — predominating, but Mozart, Handel, 
 and Haydn receiving lesser honours, and 
 Meyerbeer, Mendelssohn, Spontini, Rossini, 
 Weber, and others, figuring regularly in the 
 musical menus. 
 
 Popular classical concerts were just started 
 by M. Pasdeloup, and were thronged by an 
 eager public. In these the rigid classical rule in 
 force at the Conservatoire was so far relaxed as 
 to admit the works of Schumann, Gounod, 
 
Musical Memories 
 
 Adam, Franz Lachner, Nicolai, and others. 
 Occasional Beethoven and Mendelssohn festivals 
 were also given. 
 
 These orchestral concerts were supplemented 
 by several societes, established to give concerts of 
 chamber music. Perhaps the head of these was 
 that instituted by the violinist, Monsieur Alard, 
 and the violoncellist, Monsieur Franchomme, 
 who, together with the gifted young pianist Fran- 
 cois Plante, and others, gave five or six concerts 
 during the season. The Societe Armingaud et 
 Jacquard had as coadjutor the pianist Ernst 
 Lubeck, and the third and oldest established, 
 the Societe Maurin et Chevillard, enjoyed an 
 unvarying clientele, in spite of rivals. 
 
 At these quartett meetings, as we might term 
 them, classical music was the almost unvarying 
 rule, the beloved Beethoven being the composer 
 most often played. The favourite quartett was 
 Op. 59 in F, and the trio most looked for was 
 that in G (Op. 9). 
 
 These were the days when Gounod had not 
 yet electrified the musical world with his 
 ' Faust,' and Richard Wagner was an unknown 
 
Paris in the Sixties 7 
 
 quantity. In that last era of the Third Empire 
 there was a curious passion for the older and 
 more formal musical works ; and in the light 
 of subsequent events, the Parisian thirst then 
 for Beethoven — the Dutch genius claimed by 
 the Germans as their very own — is a some- 
 what peculiar coincidence. 
 
 These were the ' home teams ' of artists ; but 
 each season brought troops of tra.v£llmg viriuosi, 
 who gave concerts or seances in one or other of 
 the four salles — the Salle Herz, or the Tivoli, 
 or the Salle Erard (belonging to the celebrated 
 firm of pianoforte-makers), or the Salle Pleyel- 
 WolfF which was lent to artists by the Pleyel 
 firm, beloved of Chopin. 
 
 Paris in the sixties was generally visited by 
 the comets among the artists before they pro- 
 ceeded to London, which was then, as it is now, 
 their El Dorado — the spot where they would be 
 sure to recoup their losses elsewhere or refill 
 empty pockets. In Paris there was perhaps 
 more kvSoc than gold. But the atmosphere 
 was exhilarating. The French public, if capri- 
 cious, was passionate. It loaded a favourite with 
 
8 Musical Memories 
 
 applause ; it was lavish to extravagance when 
 its sympathies were touched. 
 
 ' You must go to Paris,' was the advice of the 
 autocrat of chamber music in London, the little 
 gentleman who would have seemed like Punch 
 redivivus, if only he had possessed a hump and 
 a screech — ■'■ Professor' John Ella. ' You cannot 
 come out here without credentials. You must 
 go to Paris.' 
 
 Awakening in the strange, beautiful city — 
 our stock-in-trade a bundle of letters of intro- 
 duction — the first step was to obtain a piano. 
 Accordingly, we drove to the Pleyel establish- 
 ment, Pleyel being the French firm for English 
 Broadwood - players. It was a fine place — 
 warmed to an intense heat, thickly carpeted, 
 solidly furnished, and a wilderness of hand- 
 some instruments. 
 
 Most pianists who have not already played 
 upon the pianos which were Chopin's favourites 
 would naturally be interested in making their 
 acquaintance. On this occasion the tyro who 
 was to be first heard in public on one of the 
 renowned instruments was charmed with their 
 
The Pleyel Pianofortes 
 
 pure, resonant tone, but found the remarkable 
 elasticity of their touch greatly unsuited to the 
 arbitrary method of tone-production which is a 
 characteristic of the ' Henselt school.' 
 
 The Pleyel touch, indeed, was totally unlike 
 that of Broadwood, with its plastic depth — and 
 the poor neophyte felt herself nonplussed. 
 
 ' These instruments are not at all like the 
 Broadwood pianos,' was her remark to the 
 gentleman who replaced the absent principals, 
 but who seemed as enamoured of his charges as 
 even they could have been. 
 
 He bridled with pride and satisfaction. 
 ' They are not. They are unlike all other 
 pianos in the world,' he said, bubbling over 
 with self-gratulation. ' The beloved and re- 
 gretted composer Chopin said their equal did 
 not exist.' 
 
 Crushed, we chose a small grand piano, and 
 drove gloomily back to the pleasant little hotel 
 in the Rue Notre Dame de Lorette, recom- 
 mended by Mr. Ella, who invariably occupied 
 rooms in its rez-de-chaussee during his frequent 
 visits to Paris. 
 
lo Musical Memories 
 
 ' Perhaps a few hours' practice will put every- 
 thing right,' said my companion consolingly. 
 
 But it did not. A couple of days merely 
 strengthened the antagonism between player 
 and instrument. There was nothing to do but 
 to confess one's self utterly unable to follow, 
 however distantly, in Chopin's footsteps — and 
 to seek the Maison Erard. 
 
 ' Erard ' is a household word wherever music 
 lives in the wide world. No pianist has ever 
 failed to recognize the perfection of the instru- 
 ments which are stocked in those palatial build- 
 ings in the Rue du Mail, Paris. 
 
 The Erard pianoforte was invented by 
 Sebastian Erard, a young man with a genius 
 for mechanics, who first saw the light in 1752. 
 His professor in mechanics told him he was ' a 
 born genius.' But it did not occur to him to 
 make use of that inventive genius in the matter 
 of pianofortes until induced to do so by his 
 patroness — a musical amateur — the Duchesse 
 de Villeroy. Then he put his hand to the 
 work, and did it with all his might. His first 
 essay in pianos was tried by a number of dis- 
 
Messrs. Erard's Establishment 1 1 
 
 tinguished artists in the presence of equally 
 distinguished amateurs in the Duchesse's salon, 
 and ' produced the most vivid impression.' 
 There was no halting midway of the Erard 
 pianoforte. It came, was seen, and conquered. 
 
 Sebastian died in 1 8 3 1 . The house was re- 
 presented in 1 86 1 by the widow of that nephew 
 Pierre, who, after living much in England, died 
 at his country-house, the celebrated Chateau de 
 la Muette, at Passy, in 1855. 
 
 During the greater part of the season Madame 
 Erard lived in her apartments in the Rue du 
 Mail. 
 
 Arriving at the great establishment, our 
 voiture de remise drove under the porie-cochere 
 into a quadrangle, around which were the high 
 buildings occupied principally by the instru- 
 ments, and we alighted at the door, the public 
 entrance to the office, on the right. 
 
 Here, although the bearers of a merely 
 nominal introduction, we were welcomed warmly 
 by the manager, an energetic old gentleman 
 with somewhat weak eyes and a skull-cap. An 
 English debutante, wishing to give a matinee 
 
12 Musical Memories 
 
 d' invitation. Most interesting ! Every facility 
 would be afforded to mademoiselle. Would 
 madame and mademoiselle give themselves the 
 trouble of viewing the salon^ which would be 
 placed at their disposal for the concert ? 
 
 We followed — through big rooms which 
 seemed all windows, rooms full of grand pianos ; 
 across a fine marble hall, into the concert- 
 room — a long salon all white and gilding, with 
 an elegantly decorated platform opposite the 
 entrance. It was furnished with rows of com- 
 fortable fauteuils upholstered in crimson velvet. 
 
 An evening was fixed for the concert, and we 
 drove off on a business expedition, calling on 
 artists, at the printers', etc. In spite of the air 
 oi do Ice far niente, there was no difficulty in the 
 arrangement of business with the Parisians. 
 Everyone seemed ready, on the alert, ' all there.' 
 On our return to the hotel, an Erard piano 
 occupied a conspicuous place in our sitting- 
 room. 
 
 Two days later, visiting the establishment 
 on minor affairs, we were introduced to the 
 acting representative of Madame Erard — her 
 
Madame Erard 1 3 
 
 brother-in-law, Monsieur SchaefFer, a tall man, 
 middle-aged, with a grave, kindly face and 
 a serious, interested manner. 
 
 ' Madame Erard wishes to make your 
 acquaintance,' he informed us, and presently 
 conducted us, staid but courtly, through the 
 marble hall, up a wide marble, softly-carpeted 
 staircase into a beautiful suite of choicely-fur- 
 nished, lofty rooms, in the smaller drawing- 
 room of which a delicate little lady of a certain 
 age, dressed in silk, with a rich lace cap on her 
 still golden-brown hair, sat at work. 
 
 Her welcome was both warm and gentle. 
 She knew of Adolphe Henselt, the great pianist, 
 although she had never succeeded in hearing 
 him play. It was pleasing to her to know his 
 pupil, who was, also, an Englishwoman. She 
 hoped she would make herself perfectly at home 
 in the house, and when she was to be left alone, 
 although with friends, that she would consider 
 her her deputy-mother. 
 
 From that moment the charming little lady 
 was as good as her word, and for more than 
 twp months the young English stranger was with 
 
14 Musical Memories 
 
 her, and with the handsome, dark-eyed matron 
 her sister, Madame SchaefFer, nearly every day, 
 and the whole of Sunday, enjoying the bright 
 companionship of the sweet young Mademoiselle 
 Marie, the SchaefFers' only daughter and the 
 favourite niece of her aunt — a dark, handsome 
 girl with soft black eyes. 
 
 Sunday, as usual in Paris, was the day in the 
 famille Erard. Madame received. At the 
 dinner-table covers were laid for those among 
 the resident or travelling pianists who were 
 privileged to come and go as they pleased. 
 There were some habitues who generally ap- 
 peared. One was Madame de Spontini, a pic- 
 turesque old lady, who invariably wore a reticule 
 with a bonbonniere and vinaigrette among its 
 contents, and carried a fan in her trembling, 
 jewelled fingers. She was the widow of the 
 composer, and, in spite of her old age, loved to 
 talk of music and musicians of the past, and 
 was actively interested in all that took place in 
 the present. 
 
 Another was Ernst Lubeck, the Dutch pianist, 
 a big, burly man with a curious artistic face, a 
 
Francois Plante 15 
 
 round head, and prominent, sea-green eyes. He 
 was a sound musician, a fine player; a passionate 
 Beethovenite ; Berlioz spoke of his technique as 
 ' prodigious.' But his success with his clientele 
 of pupils and hosts of friends was quite as much 
 due to his personality as to his talent. Lubeck 
 was a man overflowing with sympathetic kindli- 
 ness ; his prevailing characteristic, indeed, being 
 a forgetfulness of self-interest, which was rare 
 as it was admirable. 
 
 Francois Plante, then a slim, somewhat 
 melancholy-looking youth, reserved, yet mild and 
 modest, was another frequent visitor. His play- 
 ing was of a most delicate and ethereal type, his 
 touch bell-like and soft. Mozart, interpreted 
 by him, was Mozart newly revealed. He was 
 sensitive to a fault. Later in his career he took 
 umbrage at the conduct of an audience who 
 talked persistently while he played ; after the per- 
 formance he packed up his belongings, returned to 
 his native place in the Pyrenees, and remained in 
 obscurity for the next ten years— either shutting 
 himself up to study and to meditate, or travel- 
 ling in semi-incognito to other countries to 
 
1 6 Musical Memories 
 
 hear other pianists and acquaint himself with 
 their styles. 
 
 These two pianists — one the pianist of the 
 Alard and Franchomme seances, the other 
 (Lubeck) attached to those of Armingaud and 
 Jacquard — rivals, in fact — were really and truly 
 allies. They were among the intimates at 
 Madame Erard's dinner-table. In the evening 
 would arrive ladies — personal friends — and the 
 ' outer circle 'of artists, mostly pianists. While 
 the men talked and smoked over their cafe noir 
 and liqueur in the dining-room, the ladies would 
 form a picturesque group around Madame 
 Erard in her stately, dimly-lit bedchamber, 
 where the big bed with its fine tapestries loomed 
 in the shadow, and a solemn portrait of the 
 deceased Pierre Erard seemed to gaze down 
 upon the ladies, sipping their the a V Anglaise or 
 eau sucre, and prattling of their directors or 
 their babies. Presently there would be a 
 gradual drifting of the guests to the central 
 drawing - room, which was more brilliantly 
 lighted, and where the brocaded fauteuils were 
 placed in one or more rows around the full- 
 
A Musical Evening 17 
 
 sized grand piano, which was drawn into the 
 centre of the room. Then the evening's music 
 would begin ; the various pianists present 
 would vie with each other in the display of 
 their different styles. 
 
 One evening is particularly present in the 
 mind of the writer. Lubeck, as the home pianist 
 — the adopted musical son of the house — began 
 the performance, playing the principal part of 
 the sonata of Beethoven in E flat (Op. 29 or 
 31). Invariably, in spite of his robust physique 
 and his acknowledged merit, he suffered from 
 nervousness to a remarkable degree. Even 
 when playing to a few accustomed auditors, 
 Lubeck's bronzed countenance paled to lividity, 
 his prominent eyes acquired a stare of intense 
 anxiety. But his playing remained unaffected 
 thereby. On this particular occasion a new rival 
 was present, Theodore Ritter ; but his rendering 
 of this particular sonata, of which he gave a 
 most remarkable and delightful reading, was 
 never better, perhaps had never been so perfect. 
 
 Next came Ritter, as the lion of the occasion. 
 His contribution was also classical in the 
 
 2 
 
1 8 Musical Memories 
 
 extreme. But, finished as his style was, pure 
 as was his tone, there was a certain coldness and 
 seeming calculation which counterbalanced his 
 undeniable gifts. If memory does not deceive, 
 this lack of ' abandon,' this ' reserved force,' 
 hindered the supremacy of a remarkable career, 
 or that which might otherwise have been so. 
 
 While these two pianists had been playing, a 
 tall, emaciated, white-faced man had listened 
 quietly in the shade, leaning against the mantel- 
 piece. This was a Bohemian pianist, by name 
 Hans Seeling, who, after a residence in the East, 
 ^then, for his health, in the Southern Tyrol — 
 had returned to Paris, attracted as the moth to 
 the flame, for a glance at his attenuated frame 
 told of his temerity in braving a Northern 
 winter. He was asked to play. 
 
 He gave a composition of his own, an Eastern 
 reminiscence. It was a striking morfeau. The 
 calm Oriental sounds, the tinkling of bells, the 
 murmur of chanted prayers, the languid march 
 in a scorching land — all were given with a subtle, 
 suggestive charm, which reduced the listeners to 
 a somewhat mournful mood. 
 
A Musical Evening 19 
 
 He was so fragile, this ghost of a man, who 
 had an indefinable touch of a very living 
 genius ! 
 
 A sigh of almost relief might have been heard 
 as he slowly stretched his long body upwards 
 from the music-stool, and received the con- 
 gratulations of his hearers on the charm of 
 his composition and his interpretation of his 
 work. 
 
 It was cheering to see a healthy, brisk, and 
 thriving man assume the vacated seat at the 
 piano. The new-comer was a German virtmso, 
 Vincent Adler, whose tone was rich and full, 
 whose style was one which might be termed sym- 
 pathetic for lack of a more apposite term ; in 
 any case it fitted its subject, whether grave or 
 gay. Herr Adler played two or three brief 
 morfeaux, one — his own ' Styrienne,' a delight- 
 ful suggestion of a provincial rustic dance, with 
 zither accompaniment — a gem. It was hard for 
 a neophyte to be called upon to be the exponent 
 of her master — a great master — after such suc- 
 cessive displays : and in fear and trembling the 
 poor little fauvette intimidee, as Berlioz play- 
 
 2 — 2 
 
20 Musical Memories 
 
 fully called her, took her seat at the piano, but 
 poorly consoled after her penance on the music- 
 stool by the warm encouragement which Is so 
 generously given to the honest aspirants by the 
 past-masters of the craft. 
 
 This memorable evening was more than 
 thirty years ago, and of those who were its 
 principals, how few remain ! 
 
 Ernst Lubeck, then strong, overflowing with 
 energy, untiring in his bonhomie, had a tragic end. 
 
 The catastrophe, the rending in pieces of the 
 city of his adoption, unsettled his brain. Shortly 
 after Paris had partially recovered from the 
 scenes enacted during the siege and the Com- 
 mune, he once more played in public. Nothing 
 had been noticed to excite alarm in his de- 
 meanour until after the concert, when he 
 suddenly became so violently excited — stating 
 that he had not been sufficiently applauded, and 
 that the cause of this was his German name- 
 that it became evident that for the present he 
 was insane. His devoted wife (formerly Made- 
 moiselle de Plantis, the daughter of the Marquis 
 de Plantis, who practised as a physician) nursed 
 
Tragic End of Lubeck 21 
 
 him, with the assistance of her relatives — nursed 
 him, if in fear and trembling, yet with hope. 
 But as time went on, hope gave way to dismal 
 foreboding. Lubeck was undoubtedly mad, and 
 had to be strictly watched. Thus matters went 
 on until the Marquis, his father-in-law, died in 
 1876. During the subsequent grief of the 
 family vigilance was relaxed, and one day in 
 September, 1876, he escaped, and, wandering in 
 the Bois de Boulogne, entered a restaurant and 
 ordered dinner. 
 
 So far, so good. But when pay-time came, 
 poor Lubeck had no money in his pocket, and 
 no sense to explain his identity. He obstinately 
 refused his name and address, and, evidently 
 unsuspicious that he had to deal with a lunatic, 
 the restaurateur gave him into custody. He 
 was marched from police-station to police- 
 station throughout the night, and was only 
 traced by his terrified relatives next day. 
 Excitement and rough treatment hastened the 
 progress of his brain disease. It assumed an 
 acute form, and in a few days he expired. 
 
 Hans Seeling died in his native city of 
 
22 Musical Memories 
 
 Prague in 1862; and Vincent Adier, in such 
 seemingly robust health on the occasion men- 
 tioned, only lived till 1871. 
 
 And the queen of her circle, the charming 
 little chatelaine of the Rue du Mail — she also 
 has passed into her well-earned rest, doubtless 
 with her generous little hands folded upon her 
 favourite rosary, and her crucifix laid over her 
 pious, tender heart. May her sweet, gentle 
 soul rest in the peace she would have given 
 to all, had it been in her power to bestow It ! 
 
[ 23 ] 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 Chopin's pupils — Monsieur Teleffsen — -The Princess Czar- 
 toryska at home — Monsieur Fontana — Biography in 
 brief of Frederic Chopin — His career as an artist — 
 Matrimonial engagement — Meeting with Madame 
 Dudevant (George Sand) — Failure of health — Visit 
 to Majorca — Rupture with George Sand — Visit to 
 England — Personal reminiscences of Chopin during 
 his visit to London, communicated by Mr. A. J. 
 Hipkins, F.S.A., etc. — Miss Stirling — Her part in 
 Chopin's last illness — Story of the bank-notes — His 
 death — Funeral as related by an eye-witness — Miss 
 Stirling's Chopin museum — Fate of the relics — His 
 compositions — His pupil Filtsch. 
 
 In the prevailing tendency to Beethoven- worship, 
 it is scarcely remarkable that lesser lights in 
 the world of musical composition were tem- 
 porarily obscured in those days in Paris. 
 
 Still, that which may be termed the Chopin 
 coterie, the circle of pupils and admirers of the 
 
24 Musical Memories 
 
 Polish genius, remained as enthusiastically his 
 adorers then — when he had been some twelve 
 years in his grave in the so-called Poets' Corner 
 in Pere la Chaise, near to Cherubini, Bellini, 
 Boi'eldieu, Gretry, and others— as in the heyday 
 of his more universal popularity. 
 
 We first crept within the charmed circle 
 when, one afternoon shortly after the delivery 
 of certain letters of introduction, the rosy- 
 cheeked garfon, a rustic to whom we were 
 evidently an insoluble problem, popped his head 
 into the room and announced that ' un monsieur ' 
 demanded to see the ladies. 
 
 The head popped back, the door opened, 
 and a curious-looking black-clad gentleman 
 entered, and somewhat austerely announcing 
 himself as the Monsieur TelefFsen — the favourite 
 pupil of Chopin — to whom we had been recom- 
 mended, accepted a chair, and seemed ready to 
 be friendly in a chilly, ceremonious way. 
 
 He was scarcely prepossessing at first sight : 
 very pale, with golden-red, gray -besprinkled 
 hair, and his small light eyes somewhat fierce 
 and suspicious under his fair eyelashes. But as 
 
Chopin's Favourite Pupil 25 
 
 we knew him better, his almost captious ab- 
 sorption in his late beloved master — that devour- 
 ing devotion to his memory which characterized 
 everyone of those who had known Chopin — lent 
 him a charm and interest which, clever artist 
 and composer as he was, might otherwise have 
 been lacking to his personality. 
 
 He told us some details of himself — that he 
 was a Norwegian of nearly forty years old, 
 that his first inclinations had been in the direc- 
 tion of the priesthood, and that music had 
 conquered ; but he speedily relapsed into the 
 topic of topics — the Master's personality, the 
 Master's compositions. 
 
 It was later that the story of his being mag- 
 netized by the great artist's genius came to our 
 knowledge : how, one day, passing through a 
 street in Stockholm, he heard some extraordinary 
 music being played. He stopped, listened, 
 and was so violently affected that there and 
 then he knocked at the house door, and dared 
 so far as to ask the name of the composer of 
 the astounding composition. As soon as he 
 learnt that it was the work of a ' young Polish 
 
26 Musical Memories 
 
 composer resident in Paris,' he made up his 
 mind that his pupil he must be. But he was 
 poor! It mattered not. He persevered, 
 worked, saved and scraped — and not only 
 became Chopin's pupil and intimate friend, but 
 lived many years after his death in Paris to 
 perpetuate his memory. 
 
 On another occasion he played to us — 
 charrriingly, with considerable finish and grace 
 of execution. But his talent was scarcely so 
 Chopinesque as that of Chopin's favourite 
 amateur pupil, the Princess Czartoryska, rela- 
 tive of his patron, the Prince Czartoryski. 
 
 This lady resided at the time of our visit in a 
 fine hotel in one of the fashionable avenues. 
 A splendid mansion from without, it was quite 
 a palace within. A magnificent staircase led to 
 the reception-rooms, which were lavishly fur- 
 nished. The principal salon was decorated in 
 white ; a thick white pile carpet softened the 
 footsteps ; the gilt chairs and sofas were covered 
 with richly-embroidered white satin. A fitting 
 temple for the memory of a being who loved 
 refinement and delicacy as he loved the violet 
 
Princess Czartoryska at Home 27 
 
 and its perfume ; and memorials of the dead 
 genius were many — his portrait near to the 
 great white Pleyel grand piano, his profile 
 in a medallion, and pictures of scenes con- 
 nected with his career here, there and every- 
 where. 
 
 But the living memorial was the Princess 
 herself, a slight, spare little creature, with 
 bright, mournful eyes and a certain picturesque 
 grace of movement. At first there was a slight 
 reserve — the reserve of the recluse, rather than 
 anything approaching to hauteur — in her 
 manner. But as soon as she was sure that she 
 was in the presence of Chopin-lovers, the slight 
 cloud passed, and she became genial and com- 
 municative. 
 
 In this great white salon met the friends and 
 former pupils of the master. Here were to 
 be heard his polonaises, mazurkas, nocturnes, 
 sonatas, and those latest and most touching 
 efforts at musical poesy, the preludes. Here 
 his last hours and words were mournfully dis- 
 cussed by those who had seen him die ; and 
 here, it was whispered, had the confused piles 
 
28 Musical Memories 
 
 of his manuscripts been sorted, arranged, and 
 prepared for publication or reissue by a select 
 committee of his intimates. 
 
 Rumour suggested that of these Monsieur de 
 Fontana — who is credited with the editorship of 
 Chopin's works, but who was scarcely his pupil, 
 hardly his intimate friend — was not one of those 
 who pieced together debatable fragments with 
 excessive caution and loving care. But rumour 
 is not always right, and when a heterogeneous 
 number of friends constitute themselves editors 
 of posthumous works — or works which have not 
 been revised by their author personally — there 
 will be factions, and there must be considerable 
 differences of opinion. 
 
 In any case, Madame la Princesse's salons 
 were at that time a head centre of Chopin- 
 worship ; and here some of his works, notably 
 the polonaises, were played by her with a 
 startling yet most beautiful originality which 
 the auditors who had heard the master himself 
 declared to be the most perfect of all readings 
 of the composer. Here also, on many occa- 
 sions, tales were told by the Princess and others 
 
Frederic Chopin 29 
 
 of the days which would come no more — stories 
 of Chopin in his habit as he lived. 
 
 Many biographies exist of Frederic Chopin. 
 The Abbe Liszt's romantic pen has run riot on 
 his admired theme. Scenes have been described 
 which are coloured by the honoured Abbe's 
 brilliant imagination. He has thrown together 
 personages who have denied their presence 
 together, as described, at that particular time. 
 George Sand — whose intimacy with Chopin was 
 too bitter to those who were faithful to him 
 unto death, and after it, to be alluded to in 
 conversation — has written of the man who loved 
 her not wisely, but too well, in her novels, and 
 in the confessions she has given to the world 
 under the title of ' Histoire de ma Vie.' Those 
 who prefer fiction to fact should seek out the 
 details of Chopin as related by Madame 
 Dudevant and Franz Liszt. But more sober 
 truth-lovers must be content with bare facts 
 and with reliable traditions, which do not go 
 
 very far. 
 
 Chopin was the son of a French father, and 
 of a Polish mother who was evidently a God- 
 
30 Musical Memories 
 
 fearing woman, and whose influence, obscured 
 at times by baser fascinations, survived to 
 blossom and bear fruit suddenly in his last 
 hours. A delicate, sickly child, he was pre- 
 cocious, clever, sensitive. At nine years of 
 age he began to study music under Zywny, an 
 old Bohemian musician who was devoted to 
 Sebastian Bach. For seven years he remained 
 with Zywny ; then his parents, or the Prince 
 Radziwill, sent him to the college in Warsaw. 
 The Princess Czetwertynski was one of his 
 first appreciators : she it was who brought him 
 to the notice of the Polish nobility. When 
 still a youth, he travelled to Dresden and to 
 Prague. In 1829 — he was then nineteen, a frail- 
 looking young man with a long, oval face, mild 
 eyes, and a small, effeminate mouth — he took a 
 longer and more important flight : he went to 
 Vienna. Here he appeared at the concert of a 
 Mademoiselle Veltheim, but did not create the 
 furore of later days, although but three months 
 later a German newspaper described him a? 
 ' one of the most remarkable meteors which 
 have shone above the musical horizon.' He 
 
Chopin's First Concert 
 
 was like those he considered his countrymen, 
 in his patriotism. The troubles of Poland 
 afFected him deeply. His thoughts turned 
 Englandwards, whether for sympathy or as a 
 place of residence is not told. But, journeying 
 towards London, he stayed in Paris. 'And 
 there,' significantly adds his simplest biographer, 
 • he remained for the rest of his days.' 
 
 He was twenty-two when he first played in 
 the Pleyel salons on his beloved Pleyel pianos. 
 The rooms were thronged with artists and. 
 amateurs, eager to hear his first concerto and the 
 other pieces chosen. That such original genius 
 should not inflame the imagination of his im- 
 pressionable audience was impossible. He had 
 a certain success. Still, the critics had excep- 
 tions to take. His system of fingering, using 
 the thumb and third finger in a manner hitherto 
 considered unlawful, came in for its share of 
 censure. 
 
 But by degrees his supremacy was acknow- 
 ledged. Paris was to an extent at his feet. 
 
 His friends loved him, his jpupils adored 
 him, because they valued the fact that one so 
 
32 Musical Memories 
 
 great should descend to the drudgery of teach- 
 ing. Among them, in the earliest days, were 
 Polish princesses and noble ladies. Later, in 
 Paris, their name was legion. His days were 
 days of that which to most musicians is well- 
 nigh unbearable drudgery — teaching, the en- 
 deavour to pass on one's hardly-acquired skill 
 to others. Meanwhile, Fortune did not smile 
 all at once, or steadily. But for one of those 
 seeming chances which so often prove the actual 
 turning-point in the careers of talented people, 
 Chopin would have lacked the wherewithal to 
 continue his Parisian career. 
 
 One day, when he was actually contemplating 
 either a return to Poland, or, as he had phrased 
 it in a letter to a friend, ' to stay, and kill him- 
 self,' he happened to meet his old friend and 
 patron Prince Radziwill in the street. ' I am 
 leaving Paris for ever,' he told him. ' I have 
 made my adieux ; I have packed my luggage ; 
 to-morrow I shall be far away.' The Prince 
 made no objection, but merely asked whether he 
 would promise him to spend that evening with 
 him at the Rothschilds'. Chopin promised ; 
 
Chopin's First Love 33 
 
 the promise decided his future. In the salons 
 of the famous banker, where he went for the 
 first time, he was received with enthusiasm. 
 There was no further talk of leaving Paris. 
 He awoke next morning to find himself famous. 
 
 From that moment, the tide turned. He 
 became renowned, established. One of his 
 former fellow - students, Orlowski, wrote : 
 ' Chopin is very well. He turns all the French- 
 women's heads, and makes all the men jealous.' 
 But he was no Lothario. He had had his 
 ' ideal ' when he was just twenty years old : a 
 young pupil at the Conservatoire of Warsaw, 
 by name Constantia Gladkowska, who, with her 
 toilette blanche and a rose in her hair, singing 
 her sweetest at one of his concerts, confirmed 
 his incipient passion. Not until after her 
 marriage did another damsel find some favour 
 in his eyes. 
 
 This was a young Polish lady, a certain Made- 
 moiselle Maria W , the sister of a former 
 
 friend, who came to stay in Paris with her 
 family. He was attracted by her, and the im- 
 pression was strengthened the following year 
 
 3 
 
34 Musical Memories 
 
 when they happened to meet at Marienbad, 
 where the young lady's mother was making the 
 'cure.' They were betrothed, left Marienbad 
 together, and the happy composer spent some 
 delightfiil weeks with Maria and her family. 
 The young lovers parted with the understand- 
 ing that they would shortly meet again. But a 
 few months after his return to Paris, Chopin 
 learnt, to his humiliation, that Maria had had 
 the offer of a coronet, and that she preferred 
 rank and wealth to the rSle of an artist's 
 wife. 
 
 It was while smarting and writhing under 
 a blow which to such a delicately-organized 
 nature was a rough experience, that — at the 
 house of a certain Countess — he met Aurore 
 Dudevant (George Sand). 
 
 The interview is more or less picturesquely 
 described by even those among his biographers 
 who most deeply deplored its consequences to 
 Chopin. 
 
 By some chance, Chopin happened to re- 
 member one night that the Countess was re- 
 ceiving her friends, and to feel an inclination to 
 
The Lady of the Violets 35 
 
 pay her a visit. As he mounted the stairs, it 
 seemed to him that he was followed by a 
 shadow which exhaled his favourite perfiime of 
 violets. He felt a presentiment that something 
 peculiar and mysterious was about to happen 
 to him, and, hastening his footsteps, felt more 
 secure when he had found a corner in the 
 brilliantly-lit salons where he might be an on- 
 looker rather than an actor in the busy scene. 
 
 Here he remained until the greater part of 
 the guests departed, when it was no longer 
 possible to conceal his presence. He was un- 
 earthed and seated at the piano, and — perhaps 
 in consequence of the slight excitement of the 
 violet-perfumed shadow feeling himself in the 
 vein for improvisation — he began to extem- 
 porize. 
 
 His genius for improvisation was, so say 
 his pupils and artist friends, his supreme gift. 
 On this occasion he enthralled his auditors ; 
 he seemed to be lifted above himself, under 
 a spell. The most unearthly melodies, the 
 most transcendent modulations and ethereal 
 broderies, fell from his long, delicate fingers. 
 
 3—2 
 
36 Musical Memories 
 
 Then suddenly he seemed to come to earth, to 
 remember where he was — and raising his eyes, 
 he met the ardent gaze of George Sand. 
 
 He sprang up, and, eluding the congratula- 
 tions of his eager hearers, established himself 
 behind a group of camellias. But a few moments 
 later he heard the rustle of silk, he smelt the 
 violet odour, and there before him stood his 
 friend, Franz Liszt, the handsome dark-eyed 
 woman on his arm. The introduction was in- 
 evitable. 
 
 Although fascinated by the celebrated novelist's 
 deftly-conveyed compliments, her aptly-worded 
 appreciation, he wrote of this meeting with her 
 to his parents : 
 
 ' I have made the acquaintance of a great 
 celebrity, Madame Dudevant, who is known by 
 the name of George Sand ; but her face is not 
 sympathetic, and did not please me ; there is 
 something in her which to me is repulsive.' 
 
 And not long after this he was at her feet, 
 conquered by the fascination of her intellect and 
 vitality, blinded by her subtle power to attract 
 the opposite sex. His first " ideal " and the 
 
In a Monastery 37 
 
 fair Maria both forgotten, he began a new and 
 different life. He forsook the coteries where he 
 had been the centre of admiring crowds ; he 
 shrank from mixing with his most intimate 
 friends. Spending the summer at Madame 
 Sand's estate, Nohant, and the winter among 
 her pecuhar circle of intimates, he seemed lost 
 to those who had known and loved him 
 best. 
 
 A year later Chopin's health showed symp- 
 toms which seemed to demand a warmer 
 climate, and Madame Sand decided to rent a 
 forsaken monastery in the island of Majorca, 
 
 Thither accordingly went the lady, accom- 
 panied by her son and daughter and by Chopin. 
 She and her children appeared to enjoy wander- 
 ing about the island and prowling about the 
 deserted and gloomy building which was their 
 temporary home. But Chopin was depressed 
 by his surroundings. Even the resources of 
 a millionaire would hardly make a cosy house 
 for an invalid of an abandoned monastery. 
 The thick stone walls, the small, high windows, 
 the long corridors with their reverberations, and 
 
38 Musical Memories 
 
 the ghastly cloisters — all these affected the 
 spirits of the impressionable artist, and led 
 to the first distaste of Madame Sand for her 
 susceptible friend. From her own account, 
 she often left him to himself, even in the dark 
 evenings — when she would find him seated at 
 his piano, pale, with haggard eyes and hair 
 standing on end, too unnerved to recognize 
 either her or her children until reassured by 
 their cheerflil presence. 
 
 But to these moods among the monastery 
 shadows the musical world owes some of 
 Chopin's loveliest inspirations — notably the so- 
 called 'Preludes,' in many of which — says 
 Madame Sand — one may hear the echo of 
 Chopin's fantastic ideas of the deceased monks 
 whose graves were in the quadrangle, and of the 
 funeral chants which persistently haunted him 
 in the desolate cloisters. 
 
 Returning to Paris, his health appeared re- 
 habilitated, and some years passed, during which 
 his reputation steadily grew. But he could 
 scarcely have been a happy man, feeling as he 
 did irresistibly reattracted towards his old 
 
Decline of Health 39 
 
 friends and acquaintances, from association with 
 whom Madame Sand had resolutely kept him. 
 From Liszt, Franchomme, and other artist 
 brethren she did not attempt to separate him. 
 But a certain captiousness and irritability had 
 evidently begun to affect her victim, uncon- 
 sciously weary of his slavery. In writing home, 
 he complained of certain intimates, notably, 
 says Monsieur Karasowski — his compatriot, 
 and later on his biographer — of Franz Liszt. 
 Yet Monsieur Franchomme considered that 
 Chopin had reason to consider himself aggrieved, 
 although he refused to give his reasons for his 
 opinion. 
 
 Then came a blow : the death of Nicolas 
 Chopin, his father. This was in 1844. Not 
 very long after this the composer's health began 
 finally to decline. His cough and weakness 
 increased, until at last he could no longer walk. 
 He had to be driven or carried here and there. 
 His spirits forsook him. At this juncture 
 occurred the rupture of his friendship with 
 George Sand. 
 
 The reason why Chopin somewhat suddenly 
 
40 Musical Memories 
 
 broke his chains, was — according to Monsieui 
 Karasowski and Monsieur le Comte Stanislai 
 Tarnowski — this : 
 
 George Sand wrote a novel, ' Lucrezia 
 Fioriani,' in which she was supposed to depict 
 herself as the heroine, and Chopin as the selfish, 
 sickly, and jealous Prince Karol, who repays the 
 devotion and self-sacrifice of the artist ' la 
 Fioriani ' by so tormenting her that she dies. 
 
 Whether Chopin suspected the truth of the 
 portraiture is not known. But it was stated by 
 several of those who were likely to know and 
 to be truthful, that he was asked to assist in the 
 correction of the proofs ; and that the young 
 Dudevants, her children, said on one occasion : 
 ' Surely you know, Monsieur Chopin, that Prince 
 Karol is you ?' 
 
 Madame Sand and her friends denied that this 
 was true, and cited traits in the character of the 
 Prince which no one could have attributed to 
 Chopin. 
 
 'So little is Karol the portrait of a great 
 artist,' she said, 'that Chopin, reading the 
 manuscript day by day on my desk, never for 
 
A Lovers' Quarrel 41 
 
 one moment dreamt of such a thing — he, the 
 most suspicious of beings.' 
 
 Whether this was the immediate cause or not, 
 the estrangement took place, and Chopin's 
 weakness was increased by the shock. 
 
 Paris became odious to him. He resolved to 
 carry out a frequentlyrplanned visit to England. 
 A pupil — a Scotch lady. Miss Stirling-^had often 
 invited him to stay with her in Scotland. It 
 seemed the right moment to accept. But before 
 leaving he gave a concert, which Jules Janin 
 announced thus in )\\s fe utile ton of February .14, 
 1848 : ' Monsieur Chopin gives his concert next 
 Tuesday ; but it is not one of adieu, of de- 
 parture. Monsieur Chopin remains in Paris, 
 the seat of his renown and of his repose.' 
 
 The immediate migration was hindered by 
 the political events of 1848. Meanwhile, 
 Chopin, in the salon of a favourite friend, had 
 happened to meet Madame Sand. She took 
 the first step towards a reconciliation by holding 
 out her hand and saying, ' Frederic,' with 
 tears in her great dark eyes. But Chopin was 
 not to be deterred from the straight and narrow 
 
42 Musical Memories 
 
 path by tears which the poet Alfred de Musset, 
 a former conquest of the capricious lady's, had 
 apostrophized thus : 
 
 ' Si je doute des larmes, 
 C'est que jet'ai vue pleurer.' 
 
 He trembled and changed colour, but he 
 turned and left the salon. Later, we find him 
 in London. 
 
 His life during his stay here, and an account 
 of his prevailing characteristics at that epoch, 
 can scarcely be better given than they are by 
 Mr. A. J. Hipkins, F.S.A., a member of the 
 Broadwood firm, well known in the musical 
 world as the historian of the pianoforte, and 
 writer on keyed instruments in the ' Encyclo- 
 pasdia Britannica ' (ninth edition). In a letter 
 to the writer, Mr. Hipkins states : 
 
 ' My recollections of Frederic Chopin are limited to 
 the year 1848, when he came to this country along with 
 the late Sir Charles Halle, Alexandre Billet, and others. 
 He had been obliged to leave Paris on account of the 
 Revolution which deposed and exiled Louis Philippe. 
 
 ' Chopin had been in London in 1837, when symptoms 
 of the disease to which he was ultimately to succumb had 
 caused anxiety. He was then accompanied by the pianist 
 and piano-maker, Camille Pleyel. 
 
Mr. Hipkins on Chopin 43 
 
 ' Almost the only record of this visit has been preserved 
 in the Broadwood family. The late Mr. James Shudi 
 Broadwood, at that time residing at 46, Bryanston Square, 
 invited Pleyel, with his friend Chopin, who tried to put 
 on a quasi-anonymity by masquerading as. Monsieur Fritz, 
 to dinner. Chopin had no need to adopt this harmless 
 deception, for at that time his name was unknown in this 
 country, unless it were to a few advanced musicians. 
 However, his incognito was upset when, after dinner, he 
 was invited to try the piano. In the Broadwood circle 
 his fame would seem to have gone before him, although 
 the lurking thought cannot be suppressed that Pleyel had 
 quietly let out the secret. 
 
 ' The recollection of the Broadwood piano and its 
 responsiveness to his sensitive touch remained with 
 Chopin, so that when he arrived in London in April, 
 1848, one of the first visits he paid was to Broadwood's 
 warehouse in Great Pulteney Street. That was the first 
 time I saw him. He paid many subsequent visits, and it 
 was on those occasions that I heard him play. 
 
 ' It was the first near experience I had of genius. I had 
 seen Mendelssohn conduct " Elijah," I had heard Thalberg 
 in his remarkable and original displays of piano- playing, 
 but they were as prose to Chopin's poetry. I was carried 
 up into another sphere, and my ideas of musical art 
 became enlarged, so that all I had hitherto experienced 
 was seen and valued from a new and higher stand- 
 point. . . .' 
 
 Alluding to the music Mr. Hipkins already 
 knew of Chopin's, he continues : 
 
 ' As to Sterndale Bennett, he would have nothing to do 
 
44 Musical Memories 
 
 with Chopin — at least, in his public performances. When, 
 afterwards, I attempted to play some of Chopin's works, 
 Bennett good-naturedly laughed at me, and said he would 
 not give much for Wessel's speculation in engraving those 
 compositions. . . . 
 
 ' On one occasion Chopin came with his pupil. Miss 
 Stirling, and the late Frederick Beale, of Cramer and Co. 
 (publishers), to play the new valses in A flat and in C sharp 
 minor, since so popular, which Beale had then secured 
 for publication. This was a great privilege for me ; but 
 of all he played when I heard him, I best remember the 
 " Andante Spianato." 
 
 ' To save Chopin from fatigue, he was carried upstairs. 
 Physical weakness was not, however, the cause of his 
 tenderly-subdued style of playing. This was his own, and 
 inseparable from his conception of pianoforte touch ; it 
 was incapable of modification from any influence whatever. 
 His fortissimo was the full, pure tone without noise, a 
 harsh, inelastic note being to him painful. His nuances 
 were modifications of that tone, decreasing to the faintest 
 yet always distinct pianissimo. His singing, legatissimo 
 touch was marvellous. The wide-extended arpeggios in 
 the bass were transfused by touch and pedals into their 
 corresponding sustained chords, and swelled or diminished 
 like waves in an ocean of sound. He kept his elbows 
 close to his sides, and played only with finger-touch — no 
 weight from the arms. He used a simple, natural position 
 of the hands as conditioned by scale and chord playing, 
 adapting the easiest fingering, although it might be against 
 the rules, that came to him. He changed fingers upon a 
 key as often as an organ-player.' _ 
 
 Then, once more returned to Paris, sick, as 
 
The Story of the Bank-notes 45 
 
 he wrote to his friend Grzymala, of the mists 
 of Scotland and the fogs of England, his last 
 days began. They were soothed by the loving 
 attentions of his friends Grzymala, Franchomme, 
 Gutmann, and by the solicitude of his own sister 
 and his sisterly friends, the Countess Delphine 
 Potocka, the Princess Czartoryska, the Baronne 
 de Rothschild, and others. But he was shadowed 
 by a very pressing trouble — the want of money. 
 
 However, this came to the ears of his pupil, 
 Miss Stirling, who immediately produced 25,000 
 francs for his immediate expenses. 
 
 Thereby hangs a tale. The notes were given 
 to the one who had taken upon himself to 
 inform Miss Stirling of the great artist's 
 anxieties, with the sole proviso that they were 
 to be delivered anonymously, and her secret 
 kept. 
 
 The good-natured but evidently somewhat 
 too careless and confiding personage simply 
 enclosed the notes in an envelope and left them 
 with the portress to be delivered immediately. 
 The days passed, and those who were in the 
 secret were astonished to find Chopin still 
 
46 Musical Memories 
 
 restless, anxious, and bewailing his difficulties. 
 At last a bold spirit among them asked why- 
 he should worry, considering that he had 25,000 
 francs at his disposal for his more pressing 
 wants. 
 
 Chopin stared. ' You mock me !' he stam- 
 mered bitterly. ' Twenty-five thousand francs 
 indeed ! Where should I get them .'' I have 
 not a single sou of such a sum.' 
 
 The amiable conspirators, whose plot had 
 somehow proved a fiasco, were both bewildered 
 and alarmed. They naturally suspected the 
 portress, but for some reason did not at once 
 appeal to or accuse her. One of them, evidently 
 a believer in the occult, suggested that they 
 should have recourse to a fashionable clairvoyant 
 who had lately electrified certain Parisian circles 
 by his second-sight. This Monsieur Alexis was 
 accordingly visited by some of them, a cravat 
 worn by the portress having been obtained to 
 give to him, that he might obtain the necessary 
 rapport. The sequel was certainly strange. 
 Monsieur Alexis unhesitatingly declared that the 
 money would be found behind the mirror in 
 
Chopin's Last Hours 47 
 
 the porter's lodge. Repairing at once to the 
 house, the portress was interrogated, with the 
 result that the envelope, with the seal unbroken, 
 was sought for and found under the clock and 
 behind the glass in the lodge, as the clairvoyant 
 had said — doubtless placed there, and from that 
 moment entirely forgotten, by the woman. 
 
 Chopin resisted the gift, and finally accepted 
 less than half The relief was just in time. 
 On October 17 he breathed his last. 
 
 Many accounts are given of the closing scene ; 
 several pathetic pictures have depicted it. The 
 facts are simply these : 
 
 Ever of a religious nature, his faith had been 
 dimmed by the influence of George Sand, who 
 had some theories of her own on the subject of 
 Nature and the right of human beings to follow 
 their instincts after the fashion of the animals — 
 dimmed, but not destroyed. One of his friends 
 declared that he never joined in any conversa- 
 tion subversive of revealed religion and the 
 accepted laws of morality. But he was dis- 
 couraged, depressed. His compatriot and 
 friend, the Abbe Alexandre Jelowicki, who 
 
48 Musical Memories 
 
 hastened to bring consolation to his death-bed, 
 found him somewhat hopeless as to his spiritual 
 state. However, in a short time the good 
 priest was consoled by administering the last 
 Sacraments to him, and seeing him sigh out his 
 soul in peace. 
 
 Chopin died young, if not quite so young as 
 his friend Mendelssohn. In death, as he lay 
 among quantities of the flowers he so much 
 loved, survivors who were among those privi- 
 leged to see him say that he was more beautiful 
 than in life. 
 
 His funeral took place on October 30. The 
 great church of the Madeleine was hung with 
 black, and crowded. The 'Requiem' of Mozart 
 was to be sung ; that this should be so had 
 been one of his last wishes, and the Archbishop 
 had for the occasion permitted women's voices 
 in the choir. Already Mesdames Viardot 
 and Castellan were in their places, near to 
 Messieurs LabJache, Alexis Dupont, and Meyer- 
 beer (conductor). All awaited the coffin in 
 solemn silence, when suddenly a slight shudder 
 seemed to stir the congregation, most of whom 
 
A ' Chopin Museum ' 49 
 
 were on their knees. ' Never — never shall I 
 forget that moment,' said a distinguished pupil 
 of the master's, relating it with tears in her 
 eyes many years after. ' Glancing up, 1 heard 
 the first notes of his " Marche Funebre " from 
 the great organ, and saw his coffin moving slowly 
 towards us from the doorway.' 
 
 The pall-bearers on the solemn march along 
 the boulevards to Pere la Chaise Were Messieurs 
 Franchomme, Eugene Delacroix, Meyerbeer, 
 and Prince Czartoryski. Ever a faithful son 
 of Poland, it was a handful of the earth he had 
 brought with him when leaving his country 
 eighteen years before that was first cast into his 
 grave. But although his body was to rest in 
 French soil, his heart was by his desire taken 
 to Warsaw, to the Church of the Holy Cross, 
 where as late as 1879 or 1880 they erected his 
 bust. ^ ' 
 
 Chopin relics still exist, but the bulk of them 
 were burnt in a fire in Warsaw in 1863. 
 
 Nearly all the composer's belongings were 
 bought, after his death, by his munificent friend 
 Miss Stirling, who had a Chopin museum of her 
 
 4 
 
50 Musical Memories 
 
 own in Scotland. But first she gave many- 
 mementoes to his pupils and admirers. Mon- 
 sieur Franchomme showed a pink vase of 
 Bohemian glass, and one of his most distin- 
 guished pupils, Mademoiselle Meara (afterwards 
 Madame Dubois), received a similar one. 
 Many others were recipients of such relics. 
 The remainder — in fact, the whole of the above- 
 mentioned collection purchased by Miss Stirling 
 — was left by her to Madame Chopin, who 
 survived her son until 1861. 
 
 At her death they became the property of her 
 only surviving daughter, Madame Isabelle Bar- 
 cinska. This lady lived in the second story ot 
 a house in the Faubourg of Cracow, in Warsaw. 
 During the trouble in 1863 a shot was fired and 
 some Orsini bombs discharged from a story above 
 hers, at the Comte de Berg, a Russian officer. 
 The house was entered and sacked by a mob of 
 infuriated soldiers, who made a bonfire of its 
 contents, including the Chopin collection — which, 
 among other precious things, contained the first 
 pianoforte on which his childish fingers had 
 •played, and his favourite Pleyel grand ; also his 
 
M. Jules de Fontana 51 
 
 portrait by Ary Scheffer and all his letters to 
 his family. Happily, his manuscripts were 
 already collected by loving hands, and had 
 passed through many editions in many countries. 
 There are various opinions of the hundred 
 and odd works which Chopin left at his death ; 
 but most persons concur in thinking the polon- 
 aises, mazurkas, impromptus, and preludes his 
 most distinctive compositions. The ' Concerto in 
 E minor ' can scarcely ever cease to be the delight 
 of pianists, especially since the somewhat meagre 
 orchestration has been remodelled by an eminent 
 German musician. But that any manuscript of 
 Chopin's should be meddled with by a profane 
 outsider was, and is, considered horrible sacri- 
 lege by his pupils. One of them — Monsieur 
 Fontana — went into a violent passion one day on 
 hearing the writer play the ' Valse in A minor ' 
 as edited by Adolphe Henselt. He paced the 
 room, actually foaming at the mouth with rage, 
 which he afterwards explained was not anger 
 with the unhappy executant, but with the pre- 
 sumptuous editor — who, if the truth be known, 
 has effectirt, as he termed it, more than one 
 
 4—2 
 
52 Musical Memories 
 
 of the celebrated studies, and nearly all the 
 mazurkas. 
 
 Some of his pupils upheld the idea that there 
 were certain traditions as to how Chopin ought 
 to be played; in fact, that his own interpretation 
 of his own compositions was the one, and that 
 all other should be held as anathema. But 
 some — notably the Princess Czartoryska, whose 
 playing Chopin certainly approved — and others 
 among his pupils, differ from this — consider 
 the idea, indeed, a heresy. 
 
 The Princess was wont to say that Chopin 
 was essentially one of those geniuses who are 
 kaleidoscopical in their shades of moods and 
 humours. As he was always correcting, alter- 
 ing, remodelling his manuscripts — until his un- 
 lucky editors would be confounded by meeting 
 with the same idea expressed and treated some- 
 times a score of different ways — so he seldom 
 sat down to play in the same state of mind or 
 emotional feeling : so that perhaps he seldom 
 played one piece exactly as he played it before. 
 
 ' No,' she said : ' his music has a universal 
 character, just as the severest classical music has 
 
A Young Hungarian 53 
 
 it. It will admit of many interpretations by 
 many musical minds ; in harnessing it with a 
 cut-and-dried tradition you belittle it.' 
 
 Besides the Princess, one of his favourite 
 pupils, Chopin believed greatly in a young 
 Hungarian, by name Filtsch, who died while 
 still a mere boy. Mr. James W. Davison, the 
 eminent critic, has told the writer that the 
 playing of this youth resembled Chopin's so 
 greatly that it would have been difficult to tell 
 one from the other, had the two players been 
 concealed from sight. 
 
[ 54 ] 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 The Paris opera-houses — ' Tannhauser ' — Graziani and 
 Mario — The pianist Ascher — ^Hector Berlioz — His 
 life — His compositions and literary works — Failure 
 of ' Les Troyens ' — Domestic troubles, illness, and 
 death — The writer's personal reminiscences of 
 him — The brothers Galignani — M. de Lesseps — 
 Mr. Wyld, the English painter — -Mr. and Mrs. 
 Wittering — Rossini. 
 
 While the Chopin circle had become scattered, 
 and was to a certain extent a society dedicated 
 to his memory, more living work was proceed- 
 ing in the musical world of Paris in ' the 
 sixties.' 
 
 We have glanced at the orchestral concerts 
 and the societes for chamber music — in both 
 branches the exaltation of Beethoven, as the 
 great central musical sun, being the primary 
 object. But what was doing at the opera.'' 
 
' Tannhauser in Paris' 55 
 
 The talk of the hour was the fiasco of 
 ' Tannhauser ' at the Grand Opera. It had 
 been produced through the influence of the 
 Princess Metternich — who gave the Emperor 
 and Empress no peace until the performance 
 was announced — and it cost the management 
 150,000 francs. But the Parisian public prided 
 themselves on being able to think for them- 
 selves. They had accepted Beethoven, and 
 plumed themselves greatly upon the fact. Mean- 
 while, Richard Wagner was another affair alto- 
 gether. Who was this upstart, this Richard 
 Wagner, indeed ? A protege of royalty, recom- 
 mended from Court to Court .'' Bah ! they 
 were not to be cajoled in that fashion. So they 
 went, severely critical, to listen — and remained, 
 to siffler, until the curtain was rung down 
 upon the last scene. Next morning musical 
 Paris resounded with the unpleasant words 
 ' humbug,' ' charlatan,' ' richly-deserved fiasco ' 
 and others equally delightful to the ear of 
 aspirants to public favour. 
 
 At the Italiens, the ' Ballo in Maschera ' 
 was produced as a quasi-novelty. Graziani was 
 
56 Musical Memories 
 
 singing there, also Mario — about whose deca- 
 dence the critics were beginning to give broad 
 hints. SchulhofF, the most brilliant and spark- 
 ling of pianoforte executants, came and went ; 
 and the writer frequently met a then great 
 favourite of the English public, the pianist and 
 composer, Monsieur Ascher. Ascher was the 
 composer of London drawing-room pieces par 
 excellence, and the predecessor of the late Sydney- 
 Smith (whose first success, the ' Harpe Eolienne,' 
 realized a little fortune). He was, as his name 
 suggests, of Hebrew extraction — a slight, middle- 
 aged man, with scant brown hair and whiskers, 
 and an eyeglass. A most humble -minded per- 
 sonage, he was anxious to excuse himself for his 
 successes. ' I cannot imagine what the public 
 see in them,' he said. ' To me, essentially 
 a lover of classical music, they are atrocious — 
 and so difficult to write !' His method to 
 obtain the few pages which tickled the ear of 
 the general public and were easy enough to be 
 played by the merest schoolgirl, was to write 
 pages upon pages, and gradually reduce them 
 to a fraction of their original length — in fact, 
 
The Pianist Ascher i^j 
 
 to ' boil down,' as it is called. ' But I should 
 like you to hear my real work,' he pleaded, 
 'my compositions that the publishers will not 
 accept, because of the unfortunate clap-trap I 
 was so very foolish as to write — in jest, at first, 
 I assure you — as a caricature ! And they took 
 me au serieux.' 
 
 We heard some of Monsieur Ascher's real and 
 earnest work, and — yawned, although he com- 
 pletely enjoyed himself 
 
 There was a distinct pathos about the com- 
 poser who yearned to be what he was not, or 
 what the public would not allow him to be. A 
 roughly-checked ambition, a life's disappoint- 
 ment, is always pathetic. But the pathos about 
 poor Monsieur Ascher, hovering about classical 
 concerts and protesting his, musical faith, is as 
 nothing to the pathos about the being who will 
 ever remain the strangest, most significant figure 
 of many musical memories — Hector Berlioz, 
 writer and composer. 
 
 Before sketching the man as the writer saw 
 him, it may be as well to give a few facts con- 
 nected with his life. 
 
58 Musical Memories 
 
 Born at La Cote-Saint-Andre, near Grenoble, 
 in 1803, he was the son of a physician, Louis 
 Berlioz — who appears to have dreamt so little 
 of the distinguished future in store for the little 
 Hector, that he destined him for a medical 
 career. He sent him to Paris, when old enough, 
 to study medicine under Amussat and chemistry 
 with Thenard and Gay-Lussac, Literature was 
 to be pursued, and in this Andrieux was his 
 professor. But the youth, evidently reserved to 
 a fault, had long ago been the secret lover of 
 another goddess than Hygeia. Music was in 
 his soul — and' the struggle between his passion 
 and his duty to his father ended in his giving 
 up medicine, and abandoning himself to his 
 " call." He began to study composition under 
 Lesueur, and in 1825 a Mass from his pen was 
 given in the church of St. Roch. Next year 
 he competed for the prize for composition given 
 by the Institut des Beaux Arts, but failed to 
 obtain it. On August 26 his name was in- 
 scribed on the books of the Conservatoire, 
 and on October 2 he became a member of 
 Reicha's class. In 1827 he competed for the 
 
Hector Berlioz 59 
 
 first time in the renowned academy, sending in 
 his cantata ' Orphee,' but failed to obtain a 
 prize. 
 
 Discouraged, but not altogether disheartened, 
 in 1828 he sent in and obtained a prize for his 
 cantata ' Herminie.' But it was a second prize, 
 and to an original genius to be second means to 
 be defeated. Then, in 1829, came a fourth 
 rebuff. His cantata ' Cleopatre ' — upon which 
 he built his hopes — passed without notice. 
 Still he persisted. A fifth time he tempted 
 Fortune with a work which some critics prefer 
 to all others from his pen — ' Sardanapalus ' — ■ 
 and won the coveted Prix de Rome. 
 
 Success so far achieved, his family, who had 
 given him the cold shoulder since he forsook 
 medicine for music, relented, and were more 
 reconciled to his ambitions. He set out for 
 Rome, where he composed his ' Rob Roy,' 
 which he afterwards destroyed, as he had already 
 destroyed his first attempt at ' Faust.' In 1832 
 he returned to Paris, and a year later married a 
 young Irish actress, a certain Henrietta Smith- 
 son. It was not a happy marriage. He was 
 
6o Musical Memories 
 
 passionately in love, and there were constant 
 differences of opinion, if not jealousies and 
 estrangements. In 1841 the couple finally 
 separated, and he drifted into the arms of the 
 lady he married Immediately after his wife's 
 death in 1854, a certain Marie Martin, or 
 Marie Recio. 
 
 Meanwhile, in spite of domestic disturb- 
 ances, he continued his career with the almost 
 defiant perseverance which must lead to some 
 sort of success. He composed work after work 
 — the celebrated ' Enfance du Christ ' and 
 'Symphonie Fantastique ' ; the popular 'Damna- 
 tion de Faust'; his ' Requiem '; the ' Carnaval 
 Romain ' and overture to 'King Lear'; 
 ' Lelio, ou la Retour a la Vie'; ' Benvenuto 
 Cellini'; 'Beatrice et Benedict' ('Much Ado 
 about Nothing '), and the three compositions 
 which were his own special favourites : the 
 ' Romeo et Juliette ' symphony, the ' Te 
 Deum,' and the opera which later had such a 
 disastrous influence on his career, 'Les Troyens.' 
 
 He wrote many other works. He also con- 
 tributed to literature, not only by his much- 
 
' Les Troyens ' 6 1 
 
 looked-for weekly feuilletons in the Journal 
 des Debats, but by the libretti of ' Les Troyens 
 a Carthage ' and other operatic works, by 
 ' Memories,' ' Retour a la Vie,' ' Episode de la 
 Vie d'un Artiste,' and 'Les Grotesques de la 
 Musique.' Yet he found time for visits to 
 London in 1852-53 to conduct the first series of 
 the New Philharmonic Concerts, and to produce 
 his ' Benvenuto Cellini,' and for tours in Austria, 
 Silesia, Hungary, Bohemia, and Russia, where 
 the prophet was more honoured than in his own 
 country. A friend, writing of him after one of 
 his bitter disappointments in Paris, significantly 
 adds : ' Germany considered him as one of her 
 glories. In Beethoven's own country they 
 called him the " French Beethoven." He has 
 had to seek forgetfulness of the outrages of his 
 compatriots in Vienna, Berlin, or Weimar.' 
 
 ' The outrages of his compatriots.' Fresh in 
 the mind of that writer would seem to, have 
 been the Parisian disdain of the opera upon 
 which he had worked for years, which was his 
 darling among his brain - children — ' Les 
 Troyens.' 
 
62 Musical Memories 
 
 This opera, which might be termed a 
 ' dualogy,' was in two parts, ' Les Troyens a 
 Carthage ' and ' La Prise de Troie.' It was the 
 performance of ' Les Troyens a Carthage ' which 
 he proposed to Monsieur Carvalho should take 
 place at the Theatre Lyrique. Monsieur 
 Carvalho, after some deliberation, for Berlioz 
 was anything but popular, undertook the work, 
 and it was produced on November 4, 1863. 
 
 Everything that could be done to ensure 
 success was done. Madame Charton-Demeur, 
 the tried friend of the composer, created the 
 part of Dido. Eneas was sung by Monsieur 
 Montjauze, a favourite with Parisian audiences. 
 But the music was too violent a contrast to the 
 suavities of , Auber and others to whom they 
 were attached — too audaciously original, and 
 perhaps even eccentric — to be borne by a public 
 who insisted on being pleased as a first desider- 
 atum. After twenty-one days', or rather nights', 
 struggle for existence, the poor opera was with- 
 drawn, pelted with the revengeful condemnation 
 of the composer's many, enemies. 
 
 For the first time in his chequered career 
 
Berlioz's Compositions 63 
 
 Berlioz lost courage. He wished to resign his 
 post as critic in the Journal des Debats. His 
 health gave way. Then came other troubles. 
 His wife died, and his son — a young naval 
 officer whom he devotedly loved — did not long 
 survive her. After protracted sufferings, the un- 
 acknowledged genius died on March 8, 1869, 
 without that which would have cheered his 
 death-bed — a prevision of posthumous fame. 
 
 Berlioz's undeniable genius has been hardly 
 judged by many, although it has been to a 
 considerable extent acknowledged since his 
 death, both here and elsewhere. His music, 
 even to the initiated, is harsh, and perhaps 
 repellent. He glories in a somewhat violent 
 use of the noisier instruments, to the repudiation 
 of the gentler wood and strings. His concep- 
 tions are sometimes singular, often wild; and he 
 seems to fear the ad captandum effects — as it 
 were, to go out of his way to avoid them. 
 That he should have condescended to have 
 written a ' Danse des Sylphes ' is amazing ; that 
 he has not contemptuously destroyed that oasis 
 in the desert of grim fancies, as he destroyed his 
 
64 Musical Memories 
 
 first ' Faust ' and other manuscripts, is a marvel. 
 But had not his life been so hard, so full of 
 bitterness, what might he not have been ! As 
 it is, his disappointed, despairing Muse is 
 scarcely ever less than great, even in her shrillest 
 cries — and there are moments when that cry is 
 shrill indeed. 
 
 Defiance of all accepted form and tradition 
 may win a public when it is foisted upon 
 them with magnificent pretension and un- 
 paralleled audacity — as in the case of Richard 
 Wagner. But defiance alone is met by ridi- 
 cule and contempt, or at the best by indiffer- 
 ence. 
 
 It was before what might literally be termed 
 the fall of Troy — his Troy — that Berlioz's ac- 
 quaintance was made by the writer. 
 
 With a certain trepidation, we set out upon 
 our first visit to the great critic, for some among 
 Qur French acquaintances had shrugged their 
 shoulders, raised their eyebrows, and smiled 
 when Berlioz was mentioned. He was nothing 
 if not exclusive. We might expect — anything. 
 He seldom saw strangers. We might spare 
 
Berlioz at Home 6^ 
 
 ourselves the trouble of a journey which would 
 most likely be fruitless. 
 
 It was not in the most fashionable quarter of 
 Paris that we found the composer's abode — a 
 huge, desolate-looking house in a long, narrow 
 street. There was a boulangerie opposite, 
 also a charcuterie. Entering by the big porte- 
 cochere, we sought the concierge. But the small, 
 untidy lodge was close shut. He — or she — was 
 out. Wandering into the courtyard to find 
 someone who might give information, there was 
 a desolate appearance about the square of cobbles 
 strewn with straw, cabbage-leaves, and what not, 
 where a i^^ sickly-looking fowls were seeking 
 food, and a woman was slowly and laboriously 
 hanging out clothes — how they were to dry 
 instead of freezing that bleak winter morning 
 would be proved by-and-by. A bitter wind 
 met us round the corner as we interrogated 
 the woman. ' Monsieur Berlioz .'' Yes, he 
 lived there. But the ladies would have to 
 mount high — very high ; it was the topmost 
 
 etage' 
 
 We mounted a dark wooden staircase, story 
 
66' Musical Memories 
 
 after story, meeting no one. At the top of the 
 flight there was a small three-cornered landing — 
 and a window through which, peeping down, 
 we saw the fluttering clothes, the woman, and 
 the fowls, Berlioz, the author of t)\e.feuilletons, 
 the musical autocrat of the Journal des Debats, 
 here, with this entourage ! We glanced at each 
 other ; then one of us pulled the red woollen cord 
 by the door. A bell clanged noisily, but there 
 was silence within. Presently we heard slow 
 footsteps — the door opened — we saw a stolid 
 wench in a soiled blue cotton gown who gave us 
 an astonished stare. 
 
 ' Monsieur Berlioz chez lui? Oh yes ; he 
 was chez lui.' She took our cards in a protest- 
 ing manner and shuffled off within, and, return- 
 ing almost immediately — ^ astonished, and still 
 mutely protesting, as it were — ushered us into 
 a room, placed chairs, and left us. 
 
 A small, untidy apartment, with dust every- 
 where, with bookshelves not neatly arranged, 
 with tables and chairs strewn or laden with 
 books, papers, manuscripts. Over the crowded 
 mantelpiece was the oil-painting of a lady, a 
 
Berlioz at Home 67 
 
 good-looking woman, with dark eyes and bunches 
 of ringlets on either side of her oval face. 
 
 We were wondering whether this was the 
 Henrietta Smithson of his earlier days, and, as 
 the minutes passed, wondering also whether the 
 sturdy handmaiden had erred in ushering us 
 into her master's sanctum — when the door 
 opened and a slight, middle-aged man entered. 
 The portraits of Hector Berlioz are good. 
 They give a fair idea of him as he was then — 
 with sharp, pronounced features, flowing iron- 
 gray hair, small but brilliant dark eyes, and a 
 pensive, somewhat enigmatical expression. 
 
 He bowed, murmured a few words of 
 welcome, and with a courtly air insisted on our 
 resuming the seats we had risen from as he 
 came in. Then, seating himself behind the 
 writing-table, he looked from one to the other, 
 and gave a melancholy little smile. 
 
 ' You are musical, you come from London, 
 you must know my great friend Davison,' he 
 said ; and they were his first words. ' What a 
 critic ! what a man !' Then with intense feeling 
 he spoke of Mr. Davison and of others, 
 
 5—2 
 
68 Musical Memories 
 
 suddenly pausing, a trick of his, and abruptly 
 changing the conversation. 
 
 ' You are to make your debut here ?' he 
 asked. ' And you are a pupil of Henselt.'' His 
 etudes are known and liked here.' Then he 
 gave us practical advice, and, unbending, was 
 so kindly and encouraging that it was almost 
 impossible to realize that we were talking to 
 the unapproachable, inaccessible being of whose 
 absolute excluslveness we had been warned. 
 Most valuable were his hints, practically price- 
 less was his advice ; and on our rising to end the 
 interview he promised to shortly visit us at our 
 hotel, and escorted us to the door. 
 
 We retraced our steps, and found our 
 voiture and cheerfully - indulgent cocher (a 
 cheery indulgence was the prevailing attitude 
 towards us Anglaises), and as we clattered over 
 the stones we congratulated ourselves upon a 
 good fortune in which, after what we had heard 
 from our musical friends, it was somewhat hard 
 to believe. 
 
 Monsieur Berlioz kept his word. One 
 evening we were dressing for a dinner-party at 
 
A Visit from Berlioz 69 
 
 the Galignanis', when there was. a tap at the 
 door communicating with our little salon, and 
 a card was presented by the rough-and-ready 
 gar f on — ' Hector Berlioz.' 
 
 Hurrying on the first frocks which came to 
 hand, we hastened to receive our distinguished 
 guest. He was standing with his back to the 
 wood fire, and to the lighted candles in the 
 bronze branches on the mantelpiece. He looked 
 stiffly grave, his black coat tightly buttoned 
 almost to the throat, his hand inserted under 
 the lapel after the manner of old-fashioned por- 
 traits. At first he was politely abrupt, and 
 presently requested that I would play to him. 
 
 For a neophyte, a mere tyro and aspirant, to 
 be called on suddenly to be tested by a great 
 critic is a severe trial. But Berlioz, listening 
 silently as he leant against the mantelpiece, 
 seemed to cast a protecting mental shadow upon 
 the trembling player, even as his material 
 shadow was cast upon the keyboard. He was 
 anything but chilly or severe. He was, indeed, 
 both compassionate and sympathetic, and after- 
 wards gave his views of what a young artist's 
 
JO Musical Memories 
 
 life should be. He condemned the practice of 
 many consecutive hours at the piano, and of 
 the use of nerve stimulants, such as tea and 
 coffee. ^ Surtout' he- insisted, ^ point de cafe 
 noirJ 
 
 The visit was not his only kindness. A 
 charming article was written by him in the 
 Journal des Debats, after the concert given by 
 the debutante, who was a native of the country 
 of which he evidently cherished tender and 
 grateful memories — England. 
 
 Perhaps, had he remained in England, Berlioz's 
 career might have been a far happier and more 
 successful one. Whatever other nations may say 
 of us, from the time when Handel lived and 
 flourished England has seemed the natural home 
 of original genius, and English audiences have 
 shown a readiness to give an unprejudiced and 
 unbiased hearing even to those who have been 
 failures abroad. Here, Berlioz would have had 
 justice, even had he not achieved popularity : 
 and the mysterious fact that the music of 
 Richard Wagner is tolerated by the million in 
 this country would seem to suggest that Berlioz, 
 
The Brothers Galignani 71 
 
 if resident here, might have met with similar 
 good fortune. 
 
 That good fortune would have softened his 
 musical asperities — the stringent acrimony of his 
 conceptions — is quite possible. The excessive 
 sensibility of genius precludes its exemption 
 from external impressions. Berlioz's strength of 
 will carried him to the end through a crowd of 
 disappointments, but no strength of will can 
 deaden the nervous system of a brain-worker. 
 
 tF w ^ w tP 
 
 Musical society in Paris numbered many 
 amateur circles. Among those of the English 
 residents who, if not ardent music-lovers, were 
 music-patrons, were the brothers Galignani. 
 
 In his office, the brother whose acquaintance 
 we first made seemed somewhat hard, business- 
 like, even brusque. But in his own home, a 
 palatial house luxuriously furnished and con- 
 fortahle, as the French term it, he was the most 
 genial of hosts. Dinner-parties at the Messrs. 
 Galignani's were not stiff, ceremonious functions. 
 Stiffness and ceremony, indeed, must have dis- 
 appeared at the very entrance of the fairylike 
 
72 Musical Memories 
 
 little Madame Galignani, an invalid, who was 
 carried to and from her own rooms in a chair 
 like that used by the Pope. She was a bright 
 creature, youthful-looking in spite of her white 
 hair, and seemed interested in each of her 
 guests, anxious to hear their concerns and to 
 sympathize. Here we met Monsieur de 
 Lesseps, then a fine man with dark eyes and 
 hair, whose conversation was varied and brilliant, 
 and an English painter greatly appreciated in 
 Paris, if somewhat overlooked Jiere, Mr. 
 William Wyld. Visits to his studio in the Rue 
 Blanche, and the lovely landscape paintings he 
 was working upon, dwell in the memory, as 
 well as his picturesque personality ; he was then 
 of middle age, with aquiline features, clear eyes, 
 and short gray hair and pointed beard. He 
 was an amateur musician, and there were 
 meetings for concerted music frequently at the 
 house of his friend, Mr. Wittering — a Dutch 
 gentleman with a musical English wife, at whose 
 residence we spent many pleasant hours. Their 
 rooms were more English in style than French, 
 but over the mantelpiece of the music-room 
 
Rossini 
 
 73 
 
 hung one of the most remarkable of Ary 
 SchefFer's portraits. A friend of Mr. Witter- 
 ing, he had exalted a somewhat ordinary phy- 
 siognomy into one radiant with poetic beauty ; 
 yet the likeness remained, proof of the painter's 
 genius. 
 
 At that time a musician could scarcely have 
 been said to have seen musical society in Paris 
 who had not been present at one of Rossini's 
 musical receptions. Rossini, even then well 
 laden with years, lived in an old stone house 
 which might well have been an ancient Italian 
 palazzo. We had introductions to the maestro, 
 but his health was failing — his receptions were 
 in abeyance for the time being. His society 
 was much sought after ; the Parisians as well as 
 his own countrymen delighted in his conversa- 
 tion, and his latest bon-mot was always in circu- 
 lation at artistic gatherings and musical dinners. 
 
[ 74 ] 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Adolphe Henselt — His birth and education — Residence in 
 Weimar under Hummel — Emancipation — Self study, 
 visit to Karlsbad, and iirst appearances — Henselt in 
 public — Marriage — Visit to London in 1850 — 
 Personal appearance and characteristics — His playing 
 — Visit to London in 1867, and recital at Messrs. 
 Broad wood's — Henselt in his castle in Silesia — The 
 Frau von Henselt — Henselt as teacher — The effect 
 of his teaching — Life at Gersdorf — Henselt at the 
 piano — Schloss Waldau — Henselt's w^ork in Russia — 
 His system and compositions — His death. 
 
 Mention has been made of a name which 
 would certainly be unfamiliar to the general 
 reader who had not a hobby for the pianoforte 
 and the music specially written for that instru- 
 ment — -Adolphe Henselt. 
 
 Henselt is, however, known as a great pianist 
 who ranks with Liszt, Thalberg, Rubinstein, 
 
Adolphe Henselt 75 
 
 Clara Schumann, among the cognoscenti, although 
 the majority have not heard him play. 
 
 His life can be briefly told. His birth is 
 ambiguous. But from very early days indeed 
 the old King Louis of Bavaria showed solici- 
 tude for the child, and, indeed, gave him into 
 the care of a lady well known at Court as 
 something more than an amateur, the Frau von 
 Fladt. Born at Schwabach, in Bavaria, in 
 1 8 14, he soon showed musical talent. But a 
 certain Herr Lasser and Frau von Fladt were 
 his only teachers until King Louis, when he 
 had reached the age of seventeen, sent him to 
 study under Hummel in Weimar. 
 
 Hummel was then considered the best attain- 
 able professor of the instrument, and a small 
 crowd of students lived in Weimar to take 
 lessons of him. About that time, Ferdinand 
 Hiller, Edward and Leonard Schultz, Edward 
 Roeckel, Hummel's nephew, and many others 
 who afterwards distinguished themselves, were 
 among them. Henselt's elected chum was a 
 quiet, self-contained youth from Darmstadt, 
 Karl Mangold by name (afterwards the writer's 
 
jb Musical Memories 
 
 father), whose temperament was the exact oppo- , 
 site of his own. The story of the eight months 
 of Henselt's stay in Weimar was one of rebel- 
 lious genius scoffing at the cut-and-dried style 
 of his elected teacher, openly or covertly 
 thwarting him, studying or neglecting to study 
 as and when he pleased — but, with his brilliant 
 talent and great personal beauty, dazzling nearly 
 everyone he came in contact with except his 
 portly, matter-of-fact master. He was truly a 
 thorn in Hummel's side, and the composer 
 spoke more bitterly of the young anarchist in 
 music than he had been heard — being of a 
 gentle, reasonable nature — to speak of anyone 
 before. 
 
 Scorning the laws of execution adopted by 
 Hummel and reversing his counsels, the gifted 
 youth left Weimar and went to Vienna, where, 
 studying harmony and counterpoint under 
 Sechter, he pursued a system of self-education 
 born of his contempt of the Hummel school — 
 pursued it vigorously and relentlessly until it 
 made a magnificent player of him, but by its 
 intense difficulty and arbitrariness handicapped 
 
Henselt as Student 
 
 77- 
 
 him for public performance, and seriously affected 
 his health. 
 
 To recover his strength, lost during his 
 rigid daily practice of ten or twelve hours, he 
 went to Karlsbad. After that, he was first 
 heard in private circles, and wherever he was 
 heard he electrified his hearers. His fame spread, 
 he was besieged and besought on all sides by 
 eager entrepreneurs, by amateurs wild to hear 
 him play, to give a concert — or at least to play 
 in some one of the established musical societies. 
 But he hung back. Naturally imperious, proud, 
 independent, it seemed to go against him, as it 
 went against him throughout his life, to do what 
 he was asked to do. Had he proposed to play 
 in public himself, it would have been another 
 matter. However, eventually he played — 
 magnificently, rousing a fervour of enthusiasm 
 — and the concert would have beaten the record 
 of scenes of public furore, but that suddenly, 
 towards the end of his performance, his memory 
 failed him. In a fit of anger he rose from 
 the piano, left the platform, and refused to 
 return. 
 
78 Musical Memories 
 
 So wayward a genius was not fitted by nature 
 to face and to please the public. Henselt 
 played a few times, and then abandoned the 
 idea of being what he must inevitably have 
 been had he chosen to persevere, the darling 
 of the multitude. From whatever cause 
 his nervousness, or, rather, his dislike of crowds, 
 proceeded, it was a real nervous condition. 
 When playing with an orchestra, for instance, 
 he chose to remain ' behind the scenes ' when 
 the band was executing the introductory 
 passages, often playing the tutti with them 
 on a small instrument concealed from view ; 
 then, a few moments before he was to begin, 
 he would rush on and pounce upon the piano, 
 a trick of his even when playing to a few rela- 
 tives and friends alone. Von Lenz relates an 
 anecdote bearing upon this habit of his. 
 Having consented to play on a state occasion 
 before the Czar, he had his piano placed close to 
 the door from which he would emerge, and 
 was playing the first tutti together with the 
 orchestra, his cigar between his lips, when, the 
 moment of his solo approaching, he rushed on 
 
Henselt in London 79 
 
 to the platform, and, plumping himself down 
 before the concert-piano, played on, smoking, 
 and continued to smoke while his cigar re- 
 mained. 
 
 Such a breach of etiquette caused general 
 consternation, but, happily, the Emperor was 
 only amused, and was the first to applaud his 
 protege. 
 
 Henselt was a favourite at the Russian Court, 
 as well as among the nobility and the culti- 
 vated in Russian society, from the time of 
 his marriage with sa Rosalie — a noble German 
 lady- — in Breslau in 1837, to almost the hour 
 of his death a few years ago. He was an 
 intimate friend of the Prince and Princess of 
 Oldenburg, relatives of the Czar — and was so 
 much in request at Court that he found it no 
 easy matter to obtain a few months' leave of 
 absence to join his wife in the summer at their 
 castle of Gersdorf, in Silesia. 
 
 The writer's first memories of Henselt are 
 vivid, though she was a very young child. There 
 had been much talk anent his promised visit in 
 1850, and the gloomy house in the London 
 
8o Musical Memories 
 
 street where his fellow-student, Karl Mangold, 
 pursued the equally gloomy metier of a London 
 professor, was somewhat topsy-turvy with the 
 preparations. Visitors came and went. A 
 second Erard grand was dragged in its creaking 
 wooden support up the stone staircase. Pre- 
 parations for days ; then the great arrival. 
 Valises, portmanteaus, coming upstairs — servants 
 flushed and flurried, hasty scrubbings and dress- 
 ings ; then two little girls sat patiently waiting 
 to be summoned downstairs to the drawing- 
 room. 
 
 I can almost see the handsome man now — 
 not either tall or short, with a proud carriage of 
 his dark head. As he stood on the hearthrug 
 gazing ac us with his piercing, luminous eyes — 
 eyes which seemed to shine with an inner light 
 of their own — he gave his peculiar smile, 
 a smile which, while singularly sweet, had a 
 petulant, impatient twist about it. Then he 
 kissed us, and soon afterwards dismissed our 
 existence from his mind. But to childish obser- 
 vation and rumination, he was an enigma. He 
 seemed wrapped up in something, some matter 
 
Henselt's Playing 8 1 
 
 ponderous, weighty. He listened absently, 
 awaking from a reverie, as it were, every now 
 and then, and somewhat irritably snapping out 
 a remark or a reply in his remarkably clear, 
 sibilant tones. 
 
 That was the man. But the artist ? 
 
 Next morning a tide of splendid sound was 
 suddenly let loose, and seemed to flood the 
 house. Startled, excited, we leant over the 
 banisters, then crouched timidly on the stairs 
 to listen in breathless amazement. 
 
 Music ? We had heard orchestras ; but 
 there was a fulness of rich sound, an accent, 
 an abandon, and a passion in Henselt's playing 
 of Weber's ' Oberon ' and ' Euryanthe ' which 
 were overwhelming. One listened spellbound, 
 then found one's self unnerved and palpitating, 
 and wondering what had happened to one. 
 Then came a second burst of genius from the 
 extraordinary being shut up alone in the 
 drawing-room with his Erard — studies of 
 Chopin, studies of his own, flights of aerial 
 passages from the concert! he was keeping under 
 his hand, or rich melodies, played with a 
 
 6 
 
82 Musical Memories 
 
 cantando which made of the instrument a 
 vocalist for the nonce. 
 
 Never did Henselt play to others as he 
 played when absolutely alone. That trouble- 
 some self-consciousness of his prevented it. 
 
 He had refused the most tempting offers to 
 play in public here. If memory can be trusted, 
 the late Mr. Willert Beale was first and foremost 
 in his persuasions, and offered a then unheard- 
 of sum if Henselt would consent to a few public 
 exhibitions of his talent. But he laughed — and 
 dismissed the suggestions with a mere wave of 
 the hand as a supremely uninteresting topic 
 which might easily become tedious, if not 
 annoying. 
 
 He was a most awkward person to converse 
 with. One hour he might entertain a subject 
 with a fair show of interest — even, at rare 
 moments, with gusto. The next he might 
 dismiss the topic with a frown of his delicately- 
 marked brows and a gleam of his brilliant eyes 
 — -in fact, with a scowl. 
 
 Reports of his arrival brought artists and 
 amateurs about the house. A few artists were 
 
A Hidden Audience 83 
 
 invited, almost in fear and trembling ; for the 
 autocrat took sudden and unaccountable dis- 
 likes to people, and an unexpected trifle which 
 affected his fastidious taste would counter- 
 balance the most potent attractions. Artists — 
 by which, of course, one means musicians — 
 came, heard, and went away raving or speechless 
 with admiration, according to temperament. 
 Amateurs contrived to cajole the hosts into 
 admitting them secretly, stealthily. The scene 
 in the house those mornings when the great 
 pianist was 'practising' would have been farcical, 
 but that the extraordinary music proceeding 
 behind the closed door explained it. Ladies 
 were content to be seated on the stairs where 
 they silently listened. Now and then they 
 wept with emotion. This and that one who 
 dared not stay longer would creep stealthily 
 down ; another, waiting patiently round the 
 corner below, would creep as stealthily up, 
 and sidle into the vacant place. What would 
 have happened had the Master suddenly 
 stopped and made for the door.? It would have 
 been a tableau or an undignified stampede. But 
 
 6—2 
 
84 Musical Memories 
 
 it did not come to that. During those few 
 mornings in England he played on, supremely 
 unconscious of a hidden audience. 
 
 In 1867 he visited his friends — now domiciled 
 in quaint, grim old Queen Square, Bloomsbury 
 — again. The greatness of his playing re- 
 mained, although the youthful fire was no more. 
 Henselt was now over fifty years of age, stouter, 
 round-shouldered, fuJl-faced, and gray. His 
 abruptness and sharpness of manner and speech 
 were softened, and so, seemingly, was his intense 
 aversion to publicity, for he consented to give a 
 sort of recital at Messrs. Broadwood's, in Great 
 Pulteney Street. 
 
 The largest of the many large showrooms 
 there was denuded of pianos, and prettily 
 decorated with flowers and crimson cloth. On 
 the afternoon fixed it was filled with chairs, 
 and as many artists and amateurs as could be 
 found in or near London in August were in- 
 vited. Henselt played a varied selection from 
 the works of other composers as well as of his 
 own, and played his best. But although he was 
 thoroughly appreciated by his audience, although 
 
Schloss Gersdorf 85 
 
 even those whose anticipations were greatest 
 were not by any means disappointed, it seemed 
 a huge pity that this could not have been 
 twenty years ago, when the gorgeous richness 
 of his tone and the electric spontaneity of his 
 emotions were in their full springtide. Now 
 there was maturity in conception, in execution ; 
 but the divine spark — a distinct flame, and a 
 potent one, in 1850 — was a spark that flickered 
 only at intervals. 
 
 It was between these two visits to England 
 that the writer spent some time with him, and 
 with the gracious, graceful grande dame his 
 wife, at Schloss Gersdorf, in Silesia, and was 
 initiated into the secrets of his peculiar system. 
 The Schloss was an old baronial castle standing 
 among the wide, flat fields and barren wastes of 
 Silesia. Around the great white turreted and 
 castellated building were gardens. The village 
 and adjacent fields separated it from the vast 
 pine-forest which must be traversed to reach 
 the neighbouring mountains — the Riesengebirge. 
 Henselt lived here en grand seigneur. The 
 huge rooms were splendid with rich furniture. 
 
86 Musical Memories 
 
 costly hangings, chefs-ctceuvre of art. In the 
 suite of state-rooms ending in a noble Rittersaal 
 above the ordinary living-rooms, were the mag- 
 nificent gifts of his Russian patrons, royal and 
 noble. One chamber was green with malachite, 
 another shone with gold and platinum. There 
 were precious carvings of wood and ivory, as 
 well as jewelled writing-table equipments, also 
 Arab horses in the stables, satin-lined carriages, 
 costly plate and linen ; nothing was wanting to 
 complete the luxury of the artist's manner of 
 living. 
 
 The Frau von Henselt was a tall, finely-pro- 
 portioned woman, with good features, blue eyes, 
 golden hair, and a dignified suavity of manner. 
 From the first, although she was entertaining 
 Russian and German officers, counts, and barons, 
 and other guests, she took, the young Engldnd- 
 erin under her special protection. 
 
 It was necessary. Henselt as a man was 
 captious and capricious ; as a teacher he was 
 relentless to savagery. He was not capricious 
 with his pupils ; he treated them alike, with 
 merciless rigour, except on the occasions when 
 
Henselt's Lessons 87 
 
 he did not feel in a working humour — when he 
 would allow the Stunde to pass in silence, and 
 evidently did not listen. 
 
 Yet the Russian amateurs always flocked to 
 him, paid unheard-of terms for their course of 
 torture, put their names down as candidates for 
 future tuition when his list was full ; they 
 seemed to like a master who wielded a moral 
 knout. They would faint or have ' crises ' after 
 their lessons, yet return meekly again and again 
 to endure the ordeal. ' Why do you learn, if 
 it makes you like this?' said a friend who met 
 a young Russian lady in the master's ante- 
 room, overcome with a violent fit of weep- 
 ing. ' Es ist dock himmelisch ' (' It is still 
 heavenly'), she stammered, smiling through her 
 tears. 
 
 To benefit by Henselt's lessons, it was neces- 
 sary to be doggedly determined to benefit by 
 them, or to be a person of the spaniel and 
 walnut-tree order. To undergo them and not 
 thoroughly to hate him at the end, showed a 
 beautiful nature to be envied by those who could 
 not honestly lay claim to it. 
 
88 Musical Memories 
 
 Yet before the lesson, and after, he might be 
 geniality itself; indeed, he mostly was. 
 
 The mornings would begin with the ' little 
 breakfast,' served to some guests in their rooms, 
 but by the writer and her mother taken in 
 company with their host and hostess in a sort of 
 verandah at the end of the long suite of living- 
 rooms, which opened upon the gardens. Here, 
 Hensek — his beautiful white dog ' Chance' lying 
 at his feet — would be amiable enough. Then 
 would come a stroll in the gardens until the 
 second breakfast at half-past ten in the Speise- 
 saal, which was also the poor pupil's torture- 
 chamber. 
 
 It was a great square room, with a carved 
 stone ceiling and a highly-polished floor covered 
 with rugs and skins. The light came in greenly 
 through the mullioned windows in the thick 
 stone walls — upon the massive tables and carved 
 sixteenth-century chairs, upon the shining white 
 stove, and the grand piano drawn across the 
 end of the room, where there were also windows. 
 Over the instrument hung a beautiful picture, 
 a portrait of Henselt when he was two or three 
 
His Method 89 
 
 and twenty. The face was splendidly hand- 
 some, the eyes shone, the lips seemed to smile 
 under the brown moustache. His brown velvet 
 shooting-suit, the fur cloak thrown carelessly 
 across his chair, his gun, and the piano against 
 which he was leaning, were one and all marvel- 
 lously painted. It is astonishing that this 
 portrait has not been engraved or photo- 
 graphed. It still exists in the villa at Warm- 
 brunn, where he last lived, or elsewhere ; 
 but its whereabouts have proved difficult to 
 ascertain. 
 
 The second breakfast over, the poor pupil 
 remained, watching the quick, nervous clearing 
 away of the servants — everyone seemed troubled 
 with slight nervousness while Henselt was 
 prowling about — inwardly wishing that some- 
 thing would happen to prolong it. Then, the 
 room being empty (there were many other 
 pianos in the house, but that the lesson should 
 be given on this, a Wirth from Stuttgart, was 
 Henselt's whim), there was the waiting for him 
 to enter. 
 
 He would come in in his white suit, a red 
 
go Musical Memories 
 
 fez on his head, a fly-flapper in his hand, and, 
 motioning his pupil to seat herself at the piano, 
 would say in his short, brusque way, ' Begin so- 
 and-so.' 
 
 Then, as she began, he would first go to the 
 window, appear to see something that he took 
 exception to, then pace backwards and forwards 
 for a minute or two, stop suddenly, and, with a 
 tigerish glance at her, cry, ' Falsch ! Play it 
 again !' 
 
 ' Falsch /' But what? where? She had per- 
 haps played a page, or nearly a page. Was it 
 the way she played it that was wrong, or were 
 there wrong notes ? 
 
 She would begin again, and ' Falsch! falsch!' 
 would follow her. She seemed peppered with 
 small shot instead of that first big bullet. Then 
 he cried, ' Stop !' 
 
 The flag of truce. He came across, eyes 
 gleaming, his ivory skin paler, and with a word 
 or two in low, hissing tones, far more terrible 
 than angry shouts, would contemptuously push 
 her oiF the stool and imitate her, then play the 
 passage himself divinely, stopping now and then 
 
A Music Lesson 91 
 
 to repeat and snap out rules and hints. Then, 
 as if slightly pacified by his victory over himself 
 — by not having given way to his impulse of 
 annihilating her for ever — he would stride off 
 and begin killing flies upon the wall. 
 
 And, chilled and awe-stricken, she would make 
 another attempt at the miserable piece with her 
 trembling fingers, although the notes on the 
 music danced upon the paper, and a frantic 
 desire to take a header out of window had to 
 be fought against. During the first few bars 
 flies were being sent to their last account — flip, 
 flap, flip, flap — then a jump to reach one higher 
 than the rest on the stone wall, then a stamp of 
 the foot—' Stop !' 
 
 He would come slowly across, evidently 
 struggling for self-mastery, and in a gentle 
 manner of intense politeness, of overwhelming 
 deference, would once more point out a long 
 string of defects. Indeed, the defects were so 
 numerous that, in fact, every note seemed wrong, 
 every finger misplaced. 
 
 ' Now you will be so very good as to begin 
 again,' he would add, with terrible sweetness. 
 
92 Musical Memories 
 
 And while, strung up to the intensest pitch, 
 she made a desperate attempt to do all that was 
 required at once, he went to a side-table, took a 
 huge spoonful of some medicinal salts from a 
 glass jar, mixed it in a tumbler with water, and 
 drank it ofF. 
 
 Then perhaps there would be a milder 
 quarter of an hour, he pacing and crying 
 ' Falsch r and she stumbling through the piece 
 and correcting. Then he would stop short, 
 say ' Stop !' once more, heave a huge sigh of 
 utter hopelessness, then saying ' Get up,' would 
 sit down and give what was — the real lesson. 
 
 In ten or twenty minutes he would clearly 
 and concisely teach a pupil enough for months 
 of work. Not only did he lay down rules, but 
 he explained the why and wherefore. He 
 proposed problems, but added their solutions. 
 Enough said, according to his idea, he abruptly 
 rose — and without another word stalked out of 
 the room. 
 
 This was the ordinary lesson when he was in 
 the teaching humour. When he was not, he 
 would cry 'Falsch!' in various tones for the 
 
Life at Gersdorf 
 
 93 
 
 first half-hour, then kill flies silently, till he 
 marched out and banged the door. Or, worst 
 of all, he would bring in the dogs and play with 
 them, and let the unhappy pupil do her utter- 
 most without comment, even at the end. 
 
 Yet these very peculiar lessons were in- 
 valuable. After a course of them, whatever 
 talent one possessed was brought to life, and a 
 new and vast idea of work, its grandeur and 
 self-sacrifice, was suggested. Desultoriness, 
 carelessness, were killed once and for all — and 
 if the pupil had anything in him or her, no 
 other tuition was really required. Method, 
 aim, and judgment were inculcated. As Henselt 
 himself had been his own instructor as well as 
 his own pupil, so it was in the power of those 
 who passed through the ordeal of his lessons to 
 go and do likewise. 
 
 Meanwhile he was only Henselt the great 
 teacher during the Stunden. Before and afi:er 
 he was the gracious host, the amiable friend. 
 
 An active German country life proceeded at 
 the great white castle. Each day there were 
 strolls in the grounds or drives across the flats 
 
94 Musical Memories 
 
 — now mostly pasture or stubble-fields — to the 
 forest. Or Henselt and his son Alexander, a 
 young lieutenant in the Prussian army, a tall 
 stripling without the talent of his father or the 
 grace and savoir-faire of his mother, would 
 play bowls in the Kegelbahn with their men 
 guests, the ladies looking on. 
 
 Or Henselt would feel inclined to play to 
 some musician who had journeyed far, and 
 perhaps put up in the village to hear him. He 
 played so rarely — although not a day passed 
 that he did not practise — that there would be a 
 hasty summoning of neighbours and friends. Of 
 relatives, too : for in the village lived two of 
 Frau von Henselt's sisters, Madame von Schir- 
 mann, a widow, with her pretty daughter Rosel ; 
 and Madame von Rozinsky, the wife of a Polish 
 Colonel, with her clever daughter Marta, one of 
 her uncle's best amateur pupils. These, to- 
 gether with the grave, ascetic-looking Pastor 
 Matthai and his devoted little wife, who had 
 incurred Henselt's aversion because of her shrill 
 voice — which he said reminded him of those 
 hated birds, peacocks — and a few others, made 
 
A Recital 95 
 
 up an audience which assembled in the Speise- 
 saal in a semicircle two or three deep in front 
 of the Wirth piano, and he would give a recital. 
 
 On these occasions he was at his best. In his 
 own room, seated at the pianoforte he chose to 
 prefer — although it was not by any means the 
 best instrument at his command — he perhaps felt 
 that his listeners were more his admiring serfs 
 and vassals, who knew his repertoire and his 
 manner of playing it almost as well as they 
 knew their own faces when they saw them in 
 a glass, and therefore were scarcely to be termed 
 an audience. 
 
 He generally began with some piece de resist- 
 ance, such as a sonata of Beethoven, or some 
 important work of Mendelssohn or Weber ; then 
 he would give pieces of Schumann's, Chopin's, 
 Liszt's, Thalberg's and his own, diversified with 
 an occasional prelude and fugue of Bach or 
 extracts from the ' Suites.' Of all the classics, 
 his playing of Bach — especially the fugues — was 
 the most remarkable. His fingers were — by his 
 long practice of his own finger-gymnastics, the 
 Exercises — so absolutely independent that he 
 
96 Musical Memories 
 
 was able to keep the working of the subjects as 
 distinct as if the parts of the composition were 
 being played by several players at different 
 instruments. 
 
 This wonderful command of the hand, which 
 made his performance of a fugue a new experi- 
 ence and a marvel to the listener, gave its dis- 
 tinction to his playing of orchestral music 
 arranged for the pianoforte. In the ordinary 
 way such pieces are to be condemned. They 
 savour of the illegitimate. The pianoforte has 
 its place among instruments — a special and 
 enviable place as the greatest of wooden media 
 for music — and to use it to imitate the orchestra 
 is to degrade it. But this is the rule. Henselt's 
 playing of orchestral ' arrangements ' was the 
 exception. Great though Rubinstein's perform- 
 ance of such music was, he could not rival 
 Henselt in it ; to hear Henselt play an over- 
 ture of Weber was a revelation. Under his 
 hands, too, Cramer's studies became a species of 
 fairy-music, and the nocturnes of John Field, 
 the English composer, who, living in Russia, 
 found more favour among the Tartars than with 
 
Receptions at Gersdorf 97 
 
 his countrymen, were musical poems. Henselt 
 is said to have been influenced by Field as he 
 was influenced by Chopin. However this 
 may be in regard to his playing, those who 
 have heard neither Field nor Chopin cannot 
 of course determine. But in his softer, tenderer 
 compositions there are faint traces of the 
 musical thought of both — just as there is 
 audible a distinct flavour of Russian folk-songs 
 and their characteristic modulations. As the 
 Pole could be detected in nearly everything from 
 Chopin's pen, so the Russian is to be heard in 
 Henselt. 
 
 There were weekly receptions at Gersdorf, 
 when Henselt would, on occasion, play. The 
 whole of the beautiful suite of state-rooms was 
 then thrown open ; in one there would be cards, 
 in another music, and in the great Ritiersaal, 
 with its shining. parquet floor, the young people 
 would dance. There were also weekly recep- 
 tions at the neighbouring Schloss Waldau, a 
 mansion owned by an amiable childless couple, 
 whose aim in life seemed to be to make all 
 around them happy. This castle was in point 
 
 7 
 
98 Musical Memories 
 
 of architecture the opposite of white-stone, 
 castellated Gersdorf — whose tower with the flag 
 flying was such a picturesque object, rising 
 above the stately trees that immediately sur- 
 rounded it. It was in the old German style, 
 with numbers of tiny conical-roofed turrets, 
 and stood in quaint old gardens, whose square, 
 straight walks ended in a species of pleasure- 
 ground — green lawns around a lake where swans 
 swam and water-lilies grew. Here there were 
 graceful willows, under whose shade the young 
 people would gath'K^-those hot summer afternoons 
 to drink their cofi^ee and eat little cakes and tarts 
 with tiny silver knives. At seven an elaborate 
 supper would be served in the long dining-hall 
 of the Schloss, after which the juniors danced, 
 and their elders sat about in other rooms and 
 talked— the ladies over their knitting in one, the 
 men with their cigars in another. 
 
 These months with his wife at Gersdorf. were 
 Henselt's idler days. In Russia his life was one 
 of incessant work. As well as his private 
 teaching, he had the superintendence of the 
 music in the Government schools, and had to 
 
Henselt's System 99 
 
 make tours now and then to examine the pupils, 
 who were carrying out his system under pro- 
 fessors appointed by him to teach the music 
 specially fingered and edited by him for their 
 use. 
 
 These courses are admirable. They begin 
 with the elementary music for young minds and 
 small hands — sonatinas, studies, etc.— and take 
 the pupil step by step through the series of 
 obstacles which beset the path of the pianoforte- 
 player until, when advanced music of the greatest 
 difficulty is reached, no hindrance rerhains. 
 
 The system is rigid and arbitrary. But if 
 rigidly and arbitrarily pursued, it must make 
 fine players of those who are at all gifted, and 
 satisfactory amateurs out of the most unpromis- 
 ing, and even seemingly hopeless, pupils. 
 English children ^are certainly not accustomed 
 to study as closely and. continuously as Russian 
 and German children are expected to do, there- 
 fore the system might not be so successful here. 
 At present, although some of these prepared 
 editions are republished in Germany, they have 
 not been tried in London. 
 
 7—2 
 
loo Musical Memories 
 
 As a composer, Henselt occupies a distinctive, 
 if not a very lofty, place. His works are com- 
 paratively few. His concerto, an early work, 
 altered, added to, and edited as years went on, is 
 of enormous difficulty. Liszt seemed to love to 
 create new problems, and in this composition 
 Henselt emulated him. Few women players — 
 unless they possess the iron wrists and biceps of 
 a Sophie Menter or an Annette EssipofF — could 
 give it with effect. But in his studies, im- 
 promptus, and other shorter pieces he is not so 
 impossible ; and there is a fascination about 
 some of his compositions which makes them 
 well worth the study of every lover of the in- 
 strument. 
 
 Henselt died as he lived — wrapped up in 
 music ; above all, in his ideas of music. As it 
 had been his first thought as a young child, so 
 it was his last before he passed away. His last 
 conscious act was to hum a melody. 
 
[ loi ] 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 Music in England in the Sixties — The various concert 
 societies — Symptoms of a musical revival — English 
 musical art — Its position compared with that of the 
 music of other countries — English vocalists and 
 instrumentalists- — Madame Arabella Goddard — Her 
 life and her talents — Sir Charles Halle — The Monday 
 Popular Concerts and Mr. Arthur Chappell — Mr. 
 H. F. Chorley and the old Philharmonic — The 
 Musical Union and its director — Personal remini- 
 scences of Mr. Ella — His meeting with Henselt — 
 Monster concerts — ' Benefit' concerts — Instrumental 
 ' recitals ' — Herr Ernst Pauer, etc. 
 
 In the middle of the century music in England 
 was, compared with its present condition, to 
 a certain extent in abeyance. This country 
 was still what it has always been, the open 
 bank for musical artists of all countries to 
 draw upon when they wanted money. But it 
 
:o2 Musical Memories 
 
 had not yet learnt that it possessed an unsus- 
 pected and unworked mine of native musical 
 talent. 
 
 There were many societies for concert-giving, 
 vocal, orchestral, and instrumental. The Sacred 
 Harmonic flourished at Exeter Hall. There 
 was a Vocal Association, which possessed a 
 capital choir, and gave several concerts in the 
 season. The Philharmonic Concerts and the 
 New Philharmonic had new and seemingly 
 powerful rivals in the Musical Society, con- 
 ducted by Alfred Mellon, and the Musical Art 
 Union, whose enterprising conductor, Herr 
 Klindworth, was bent upon the production of 
 the hitherto unknown works of composers of all 
 nationalities. The Musical Union, a society 
 founded by Mr. John Ella in 1845, gave 
 several concerts for chamber music in the 
 summer, and was attempting musical evenings 
 in the winter. And not forgetting Mr. Henry 
 Leslie's choir, there were last, but not least, the 
 Monday Popular Concerts, whose establishment 
 in 1 8 5 8 by Mr. Arthur Chappell, to popularize 
 classical chamber music, is perhaps the most 
 
Monday Popular Concerts 103 
 
 important step to advance the interest of music 
 in England which has been taken in the 
 century. 
 
 Hitherto, music lovers and concert-goers had 
 been of the more opulent classes alone. Music 
 had therefore appealed to the thousands instead 
 of to the millions ; and to this fact it may be 
 attributed that there was only one musical 
 academy ; that nearly all the principal pro- 
 fessors and professional musicians living on 
 English money were foreigners ; that there 
 were few English musical ' stars ' — in their own 
 country — and while the members of all the 
 orchestras, even the Queen's private band, were 
 either aliens or, if British-born, the sons of 
 aliens, there was no school for the study of 
 orchestral instruments except the limited 
 college in Tenterden Street, which was by no 
 means overcrowded. 
 
 In the matter of musical art the thousands 
 showed themselves either unpatriotic or un- 
 believing. They were not only content to 
 welcome almost any foreign virtuoso who chose 
 to appear, but they never awarded English 
 
104 Musical Memories 
 
 composers or executants more than a succes 
 d^estime. 
 
 The heart of the country had not yet been 
 appealed to. Music and the millions were still 
 strangers. The Monday Popular Concerts 
 introduced the public and chamber music to 
 each other, as the Sacred Harmonic and other 
 societies had brought the million into close 
 contact with all that was great in vocalism. 
 
 Whether the idea first originated with Mr. 
 Arthur Chappell, their persevering and indomit- 
 able director, we know not. In any case, the 
 movement was an inspiration. Hundreds of 
 thirsty musical souls found their vocation — 
 learnt what classical music really was, and learnt 
 that which was an equally important fact : 
 that they had English born and bred artists 
 among them as great as, and in some in- 
 stances far greater than, those hailing from 
 abroad, and that they might therefore go on 
 and prosper. 
 
 Mr. Arthur Chappell found a valuable ally 
 in Mr. James W. Davison, the eminent critic 
 of the 'Times (of whom more anon). But his 
 
English Music 105 
 
 security was the possession of a few English 
 musicians who could hold their own triumph- 
 antly in the world of music as well as among 
 their own people. 
 
 Before the subject of English artists comes 
 that of English musical art. Everyone, almost, 
 will be willing to admit that, just as each separate 
 nation has its distinct language, each has its 
 distinct art spirit. German art is simple, deep, 
 grand, but will on occasion be coarse, and some- 
 times rough. French art, dainty, beautiful, 
 polished, refined, errs, when it errs, by its 
 triviality. Italy, with all its lovely thoughts 
 so poetically expressed, is sensuous to the core — 
 while the art of most other countries is too 
 steeped in their prevailing mannerisms ever to 
 be thoroughly cosmopolitan. 
 
 The prevailing characteristics of the English 
 musical spirit are calm, purity, and exactitude 
 of rhythm. As these quahties reign supreme 
 in the old English vocal composers, so we may 
 hear them stamped upon the more recent works 
 of British origin. This calm and absence or 
 undue storm and stress has led to the suggestion 
 
io6 Musical Memories 
 
 that to be English in art is to be cold. If so, 
 the greatest sculpture is cold, for in sculpture 
 art is at its calmest and purest. 
 
 Anyone will acknowledge that the classics 
 flourish best in an atmosphere of calmness and 
 purity, and therefore that when English artists 
 possess these characteristics, as one may say, by 
 nature, they become eminently, by nature, the 
 exponents of the great thoughts of noble minds 
 — ay, and of the very greatest. There have 
 lived among us a series of wonderful singers, 
 whose voices have uttered the holiest of words 
 wedded to the noblest music. Clara Novello, 
 Charlotte Dolby, Janet Patey, Sims Reeves, 
 Charles Santley, Edward Lloyd, are but a few 
 chief names of a long list that in their day have 
 done the work of preachers in bringing home 
 sacred truths to the minds of vast crowds of 
 human beings — crowds who in many cases 
 would hear them at no other time : an exalted 
 office as well as an arduous and ofttimes thank- 
 less calling. 
 
 What these great vocalists, English by birth, 
 English by nature, have done for voice-music, 
 
Madame Arabella Goddard 107 
 
 others have done for that which needs an Instru- 
 ment or instruments for its expression. Supreme 
 among English executants was Madame Arabella 
 Goddard, the head and front of that which may 
 be termed the revival of English music in this 
 century. 
 
 Although born at St. Servan, she was of 
 English parentage, and showed talent almost in 
 infancy. As a young child she studied with 
 Kalkbrenner, and later on with Mrs. Anderson, 
 pianist to and teacher of the Queen. Thalberg, 
 who was her master — and who, the most rigid 
 player in regard to technique, helped to per- 
 fect her exquisite style — recommended her to 
 imbibe the spirit of classical music from Mr. 
 J. W. Davison, whose pupil she accordingly 
 became. Thalberg doubtless felt that it needed 
 a mind that was great in itself, apart from 
 music, to imbue the young artist with the 
 thoughts of the great composers. The result 
 proved that he was right. Arabella Goddard 
 was the most faithful and reverent classical 
 player it was possible to hear. Not the faintest 
 hint given of the composer's intent was over- 
 
io8 Musical Memories 
 
 looked. To hear her play Beethoven, Mozart, 
 Mendelssohn, Weber, Schubert, and the rest, 
 was to hear their compositions as they mani- 
 festly wished them to be played. Still, the 
 lovely touch, the grace, the finish and poise of 
 the most stupendous of mechanical difficulties, 
 enhanced the charm of the composers' ideas, 
 as a beautiful scene in Nature is seen best in 
 stillness — in the glow of sunrise or sunset, or 
 under the white light of an unclouded moon, 
 rather than during a tempest. 
 
 There was a peaceful security about Madame 
 Goddard's playing which infected the listener. 
 Yet she had her moments of genius — in other 
 words, of unsought-for effects when inspiration 
 conquers the habit of self-repression necessary 
 in a classical player. The writer will never 
 forget hearing her play the septet of Hummel — • 
 perhaps his most poetic work — when she was 
 rehearsing once for a Monday Popular Concert 
 at Messrs. Broadwood's in Great Pulteney Street. 
 In the scherzo the wind instruments have the 
 melody, the piano has flights of the most deli- 
 cately fanciful accompanying arpeggios. The 
 
Sir Charles Halle 109 
 
 scherzo that day sounded superhuman, music 
 transcending the music of a workaday world, 
 and the impassioned allegro which concludes 
 the work was a fitting climax ; there was an 
 Han, an abandon about the ascending passages 
 of bravura octaves and chords, which was 
 akin to the passionate utterances of a Rubin- 
 stein. 
 
 Madame Goddard shared the pianoforte at 
 the ' Monday Populars ' with Mr. Charles 
 Halle, who had adopted England as his country. 
 He was essentially an artist devoted to the in- 
 terpretation of the musical classics, rather than 
 the executant using them to express his in- 
 dividual emotions. Born in Germany in 18 19, 
 he came to England in 1 848, and was among the 
 first to take part in the Popular Concerts after 
 their inauguration in 1858. Mr. (later on Sir) 
 Charles Halle's playing was conspicuous for the 
 very quality which distinguishes English virtuosi 
 — purity., His touch was bell-like, and his 
 mechanism was faultless. More conspicuous 
 even than Madame Goddard for his reservation, 
 his determined self-repression^ — the one flaw in 
 
1 10 Musical Memories 
 
 his marvellously-perfected technique was a slight 
 want of accent. Accent is carried to such an 
 extreme by some German musicians that per- 
 haps this careful avoidance of marked rhythm 
 was purposely adopted. As it was, it was 
 essentially suitable to the music of Heller, in 
 which he was heard at his best in his lighter 
 moments. 
 
 He it was who made of Manchester a town 
 almost vying with London in its reverence for 
 the great in music, and the English owe to 
 him somewhat of their present distinct musical 
 position in Europe. 
 
 Other English artists appeared constantly at 
 the ' Monday Populars ' — violinists such as 
 Messrs. Henry Blagrove, Cooper, and Carrodus, 
 and instrumentalists who belong more rightly 
 to a record of the present than of the past ; 
 vocalists such as Madame Lemmens-Sherring- 
 ton. Miss Banks, a sweet soprano and gifted 
 artist, the well-known contralto Miss Palmer, 
 and others. In the sixties, we also see the: 
 names of Messrs. Wilbye Cooper, Weiss, Lewis ' 
 Thomas and Santley at these ' concerts. Their 
 
Henry Fothergill Chorley 1 1 1 
 
 programmes were examples of a catholic taste. 
 Beethoven, Mozart, Haydn, Bach, and the older 
 classics, were not exclusively given, as it was the 
 fashion to give them at that time in Paris. 
 Schubert, Schumann, Brahms, Raff, Rameau — ■ 
 all, indeed, which could be called classical 
 chamber music, was conspicuously present, and 
 Mendelssohn was faithfully performed at regular 
 intervals. In 1861 his magnificent octet, now 
 so seldom heard, was, if we are not mistaken, 
 given more than once. Hummel — ^also Spohr 
 and others, received due attention. The learned 
 and brilliant critic of the _^i hen ^ urn, Mr. H. F. 
 Chorley, had no occasion to lapse from indigna- 
 tion into bitterness with the caterers for the 
 million, the authorities who drew up the 
 Popular Concert menus, as he had with the 
 directors of the Philharmonic Society. 
 
 Mr. Henry Fothergill Chorley, who will be 
 referred to- later on, was a far-seeing as well as a 
 learned man. Music in E,ngland was fortunate 
 indeed in having as her leading critics two men 
 who would have been great as writers on deeper 
 and more vital questions — Mr. J. W. Davison 
 
1 1 2 Musical Memories 
 
 and Mr. H. F. Chorley. Both critics intended 
 to foster English music and musicians, as wel] as 
 music in England. And to do this eiFectually, 
 they seem to have felt that the whole must be 
 dealt with before its part. They must bring 
 the music of the entire world to be the daily 
 bread of the million, before the units would 
 come forth and declare themselves recruits in 
 the new musical army. 
 
 Both Mr. Davison in the Times, and Mr. 
 Chorley in the Athen^um, urged entrepreneurs 
 to introduce new works. Already the Crystal 
 Palace concerts, under Mr. Manns, were leading 
 the way in this direction, and Herr Klindworth 
 followed in the orchestral programmes of the 
 Musical Art Union. But the old ' Phil- 
 harmonic ' continued its course of Beethoven, 
 Mozart and Haydn symphonies and the reitera- 
 ated concert! and overtures. 
 
 ' We may talk, indeed, of the poor old Phil- 
 harmonic concerts,' wrote Mr. Chorley at last. 
 ' It is painful to think that representatives of 
 the liberal and spirited artists who shed comfort 
 on Beethoven's death-bed, who commissioned 
 
Chorley and Ella 1 1 3 
 
 such men as Clementi and Spohr, who brought 
 forward Mendelssohn, should have dwindled to 
 monotony and barrenness like this. It is pain- 
 ful to see their association die, not "like a 
 dolphin," as Byron sings, but like a dowager, 
 respectable in apathy.' On another occasion he 
 gave direct advice, recommending the produc- 
 tion of Mehul's ' Symphony in G minor,' and 
 adding that ' a couple of columns could be filled 
 by a list of other productions unknown in 
 England, but recognized abroad.' 
 
 While upholding British talent, Mr. Chorley 
 welcomed great, and even moderately gifted, 
 foreign artists with open arms. Although he 
 covertly censured Mr. Ella's exclusiveness,and the 
 lionizing of any strange foreign fish which came 
 to his net, as he condemned his programmes 
 and their personal puffs — he was mollified by 
 the fact that new music as well as new artists 
 figured in those historic documents. 
 
 But for this redeeming feature in Ella's pro- 
 grammes, anyone familiar with Chorley 's fearless 
 and trenchant pen knew that he might hardly 
 have rested until the Musical Union was sub- 
 
114 Musical Memories 
 
 merged, together with its director, Mr. Ella, a 
 feat by no means beyond his powers. It is easier 
 to kill a musical enterprise than to give it life. 
 
 Meanwhile, the Musical Union concerts 
 were doing distinct work. Until they were 
 established, the aristocracy, were not brought in 
 contact with classical music, and had, indeed, 
 drifted into a bad way since the demise of the 
 ' Antient Concerts ' — those strictly prim and 
 formal entertainments where applause was 
 awarded by the fluttering of the programmes 
 alone (a pretty conceit in its way, if priggish). 
 With ' Prince Albert,' as he was still entitled, 
 as its President, and titled amateurs as its 
 ' Council ' (whether that Council ever met 
 is unknown), it is not wonderful that a very 
 select audience supported Mr. Ella's enterprise, 
 which was the giving of a limited number 
 of quartett concerts after the manner of the 
 Alard and Franchomme or Armingaud and 
 Jacquard societies in Paris, except that instead 
 of one pianist he employed several. These 
 were given during the London season, between 
 April and August, and admirable concerts they 
 
Mr. Ella 115 
 
 were, the programmes being executed to per- 
 fection by all concerned. 
 
 Mr. Ella had not always been a concert- 
 director. Born in Thirsk in 1802, he became, 
 when little more than a youth, a fair performer 
 on the fiddle ; he himself owned to having been 
 a member of the Queen's private band. But 
 little that is authentic of his biography seems to 
 be known ; meanwhile, in some way he became 
 a musical authority in certain aristocratic 
 families, and from one to another extended his 
 clientele until. In 1845, he started his Musical 
 Union. 
 
 The concerts were first given in Willis' 
 Rooms — the famous saloons used for Almack's 
 and other balls — great square chambers, elabo- 
 rately decorated, with long, massive mirrors let 
 into the walls between the satin brocaded 
 draperies of the many windows. There was an 
 air of musty and faded grandeur about- these 
 rooms in the daytime. The dust was apt to 
 lie somewhat thickly upon the crystal lustre 
 chandeliers. The audience, however conserva- 
 tive, must have felt relieved when, after much 
 
1 1 6 Musical Memories 
 
 hesitation and discussion, the concerts were 
 finally established in the then new St. James's 
 Hall. 
 
 Here Mr. Ella had a square platform erected 
 in the centre of the hall. It was covered with 
 bright crimson cloth — he always had an eye to 
 effect — and sometimes surrounded with shrubs. 
 The pianoforte was thus as near to the entire 
 audience, who were ranged round in circles of 
 seats all facing the platform, as possible ; and 
 about the platform he would hover — a short 
 man, with a big bald head, over which the few 
 hairs left were plastered as landmarks of a 
 former crop ; with a Roman nose, prominent 
 chin, overhanging brows, twinkling eyes, and a 
 broad grin — Punch in the flesh. He was 
 careful, if not punctilious, in the matter of dress ; 
 and was quite bridegroom-like in his dark-blue 
 frock-coat, light tie, and spotless lavender kid 
 gloves. 
 
 To see him at his best was to see him 
 escorting some lady star from abroad to the 
 piano, or seated airily conversing with some 
 important dowager on the front bench, one of. 
 
Ella at Home 
 
 1 17 
 
 those ladies irreverently termed ' Ella's duchesses ' 
 by youthful members of the Union less 
 socially important : or, still better, when he 
 was standing or sitting where he could be the 
 observed of all observers during the perform- 
 ance, beating time, wagging his head, or 
 glancing rapturously upward. Advertising his 
 artists on the programme, he advertised their 
 current performance by acting his admiration. 
 With the exception of a few recusants in the 
 back-seats, Ella's auditors accepted Ella's artists 
 at Ella's valuation. 
 
 But Ella was useful. Although he was the 
 avowed enemy of British art — although Arabella 
 Goddard, great artist though she was, was 
 tabooed by him, and, if he could possibly avoid 
 it, no English pianoforte graced his platform — 
 he was an inducement to foreign virtuosi to 
 visit England, and English audiences heard 
 many great artists they might never otherwise 
 have known of except by hearsay. For the 
 Musical Union was a bait, a promise of 
 further cheques. 
 
 To be in the least interesting to John Ella, 
 
ii8 Musical Memories 
 
 it was necessary, if born on British soil, to be of 
 foreign parentage. Because of her foreign 
 parentage, he was gracious to the writer, who 
 remembers visits to him as a child. He lived 
 then in part of a house in Harley Street. His 
 sitting-rooms were on the ground -floor, his 
 special sanctum two back-rooms communicating 
 with each other — the first a library of music 
 and books relating to music, all minutely cata- 
 logued, for he had the gift of order to a 
 remarkable degree ; the second lighted by a 
 skylight, under whose merciless light his bald 
 head shone like a billiard-ball : a study, office, or 
 business sitting-room, where an Erard grand 
 was somewhat ostentatiously drawn up on one 
 side, and he sat behind an office table to inter- 
 view his visitors. 
 
 He was nothing if not loquacious, and would 
 hold forth volubly for hours on his various 
 dealings with artists, and on his position in the 
 musical world, being especially anxious to im- 
 press his hearers with the fact — or rather, per- 
 haps, idea — that he rather lost by his concerts 
 than otherwise. 
 
Ella on Musicians 119 
 
 ' I pay my artists large sums to come over,' 
 he would say. ' If it were not for me, none of 
 you would ever hear the great foreign virtuosi. 
 I have actually lost money some seasons. 
 Happily, I have my little patrimony ' — mag- 
 nanimously, thumbs in his waistcoat, eyes 
 blinking, head thrown back — ' and my wants 
 are few. These rooms' — a deprecatory wave 
 of the hand, with a suggestion how he might 
 be lodged were he less disinterested — ' a chop; a 
 glass of sherry, voila tout !' 
 
 He spoke feelingly of the ingratitude of 
 artists in general. ' Would you believe it,' he 
 would say — with the saddened smile of one 
 who has given his very heart's blood without 
 acknowledgment — ' I have put hundreds, and 
 in some cases thousands, into their pockets, and 
 they have never even given me the value of 
 a sou. Except young Arthur Napoleon and 
 Rubinstein — a great friend of mine is Rubin- 
 stein — they are one and all selfish, selfish to the 
 core !' 
 
 Rubinstein — so said a brother artist — wis 
 the first to allude to his friend as Punch. 
 
126 Musical Memories 
 
 But it is a privilege of friends to be uncere- 
 monious in such trifles. 
 
 At the dinner-table Ella would have been 
 amusing had his anecdotes, often related in 
 fluent, if somewhat Cockney French, been less 
 occupied by his own personality. He some- 
 times told interesting mots of celebrated artists, 
 but his stories-in-chief were of his own prowess. 
 There was a certain tale of his capture of a 
 salmon in Scotland, which lengthened by a few 
 sentences each time of telling. There had been 
 a time when, beginning with the serving of the 
 fish, it was well over by the appearance of the 
 cheese. But the last time the writer had the 
 honour of hearing it, it was barely half through 
 — in fact, Ella had not begun to ' play ' the 
 monster from his slippery perch among the 
 rocks — when the ladies rose to leave the 
 table. 
 
 Only on one occasion did he seem somewhat 
 less buoyant than usual. This was when, in 
 186^7, he was invited to dine with Henselt in 
 Queen Square, where the pianist was staying 
 with his old chum, Karl Mangold. Henselt 
 
Ella and Henselt 121 
 
 failed to understand his French, and there was 
 no other language they could converse in, 
 Henselt being absolutely ignorant of English, 
 and Ella knowing but a few scraps of German. 
 Interpretation was resorted to. But Henselt — 
 who had somewhat obstinately refused to under- 
 stand Ella's position in London, and had queru- 
 lously shaken his head, and repeated, ' Was ist 
 dieser Mann und sein Musical Union ?' when 
 he was asked to tolerate his presence at dinner 
 — stared gloomily at the grinning man with the 
 Punch-like physiognomy, and, lapsing into 
 complete silence, stroked his moustache and 
 scowled for the remainder of the evening. 
 
 'The most ill-tempered brute I ever sat at 
 table with,' was Ella's account of the great 
 pianist after that experience. 
 
 ***** 
 
 Another, if a less important, factor in the 
 popularization of music in London was the 
 lengthy entertainment called the ' monster 
 concert.' 
 
 The programmes of these were given by a 
 crowd of artists, vocal and instrumental, all, or 
 
122 Musical Memories 
 
 nearly all, contributing two numbers. In most 
 cases beginning at one or half-past one o'clock, 
 they would still be in progress at six in the 
 evening. The programmes were polyglot in 
 the matter of musical composers. Beethoven 
 and Bach alternated with the newest pianoforte 
 ' arrangement ' or most recent popular ballad, 
 and the vast audience — for, although frequently 
 given in St. James's Hall, on occasions they were 
 held in Drury Lane and other theatres — sat 
 patiently, hour after hour, their applause at the 
 last being scarcely fainter than at the beginning. 
 Chorley and the more fastidious among the 
 critics deprecated these musical festivals in 
 nuce, but they are unquestionably entitled to a 
 place among the educators, musically speaking, 
 of the concert-goers whose means would not 
 allow of their attending the Philharmonic, 
 Musical Union, or other expensive entertain- 
 ments. 
 
 They were given by Sir Julius Benedict, Mr. 
 Kuhe, Mr. Howard Glover, and others. 
 According to Mr. Kuhe, they were not par- 
 ticularly remunerative, but we believe that Mr. 
 
Concerts 123 
 
 Glover counted them among his sources of 
 income. 
 
 Whether 'benefit concerts' — private affairs got 
 up by certain artists to sell the tickets among 
 their pupils and friends, and to give away the 
 remainder — were ever more than harmless and 
 ephemeral is a question. Some consider that 
 they have been to a certain extent mischievous, 
 in that they kept some persons, who had only 
 a certain sum to expend in concert-tickets, from 
 attending a far higher class of entertainment. 
 Be this as it may, they still live, and seemingly 
 flourish — for where, in the sixties, one concert of 
 this sort was given, there are now a dozen or 
 a score. 
 
 Instrumental 'recitals,' given by artists who 
 have already won their spurs, or who are 
 entitled to win them, are a different affair, and 
 are distinctly educational. They were heralded 
 by the historical pianoforte recitals of Herr 
 Pauer in Willis's Rooms, when he gave specimens 
 of bygone composers audiences knew merely 
 as names, and traced the development of piano- 
 forte music up to the present time ; by Mr. 
 
124 Musical Memories 
 
 Charles Halle, who played the whole of Beet- 
 hoven's sonatas in a series of matinees at St. 
 James's Hall ; and by the never-to-be-forgotten 
 Mendelssohn recitals of Madame Arabella 
 Goddard. Mendelssohn, once the idol of 
 amateur pianists, has never been played with 
 more appreciation and grace, with more exquisite 
 ideality. It is a pity such a memory should 
 pass away, that there was no phonograph present 
 to perpetuate those choice and tender modula- 
 tions, that flowing stream of sound. 
 
[ 125 ] 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 The musical critics and their work — Mr. H. F. Chorley 
 — His birth, parentage, and education — His intro- 
 duction to London — Established as critic to the 
 Atheneeum — Ella and Chorley — Virginia Gabriel — 
 Chorley's works — His death — James W. Davison — 
 His gifts and characteristics — Davison and Weist 
 Hill — Messrs. Howard Glover, Desmond Ryan, and 
 Sutherland Edwards — A ' little dinner ' — Some of 
 Davison's written opinions — His funeral — Messrs. 
 Gruneisen, Hogarth, and Lincoln — The musical 
 critics of to-day. 
 
 Since the very first time that any artist or 
 writer made a bid for public favour — and who 
 can say when that was.f" — ' critic' has been to a 
 certain extent an opprobrious word. We do not 
 love those who tell us unpalatable truths. They 
 who are freshly smarting from the lash have 
 from time immemorial labelled their castigators. 
 
:26 Musical Memories 
 
 Yet, as a body, critics who maintain their 
 position — of course there are spurious, mush- 
 room critics as well as spurious writers, artists, 
 and what-not — are an exceptional race of men. 
 
 The critical faculty may be said to be the 
 result of a peculiarly rich organization — for 
 only such a one is equipped for the role, and can 
 follow it for any length of time — and critics 
 are born as well as made. The musical critic 
 must have a full conception of the ideal in the 
 art he criticizes. He must have a vast memory, 
 a strong power of comparison, and a sensitive- 
 ness to the finest and faintest impressions. All 
 this to start with. He must have a huge 
 capacity for work, and continuous, laborious 
 work — for in one way he is a slave to those he 
 criticizes and servant to his editors, and must be 
 as watchful and ready as the ten wise virgins in 
 one. He must listen to everything put before 
 him, good, bad and indifferent. Listen indeed 
 he must — outraged though his finely-cultivated 
 taste may be by the most miserable caricature 
 that has the effrontery to come before the public, 
 and the tares flourish among the wheat : listen. 
 
The Musical Critics 127 
 
 though his nerves thrill with the torture, and 
 judge — always on the side of mercy, when, as in 
 these days, every aspirant is a hero in his little 
 coterie. 
 
 Then, when — after braving all weathers and 
 passing from one vitiated atmosphere to another 
 — he must be physically exhausted, he cannot go 
 home and rest like the artists and audience. He 
 must take his place at his desk, oftentimes in 
 the small hours, amid the noise and bustle of a 
 printing-office, and write freshly, brilliantly, as 
 if he were just recruited by sleep and food. 
 There must not be a halting sentence or a 
 failing word — no, nor a slip of the pen — or down 
 upon him will be a disappointed crowd of 
 incipient enemies who have not, they consider, 
 had 'justice ' from his hands. As well as a super- 
 human brain, which can, like the brook, go on 
 for ever without a moment's pause, he must 
 have a nervous system which can never be 
 shaken, and the physique of a Hercules. Those 
 who are not thus equipped are soon to be recog- 
 nized. They are the wounded who drop by the 
 way. 
 
128 Musical Memories 
 
 In these days, some of the public have a habit 
 of cavilling at criticisms. Yet, because no un- 
 just critic can exist for a month on any leading 
 journal, the critics are their best friends. They 
 tell them the truth — vs^here to go for their plea- 
 sure and benefit, and how they may spend their 
 recreation money to the best advantage. And 
 it is to the critics of the present, who are bravely 
 continuing the work of the critics of the past, 
 that England chiefly owes its growth as a 
 musical country. 
 
 It has been shown how there was a time 
 when English composers and compositions and 
 English music and musicians were practically 
 submerged. To be English in music was to be 
 anathema, especially in Great Britain and her 
 dependencies. 
 
 The two leading critics of the day — Mr. J. 
 W. Davison of the "Times and Mr. H. F. 
 Chorley of the Athenaeum — were, if not altogether 
 the originators of the new movement to awaken 
 English music to a fresh and vigorous life, most 
 certainly its pioneers. 
 
 They had a whole full-grown forest of preju- 
 
Henry F. Chorley 129 
 
 dice and scepticism to hew down before they 
 could arrive at an open field where England 
 might enter the lists. But they wielded the 
 axe with skill and untiring perseverance, and 
 lived to see the first results of their patriotism. 
 
 Mr. Chorley was an extraordinary man, as a 
 cursory glance at his life will show. 
 
 For one who was to ' hold his own ' in the 
 fashionable world as well as in literary and 
 musical circles, his birth and early training were 
 hardly promising. Although the Chorleys were 
 an old Lancashire family — two members of 
 which were beheaded, and their landed property 
 confiscated, for having gone out with the 
 Stuarts in 17 15 — when Henry was born they 
 were in far more humble circumstances. Lack- 
 ing the art of making money, or keeping it, 
 Chorley's father was no exception to his 
 ancestors in this regard ; and when he died — 
 probably where Henry was born, at Blackley 
 Hurst, near Billinge — his family became de- 
 pendent upon Mrs. Chorley's half-brother. 
 
 At this time little Henry was but seven years 
 old. Four years later his general education 
 
 9 
 
130 Musical Memories 
 
 began. His mother moved to Liverpool, and 
 he and his brothers attended the Royal Institu- 
 tion, where they received a classical training. 
 
 A peculiar-looking child, small, fragile, red- 
 headed, badly dressed, and with the nervous 
 habit of blinking his eyes and slightly twitching 
 his lips, which adhered to him through life, he 
 did not inspire his schoolfellows with liking. 
 He was ' nothing much ' in class, and he failed 
 utterly in the playground. He was considerably 
 bullied by the rougher boys, to whom he was 
 especially irritating. 
 
 He was wont to say, on the occasions when 
 he was betrayed into expansiveness on the sub- 
 ject of his early life and struggles, that his 
 schooldays had sufficient of bitterness in them 
 to provide him liberally with nightmares for his 
 whole succeeding years. And while he was 
 plodding away at Latin and Greek — the latter 
 he found the easier — all his sympathies were 
 magnetized by music. His mother had a sweet 
 voice, although she had had little or no real in- 
 struction, but the little boy listened greedily to 
 every sort and kind of music that came in his way. 
 
Chorley's Life 131 
 
 and was positively fascinated by a certain music- 
 shop which he had passed on his way to and 
 from school, which he haunted and hovered 
 about as long and as often as he dared. Pas- 
 sionately did he wish to be a musician, always 
 and only a musician. But instead of being able 
 to continue the lessons begun with Herr Herr- 
 mann, of the Liverpool Philharmonic Society, 
 duty — for which he always had a great regard — 
 enforced his acceptance of a clerkship under 
 some American merchants in the town. 
 
 As a solace to his mind, tortured by the 
 drudgery of desk-work, he began to write tales, 
 verses, and hymns. Possibly by means of one 
 or more of these sacred eifusions, he came to 
 London under the patronage of Archdeacon 
 Wrangham, and this was the turning-point of 
 his career. 
 
 He was now twenty-two, a tall, fair, un- 
 gainly youth, under whose nervous, quaint 
 reserve and the Quaker-like manner inherited 
 from his parents — who were both of the Society 
 of Friends — lay a small abyss of romantic enthu- 
 siasm. The Archdeacon, interested and aroused, 
 
 9—2 
 
132 Musical Memories 
 
 he hardly knew why, by his original protege, 
 took him to breakfast with Basil Montagu, who 
 from that moment became his friend. 
 
 In the coteries he afterwards frequented he 
 met Miss Maria Jewsbury (Mrs. Fletcher), and 
 she it was who, by introducing him to Mr. C, 
 Wentworth Dilke, the editor of the Athenaeum, 
 was the actual founder of his future fortunes. 
 In September, 1830, he was commissioned by 
 Mr. Dilke to write the account of the cere- 
 monies to inaugurate the new railway between 
 Liverpool and Manchester ; and in such a style 
 did he execute this mere reporter-work that 
 presently we find his editor lending a willing 
 ear to his suggestion of musical criticisms — 
 papers which showed such conspicuous ability, 
 if not genius, that Chorley soon after left Liver- 
 pool for London, and became the critic — very 
 soon the celebrated critic — of the Athenaum. 
 
 To reperuse the articles he subsequently 
 wrote is to be astonished at not only their 
 critical acumen, their brilliance, point, and 
 nervous incisiveness, but at the extraordinary 
 vitality of the trenchant paragraphs, which 
 
Chorley's Writings 133 
 
 makes them scintillate with life, as if they were 
 utterances of yesterday. He threw himself into 
 his work heart, soul, mind, and strength, and — 
 although he meted out praise to foreign art and 
 artists, when deserved, with no unsparing hand, 
 and wished to see music in England like the 
 spreading tree on whose branches all the birds 
 of the earth might perch and sing — English 
 music was the particular Muse of whom he 
 proved himself the faithful knight. 
 
 His personality, to those who knew him but 
 little, was chilling. Tall, spare, pale, with 
 colourless eyelashes shading light gray eyes, he 
 spoke in a high-pitched voice, and, unlike Mr. 
 J. W. Davison, was not as brilliant a speaker 
 as he was a writer. 
 
 ' Bah ! don't talk to me of Chorley ! He looks 
 like a sick monkey,' said Professor Ella, who 
 detested him. But however Chorley may have 
 lacked personal beauty, he must have possessed 
 some peculiar charm, for he was to be found 
 among the brave men and lovely women of his 
 day, his society equally courted and desired. 
 And he was able to pick and choose his 
 
1 34 Musical Memories 
 
 entourage. One of his special friends was the 
 accomplished amateur and song-writer, Virginia 
 Gabriel. There was scarcely a musical gather- 
 ing at her house when, whatever might be going 
 on in the world of concerts and operas, his 
 lanky figure might not be seen leaning up 
 against the door-post, and his somewhat shrill, 
 staccato accents heard, distinguishable amongst 
 the buzz of various voices. 
 
 Although a doubter of prodigies and early 
 appearances, he was gentle in his dealings with 
 young artists. He was specially tender in his 
 treatment of the writer, whom he considered 
 too young for life in public, quoting the well- 
 known Italian saw, ' Chi va piano, va sano e 
 anche lontano! ' Young lady,' he said, smiling, 
 ' you will go far if you are not in a hurry '- — 
 advice which is apphcable to students and all 
 young artists generally — who have not wings, 
 being human, to fly to the top rung of the 
 ladder. 
 
 At the time when he was to be seen at every 
 sort and kind of musical entertainment, as his 
 duty demanded, he was to be met in most 
 
Chorley's Books 135 
 
 private literary and artistic gatherings of con- 
 siderable note ; and in addition to his constant 
 lengthy contributions to the Athenaum, he was 
 writing for the New Qiuarterly and British 
 Foreign Reviews, for Bentley's Miscellany, the 
 People's Journal, and Jerrold^s Magazine, and 
 found time to write novels which did not 
 succeed, and a five-act play, ' Old Love and 
 New Fortune,' which, brought out at the Surrey 
 Theatre, did. 
 
 So did his books, ' Modern German Music ' 
 and ' Thirty Years' Musical Recollections ' ; 
 and — although he was pretty severely handled 
 on the subject of his book for Bennett's ' May 
 Queen ' — his libretti for Wallace's ' Amberwitch,' 
 Leslie's ' Judith ' and ' Holyrood,' Benedict's 
 ' St. Cecilia,' Sullivan's ' Kenilworth,' and the 
 not-yet-performed ' Sapphire Necklace,' were 
 duly successful. He also furnished the English 
 libretto of Gounod's ' Faust,' and so nervously 
 anxious was he that the words should be exactly 
 given, that he was seen writhing in agonies in 
 the wings the night of the opera's first appear- 
 ance in English dress, because the great English 
 
136 Musical Memories 
 
 ' Faust,' Mr, Sims Reeves, was not so letter- 
 perfect as he was dulcet of voice and admirable 
 in intonation. 
 
 As critic he had his prejudices. Widely- 
 sympathetic to all that was of English or 
 British origin, taking native composers to his 
 heart — from those who are now mere names, 
 down to the latest — he disliked, at times almost 
 abhorred, Schumann. Whether the rough 
 monotony of that sweetest of melodists' rhythm 
 jarred upon his fastidiously-delicate taste canriot 
 be said. In any case, he failed to appreciate 
 one who was essentially a tone-poet. 
 
 Residing at first with a great friend, for twenty 
 years he lived, alone, in Eaton Place West. 
 V? propos of this final move, a story is told which 
 shows him to have been subject at certain 
 moments to a grim facetiousness. The agent 
 who was showing him the house deprecated 
 the narrowness of its passages. ' Never mind,' 
 said Chorley dryly ; 'I shall require a very narrow 
 coffin.' ' I have sold a good many leases of 
 houses, sir,' said the agent, somewhat taken 
 aback, ' but I never heard a gentleman make 
 
J. W. Davison 1 37 
 
 such an observation before.' Yet much im- 
 portant work was done before the narrow coffin 
 was carried to its last resting-place. Henry 
 Fothergill Chorley died February 16, 1872, 
 aged sixty-four. 
 
 The other great critical star of the musical 
 world at that time was as individual, as original, 
 as Chorley, but was possessed of a more daring 
 genius. James W. Davison, who was appointed 
 to the position of musical critic of the Times 
 when that journal was practically the first 
 in the world, was instantaneous in judgment, 
 and utterly fearless in that judgment's enuncia- 
 tion. His was a mind whose great forces acted 
 with lightning rapidity, and must have been 
 hard to hold in check. As it was, his articles 
 in the Times were generally outbursts of 
 eloquence. Being so marvellous a speaker, 
 holding his hearers spellbound for hours when 
 he was ' in the vein,' he might be said to have 
 been the reporter of his own unuttered speeches 
 rather than a mere writer. 
 
 Although the humble recorder of these 
 memories had the honour of his personal friend- 
 
138 Musical Memories 
 
 ship — leaving music as a profession to take up 
 the pen at his advice, and first writing under 
 his editorship — there are others to whom a fitting 
 record of his life should be left. It is sufficient 
 to add here that he was born in October, 1813, 
 and that his mother, before she married Mr. 
 Davison, an English squire, was known and 
 admired as the clever and beautiful actress, Miss 
 Duncan. 
 
 The portrait of Davison's mother shows a 
 woman of graceful form and gracious presence, 
 whose classic face beams with intellect, and 
 whose eyes must have been as eloquent as her 
 son's. To the end Davison spoke of his mother 
 with reverence and admiration ; to her he may 
 have owed much of his wealth of resource, and 
 certainly his electric spontaneity. 
 
 Like Byron, Davison suffered from a slight 
 lameness. This may have been rather a help 
 than a hindrance in his literary life ; for those 
 who knew him felt that to his energetic and 
 buoyant temperament an outdoor life, had he 
 been of a more athletic build, must have proved 
 a great attraction. In person he was of middle 
 
Davison and Mendelssohn 139 
 
 height, with a fine head and a characteristic 
 face — the outstanding sharp-cut nose which 
 among noses is termed ' the clever,' and with 
 dark-blue eyes, clear and sparkling as sapphires 
 and twinkling with humour. 
 
 Musician as well as writer, he composed, and 
 in some instances published, a number of pieces, 
 classical in character, scholarly in treatment, 
 but entirely inferior to his literary offspring. 
 His taste was first and foremost the old masters. 
 Bach was thoroughly congenial to his mind ; 
 he would spend hours playing the fiigues. 
 Beethoven he was the first to establish here on 
 a firm basis. Meanwhile, he delighted in Men- 
 delssohn, and to Mendelssohn he remained 
 faithful till death ; no newer light eclipsed his 
 in Davison's mind. 
 
 Of all Mendelssohn's works, his favourites 
 may be said to have been the ' Scottish Sym- 
 phony,' the lieder — and the fiery and im- 
 petuous octet, played so frequently at the 
 Monday Popular Concerts in the sixties, and 
 now, alas ! so seldom heard. In one instance 
 the performance of the ' Scottish Symphony ' 
 
140 Musical Memories 
 
 with great preparation and minute care, brought 
 about a reconciliation between James Davison 
 and a former protege of his, Weist Hill. When 
 the Alexandra Palace was first opened, there 
 were weekly orchestral concerts given on Satur- 
 days by a band of excellent, in some cases fresh 
 and talented, young musicians who have since 
 made their mark in the musical world, under 
 the baton of the well-known violinist — later 
 chief of the Guildhall School of Music — Weist 
 Hill. As these were Saturday afternoon per- 
 formances, and therefore clashing with the 
 long- established concerts at the Crystal Palace, 
 Davison did not feel it his bounden duty to 
 forsake the older for the newer enterprise. 
 However, one afternoon the piece de resistance 
 in the Alexandra Palace programme was the 
 so-called ' Scottish Symphony,' and a mutual 
 friend of Davison and Weist Hill persuaded 
 the former to go. He went, heard, and 
 was conquered. The writer, who sat by him, 
 watched his growing enthusiasm, until at the 
 close he cried with the abandon of a boy, • I 
 never heard a finer performance in my whole life!' 
 
Henry Weist Hill 141 
 
 Afterwards, he went to the conductor's room 
 and shook Weist Hill warmly by the hand. 
 The artist deserved the tribute. Weist Hill's 
 * strings ' were unsurpassed, and he was a daring 
 musician. Mendelssohn, personally so well 
 balanced, was, in the matter of tempi, somewhat 
 reckless of consequences. He it was who 
 radically, and it may be said chronically, 
 quickened the allegro to a presto, the presto 
 to prestissimo. Weist Hill took the quicker 
 movements of the symphony at Mendelssohnian 
 speed, but emerged triumphantly, covered with 
 glory. Not a note was lost, not a phrase was 
 slurred. 
 
 Leading the world of amateurs — some of 
 whom, believing in the opinions of the cogno- 
 scenti, read their Times before hearing the 
 artists or compositions criticized — Davison was 
 unconsciously the king among the lesser critics 
 of the day. Of course, where two such critical 
 autocrats as Chorley and Davison co-existed in a 
 capital, it could scarcely be expected that they 
 would fraternize, but preserve, as indeed they 
 did, an armed neutrality, uniting their forces on 
 
142 Musical Memories 
 
 occasion against some common enemy. But 
 Davison, both in and outside concert-room or 
 opera, was surrounded by a little knot of 
 courtiers who were his faithfiil listeners and 
 adherents — supporting his dictum, although, in 
 those days of the absolute and almost un- 
 bounded supremacy of the Times newspaper, 
 he could well have stood alone, even against a 
 cabal of antagonists. 
 
 His marked features and restless dark head 
 could generally be seen near to the ruddy, good- 
 humoured face of Howard Glover, of the 
 Morning Post — himself a musician England has 
 good reason to be proud of — who also wielded a 
 brilliant pen, and who inherited a natural Irish 
 wit from his parents. (His mother was the 
 well-known actress.) Not far away one would 
 be certain to catch sight of the frizzy dark hair, 
 somewhat solemn, professor-like visage, and 
 spectacles of Desmond Ryan, the sparkling 
 writer on music in more than one journal of 
 repute. 
 
 In later years Mr. Sutherland Edwards, who 
 has distinguished himself as an author in other 
 
A Little Dinner 143 
 
 subjects as well as music, was one of Davison's 
 close friends. He it was who once remained 
 last with his friend throughout a long night's 
 vigil at the author's house, when Davison talked 
 literally from early evening till the winter dawn. 
 The gifted man did not add to his many 
 qualities the faculty of being punctual. As a 
 guest he had long been considered as hopeless — 
 when he was invited to dinner generally arriving 
 when the latest lingerer at dessert had joined the 
 ladies in the drawing-room. 
 
 On this occasion — a little dinner to a chosen 
 few, among whom were Mr. Sutherland 
 Edwards and Mr. George Grossmith — he had 
 amiably commissioned his brother, Mr. William 
 Duncan Davison, to fetch and escort him to his 
 destination. However, Mr. W. D. Davison 
 arrived alone and rueful. Adjourning ' home,' 
 he had found the bird flown. After a short 
 period of waiting, hosts and guests sat down to 
 dinner, disappointed. When the sweets were 
 served, there] was a knock at the door, followed 
 by a slight altercation with a cabman, who had 
 been driving Davison round the Park in the 
 
144 Musical Memories 
 
 darkness, and who expected a fancy payment for 
 the impromptu drive. Dinner was served to 
 Davison, but he began to talk ; and he never 
 talked better, for, with the interval of a few of 
 Mr. Grossmith's songs, which he greatly en- 
 joyed, he talked through the night. One by 
 one the guests slipped away, especially when 
 metaphysics became the topic, and the Dialogues 
 of Plato, and Socrates according to Xenophon 
 and Plato, were closely discussed. Between 
 five and six a.m. some dozed. Between six and 
 seven breakfast became an essential, and after a 
 * scratch ' meal Davison, still as fresh as Socrates 
 after an all-night symposium, passed out into 
 the gray light of the chill winter dawn, accom- 
 panied by his faithful friends. 
 
 The habit of turning night into day was, 
 perforce, his to a fault. After a day's concerts 
 and an evening at the opera, he would adjourn 
 to a favoured tavern^ — the Albion — near to 
 the opera-houses, to write those marvellous 
 articles which seemed to issue newly-alive from 
 his untired brain, and which a few hours later 
 delighted thousands of readers at the breakfast- 
 
Davison's Writings 141^ 
 
 table ; and there he remained till his work was 
 done. 
 
 In re-perusing these astonishing essays, one is 
 struck by their prophetic tendency, no less than 
 by the modernity of their style: and in those 
 days of lengthy divagations — of the popularity 
 of the long-winded and inflated — their terse 
 and vigorous grip is amazing. Collected, they 
 would be an invaluable musical history, if not a 
 lesson to all students — and would read with a 
 new significance. 
 
 Davison has been accused of prejudice. 
 With temperaments of such fiery enthusiasm, 
 an occasional bias of opinion is inevitable. But 
 with him it was the exception rather than the 
 rule. It was his effort, his endeavour — as he 
 himself said when he was about to hear a new 
 work or a new artist— to keep his mind strictly 
 a tabula rasa. In some cases he forced himself to 
 deaden his musical palate, for there were great 
 artists and works submitted to his criticism, 
 whose mannerisms, or perhaps even theories, 
 were entirely obnoxious to his taste. As he 
 himself writes, in January, 1861 : 'Artists of 
 
 10 
 
146 Musical Memories 
 
 the highest class, with the stamp of individuality 
 upon them, should be accepted in good faith, 
 idiosyncrasies and all.' This was his own motto, 
 written for himself as well as for others. Like 
 all other great critics in literature and art, he 
 valued originality, individuality, above and 
 beyond all other qualities — that stamp of the 
 Creator, who creates no double in Nature, upon 
 the creature. To this hall-mark of immortality 
 he was willing to sacrifice much — all, indeed, 
 but the fixed principles of art. When there 
 was a suspicion of anarchy — of reversal of the 
 accepted rule strengthened by the assent of 
 centuries of great minds — he halted and drew 
 rein. He never accepted Richard Wagner, 
 
 From first to last his columns in the Times 
 show a firm, fixed belief in the promise of a rise 
 of English music to the highest attainable level. 
 Even then, thirty, forty, fifty years ago, when 
 English musicians were rarities, and when 
 budding talent which is common enough now 
 was welcomed as an exception, he trusted in 
 the future. 
 
 Of an English orchestra (that of the Musical 
 
English Orchestras 147 
 
 Society, under the conductorship of Alfred 
 Mellon) he wrote, early in the | sixties : ' There 
 are elements of capability in our orchestral 
 players which endow them with a marked 
 preference over their foreign contemporaries. 
 The most illustrious composers of modern 
 Germany — Weber, Spohr, Mendelssohn, Meyer- 
 beer — have acknowledged the quickness and in- 
 telligence of our orchestras, their " vigour of 
 attack " and general breadth of style, which, 
 combined with the rich quality of tone brought 
 from their instruments — a tone attributed by 
 some to the instruments themselves, by others 
 to the superior energy of the players — invests 
 their performance with a peculiar spirit and 
 charm, to which no parallel can be cited abroad.' 
 Yet he deprecated the possibility of English 
 instrumentalists — who in those days had to toil 
 to support an outward show not expected of 
 German musicians in Germany — ever attaining 
 the ensemble of, for instance, the orchestra of the 
 Gewandhaus in Leipzig. Nothing, he felt, 
 could ' do ' but constant rehearsal, day after 
 day, that daily playing together which, after long 
 
 10 — 2 
 
148 Musical Memories 
 
 years, gave the Crystal Palace orchestra almost 
 the consonance of a huge single instrument. 
 
 He would have seen the solution of this 
 difficulty in the establishment of great musical 
 academies where orchestral practice proceeds 
 in an unbroken flow from year's end to 
 year's end. But, unhappily, he passed away 
 before the revival of British musical feeling — of 
 which he was the head and front — had set in 
 in its full force. 
 
 Then, solitary units laboured somewhat 
 cheerlessly away in smoky London, discouraged 
 by the feeling that, however hard they might 
 work, the public would never believe in them as 
 in their foreign brethren, or in some luckier 
 English students who had studied at Leipzig, 
 Milan, Paris, or Cologne. Now there are scores 
 of rising young artists in Tenterden Street 
 and the Royal College of Music, and hundreds 
 at the Guildhall School, who will be warmly 
 welcomed on their first appearance by a public 
 anxious to be pleased, hoping that they will pass 
 through the initial trial with success. And this 
 change was principally brought about by the 
 
Davison on Bennett 149 
 
 great critics of the past, and is supported by the 
 critics of the present. 
 
 British composers in Davison's day had more 
 (ciSoc abroad than at home. Between Sterndale 
 Bennett and his critic friend there was a true 
 and lasting sympathy. Davison yearned to see 
 the gifted Englishman recognized by the public 
 as he recognized him, and when on one occasion 
 Bennett's ' Concerto in C minor,' performed at 
 a concert of the Musical Society, roused more 
 enthusiasm than the music composed by an 
 Englishman was wont to do, he wrote, in 
 elation : 
 
 ' It was gratifying to find the work of an 
 English musician absolutely creating a sensation 
 in the midst of so many foreign master-works.' 
 (The programme included a symphony of 
 Beethoven's, and works by Weber, Spohr and 
 Mendelssohn.) ' Professor Bennett's concerto 
 passed the ordeal in triumph. Better still, it 
 merits all the favour it elicited, being nothing 
 less than a master-work itself. . . . The andante, 
 about which Robert Schumann wrote so elo- 
 quently when the concerto was performed by 
 
150 Musical Memories 
 
 the composer at the Gewandhaus concerts, 
 made the most impression.' 
 
 Yet, patriotic as he was, Davison recognized 
 foreign talent at once, and in generous terms. 
 Although he felt as strongly against immaturity 
 as even Chorley did, and thought it a duty to 
 young artists to discourage their elders from 
 trading upon their talents to the detriment of 
 their future, he was the first to assert the ex- 
 ceptional character of Adelina Patti's wealth 
 of gifts, when as a mere child she startled 
 London opera-goers by her debut as Amina in 
 'La Sonnambula ' on May 14, 1861. On 
 May 1 5 he wrote : 
 
 ' She has a high soprano voice, equal, fresh, 
 and telling in every note of the medium : the 
 upper E flat, and even F, at ready command : 
 admirable accentuation of the words, consider- 
 able flexibility, dashing and effective use of 
 "bravura"; expression warm, energetic and 
 varied, while never exaggerated ; and last, but 
 not least, an intonation scarcely ever at fault : 
 such were the valuable qualities that revealed 
 themselves in turn during the execution of 
 
Adelina Patti 151 
 
 Amina's well-known apostrophe to her com- 
 panions on the auspicious day that is to unite 
 her to Elvino, and which raised the house to 
 positive enthusiasm. . . . Mademoiselle Ade- 
 lina Patti's first essay was a veritable triumph, 
 and her ultimate success is thus placed without 
 a doubt.' 
 
 But the critic had his informal moments. 
 Towards the end of one of the summer concert 
 seasons he wrote : 
 
 ' St. James's Hall has been "warbling," " scrap- 
 ing," " blowing " and " thumping " all the week. 
 A perpetual concert was held. Luckily, every 
 entertainment was not of sufficient public in- 
 terest to call for record.' 
 
 It is strange to re-write the warmly-uttered 
 words that issued years ago from lips long since 
 cold in the grave. Davison seldom thought, 
 felt or spoke without the intensity which, long- 
 continued, wrecks the nerves. Although the 
 fatigue and wear and tear of a musical critic's 
 life in the mid-century was as naught to what 
 it is now, Davison's temperament, marvellously 
 elastic as it was, gradually succumbed to the 
 
152 Musical Memories 
 
 exigencies of his role. Some years before his 
 comparatively premature death in the eighties, 
 he retired from active work, merely retaining 
 the editorship of the Musical World, a weekly 
 paper. He passed away somewhat unexpectedly 
 — at all events to his London friends— at Mar- 
 gate or Ramsgate. He was buried in Brompton 
 Cemetery. As the oaken coffin, covered with 
 flowers and followed by his sorrowing widow — 
 the celebrated pianist and his faithful pupil — 
 leaning on the arm of her tall young son, 
 was borne into the mortuary chapel — which was 
 filled with a crowd of friends in deepest mourn- 
 ing, bearing wreaths and floral tributes — it was 
 hard to believe that one so short a time ago 
 full of life and intellect, restless and passionate 
 as in youth, lay stilled and silenced for ever in 
 this world ; and the pathos of the great change 
 was keenly felt that day by even the most super- 
 ficial and unthinking. 
 
 James Davison lies in a pleasant spot — near to 
 many he knew in life. Above his grave is a 
 tree, in spring the resort of the young birds, 
 who practise their first songs above the dust and 
 
Critics of the Past 
 
 153 
 
 ashes of one whom Berhoz called ' the greatest 
 critic in the world.' 
 
 ***** 
 
 Contemporaneous with these two magnates 
 were certain clever men who were neither in 
 one groove nor the other. Among them, a 
 somewhat captious censor of whatever irked 
 him, was Mr. Gruneisen, nicknamed ' Diogenes ' 
 by certain refractory spirits ; Mr. Hogarth, 
 father-in-law of Charles Dickens, was a veteran 
 among journalists ; and Mr. Lincoln suc- 
 ceeded him as musical critic of the Daily News 
 and Illustrated London News. Mr. Lincoln, 
 who retired from an active journalistic life some 
 years since, is a profound musician as well as a 
 gracefil and charming writer. While his 
 musical taste was of the severest — he delighted 
 in playing Bach : Bach's soli, duets, and triple 
 concertos were quite his ordinary musical menu 
 — his sympathies, and these had play when he 
 wielded the pen, were expansive. Whatever 
 was good in any way, old or new, met with 
 justice from one of the most conscientious of 
 men. 
 
154 Musical Memories 
 
 These were the critics of the immediate past. 
 After brave service they have either passed 
 away into the great silence, or have retired into 
 a well-earned rest. Most of them are no longer 
 here to help on the great work they had so 
 much at heart, but their successors work man- 
 fully, and are men of iron will fitted to their 
 work, for they hold on. 
 
 Chief among the supporters of English 
 music stands Mr. Joseph Bennett, of the Daily 
 Telegraph. In himself a cyclopsedia of learn- 
 ing — a man with a prodigious memory who 
 has given his life and strength to his mission — 
 his pen is a marvel of incisiveness and point. 
 While by his ready eulogies he has encouraged 
 great artists from all parts of the world to visit 
 and revisit our shores — a great desideratum to 
 the musical progress of England — our national 
 progress is his watchword. No English ex- 
 ecutant is insignificant in his eyes, no project 
 too obscure or enterprise too unimportant for 
 his notice. One might almost expect ' English 
 Music ' to be found engraven on his heart, like 
 ' Calais ' upon the heart of a certain queen. 
 
Critics of the Present 155 
 
 Facile princeps among musical writers of the 
 day — as his friend James Davison prognosticated 
 that he would be — Mr. Bennett shines among a 
 galaxy of more or less accomplished writers on 
 the art : Mr. H. F. Frost, of the Athenteum and 
 Standard, a learned theorist and one of our finest 
 organists ; Mr. Klein ; Mr. C A. Barry ; and 
 the indefatigable and energetic Mr. Percy Betts, 
 who, winning his spurs as the witty ' Cherubino ' 
 of the once popular Figaro — popular by means of 
 the brilliant humour of the saucy page — is now 
 the serious critic who succeeded Mr. Lincoln 
 on the Daily News and James Davison on the 
 Graphic. Mr. Betts has the useful faculty 
 of learning fresh facts before anyone else on 
 the press, and, what is still more important, his 
 red-hot news is seldom beside the mark. He 
 likewise turns up smiling, ready for more 
 exertion, when most others, exhausted, are in- 
 clined to cry ' Hold ! enough !' As a mere lad, 
 he ably seconded Davison in his crusade for 
 England, and many an established British com- 
 poser or executant has reason to-day to bless 
 his pen. 
 
156 Musical Memories 
 
 Last but not least, mention must be defer- 
 entially made of Mr. Fuller Maitland, whose 
 erudite and exquisite style is so agreeable to the 
 most fastidious literary mind, that if one happens 
 to differ from his tenets, one is apt to forget the 
 fact. There are, in addition to this strong force 
 of musical writers, several new recruits, who — 
 for the most part writing anonymously — are at 
 present unknown to critical history. But one, 
 Mr. R. S. Hichens, has already distinguished 
 himself in general hterature, and particularly in 
 fiction. 
 
 It may indeed be stated, without fear of 
 refutation, that England stands pre-eminent in 
 its musical press. That our writers on the 
 art are conspicuously free from the prejudice 
 ascribed to critics in general by those who love 
 a summary without preliminary reasoning, is self- 
 evident. The reader has only to consult the 
 entire press immediately after the production of 
 a novelty, to be struck by the general unanimity 
 of a number of minds of different taste and 
 feeling, of varied culture, attainments and ante- 
 cedents. 
 
[ ^57 ] 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 Two remarkable prodigies — Anton Rubinstein — His boy- 
 hood — Incident on the Rhine — His student life — 
 Visits to England — Chorley on Rubinstein — An 
 eventful soiree — Subsequent career. 
 
 In the life of every artist, be he painter, sculptor, 
 poet, or musician, there will be certain land- 
 marks by which he reckons the several eras of 
 his existence more than by years, or ordinary 
 events. Looking back, however obscure or 
 misty events in general may seem, these extra- 
 ordinary hours or days flash out with a light all 
 their own. They were decisive moments in 
 this all too brief and fleeting passage through a 
 lowly planet ; they changed the current of our 
 lives, although we may have little dreamt it at 
 the time. 
 
158 Musical Memories 
 
 Among the very first of these supreme and 
 emotional episodes in the writer's musical life 
 was a certain soiree, a ' recital ' given by two 
 youths, violinist and pianist. They were in 
 part prodigies: the pianist had already 'toured,' 
 and been welcomed as full of promise, in 
 Germany, Holland, and other Northern coun- 
 tries. But the young violinist was unknown 
 to fame. 
 
 The most careful and minute research fails to 
 find any printed record of a soiree on which 
 the genius of both these now great and recog- 
 nized artists made one of its first indelible 
 impressions. But it must have taken place in 
 the early fifties, and would seem to have been 
 at the Hanover Square Rooms. 
 
 The first piece in the programme was, if 
 memory does not deceive, a violin sonata of 
 Beethoven, most probably the ' Kreutzer.' The 
 two mere lads had but a faint welcome as they 
 came upon the platform, the violinist with an 
 awkward shamble and bow — he was a gawky 
 lad, with a grim, short-sighted expression on his 
 thick, somewhat heavy features, and as he 
 
A Pair of Prodigies 159 
 
 bowed and began tuning his fiddle, a thick lock 
 of dark hair tumbled over his broad snub nose. 
 The young pianist had a flat, leonine face ; and 
 the suggestion of the lion in his wide, massive 
 brow was accentuated as he gazed around with 
 his keen gray eyes — a slightly ferocious glance — 
 while he played a few subdued chords. 
 
 The pair — the pianist looked decidedly older 
 than the ungainly young fiddler — were not pre- 
 possessing until they began to play. Then that 
 indescribable chill — hardly a shiver, more an 
 emotional flutter of gratified surprise — stirred 
 the audience. At such moments a crowd seems 
 to sway slightly, as corn in a faint breeze. In 
 those first full rich tones of the piano, in those 
 first pure, searching notes of the young fiddler's 
 instrument, the auditors knew these were no 
 mere boys, as they seemed, but past -masters of 
 their art. 
 
 It was a stirring evening. One surprise 
 followed another ; one effect seemed greater than 
 the last. While the lion-faced young pianist 
 maintained his fierce expression and cold un- 
 concern, and the violinist's lumpish visage 
 
i6o Musical Memories 
 
 seemed more and more somnolent — his eyes, 
 indeed, seemed to recede into his head as the 
 performance proceeded — there was a youthful 
 fire, a passion of enthusiasm, about their feats 
 that ended by creating a furore. The audience 
 rose to them at the end, and seemed unwilling 
 to end their first acquaintance with the extra- 
 ordinary prodigies there and then. The writer, 
 at that time a young child struggling with the 
 difficulties of Beethoven's pianoforte concertos 
 as unsuccessfully as one of tender age with 
 infantine fingers may be expected to struggle, 
 felt half sufibcated with mingled wonder, admira- 
 tion, and despair, and remained so for a long 
 time afterwards. 
 
 The youthful fiddler was Joseph Joachim ; 
 the pianist, Anton Rubinstein, one of the very 
 greatest musicians of the century. Born in 
 Russian Bessarabia in the November of 1829 
 or 1830, he was, as so many great composers 
 and executants have been, of Hebrew origin. 
 Shortly after his birth, his parents removed to 
 Moscow, where first his mother, then the com- 
 poser Villoing, were his instructors. When the 
 
Anecdote of Rubinstein i6i 
 
 young Anton was nine or ten, Villoing took 
 him to Paris, where Liszt advised them to 
 proceed to Germany. This master and pupil 
 accordingly did — and the name of Rubinstein 
 was identified with a phenomenon in the way 
 of musical prodigies in that most dilettante of 
 countries. 
 
 It was during this lengthened tour that the 
 pair were met travelling on a Rhine steamer by 
 a London professor. It was in the height of 
 summer, and the sunlit river, with its beautiful 
 vine-clad mountains, was being gazed at from 
 the deck by most of those on board. The cabins 
 were deserted except by a thin, grim-faced boy 
 with a broad, overhanging brow and close-shut, 
 \znchildlike lips, who sat at a table hour after 
 hour alone, practising finger exercises with stoical 
 patience on one of those folding keyboards — 
 *dumb pianos' — more in use abroad, for students, 
 than here. 
 
 Something about the pale, peculiar-looking 
 boy touched the professor, who was a German ; 
 who had himself endured the unsuspected 
 agonies of studentship not so many years back, 
 
 II 
 
1 62 Musical Memories 
 
 and was tender-hearted. He could not enjoy 
 his beloved Rhineland while that silent boy- 
 was wearily plodding away at his dumb piano 
 alone in the heated cabin. He went backwards 
 and forwards, up and down, until at last he 
 summoned courage enough to speak to him and 
 to ask him to spare himself for an interval — at 
 least to go on deck for a few minutes and 
 glance at the beauties of the river. 
 
 But the boy was proof against persuasion. 
 Shaking his shaggy head, he glanced at his 
 dumb piano with an inscrutable smile. 
 
 ' This won't wait,' said Anton Rubinstein 
 quaintly ; 'the other will.' 
 
 It is this element of dogged will-power which 
 develops talent until we have the perfect, full- 
 blown genius which dominates the crowd. No 
 superfluity of artistic gifts,, no overflow of 
 natural talent will make a, great artist — without 
 that absolute determination to be the slave of 
 music, '. the drudge to the Muse, which Anton 
 Rubinstein possessed in such an enormous 
 degree. 
 
 In 1 844 his parents took both him and his 
 
Rubinstein's Career 163 
 
 younger brother Nicholas to BerHn, where they 
 saw Meyerbeer. It was by his advice that 
 Anton became the pupil of Siegfried Dehn, 
 the composer and writer on music, to whose 
 pen, it seems, we owe a large part of Fetis' 
 Dictionary. Dehn was a successful master ; he 
 had many eminent pupils, among them Glinka, 
 the composer. Rubinstein remained with him 
 some time. But it is in 1846 we find him 
 teaching in Vienna and Pressburg, and nomi- 
 nated Kammervirtuoso to the Grand-Duchess 
 Helen of Russia. In the early fifties Rubinstein 
 had already written many important works ; 
 yet whether because of his diffidence or their 
 belief that there was still undeveloped inspira- 
 tion in him, his patrons — the Grand-Duchess 
 Helen and Count Wielhorski — advised his return 
 to Germany and further study in 1854, and 
 themselves found funds for the expedition. ■" 
 
 A certain restlessness appears to have affected 
 Rubinstein about this time. We find him 
 wandering from Germany to France, from 
 France to England, concert-giving ; trying his 
 musical offspring first in one country, then in 
 
 II — 2 
 
1 64 Musical Memories 
 
 another. Was it that he felt a greater power 
 animating him than that which he had already- 
 shown, that he doubted whether the works he 
 had already composed — works which included 
 the ' Ocean Symphony' and other things equally 
 great — were to be accepted as the real utterance 
 of this dominating spirit ? A Titan, Rubinstein 
 was as self-contained as the Titans of art and 
 science so often are. In fact, his silence and 
 expressionlessness were Sphinx-like. Few can 
 tell what he actually felt during his art-life, or 
 what he really thought. 
 
 In 1857 he played one of his own concertos 
 at the Philharmonic, and although amateurs 
 were not unboundedly enthusiastic, and some 
 critics were cold while others waxed unkind, 
 Chorley wrote of him that he was ' a master of 
 the very highest order. His playing,' continues 
 that fastidious, at times even captious, critic, 
 ' is grand without coarseness, brilliant without 
 limit, expressive without exaggeration, easy, yet 
 never licentious — a master's playing.' This was 
 in 1857. When the artist, who certainly 
 showed a tendency to hover about London, 
 
Chorley on Rubinstein 165 
 
 visited England in 1858 and played Weber's 
 ' Concertstiick ' at the fifth concert of the Old 
 Philharmonic, Chorley appeared equally fasci- 
 nated by his playing, on which he commented 
 thus : ' Dashing, fiery, and forcible throughout, 
 the last movement was taken with whirlwind 
 speed.' But in 1859 the great critic was even 
 more impressed. 
 
 ' Rubinstein,' he writes, ' has, as well as a 
 plenitude of force and fire, a delicacy hardly 
 equalled in our recollection ' (yet he had heard 
 Chopin and Thalberg). 'To ourselves, there 
 is a vigour, an interest, and a mastery in his 
 execution. There is nothing small in his pro- 
 ceedings, nothing ad captandumJ 
 
 In 1859 Rubinstein gave an orchestral concert 
 on his own account at the Hanover Square 
 Rooms. Having had a great reception at the 
 Philharmonic Society's concerts, and having 
 excited the Musical Union audiences until, 
 startled out of their wonted calm, even the young 
 ladies present applauded him vehemently, he 
 was naturally led to expect that he would at least 
 command a sufficient public to pay the expenses, 
 
i66 Musical Memories 
 
 although an orchestra, even for one night, is a 
 costly affair. But he was disappointed. The 
 concert was well advertised and ' billed ' before- 
 hand, but there were hardly any applications for 
 tickets. The day approached, and the manager 
 - — fearful lest the performance would be given to 
 empty benches — invited the leading members 
 of the musical profession and those among 
 amateurs who Avere not in a position to purchase 
 half-guinea tickets, to be present. 
 
 But even then, Rubinstein, entering the well- 
 filled orchestra, baton in hand, saw but a meagre 
 audience. He stopped short, gave a compre- 
 hensive glance around the half-empty concert- 
 room, bowed, took his place at the conductor's 
 desk, and began that memorable performance. 
 
 From the moment he lifted his baton to the 
 end of the programme — which mainly consisted 
 of his own works — he seemed to sway the wills 
 of all present. The band followed his beat like 
 one man. The audience sat motionless, but not 
 unmoved. They had most of them heard that 
 ' Ocean Symphony ' before, if not at the Phil- 
 harmonic, at a concert of Klindworth's ; but not 
 
An Ovation 1 67 
 
 played like this, each man in the orchestra 
 striving to do his best, as if his very life 
 depended upon his performance. The first 
 movement over, the whole of those assembled 
 rose and cheered. They were deeply stirred. 
 At such moments analysis is impossible. They 
 could not have told whether they cheered 
 Rubinstein the composer, or Rubinstein the 
 conductor, or Rubinstein the pianist, or unsup- 
 ported concert-giver, or, as was probably the 
 case, all in one. But he had gripped their 
 sympathies, he held their hearts as he held his 
 baton, and they cried out — that spontaneous 
 admission of being under the power of another 
 which means so much. 
 
 Whether that iron man was affected by this 
 outburst of involuntary homage, perhaps even 
 those nearest him — the players in the orchestra — 
 could not have told. There might have been a 
 contraction of the pupils, a grimmer tightening 
 of the thin, firm lips — that was all. Meanwhile, 
 the mental intoxication grevy^. Recalled and 
 shouted at time after time at the close of the 
 symphony, the concerto — his second — heard in 
 
i68 Musical Memories 
 
 the hush which follows such an ebullition of 
 feeling, seemed to rouse an even greater rage 
 of enthusiasm. It was well for the mental 
 balance of all present that there was a singer. 
 Mademoiselle Artot, who had to be patiently 
 heard — although it was a hard task for even so 
 clever a young artist to intervene between the 
 magnet and the magnetized. At the close of 
 this extraordinary scene, never certainly sur- 
 passed in England, if repeated, Rubinstein 
 played his transcription of the march in ' The 
 Ruins of Athens,' where — commencing in so 
 faint a pianissimo that ears must strain to hear 
 the theme — he gave a gradual crescendo, a pro- 
 longed increase of sound as of an advancing 
 army, until the march was thundered out with 
 all that vast volume of tone at his command, 
 dying away afterwards with a diminuendo as 
 astonishing as the crescendo. 
 
 An ovation followed, people standing on the 
 seats and shouting themselves hoarse. Long 
 before it subsided, Rubinstein left the building. 
 
 After that night, when he failed to attract 
 the general public, Rubinstein was somewhat 
 
Close of Rubinstein's Career 169 
 
 shy of England. In recent years he was ap- 
 plauded by the crowd, as he was applauded 
 then by the connoisseurs — but a great onward 
 step of music in this country had been taken 
 between his appearances in 1859 and his ap- 
 pearances in and after 1870. 
 
 Meanwhile, he had made triumphant tours 
 through Europe and the United States. He 
 may be said to have founded the St. Petersburg 
 Conservatoire, of which, at intervals, he was the 
 director. He was decorated and ennobled by 
 the Czar, who gave him a pension of 3,000 
 roubles ; he was showered with complimentary 
 degrees and addresses and what-not. The over- 
 worked lad, who enjoyed no youth as less gifted 
 beings enjoy it — who once sat grimly pounding 
 at his dumb piano in the close cabin of the 
 Rhine steamer that sultry summer day instead of 
 breathing the fresh air and watching the natural 
 beauty on deck — was true to the grave purpose 
 of his life. He might have had a peaceful, 
 honoured, and pleasurable old age ; he preferred 
 to die in harness, as an example to those who 
 will follow after him. 
 
[ ^7° ] 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 A musical season thirty years ago — The opera-houses and 
 principal concerts — English vocalists — Pablo Sarasate 
 — ' Angelina ' — Virginia Gabriel — The Earl of 
 Dudley — His life as musical amateur, etc.— Lord 
 Dudley and Hiram Power — The ' Greek Slave ' — 
 Mr. F. H. Cowen— Mr. Tom Hohler— The Mar- 
 chioness of Downshire — Mrs. Sargood — Mrs. Sar- 
 good's musical evenings — Sergeant Sleigh, Sir George 
 and Lady Lewis, Miss Amelia B. Edwards, Miss 
 Hosmer, Mr. Home, etc. — Dr. Black — Dr. Black 
 and the Erard pianofortes — The great medal of the 
 Exhibition of 185 1 — Soiree at Dr. Black's^ — Miss 
 Elizabeth Philp- — A musical tour in Cornwall. 
 
 Perhaps the exact value of the present active 
 condition of the art in Great Britain may be 
 better appreciated if a slight sketch be attempted 
 of a musical season over thirty years ago. 
 
 In the early sixties opera prospered. As well 
 
Thirty Years Ago 171 
 
 as the Italian opera at Covent Garden under 
 Mr. Gye, Mr. Mapleson was flourishing at the 
 now defunct Her Majesty's Theatre, and the 
 Pyne and Harrison Company gave English per- 
 formances between the Italian seasons at Covent 
 Garden. Grisi was taking her semi-final fare- 
 wells, and 1 86 1 saw the debut of Adelina Patti. 
 ' Faust ' was brought out at both opera-houses 
 in 1863, Titiens, then in her prime, being a 
 most convincing Margherita. Miolan-Car- 
 valho's conception of the role was pure and 
 simple, but Teresa Titiens' Margherita was the 
 Gretchen of Goethe. 
 
 The orchestral societies were bravely contend- 
 ing for public favour. Oratorios were given by 
 the Sacred Harmonic Society at Exeter Hall ; 
 the Old Philharmonic clung to its classical 
 traditions, and, ignoring the personal remarks 
 of Davison and Chorley, continued its placid 
 course of Beethoven, Mozart, and Haydn, with 
 occasional dips into Mendelssohn and Weber ; 
 the New Philharmonic was doing its best to 
 give varied programmes which would please 
 both the public and the press ; the Musical 
 
172 Musical Memories 
 
 Society won the golden opinions of Davison and 
 others by its admirable orchestra under Alfred 
 Mellon, and its spirit of enterprise; the Musical 
 Art Union, under Mr. Klind worth, brought out 
 work after work until then new to English 
 audiences ; and the Vocal Association and Leslie's 
 Choir supplemented the Sacred Harmonic Society 
 in the matter of choral displays. 
 
 There were, as chamber concerts, the ' Monday 
 Populars ' and Ella's Musical Union ; Klind- 
 worth, Blagrove, and Daubert's concerts after 
 the manner of the Alard and Franchomme or 
 Armingaud and Jacquard soirees in Paris ; and 
 Halle's Beethoven recitals. Benefit concerts 
 went on both at the various ' Rooms ' and St. 
 James's Hall, as well as in private drawing- 
 rooms lent to artists for the purpose by impor- 
 tant patrons ; and twice or thrice, even oftener 
 in the season, monster concerts lasting five or 
 six hours were given by Sir Julius Benedict, 
 Mr. Kuhe, Mr. Howard Glover, or Mr. 
 Tennant, the singer. 
 
 Musard's Promenade Concerts were followed 
 in due course by those given by Mr. Louis 
 
English Vocalists 173 
 
 Jullien (son of the celebrated entrepreneur), and 
 on Saturdays Londoners who cared sufficiently 
 for music to travel some distance by rail in 
 its pursuit, found plenty to attract them to the 
 Crystal Palace, 
 
 With so many concerts, there were compara- 
 tively few performers. Where there are a score 
 of singers and instrumentalists now, there were 
 then but two or three. The same names, occur 
 again and again in programmes ; and this does 
 not apply merely to foreign visiting artists, but 
 to British talent. 
 
 Indeed, although instrumentalists were mostly 
 from other shores, the vocalists who procured 
 the best engagements were, as a rule, English. 
 While pianists such as Lubeck, Boscovitch, 
 Nicolas Rubinstein, Alfred Jaell and others, and 
 the violinists Vieuxtemps, Ole Bull, Strauss, 
 Wieniawski, etc., were the visiting instrumental 
 ' stars,' we find among the leading and most 
 prominent vocalists Madame Lemmens-Sher- 
 rington, Miss Banks, Madame Parepa, Miss 
 Palmer, Miss Whytock (Madame Patey), 
 Madame Guerrabella (Miss Genevieve Ward), 
 
174 Musical Memories 
 
 and Madame Sainton Dolby ; of course, Mr. 
 Sims Reeves, when health permitted ; also 
 Messrs. W. H. Cummings, Wilbye Cooper, 
 Santley, Lewis Thomas, and Weiss, some of 
 whom still live and still sing. 
 
 Among the junior visitors from abroad occurs 
 the now celebrated name of Pablo Sarasate. 
 Early in 1861 Mr. Chorley wrote in the Jthe- 
 naum : ' Senor Sarasate, a young violin-player 
 who has made some sensation in Paris, is an- 
 nounced to visit London.' During the season 
 the young Spaniard duly appeared at the un- 
 pretending benefit-concert of a Miss Billing, but 
 — and ambitious violin students may take heart 
 at the fact — without attracting any particular 
 notice or obtaining any special eulogium. In 
 the reviews of the performance, Sarasate is 
 spoken of as showing high promise ; but evi- 
 dently the development of his wonderful gifts 
 was the work of years. 
 
 This was music in public. But much music 
 was made in private, notably at the houses of 
 the foremost amateurs. 
 
 Among those who will long be remembered 
 
'Angelina' 175 
 
 were two ladies — one a pianoforte-player, the 
 other a composer. 
 
 The fair pianist's identity was veiled under 
 the pseudonym of ' Angelina.' She modestly 
 appeared in aid of charitable purposes, without 
 preliminary flourish of any kind, but always with 
 a success which created comment, and which led 
 to much talk in musical circles. It was whis- 
 pered among musicians that Angelina had only 
 to appear in public to eclipse the acknowledged 
 and established favourites on her instrument. 
 Her warmest admirers — the writer has heard 
 her playing discussed with many shades of 
 feeling between excessive enthusiasm and decided 
 animus — were to be found among professional 
 musicians, who compared her, amongst others, 
 with Wilhelmina Clauss and Madame Schumann. 
 'Angelina' was essentially a poetical player. Her 
 tone was lovely, her grace undeniable, her 
 phrasing that of a great artist. What she 
 might have become remains an unsolved 
 problem. She appeared, shone, and vanished 
 like a comet. 
 
 This peculiar attribute of romantic charm was 
 
176 Musical Memories 
 
 scarcely a quality possessed by the amateur 
 composer, Miss Virginia Gabriel, who has been 
 already alluded to as a friend of Chorley's. 
 Virginia Gabriel was, we believe, the only daughter 
 of General Gabriel, and was born at Banstead, 
 Surrey, in February, 1825. The writer became 
 acquainted with her in 1861, when, still un- 
 married, she was residing with her father in 
 Wilton Place, the centre of quite a little court 
 of appreciators. In person tall and slight, her 
 countenance was agreeable and intellectual. 
 Her features were aquiline, her eyes calm and 
 thoughtful. A constant and persevering 
 student, she was faithful to her inspirations, 
 and left nothing undone to develop them to the 
 best of her ability. 
 
 She wrote cantatas and other lengthy vocal 
 pieces ; but her songs were most successful, 
 attaining in some instances, such as ' Parted,' 
 ' Drifting,' ' Ruby,' etc., considerable popularity. 
 Often really melodious, her compositions were 
 always musicianly. She was fond of assembling 
 artists and amateurs at her morning receptions 
 and evening ' At homes,' where foreign royalties 
 
Virginia Gabriel 177 
 
 and musical aspirants mingled without stilted 
 ceremony or etiquette. And here might be met 
 a number of the lions of the season together, 
 instead of one at a time as in other circles ; 
 and they came early and stayed late, in spite 
 of the comparative smallness of Miss Gabriel's 
 salons, and consequently limited number of 
 guests. 
 
 Really and truly preferring single blessedness 
 — for she had frequent opportunities to marry 
 had she been so inclined — Miss Gabriel gave 
 herself entirely to composition and musical study 
 until, in 1874, she became the wife of Mr. 
 George E. March, the author of some of her 
 librettos. But three years only of matrimonial 
 happiness were hers. In August, 1877, she was 
 thrown from her carriage in London, and did 
 not survive the accident. 
 
 Patron of all that was good in music, but 
 specially interested in opera and all connected 
 with it — as the proprietor of Her Majesty's 
 Theatre need well be — was the late Earl of 
 Dudley. 
 
 Dudley House, Park Lane, was in those days 
 
 12 
 
178 Musical Memories 
 
 what it had been for many years before, one of 
 the musical centres of London. The noble 
 picture-gallery, containing so many chefs- 
 d'ceuvre of the old masters — some of which had 
 been routed out of obscurity in strange corners 
 of old cities by the Earl himself ; the ballroom, 
 with its white and gold walls and ceiling and 
 graceful chandeliers in the style of the Tuileries ; 
 and the fine staircase, with the priceless tapes- 
 tries — all these are fresh in the memories of art- 
 lovers and concert-goers generally, as well as in 
 those of Lord Dudley's friends and acquaint- 
 ances. Lord Dudley did not keep his art-trea- 
 sures for his own delectation alone. The famous 
 Dudley collection of paintings was well known 
 to picture-lovers among the general public — for 
 he was generous in lending his splendid rooms 
 to artists whom he knew, or who came to him 
 with introductions from others, and benefit 
 concerts were constant during the season in the 
 well-known square white mansion in Park 
 Lane. 
 
 Passionate enthusiasm and lavish generosity—^ 
 these were qualities of the first Earl of Dudley's 
 
The Earl of Dudley 179 
 
 which were patent to the world. But those 
 who knew him best knew that he possessed an 
 attribute far above these. He had a tender 
 heart for his fellow-creatures. Contact with 
 trouble and misfortune caused him to suffer in 
 sympathy. The interest and pains with which 
 he set about helping those who needed help was 
 known only to the few ; and his interest was 
 no transient effervescence of feeling, it was con- 
 stant and lasting. Once a friend, Lord Dudley 
 was always a friend ; and when once he had 
 adopted a fellow-creature as a friend, that 
 person could not err. It was useless to take 
 exception to the sometimes conspicuously un- 
 grateful conduct of this or that individual — 
 well known to be worthless, perhaps, and 
 openly boasting of his thanklessness. As the 
 Earl never spoke ill, so he never beheved ill of 
 any of his fellow-creatures. 
 
 Often confounded with his uncle, the eccentric 
 Lord Ward, he was about as different a man 
 as could be. His father was a simple-minded 
 clergyman, whose wife, a typical parson's help- 
 meet, brought up her children as ordinarily and 
 
 12 — 2 
 
i8o Musical Memories 
 
 as humbly as possible. The future Earl of 
 Dudley was taught that he came into a world 
 which contained others as well as himself — a 
 lesson which stood him in good stead in after- 
 years. 
 
 His majority was, we believe, postponed by 
 some clause in his uncle's will. Whether this 
 be so or not, he certainly did not come into full 
 possession of his huge income, which, when it 
 , first accrued to him, was said to be about 
 j^i.ooo per diem, until after he was twenty- 
 one. Then he at once became the target 
 of the vast army of money-seekers and adven- 
 turers which infests society. Running the 
 gauntlet of these from the first day of his riches 
 to the last, it is marvellous that he retained any 
 confidence in human nature at all. If to a 
 certain extent he lived in a fools' paradise, often 
 mistaking geese for swans, it proved an ad- 
 vantage to him ; for if he could have seen the 
 majority of claimants to his ready bounty in 
 their true colours, he must have ended as a 
 hopeless misanthrope. 
 
 As it was, his life appeared, to lookers-on, a 
 
An Aristocratic Amateur i8i 
 
 happy one — and after his marriage, early in the 
 sixties, one of perfect domesticity — shared by 
 his beautiful young wife and a bevy of charming 
 and clever children whom he was destined to 
 leave all too early in their young lives. 
 
 As a young man he was a restlessly fervid 
 musical amateur. Italy and Italian art attracted 
 him most, and the history of Italian opera in 
 England is literally interwoven with his name. 
 Among the aristocracy of his day his word on 
 this subject was law. His approval was neces- 
 sary to the complete success of a novelty, par- 
 ticularly in the world of singers. He was 
 indeed one of the finest amateur critics, having 
 a cultivated musical ear, and the experience of 
 years' constant attendance at every performance 
 of any note both here and abroad. 
 
 His mind was a perfect record of the inci- 
 dents in the whole musical world from his 
 initial appearance as a concert-goer. Notes he 
 did not need. He could remember each artist 
 — his or her special characteristics, failings, 
 qualities, life and antecedents, together with 
 anecdotes illustrating peculiarities of the in- 
 
1 82 Musical Memories 
 
 dividual — without an effort. This made his 
 conversation intensely interesting to those who, 
 like himself, were devotees of the art, 
 ■ But his mental vitality was so strong that his 
 interest was by no means limited to art. He 
 was intimately acquainted with the politics and 
 burning questions of the day, and political 
 topics were the principal subjects discussed at 
 the dinner-table — in town, and at his beautiful 
 Worcestershire residence, Witley Court ; in 
 Scotland, after the deer were duly discussed 
 and dismissed, and at his seaside place in 
 Suffolk. His famous yacht-expedition to feed 
 hungry officers in the Crimean War is an old 
 story now. But the same ardent zeal which in 
 numerous instances founded fortunes — and also 
 succoured the many, as in that somewhat 
 Quixotic Crimean enterprise — was unabated even 
 on the very eve of the seizure which proved 
 but the prelude to his decease. It might be said 
 of the late Lord Dudley that he lived to the 
 full every moment of his too brief life. 
 
 In person he was rather remarkable, and 
 peculiar, than handsome — according to accepted 
 
'The Greek Slave' 183 
 
 types of masculine good looks. There is a small 
 water-colour picture of the carnival at Rome in 
 the forties — it hung some few years ago in the 
 Long Gallery at Witley Court near to Hiram 
 Power's beautiful statue, the ' Greek Slave '— 
 where a tall, slim, broad-shouldered young man 
 depicted as leaning over a decorated balcony, 
 throwing confetti among the motley crowd 
 below, was asserted by the Earl to have been 
 an exact likeness of himself. Then, his face 
 seemed longer, and the thick waves of dark 
 hair worn after the style of seventeenth-century 
 Italian portraits somewhat less anomalous. But 
 masculine dress in the sixties was singularly 
 unsuited to a chevelure worn in the time of 
 velvet doublets and plumed birettas. In later 
 years Lord Dudley was portly, and boasted that 
 mark of the progress of Time so dreaded by 
 women — a double chin. His large countenance 
 and brilliant dark eyes were not in keeping with 
 the coiffure. 
 
 Speaking of the celebrated statue which may 
 be said to have been the work of art par excel- 
 lence in the first Great Exhibition of 1 8 5 1 , the 
 
184 Musical Memories 
 
 ' Greek Slave ' — repeated afterwards in marble, 
 alabaster, clay, and even plaster, throughout 
 the United Kingdom, until it was common 
 to banality — was really discovered by Lord 
 Dudley. Visiting the studio of Hiram Power 
 in Rome, he was greatly struck with the statue, 
 then in progress, and purchased it, with but one 
 condition. Then, the nude form we of maturity 
 remember in our childhood was surmounted by 
 a modern Greek cap. This Lord Dudley took 
 exception to, as an excrescence — a false note in 
 the pure harmony of the conception. But 
 Power clung to the cap, which was a darling 
 conceit. ' Very well,' said the Earl ; ' it is only 
 7ny opinion. You keep the cap and the statue, 
 and I keep my money in my pocket, and there 
 is no harm done.' But Power was naturally 
 loath to lose his princely purchaser, so, after 
 some debate and correspondence, he suggested a 
 compromise. Lord Dudley should become the 
 possessor of the original statue, minus the cap, 
 and he would ship a duly becapped replica to 
 the Great Exhibition. His lordship good- 
 humouredly met the artist's wishes. But when 
 
The Dudley Collection 185 
 
 the statue appeared in the great glass-house in 
 Hyde Park, she was in all the glory and purity 
 of her resplendent maidenhood — without the 
 somewhat rakish headgear which would cer- 
 tainly have marred her success. The sculptor 
 had listened to his patron, and the Greek Slave 
 became conqueror by the very simplicity of 
 her Eve-like innocence of the great future of 
 clothes. 
 
 Many pieces of sculpture afterwards cele- 
 brated were purchased by the Earl even before 
 they were executed in marble. Renowned 
 groups or statues by Thorwaldsen, Canova, 
 Chantrey, and others, were to be seen in the old 
 days at Witley Court. The Dudley collection 
 of pictures unfortunately no longer exists as 
 the Dudley Collection, he having willed it to be 
 sold. 
 
 In incipient genius, or even mere talent or 
 ability, he was at once interested. More than 
 one now established reputation began under his 
 patronage. Among others, Mr. Frederic H. 
 Cowen's gifts were recognized by Lord Dudley 
 in very early youth indeed, and the young. 
 
i86 Musical Memories 
 
 musician's career was the object of his constant 
 solicitude. Curiously enough, Mr. Cowan's 
 was the Jast music Lord Dudley heard before 
 his unexpected death from pneumonia, the com- 
 poser having visited him in his seclusion as an 
 enforced invalid after his seizure to play him 
 the pieces he loved on one of his favourite 
 Broadwood grands. 
 
 The late Mr. Tom Hohler was also one in 
 whom he took the greatest interest. Early in 
 the sixties, Mr. Hohler — a tall, slim young 
 man of considerable masculine beauty — was 
 temporarily Lord Dudley's secretary, while 
 pursuing his vocal studies during the London 
 season. Another who frequently sang at the 
 daily musical meetings of the intimates at 
 Dudley House was Mr. Fuller, the sculptor, 
 whose voice was both sweet and mellow. 
 
 Season after season brought fresh artists 
 appealing for his patronage. But although he 
 contrived to assist each aspirant as far as he 
 could, he remained rigidly faithful to his first 
 proteges. As the years came and went, the 
 same faces were to be seen in the picture- 
 
The Marchioness of Downshire 187 
 
 gallery and drawing-rooms in London, and in 
 the Long Gallery at Witley — among them the 
 Italians Vera and Pinsuti, and in later years 
 Mr. F. H. Cowen. Liberal in politics, Lord 
 Dudley was thoroughly conservative in daily 
 life. 
 
 Another aristocratic amateur who was both 
 amiable and liberal to musicians was the late 
 Dowager Marchioness of Downshire. Many 
 young artists, as well as those of rising or 
 acknowledged reputation, were constant and 
 welcome guests at Downshire House. The 
 Marchioness had a peculiar gift of mixing 
 freely with artists almost as one of themselves, 
 without the slightest loss of dignity. While 
 being of essential service to them, she would 
 suggest by her gentle, almost deprecatory 
 manner no less than by her words, that it was 
 she who was their debtor, rather than they 
 hers. 
 
 Many will remember the latest gatherings in 
 her salons in Grosvenor Square, when they were 
 filled with all that were to be met with ad- 
 vantage in art, literature, and music. She was 
 
1 88 Musical Memories 
 
 a hostess among hostesses. Scarcely a single 
 guest was present in those crowds who could 
 not afterwards relate some personal attention — 
 some complaisance on her part for him or 
 her alone. When the Dowager Marchioness of 
 Downshire died, artists generally lost a great 
 and most faithful friend. 
 
 These two — for the once famous amateur, 
 Lord Westmoreland, belongs to an earlier period 
 of music in England — were typical aristocratic 
 amateurs in the sixties. There were many 
 others among exclusive circles and somewhat 
 less conspicuous positions. 
 
 In legal society Sergeant Sargood and his 
 accomplished wife — formerly a Miss Flower, 
 and a singer and composer of no mean merit — 
 entertained artists and literary people freely 
 during the London season in their hospitable 
 house in Endsleigh Street, Gordon Square. On 
 Wednesday evenings there were pleasant and 
 informal receptions. Rising barristers and 
 future Q.C.'s, as well as the legal stars of the 
 day, were to be seen in friendly converse. A 
 constant visitor was Sergeant Sleigh, with his 
 
A Legal 'Salon' 189 
 
 charming wife and their promising son, Arthur 
 Warner Sleigh — whose erratic temperament 
 stood in the way of his brilliant talents, and 
 who died, still quite young, at sea, after a voyage 
 in search of health. Here, too, was to be met 
 the present Sir George Lewis, then a slim young 
 man lately married to his beautiful, dark-eyed, 
 dark-haired bride, ' the realization of an houri,' 
 as a painter who was present when she wore her 
 bridal dress enthusiastically termed her. Poets 
 were quite common, and novelists matters of 
 course. A very agreeable young lady, with a 
 certain placid beauty of her own and the 
 searching intensity of gaze of the habitual 
 observer, was Miss Amelia B. Edwards, the 
 well-known Egyptologist and authoress. She 
 was a clever talker as well as writer, and was 
 dowered with that most ' excellent thing in 
 woman,' a voice ' ever soft, gentle, and low.' 
 Miss Edwards' interest was by no means con- 
 fined to Egypt or fictional pursuits. Herself 
 a poet, she was also a musician, as her books 
 will tell ; and her remarks on composers and 
 executants gave one more proof of how the arts 
 
190 Musical Memories 
 
 visit their votaries hand-in-hand. Near to 
 Miss Edwards, when she was in England, 
 might be found her attached friend, the 
 sculptress. Miss Hatty Hosmer, the pro- 
 genitor of the wonderful ' Puck ' — and pupil, 
 in Rome, of Gibson, whose tinted Venus, 
 exhibited at the Great Exhibition of '62, 
 was the talk of the hour^and not far away 
 might be seen their mutual admirer, the third 
 in a remarkable triad of friends, the com- 
 poser, Elizabeth Philp, of whom more will 
 be said. 
 
 Then, besides the foreign artists of the 
 season and established English stars, there 
 would be the human curiosities of the time. 
 In the early sixties a mild stir on the subject 
 of ' table-turning ' and ' spirit-rapping ' showed 
 signs of still further activity and of somewhat 
 alarming development. Although the ' Plan- 
 chette ' was not yet established as a household 
 god among those inclining to spiritualism, there 
 was much talk of mediums, manifestations, and 
 the like — and Mr, Home, the spiritualistic lion, 
 was the mystic hero of psychic circles. He 
 
Mr. Home 191 
 
 came to Mrs. Sargood's Wednesdays — or 
 Fridays as it might be, that season. Among the 
 buzz and hum of the gay crowd thronging the 
 brightly-Hghted rooms, he would glide in — a 
 tall, black-clad form, his evening dress seeming 
 blacker, somehow, than ordinary men's ; a rapt 
 expression on his ghastly pale, high-cheek- 
 boned face ; his thin, fair hair brushed back 
 from his bony forehead — evidently because of its 
 habit of tumbling in locks upon his brow — and 
 his large transparent blue eyes fixed on vacancy. 
 If addressed, he would smile faintly — an expostu- 
 latory ' How can you disturb me .''' smile — and 
 murmur a reply. But he seemed to come 
 among the living as one from the dead — perhaps, 
 as a nervous person remarked with a scared 
 glance over her shoulder, to continue his 
 reputed communings with departed spirits. He 
 was, indeed, supposed to hold quite familiar 
 converse with the soul of a young wife, who 
 provided him with flowers enough for constant 
 ' buttonholes ' — had they been then worn. At 
 first a mere abstracted spectator among Mrs. 
 Sargood's guests, he seemed to become less 
 
192 Musical Memories 
 
 spectral as time went on, even going so far 
 on one occasion as, after some preoccupied con- 
 versation — desultory and spasmodic as his was 
 wont to be — with the writer, to inform her that 
 she was undoubtedly ' a medium.' A startling 
 assertion which remained unverified, as after 
 long years of vain hope for an uncanny 
 experience, she has never yet heard or seen 
 anything whatever which could not be amply 
 explained. 
 
 One of the chief members of quite another 
 musical circle was a certain Dr. Black. Some- 
 what arbitrary in taste, he was acknowledged 
 authority enough to be chosen on the jury who 
 decided the merits of the prize-winning piano- 
 fortes in the Great Exhibition of 1851. He 
 was a man of powerful features and original 
 appearance, with piercing eyes and shaggy iron- 
 gray hair — and was sufficiently argumentative 
 and persistent to cause some trouble to opponents 
 or antagonists. It would seem that the ex- 
 cellence of the instruments sent in to the 
 exhibition by certain great pianoforte firms was 
 so great, that the jury found themselves divided 
 
The Great Gold Medal 193 
 
 as to the first prize-winner. The coveted gold 
 medal, indeed, might have been a ' draw,' but 
 for the doggedness of Dr. Black, who clung 
 to the supremacy of the Erard grand with grim 
 determination. Madame Erard, to whom the 
 instruments invented by her husband and his 
 relatives were as dear as if they had been 
 beloved children, related how — while waiting for 
 news of the jury's decision — she, to while away 
 the hours of suspense, adjourned to the opera. 
 ' So anxious was I,' she said, ' that, although 
 it was a most interesting performance, that night, 
 I hardly knew what was going on, and when 
 there was a tap at the box door, and, on my 
 nephew opening it, I saw the faces of our 
 good Bruzaud and Dr. Black, I could not 
 speak. When ce cher Docteur Black said 
 " Victory ! We have won !" I broke down and 
 wept.' 
 
 It was at Dr. Black's house that musical 
 gatherings would be given to entertain the 
 charming little lady when she visited London. 
 The last of these at which she was present 
 proved somewhat ill-fated. A very attractive 
 
 13 
 
194 Musical Memories 
 
 selection of morfeaux, given by a select few 
 among the artists then in London, was half over, 
 when a servant precipitately entered, shouting 
 ' Fire !' The lace curtains of a bedroom window 
 had blown into the candles, the room above 
 was in a blaze, neighbours had given the alarm. 
 There was a panic, and a stampede — rendered 
 more alarming by some officious person turning 
 off the gas, and therefore leaving the staircase in 
 darkness except for the glare above. However, 
 the ladies found safety in the carriages which 
 were waiting in the street, and the writer dis- 
 covered herself sitting with the alarmed Madame 
 Erard in her landau. By the time the engines 
 arrived the fire was extinguished by the gentle- 
 men visitors and their host, and there was an 
 attempt to reassemble and continue the soiree. 
 But the evening was spoiled, and the fright had 
 a disastrous effect upon the fragile health of 
 the lady of the house, who never altogether 
 rallied from the unpleasant shock. 
 
 Mention has been made of Miss Elizabeth 
 Philp, a remarkable personality among the 
 London amateurs, who — although not strictly 
 
Elizabeth Philp 195 
 
 of them, as she followed music professionally 
 — was heart and soul with the great army of 
 music-lovers upon whom the existence of the 
 profession depends. 
 
 Born at Falmouth, she was conspicuous as a 
 child for her love for the beautiful no less than 
 for her fondness for music, and for the warm, 
 enthusiastic temperament which was hers to the 
 last moment of her life. Coming to London 
 soon after she reached womanhood, she seemed 
 to find her level at once among talented people, 
 and plunged heart and soul into music. She 
 sang more In private than in public, but her 
 songs soon made their way into public favour. 
 Then, Miss Philp — ambitious to be as well as to 
 appear a real musician — went to Cologne and 
 studied singing under Madame Marchesi, and 
 composition under Ferdinand Hiller, returning 
 with new ideas, fresh zeal, and yet greater 
 enthusiasm for her art. While writing scores of 
 more or less popular songs, she deserves per- 
 manent rank among English composers for her 
 settings of one or two of Kingsley's poems, 
 also for her ballad, 'The Irish King's Ride,' 
 
 13—2 
 
196 Musical Memories 
 
 the charming little air 'What is Love?' and 
 others. 
 
 But she had a conspicuous quality by which 
 her many other gifts were so eclipsed that she 
 will be most remembered for it — and it above all 
 other things. Friendship.'' Sympathy.'' Adapt- 
 ability.? It was a combination. It might be 
 said that, when she first met a fellow-creature, 
 she had a second sight of all in him that was 
 good and admirable, and a blindness to his 
 imperfections ; so that to meet a stranger was to 
 add yet one more to her long list of friends. 
 So many friends, indeed, had she, that she spent 
 hardly an hour of her life alone. And she 
 never tired of giving her sympathy — of listening 
 to people's confidences or talk of themselves and 
 their affairs — was never bored by her many 
 visitors. She seemed to make the lives of 
 others her own, and to participate in their 
 sorrows or successes. 
 
 Even when she took her well-earned holidays, 
 she either travelled with friends, or visited 
 friends, or made some pleasant plan to recreate 
 a friend. The writer well remembers a sultry 
 
A Tour in Cornwall 197 
 
 morning in the late summer of 1868, when 
 ' Lizzie,' as her friends called her, came rushing 
 in, elated at being 'off' for her holiday in 
 Cornwall. Some remark of the writer's, doomed 
 to stay in town, touched her. A day or two 
 after came a summons. 
 
 ' I am determined you shall see Cornwall,' 
 she wrote by special messenger. ' So you and I 
 and Antoinette Sterling will give some concerts. 
 You are both to start to-night, your journey is 
 already arranged, and the announcements for 
 the first concert have gone to the printers.' 
 
 Miss Antoinette Sterling was then fresh from 
 the hands of masters abroad, and enjoying the 
 first of her long succession of artistic triumphs. 
 With her, with a violinist, and a local tenor 
 singer of repute, the writer accompanied Miss 
 Philp on a most enjoyable tour through the wilds 
 of Cornwall. They started in a large travelling 
 carriage, and posted from town to town — 
 beginning at Truro, and returning from the ex- 
 treme point of their expedition, Plymouth — 
 where they were entertained by the Mayor — by 
 another route. 
 
198 Musical Memories 
 
 They posted from place to place in the morn- 
 ing, and spent the afternoon viewing the special 
 beauties of the neighbourhood. Before and 
 after the evening concerts were real Cornish 
 dinners and suppers, and those who know their 
 Cornwall will know the significance of those 
 words ; then to bed — to awaken in the pleasant 
 old inns, and enjoy a farewell glimpse of the 
 charming surroundings until once more ' the 
 carriage waited.' Truro, Bodmin, Helston, 
 Penzance, and other towns were visited. The 
 writer's recreation hours were certainly reduced 
 by daily struggles with a Brussels net concert- 
 dress, which had to be unmade each night and 
 remade before every performance. Still, delight- 
 ful memories of hill and vale, of old churches 
 and gardens, of the mingling of the waters at 
 historic Helston and of the climb up St. Michael's 
 Mount, remain — beside humorous reminiscences 
 of curious Cornwall audiences, who were en- 
 raptured with ' Yankee Doodle and variations ' 
 on the fiddle, while somewhat puzzled by the 
 pianoforte music, which could not aspire so 
 high — and who listened with something akin to 
 
Death of Miss Philp 199 
 
 awe to Italian vocal duets and trios, doubtless 
 chosen to supply them with specimens of what 
 was nightly heard at the opera-houses in far-off 
 London. 
 
 For thorough Bohemian enjoyment of the 
 natural beauties of one of the most richly-en- 
 dowed English counties, that impromptu concert- 
 tour stands alone in the writer's memory. 
 
 Having hardly known a day's real illness in 
 her life. Miss Philp seemed always in radiant 
 health and spirits, and when a mortal disease set 
 in, she recognized the grip of death the very 
 first hour she felt it. 
 
 Leaving London for Cornwall in the early 
 eighties, seemingly in the most perfect health, 
 she wrote to the writer from a country-house 
 where she was staying : ' You lj:now how I have 
 always boasted of not having been worried by 
 my body, as so many are. That is all over. 
 Yesterday, when I was in the garden here, I 
 had a most curious feeling. It was a warning. 
 Dear, don't think me fanciful, and pray do not 
 say one word to anyone — but I am convinced 
 that two years hence I shall be dead.' 
 
200 Musical Memories 
 
 She was. After a slow decline of health and 
 strength, she took to her bed in sheer weakness, 
 and gradually sank to rest. In life she was 
 stout and ruddy, comely, intelligent, bright. In 
 death she was a slender, beautiful creature with 
 sharp-cut features — a lovely model for a 
 sculptor. This great-hearted, generous-rninded 
 woman, sleeps in Highgate Cemetery, near to 
 the other great-hearted, generous - minded 
 woman she so sincerely admired — George Eliot. 
 
[ 20I ] 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 Musical evenings in Queen Square — ' Arthur Napoleon,' 
 Ernst Lubeck, Martin Lazare, Sigismund Blumner, 
 Mr. Scotson Clark, Mr. H. F. Parry— Ole Bull— A 
 Beethoven violin .sonata — ^Jenny Lind — Meeting at 
 a dinner at the Mansion House — Jenny Lind and 
 ' Auld Robin Gray' — Introduction to Thalberg — 
 His playing — Mademoiselle Titiens in opera and at 
 home — Madame RudersdorfF — Mademoiselle Liebhart 
 — Signer Bevignani and his betrothed. 
 
 In the early sixties the old house in Queen 
 Square — where Henselt stayed with his friend 
 Karl Mangold during his brief and latest visit 
 to London — was the scene of many musical 
 gatherings. 
 
 In the quaint, old-fashioned drawing-rooms 
 — an Erard grand abode in one, a Broadwood 
 grand in the other — most of the pianists visiting 
 London, with others, assembled on the special 
 
202 Musical Memories 
 
 evening set apart each week, and conversed and 
 played to each other to their mutual delectation. 
 
 There was 'Arthur Napoleon,' whom the 
 writer first saw and heard when that well-known 
 prodigy was a small boy in a black-velvet tunic, 
 his head 'running over with curls,' bounding 
 into the concert-room, climbing the music-stool 
 with childlike confidence, then playing the 
 ' Moonlight Sonata ' with an insight, a depth of 
 meaning, which could scarcely be surpassed by 
 Clara Schumann or any of the more poetical in- 
 terpreters of Beethoven. In the sixties — a bright, 
 unaffected young musician, with a charming 
 touch and great experience — he could scarcely 
 be said to have fulfilled the promise of his child- 
 hood, which was vast. Still he was a real artist, 
 and never more so than when listening to others 
 and conversing upon his art. 
 
 There were Ernst Lubeck, the ponderous, 
 whose prodigious execution filled the old rooms 
 with a volume of sound, and Martin Lazare, also 
 of Holland, a pianist who felt and played more 
 like a Frenchman — a handsome little man with 
 a brilliant little talent, whose delightful compo- 
 
Ole Bull 203 
 
 sition ' Marguerite au Rouet ' ought to have 
 an endless life among pianoforte pieces. There 
 was Sigismund Blumner, the young German — 
 stout, fair, ruddy, full of life and bonhomie — a 
 strictly classical player, who was heard at his 
 best in Beethoven and Mozart. There were 
 English also, who held their own bravely among 
 the foreigners — notably Mr. Scotson Clark, 
 who, although his chief instrument was the organ, 
 was a delightful pianist, with a unique tone, 
 clear, bell-like, and a simplicity and purity of 
 style which rendered some of Weber's morfeaux, 
 and all that he essayed of Mozart, memories 
 as agreeable as lasting. Mr. Francesco Berger 
 would play his own compositions ; and the co- 
 founder of the firm of Ashdown and Parry, 
 Mr. Henry F. Parry — as clever in judgment in 
 musical matters as he was witty in speech — 
 would prowl around with his ears on the alert 
 for promising pianoforte pieces in manuscript. 
 
 There were violinists — English, foreign, 
 young and old. Among them was the well- 
 known Ole Bull. 
 
 Ole Bull was then a man about fifty ; tall. 
 
204 Musical Memories 
 
 erect, he carried himself in soldierly fashion, 
 his somewhat small head — already gray — held 
 high. His features were sharp, his smile kindly. 
 A half-inquisitive, half-humorous look in his 
 clear blue eyes, the pale blue of the North, lent 
 his face a certain originality peculiar to faces 
 with a mixed expression. Great and acknow- 
 ledged artist as he was, renowned in every 
 country of any significance, he was simpler, and 
 thought far less of his powers and attainments, 
 than many a raw and untried neophyte. 
 
 The writer made his acquaintance In the 
 ' artists' room ' at a concert, when he came up in 
 his direct, unaffected way and introduced him- 
 self. ' I guess artists may speak to one another,' 
 he said in good English, with an accent more 
 American than foreign. ' And you are one, 
 because, young though you are, you have the 
 pluck to play like yourself, not to imitate your 
 master.' 
 
 But Ole Bull was an admirer of Henselt, as 
 he was of every artist of individuality, giving 
 each and all their due. Meanwhile, his love of 
 originality was so strong that in many ways it 
 
Ole Bull and Beethoven 205 
 
 ruled him. When he pleased, he could cast 
 aside his eccentricities and mannerisms, and play 
 with the innigkeii, yet steady march in harness 
 of the classical players par excellence. But he 
 doubted the ' folio w-my-leader' school of musical 
 interpretation. He believed in a great work, 
 being great because of its adaptability to many 
 different interpretations — rather than that divers 
 interpreters' should waive their thought and 
 feeling to adhere rigidly to the composer's. If 
 he had not held this extreme view, he would 
 have been great among classical players, as well 
 as among executants apart from the severe and 
 ancient schools. 
 
 When he asked the writer to play with him 
 at a concert, and Waived the choice of pieces, she 
 selected the C minor sonata of Beethoven to see 
 what he would say or do. He merely assented 
 — and then came the rehearsals. Having played 
 this same sonata in private with Herr Joachim 
 and in public with Sainton and other violinists 
 of the strictly legitimate school, the sonata ac- 
 cording to Ole Bull was new and astonishing. 
 He had his own views of Beethoven's intentions 
 
2o6 Musical Memories 
 
 — romantic and imaginative, but scarcely tenable 
 with due reverence to the composer. The 
 scherzo, in particular, was ' early morning, with 
 the hero, in the throes of cruel anxiety, awaken- 
 ing to the chirping of the birds.' The trio was 
 ' the conflict between the calm of Nature and 
 the Sturm und Drang of the interior tempest in 
 his soul.' The finale was ' the triumph of 
 human passion,' etc. One way of interpreting 
 Beethoven, certainly, but — dangerous. 
 
 There were a succession of quiet little battles 
 during those many rehearsals, ended by the 
 pianist resigning the part. Then Ole Bull be- 
 came suddenly as meek and docile as the mildest 
 of schoolboys. He professed himself ready to 
 imitate any violinist's ' reading ' which the writer 
 preferred, and at once became transformed into 
 one of the most rigid of virtuosi. He had 
 evidently heard his less erratic compeers to some 
 purpose. Quite easy in her mind — indeed, vastly 
 gratified by the discovery of this new power in the 
 great fiddler — the writer took her place at the 
 piano the day of the performance. All went well 
 during, and immediately after, the first passages 
 
A Bouquet 207 
 
 — indeed, the first movement ended without any 
 alarming eccentricity ; but when the scherzo 
 was reached — to her horror the birds chirped, 
 the Sturm und Drang was heard — and in the 
 finale the hero, in Ole's mind, abandoned him- 
 self to the fliry of passion. The occurrence had 
 this effect : the writer never dared face an 
 audience to play a duet with a violinist again. 
 
 Ole was as fond of unconventionality in daily 
 life as in his playing. He liked to come and 
 go as he pleased — an uninvited guest. He 
 often came on the writer's musical nights, but 
 would drop in at odd times and take her for 
 walks, preferring the great thoroughfares, as he 
 was amused with crowds. Shop - windows 
 attracted him. Once the writer admired a 
 bouquet in the window of a great florist. A 
 minute afterwards she missed the tall, gaunt 
 figure at her side, and, waiting, saw him coming 
 out of the shop, bouquet in hand. There, in 
 the street, he presented it to her, and when, 
 embarrassed by the stares of the passers-by, she 
 begged at least to return home at once by a 
 quieter route, he was amazed. ' You liked the 
 
2o8 Musical Memories 
 
 flowers, and you are ashamed of them?' he said, 
 in reproof, in a tone both disappointed and 
 reproachful. 
 
 As his instrumental hero was Paganini, so his 
 vocal heroine was Jenny Lind. Lind was a 
 congenial topic that he loved to dwell upon. 
 
 Jenny Lind — once the object of popular 
 passion in a way that no artist has been, before 
 her advent in the world of song or since — 
 retired from the stage when the writer was still 
 a child. It had been the wish of her life to 
 hear the ' Swedish nightingale ' at least once, 
 and, in support of the saying that ' everything 
 comes to the one who will wait,' the oppor- 
 tunity of meeting as well as hearing the great 
 genius was given her during the mayoralty of 
 the amiable and generous Sir Sydney Waterlow. 
 
 This was at the Mansion House, at an artist 
 dinner, when the writer found herself seated at 
 table side by side with the well-known Herr 
 Karl Blind, and opposite to Sir Sydney, Lady 
 Waterlow, Jenny Lind, Sir JuHus Benedict, and 
 Gustave Dore. Other notabilities were present, 
 Herr Goldschmidt and Sir Julius' beautiful 
 
Artists at the Mansion House 209 
 
 daughter Alice among them. But the in- 
 tellectual, thoughtful face of Madame Gold- 
 schmidt magnetized her humble admirer's eyes 
 far more than did the other guests, or the mag- 
 nificent City gold plate and the wealth of lovely 
 flowers around. To drink out of the loving- 
 cup which Jenny Lind had sipped was event 
 enough to intoxicate any humble musician ; but 
 when, afterwards, the remains of the glorious 
 voice were heard in Lind's extraordinary render- 
 ing of the familiar ballad ' Auld Robin Gray,' 
 the evening became historical to more than one 
 present. 
 
 The wonderful Swede was as great an actress 
 as she was a singer. Often and often has this 
 been repeated and insisted upon by calm judges, 
 not infected with the ' Lind fever,' as well as by 
 her fanatical admirers ; and soon after she simply 
 and quietly took her place before the huge 
 grand piano drawn up a little distance from the 
 drawing-room wall, it was made evident. The 
 voice was no longer the exquisite sound which 
 had held huge audiences breathless and motion- 
 less in all parts of the world. It was thin, and 
 
 14 
 
2IO Musical Memories 
 
 on some notes almost querulous in tone. But 
 the artist, the histrionic as well as musical 
 genius, made as great an effect upon her hearers 
 as ever. As Lind told the familiar Scottish 
 story, its characters seemed to pass in review ; 
 her eloquent face seemed as a glass through 
 which each gazed in turn — and the pathos of 
 the homely tale went home to the hearts of 
 the listeners straight from the warm heart of 
 the singer. 
 
 Afterwards, the writer had a conversation with 
 the great vocalist, who was one of the most 
 womanly of women, taking a vivid interest in the 
 lives of her fellow-musicians as well as in topics 
 connected with her art. Curiously enough, wide 
 as the gulf between their species of talent was 
 — Lind being on a far loftier and nobler plane 
 than Ole Bull — she made an almost exactly 
 similar remark to the one which impressed itself 
 so forcibly on the writer's memory on her first 
 introduction to the violinist. 
 
 ' The very first notes you played I knew you 
 were an artist,' she said ; ' you have the courage 
 to be yourself 
 
Carlyle on Originality 2 1 1 
 
 It was but a version of Carlyle's adjuration 
 to his fellow -creatures — when, in burning, 
 rousing words, he urged them not to stand idly 
 by in the battle of life, but to act and to do, 
 however small and insignificant their part. 
 Praise of originality from the lips of those who 
 have attained world-wide fame surely means little 
 else but that which the great moralist meant 
 when he wrote, insisting upon the fact that no 
 man was so much a dullard but some sort of 
 gift lay dormant within him. ' And in God's 
 name, out with it, man !' he cried, in passionate 
 exhortation. 
 
 Those who may have fancied — by the ex- 
 clusive, and sometimes even repellent, attitude 
 of some artists and persons whose names are 
 known by the public — that the talented are vain 
 as a rule, have only to mix with the really great 
 in any art to discover that they were wrong. 
 
 It is the old story. Royalty unbends where 
 the parvenu fears loss of caste. People of small 
 endowments are airy and pretentious where 
 genius is childlike in its unconsciousness of the 
 richness of its gifts. 
 
 14 — 2 
 
212 Musical Memories 
 
 Among great instrumentalists, Thalberg was 
 another who was singularly modest and un- 
 assuming. Meeting him at Madame Erard's 
 apartments in 15, Great Marlborough Street, one 
 summer day, he chatted very pleasantly in good 
 and fluent English, and willingly seated himself 
 at the piano and played whatever was suggested 
 to him by any of his five auditors. His play- 
 ing was delightful. While his mechanism and 
 execution were perfect, and the extreme diffi- 
 culties of some of the pieces were evidently 
 child's play to him, the tone brought out by 
 his lissom, taper fingers was difl^erent from that 
 of any other pianist. It suggested transparency, 
 brilliance, lightness. The notes seemed to float 
 on the air like bubbles. He had a power of 
 modulation which was unrivalled. His crescendo 
 and diminuendo were almost too exact. In fact, 
 his whole playing, although not lacking in 
 poetry, produced the effect of the pictures of 
 certain great masters whose characteristic is 
 excessive finish. It astonished, while appealing 
 rather to the intellect than the emotions. In 
 this, it was the direct antithesis of Rubinstein's. 
 
Thalberg 2 1 3 
 
 Then a man of about fifty, Thalberg still 
 boasted remnants of his former personal at- 
 tractions. Tall, slim, his aquiline features 
 were sharp-cut as any cameo. His daughter 
 Zare (now the Marchesa Doria) resembled him 
 in feature, as her singing partly resembled his 
 playing. A beautiful girl and pretty acti-ess, 
 her pure soprano voice, clear and sweet though 
 it was, left her hearers cold. 
 
 The season which numbers the first meeting 
 with Thalberg among its events, brings memories 
 of certain great vocalists interwoven with recol- 
 lections of celebrated instrumentalists. 
 
 Therese Tietjens (her name in private life) 
 was in her zenith as the principal prima donna 
 at Her Majesty's Theatre. A clever face, a 
 majestic carriage — indeed, to see her sweep 
 across the boards with her fine stage stride was 
 an experience — her grand voice and intensity 
 of feeling made her a dramatic soprano whose 
 like we shall not easily hear again. She came 
 at a time when Pasta and Grisi were asserted 
 by their faithful adherents — and amateurs were 
 more conservative then than they are now — 
 
214 Musical Memories 
 
 to be unsurpassable. Their admirers, indeed, 
 seemed to wish that their names should remain 
 unrivalled, that — as the English tenor Braham 
 was to be the greatest English singer of all time — 
 Pasta and Grisi were to close the list of world- 
 renowned soprani. Yet she succeeded. 
 
 Tietjens' voice was of German quality, full, 
 rich, and, in florid music, somewhat lacking 
 in fluency. In Norma, Lucrezia, Semiramide, 
 her gifts were all in her favour. When as 
 Norma she stood — tall, queenly, in her white 
 robes and green coronal — upbraiding Pollio 
 the shrinking craven, he, no matter who might 
 be assuming the role, looked a wretched dastard. 
 She swept the stage, a typical Semiramide — and 
 when her Arsace was Alboni, the great duet 
 was sung to a perfection not easily attainable 
 nowadays. 
 
 As Margherita, Tietjens evidently aimed at 
 an impersonation of the original Gretchen of 
 her great national poet, even in minor details — 
 for she discarded the white dress beloved of 
 French Margheritas in favour of a blue robe 
 which was more fitting to a burgher maiden 
 
A Prima Donna at Home 215 
 
 of the period. She naturally shone in the tragic 
 part of the opera, but as Margherita's part is 
 certainly two-thirds tragedy, that was no dis- 
 advantage. It is often said that as the part 
 of Shakespeare's Juliet, if it is to be perfectly 
 played, should be acted by two actresses in one, 
 so also should there be two soprani in one — 
 light and dramatic — for the role of Margherita, 
 The tragic being the predominant note in 
 Gounod's conception, the success of Tietjens' 
 Margherita will be understood. 
 
 Strong — indeed, virile — as an operatic singer, 
 she was in private life the most feminine and 
 tender of her sex. 
 
 In a well-known thoroughfare in St. John's 
 Wood there was a square, low cottage ornee 
 standing in a large, leafy garden. Here 
 Tietjens — with a married sister who was her 
 constant companion, and two fresh, comely, 
 lively young nieces — first pitched her tent in 
 London, Once past the gate in the high brick 
 wall, one might have been in the grounds of 
 some country-house. Ivy Cottage contained 
 some good-sized rooms, and they were carefully 
 
21 6 Musical Memories 
 
 furnished in country-house style. In summer 
 there was a profusion of flowers within and 
 without. Scarcely a prettier sight could be 
 seen than Tietjens and her family taking their 
 coiFee, in typical German fashion, in the rustic 
 arbour under the trees on summer afternoons, 
 to the accompaniment of the chirps and quacks 
 of the fowls and ducks and cooing of pigeons 
 in the little poultry-yard beyond the garden, 
 and with their favourite dogs and cats lying 
 about the lawn whose background was the 
 ivy-covered house. On Sundays the hospitable 
 prima donna was at home all day to her friends, 
 who would many of them arrive early, spend 
 the day in the garden — perhaps picking fruit 
 now and then in the kitchen-garden, where the 
 strawberries, raspberries, currants, and goose- 
 berries bore witness to the fact that there is 
 still air in London, and sunshine also — and 
 perchance remain to dine. The dinners at 
 Ivy Cottage were of the choicest, and were 
 followed by pleasant evenings in the drawing- 
 room, where the prima donna's voice was heard 
 at the greatest disadvantage in consequence of 
 
The Last of a Great Singer 217 
 
 the low ceiling, and where the artist visitors 
 would also contribute songs or pieces. Or there 
 might be a game of cards. Lotto was at one 
 time a favourite game at Ivy Cottage, and the 
 writer well remembers how, one evening when 
 she had had a long run of ill-luck, her hostess, 
 determining she should win at least one game, 
 demurely cast her eyes across at her array of 
 cards before calling the numbers, and, by some 
 manipulation in the bag in her lap called the 
 numbers on her visitor's cards first, confessing 
 her trick only when she had awarded the pool. 
 
 Therese Tietjens had a large heart, and many 
 and frequent were her good deeds in aid of the 
 sick, needy, or unfortunate. She was brave, 
 too, as the bravest of her race. Attacked by a 
 terrible internal malady, she resolutely refused 
 to succumb. She battled with the deadly 
 enemy ; and when in reality her only rightful 
 place was the sick-room, she sang through opera 
 after opera, sometimes fainting in her dressing- 
 room from the agony she had endured. In one 
 of her last appearances before her death —which 
 was truly a blessed release from an earthly 
 
21 8 Musical Memories 
 
 purgatory — the large drops wrung out by her 
 anguish could be seen coursing down her face. 
 This was in Lucrezia Borgia, and never had 
 she given a grander impersonation of the guilty 
 Italian Duchess than when literally in her death- 
 agony. 
 
 From Ivy Cottage it was not a far cry to a 
 secluded little rustic villa, the home of one of 
 the cleverest women of her time. Madame 
 RudersdorfF — as Hermine Kxichenmeister-Mans- 
 feld preferred to be called — appeared in public as 
 a soprano in her teens, and visited London in the 
 forties, when, among other concerts, she sang at 
 a soiree given by the writer's father, Karl Man- 
 gold. Originally her voice was sweet as well 
 as powerful, but in the sixties volume and 
 penetration were its most conspicuous qualities. 
 A clever actress, she was greatest in emotional 
 suggestion. But it was not only in music that 
 she excelled ; she was a marvellous linguist, 
 with a wide knowledge of subjects generally, 
 and an intimate acquaintance with the literature 
 of Europe. It would have been difficult to 
 tell her nationality by her speech, for she used 
 
Madame RudersdorfF 219 
 
 English, German, French, Italian, or Spanish, 
 according to the preference of those with whom 
 she spoke, and each with the ease of a native. 
 She painted, drew, wrote verses, and was a 
 capital pianist ; in fact, she might have shared 
 her talents with a dozen less favoured beings, 
 and have had plenty and to spare for herself. 
 
 She was an agreeable hostess ; and her garden, 
 in which she took great pride, was quite the 
 garden of a horticulturist. She understood the 
 science of floriculture, and had a share in the 
 invention and propagation of new variations in 
 species : there was a special geranium which 
 justly bore her name. Never idle, she was 
 always occupied in some pursuit, winter as well 
 as summer. Once, the writer discovered her 
 making a remarkable screen — turning odds and 
 ends into pictures wreathed round with flowers 
 in refined and artistic festoons. Her notes and 
 letters to her friends, gracefully penned in the 
 most exquisite and minute of handwritings, were 
 documents to be kept — full of esprit, and often 
 illustrated with tiny and humorous sketches. 
 In London she drifted into a teaching life. 
 
220 Musical Memories 
 
 Many a successful young vocalist owes his or 
 her attainments primarily to Madame Ruders- 
 dorfF. In 1872 she left England for America, 
 and ten years later died in her country home 
 near Boston. 
 
 The story goes that in her will she expressed 
 a somewhat singular desire to be buried above- 
 ground in a garden-house by a piece of water in 
 the grounds, and in a coffin with a glass lid. 
 She was to be dressed in a black velvet gown 
 and a mantilla of black lace. But so unreason- 
 able a whim seems so unlike the orderly and 
 common-sense Madame Rudersdorff — who would 
 have been the first to see its absurdity in the 
 case of another person — that, although the report 
 was freely promulgated at the time, it is scarcely 
 worthy of credence. 
 
 Another German soprano who was promi- 
 nently before the public in the sixties was 
 ' Mademoiselle Liebhart.' 
 
 For many years a favourite light soprano in 
 Vienna and Germany generally, Madame Lieb- 
 hart accepted an engagement under Mr. Maple- 
 son at Her Majesty's early in the sixties, and 
 
Mr. Willert Beale 221 
 
 found England and English audiences so much 
 to her taste that in England she remained. 
 
 A sprightly actress, as well as the possessor of 
 a voice singularly brilliant and flexible, she ex- 
 celled in parts such as Rosina in the 'Barbiere' or 
 Susanna in the 'Nozze'; she also sang the Queen 
 in the ' Huguenots,' and Isabella in ' Roberto.' 
 In private life she was both amiable, agreeable, 
 and amusing — and as a hostess hospitality and 
 geniality itself. Many pleasant little dinners 
 were given by her in her villa in St. John's 
 Wood. Here could be met the Arditis, the 
 singers of the season, and other foreign artists 
 visiting London. At one of these entertain- 
 ments the writer met Mr. Willert Beale, the 
 spirited entrepreneur — who some time pre- 
 viously had wished to introduce Henselt to 
 he amateurs of London and the provinces, 
 only the nervous pianist flinched, and retreated 
 during the preparation of the agreement. A 
 clever man and a fluent speaker, with plenty 
 that was of interest to relate, was Mr. Beale — 
 versatile, too, music (he himself was well known 
 as a composer, under the pseudonym of ' Walter 
 
222 Musical Memories 
 
 Maynard ') being only one of his accomplish- 
 ments. 
 
 Here, too, was sometimes to be met Made- 
 moiselle Marie Kruls, Tietjens' younger niece ; 
 and on one occasion Signor Bevignani happened 
 to appear and to accept an invitation to remain 
 with such ready acquiescence, that — when a card 
 arrived some time afterwards bidding certain 
 friends and acquaintance to the wedding of the 
 youthful pair — one or two at least among them 
 were not taken altogether by surprise. Even in 
 those days Signor Bevignani had shown con- 
 spicuous talent as a chef-d'orchestre. His sub- 
 sequent career is well known. His amiable 
 wife died a few years ago. 
 
[ 223 ] 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 Leopold Jalisa — Memories of Beethoven — Ferdinand 
 Hiller — His life, etc. — Hummel, Mendelssohn — 
 Hiller's compositions and literary works — Hiller in 
 London — Meetings with Hiller — His friendships — 
 Mrs. Joseph Robinson — Hiller's letters. 
 
 Another Viennese artist who came to England 
 on a visit, and who remained to make it his 
 home for many a long year, was the dis- 
 tinguished musician and violinist, Leopold 
 Jansa. 
 
 In the sixties he was already an old man, and, 
 although teaching artists and amateurs almost 
 when and how he pleased, he had no longer the 
 spirit, or, indeed, the wish, for the excitement 
 of publicity. Indeed, he is hardly known to 
 amateurs of the present day except as the 
 
224 Musical Memories 
 
 teacher of Madame Norman Neruda, whose 
 playing resembles his as it was in its heyday. 
 
 Yet he was one of the professional admirers 
 who clustered around Beethoven in his last 
 years — playing with him, and for him, trying 
 new compositions of the Master's — his faithful 
 friend in daily life as well as in musical matters. 
 
 Jansa lived with his wife, one of the most 
 gehildet and charming of German ladies, in 
 Mornington Crescent. Although the graceful, 
 comely Madame Jansa boasted so cultivated an 
 intellect, she was a typical Hausfrau. Entering 
 the little house, which was furnished and arranged 
 in German style, one was struck by the Dutch- 
 like order and cleanliness. The sitting-rooms 
 where the interesting old couple usually sat — 
 Jansa in a particular chair placed in a par- 
 ticular spot ; his wife, in her plain black gown 
 and knitted shawl, an old-fashioned plain white 
 cap tied over the silvery bands framing her 
 delicate aquiline features and under the chin, 
 invariably seated on the hard, high-backed sofa 
 — were always in exquisite order. All bright 
 surfaces shone as only German and Dutch 
 
Beethoven 225 
 
 strong-armed maidens can make them shine. 
 Dust it was impossible to detect. The little 
 drawing-rooms above were seldom used, and, 
 also in German fashion, the furniture and orna- 
 ments were shrouded in white. Here there 
 were chairs and stools on which the great 
 Beethoven had sat, musical instruments on 
 which he had played. 
 
 From Jansa's references to the great com- 
 poser, it might be gathered that there was but 
 little to be detailed about Beethoven — the man 
 who, always brusque and self-contained, became 
 even less communicative and more inaccessible 
 as his deafness increased and his life drew to a 
 close. It was evident, by a certain awe with 
 which his faithful adherent spoke of him, that 
 the social intercourse he permitted was not of a 
 genial or encouraging kind. Anecdotes of the 
 Master there seemed to be none, or perhaps 
 to a serious-minded follower it savoured of 
 irreverence to repeat them. 
 
 But Jansa — in person, or rather in face, not 
 unlike the master, with his broad, overhanging 
 brow and shaggy gray hair — would give an 
 
 ^5 
 
226 Musical Memories 
 
 imitation of Beethoven ' entering the restaurant 
 where he daily dined, at a table in the corner 
 apart from the rest of the diners — at whom he 
 rarely deigned to cast a glance, except a scowl 
 if he suspected an indiscreet stare on the part 
 of one of the uninitiated. 
 
 According to Jansa, he would stride in, 
 gloomy and morose, his hat crowded over his 
 brows, his whole bearing that of an unapproach- 
 able misanthrope. Stalking to his corner, he 
 would seat himself with his back to everyone, 
 eat, and stalk out again. He seldom recognized 
 the existence of anyone present, or, indeed, looked 
 at the guests — who, however, treated him with 
 reverence, and kept at a most respectful dis- 
 tance. 
 
 On occasion he would be pleased, when, at 
 the trial of some new composition, the execu- 
 tants would readily give the interpretation he 
 required. Then he would give a grunt and 
 make some remark. It would seem that the 
 grunt and a few words were his highest marks 
 of approval. But it must be distinctly under- 
 stood that the words were not words of praise, 
 
Leopold Jansa 227 
 
 more some caustic direction as to the execution 
 of the manuscript or newly-published work. 
 
 Jansa, although born in the days when there 
 were musical giants, was not of those who believe 
 that genius died out with the great men of the 
 late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. 
 He was always on the alert to hear new talent, 
 and, when report reached him, did not depre- 
 ciate the postulant unheard, but, if possible, took 
 an early opportunity of ascertaining the validity 
 of his claims. Living in the days of Beethoven 
 and his compeers as he had lived, he acknow- 
 ledged the excellence of the composers who 
 succeeded them. Mendelssohn he greatly ad- 
 mired ; and he was a warm appreciator of our 
 own Arthur Sullivan, when, as a mere lad, his 
 ' Tempest ' music dazzled the public and led 
 connoisseurs to wonder if it were not a case of 
 ' les rois sont mart — vive le rot.' 
 
 Jansa left Vienna, not because he was weary 
 of the gay capital, but because some indiscretion 
 in playing at a concert given in London for 
 Hungarian purposes obtained him a hint from 
 headquarters that it would be advisable for him 
 
 15—2 
 
228 Musical Memories 
 
 to absent himself for a period. After some 
 years' residence in London, a further hint re- 
 versed the former one, and he once more visited 
 the scene of his early successes. 
 
 He was received by his friends and admirers 
 with open arms, and so entirely delightful did 
 the artist life of the brilliant city seem to him 
 after his dull, monotonous existence in smoky 
 London — where he was practically nobody — 
 that from that moment he did not rest content 
 in the banal obscurity of Camden Town. He 
 arranged a migration to die among his old 
 friends, and carried it out. But, perhaps because 
 he was too full of years for transplantation, or 
 because his expectations were hardly realized, 
 he did not survive his return to his old associa- 
 tions long. His London friends heard with 
 regret of his death in Vienna in January, 
 1875. 
 
 Another great musician who honoured the 
 writer with his friendship, and who had seen and 
 known Beethoven — but too late, for it was on 
 his deathbed — was Ferdinand Hiller, composer, 
 critic, and pianist, who may be said to have 
 
Hummel 229 
 
 raised the Cologne Conservatoire to the position 
 it still holds among musical academies. Ferdi- 
 nand Hiller was born in Frankfort in the 
 autumn of 1811, He showed his musical 
 tendencies very young, and at ten years of age 
 had so far mastered the pianoforte that he 
 played a concerto of Mozart with orchestra. 
 At this time he was studying the piano with 
 Aloys Schmitt and harmony with VoUweiler. 
 But when he was fourteen he was allowed his 
 great desire — to become a , student under 
 Hummel. 
 
 Hummel, one of the stars of Weimar, seems 
 in the early years of the century to have been 
 a perfect magnet to all aspirants to that com- 
 paratively recent instrument, the pianoforte. 
 Would-be pianists flocked to him. He seemed 
 to stand alone among the chief masters of the 
 instrument as the acknowledged authority. 
 There was no rivalry then, such as that which 
 some score or so of years later arose among the 
 conflicting schools of Liszt, Thalberg, Henselt, 
 and others, most of whom had been his pupils. 
 It appeared to be Hummel or nothing. 
 
230 Musical Memories 
 
 To Weimar young Hiller went, and became 
 an ardent disciple of the ponderous Kapell- 
 meister and pianist, the composer of so much 
 that is rare and beautiful, and so much that had 
 not sufficient stamina to survive him. Hummel 
 has been described as one of the stoutest of men. 
 His huge, good-natured face surmounted so 
 unwieldy a body that a place had to be cut for 
 his convenience in his dining-tables, both at 
 home and at Court. When he played, as in his 
 position at Court he was frequently called upon 
 to do, he puffed and blew and perspired in a 
 manner calculated to considerably detract from 
 any spell his playing might cast upon his 
 audiences. Yet he had the power to sway them 
 as he would. His appearances were often the 
 scene of the wildest enthusiasm ; and the placid 
 monster was adored by most of his pupils, 
 notably by Ferdinand Hiller. 
 
 The young and gifted Hiller must have been 
 k delight to his master, who could see no genius 
 where it was accompanied by desultoriness, or 
 that which the late Sir Frederick Leighton con- 
 temptuously dismissed as ' slapdash,' i.e., effects 
 
Ferdinand Hiller 231 
 
 that are obtained by illegitimate means. Hiller 
 was a close worker as well as an obedient pupil, 
 and only two years after he became a Weimar 
 student he was chosen by Hummel to accompany 
 him on a professional tour to Vienna and other 
 places. 
 
 It was here that the lad of sixteen saw and 
 spoke with Beethoven. The great composer 
 was practically a dying man. The interviews 
 were brief, and of necessity silent. But Hiller 
 ever after regarded his visits to the mighty 
 genius as the greatest privilege of his life. 
 
 From Vienna Hiller proceeded to Paris, with 
 the intent of making the Parisians acquainted 
 with the works of the lately-dead Beethoven. 
 He gave concerts, and induced others to intro- 
 duce the symphonies, concertos, and chamber 
 music in their programmes. After a residence 
 of seven years in the French capital he went to 
 Milan. 
 
 While there, Mendelssohn — who was greatly 
 attracted by his work, ' Die Zerstorings Jeru- 
 salems' — wrote from Leipzig begging him to 
 come there to superintend its production. 
 
232 Musical Memories 
 
 Hiller, who was already an enthusiastic admirer 
 of Mendelssohn, eagerly accepted the invitation. 
 His stay in the German musical centre led to 
 his conducting the Gewandhaus concerts. But 
 Leipzig was not to be his abiding-place. After 
 spending some time in Dresden to bring out his 
 operas ' Traum der Christnacht ' and ' Conradin,' 
 he adjourned to Diisseldorf, having accepted the 
 appointment of municipal Kapellmeister there. 
 
 In 1850 he began his work at Cologne, which 
 proceeded with slight interruptions of visits to 
 bring out new works in other countries until his 
 death in 1885. 
 
 But constant and untiring as was his labour 
 in organizing the Conservatoire on the banks of 
 the Rhine, he neglected neither composition nor 
 literary work. As a critic he ranked high. As 
 a writer his ' Aus dem Tonleben unserer Zeit,' 
 his ' Beethoven,' ' Mendelssohn,' and ' Briefe an 
 ein Ungenannte,' will live with the language. 
 Yet his musical works can scarcely be briefly 
 catalogued. As well as 6 operas, 12 orchestral 
 pieces, and 22 numbers for chamber perform- 
 ance, he wrote over 190 songs and choral pieces 
 
Hiller in England 233 
 
 and 38 or 40 pianoforte works. He conducted 
 all the lower Rhine festivals ; yet while all this 
 varied work was in progress, he found time to 
 write lengthy letters to his friends. The writer 
 possesses some of these treasures, full of graceful 
 fancy and pleasant allusion. 
 
 It was early in the seventies that Hiller met 
 and charmed many new English friends. It 
 was at a pupil's house that the writer first saw 
 him. A few pupils, musicians, and others were 
 invited, and were assembled when the artist 
 entered — a tall, finely-built man, with somewhat 
 massive features, the typical musician's brow, 
 deep-set gray eyes, and the ruminative, intro- 
 spective expression of the thinker. Yet there 
 was more in Hi Her' s grave, calm face than 
 mere abstract thoughtfulness. Many a mental 
 struggle, many a victory or defeat, was to be 
 read in the deep lines on his rugged countenance, 
 which, a trifle awe-inspiring when in repose, 
 brightened when he smiled, as some frowning 
 rock loses its gloom when bathed in sunlight. 
 
 There was, however, no suspicion of the auto- 
 crat in his manner, as he was introduced to 
 
234 Musical Memories 
 
 those invited to make his acquaintance. He 
 chatted amiably to all, either in French or 
 German, and listened with interest to those 
 whose performances he had expressed a desire 
 to hear. Then he sat down to the piano, a 
 sweet-toned Broadwood, and played. First he 
 gave his charming trifle ' Zur Guitarre.' Always 
 a piece suitable to those possessed of any musical 
 esprit, under his fingers it assumed quite another 
 significance. It became a little poem both 
 suggestive and delightful, and none felt the 
 genius which could give a simple fragment such 
 meaning more than those whose favourite it 
 already was. 
 
 Hiller seemed quite surprised and delighted 
 at the success of his first essay, and after much 
 entreaty, to which he listened with a childlike 
 deprecation and almost amusement, he gave 
 some numbers of his suite ' Soldaten-leben.' 
 Here the various incidents of a soldier's life are 
 musically described. The sentry pacing in the 
 lonely watches of the night ; the advancing and 
 retreating patrol ; the call to arms ; the battle, 
 etc. — the different scenes in these compositions 
 
An Afternoon with Hiller 235 
 
 are marvellously suggested. Yet there is no 
 suspicion of ' programme music' All is in strict 
 form. There is no more concession to popular 
 taste than Sebastian Bach allowed himself when 
 he tickled the ears with his Suites and ' Inven- 
 tions.' 
 
 Afterwards came more entrancing pieces. 
 When the little party broke up, its several 
 members had waxed as enthusiastic as any 
 Germans in Germany under similar circum- 
 stances. 
 
 Shortly after that evening, Hiller, by per- 
 mission of the lady at whose house he was 
 staying in Kensington, invited many that he 
 wished to see, and, warmed by the presence of 
 some of his most valued friends in England, 
 he was heard at his best. On this occasion he 
 introduced the writer to a charming lady and 
 gifted musician of whom, he confided to her, 
 he expected much — the lamented Mrs. Joseph 
 Robinson of Dublin. As sweet-looking as she 
 was clever, Mrs. Robinson's was a most at- 
 tractive personality, and her sudden and tragic 
 death must have been sad news for the veteran 
 
236 Musical Memories 
 
 composer when he heard it in 1879. Not only 
 was Mrs. Robinson a deservedly appreciated 
 pianist, but she was no insignificant composer, and 
 her verses — for she was also a poetess — possessed 
 the Irish wit and pathos which characterizes 
 the literary productions of the children of 
 Erin. 
 
 Hiller, indeed, possessed one of those sym- 
 pathetic natures to whom their fellow-creatures 
 are of the profoundest interest. Over the 
 careers of his many pupils, especially, he 
 watched with quite a paternal solicitude — asking 
 news of them from time to time, and remem- 
 bering the special characteristics of each one, 
 and his ideas of what might be expected of him 
 or her, with marvellous accuracy. To fellow- 
 artists — even those from whose tenets he widely 
 differed — he was uniformly kind, going out of 
 his way to promote their interests, or to pursue 
 some course which he considered might prove 
 to be to their advantage. During his conversa- 
 tions with the writer, for instance, he took the 
 trouble to elicit her opinions on musical training, 
 and some time after his return to Cologne she 
 
Killer's Amiability 237 
 
 received the offer of a professorship from him, 
 couched in the most delicate terms, and pro- 
 mising, if she accepted, that he, his family, and 
 friends would soon teach her to forget that she 
 was in some sort an exile. But this was only 
 one instance among many. Ferdinand Hiller 
 was, in truth, a father to young artists in 
 general, and his death their irreparable loss. 
 
[ 238 ] 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 The pianists of the sixties — Liszt in the forties — Liszt in 
 the eighties — Clara Schumann and her husband — 
 Schumann and the Henselts — Madame Schumann's 
 playing — Her pupils — Alfred Jaell — Herr Ernst 
 Pauer — His arrival in England — His playing — The 
 musician's life in London — Mr. Henry Broadwood 
 and pianists — ^The Broadwood pianofortes. 
 
 The first half of the nineteenth century may 
 not have been so prolific in the production of 
 musical talent as the second ; but those artists 
 who rose to the surface of public life were 
 richly endowed. Among many musical memories, 
 the writer numbers hours spent listening to 
 Henselt, Liszt, Thalberg, Clara Schumann, 
 Goddard, Jaell, Pauer, Halle, Von Biilow, 
 Plante, Lubeck, Ritter, and, above all, Rubin- 
 stein, among pianists ; and Joachim, Ernst, 
 
Liszt Fifty Years Ago 239 
 
 Vieuxtemps, Sivori, Wieniawski, Becker, Bla- 
 grove, Ole Bull, Sainton, Alard, and others, 
 among violinists. A brilliant galaxy — individu- 
 ally equalled by many artists now in their first 
 prime, such as Paderewski and Sarasate, but 
 distinguished by an individual unity of qualities 
 which make each one stand out separate and 
 alone in their hearers' recollections. 
 
 To those who can never hope to hear them 
 — most of them having unhappily passed into 
 the unknown and unknowable — a short resume 
 of their various personalities may have a certain 
 interest. 
 
 Henselt's playing has been described at length. 
 Liszt was not heard here when his powers were 
 at their zenith. In 1 843 he created some ex- 
 citement when he played in public in London 
 — a thin, gaunt, long-limbed man, who either 
 affected a somewhat spectral appearance, or un- 
 consciously suggested a singularity such as that 
 of Paganini. His aim then seemed more to 
 startle and to astound than to charm. With 
 his grim features sternly set, his long hair 
 flying, he flung his tightly-clad arms, with their 
 
240 Musical Memories 
 
 attenuated hands, wildly about the keyboard, 
 eliciting a torrent of notes — showers of pearly 
 sounds, doubtless, but sufficiently unlike the 
 hitherto accepted styles first to confuse, then 
 to almost alarm, the more sensitive among his 
 audience. Nervous women became hysterical, 
 and in some cases fainted. There was a certain 
 Liszt fever among habitual concert-goers ; but 
 it was looked upon doubtfully by acknowledged 
 authorities, so died out. Very different was 
 the master when he Was heard in London 
 shortly before his death. A feeble, venerable 
 old man, his touch was as magical as ever, his 
 technique as exquisitely balanced as in his softer 
 moments years before ; but the fire and the 
 extravagance were gone. It might have been 
 Charles Halle at his best, or one of his most 
 faithful imitators among his pupils, such as 
 Stavenhagen and the rest. 
 
 Many will treasure the remembrance of the 
 great soiree given to afford the musicians of 
 London an opportunity of closer acquaintance 
 with a man who had a remarkable influence 
 upon the music of the century. It was held 
 
The Liszt Pianoforte School 241 
 
 in the Grosvenor Gallery, where a brilliant 
 crowd, numbering all the well-known musicians 
 in London at the time, filled the galleries, and 
 among them came the bent figure of the Abbe, 
 his white-haired head bowed by time and devo- 
 tion to his art. It was in truth a touching sight 
 as he passed through the eager throng leaning 
 on the arm of his faithful devotee, the late 
 Mr. Walter Bache — gently recognizing those 
 he already knew, and giving a kindly greeting 
 to all who were introduced to him. Yet what a 
 difference between Liszt in the forties and Liszt 
 in the eighties ! His playing then was all storm 
 and stress ; this was the calm of those who 
 wend their way downhill, their faces to the 
 sunset. 
 
 It is difficult to say in what the Liszt school 
 of pianoforte-playing specially consists, but it 
 has this peculiarity : while it is the medium par 
 excellence for the achievement of every modern 
 difficulty invented to confound those weakly in 
 physique, it is adapted to the requirements of the 
 most exacting of the classical composers. To 
 the best followers of the method the latest 
 
 16 
 
242 Musical Memories 
 
 sonatas of Beethoven, for instance, are easily 
 accessible, while the wildest passages of Chopin 
 contain but few perplexities. 
 
 Thalberg, while his position of hand and 
 wrist differed but very slightly from that adopted 
 by Liszt, had originated a more arbitrary style ; 
 while it led to perfection of technique, it was in 
 a groove, and best fitted his own compositions, 
 notably the now practically defunct fantasias. 
 Smooth, glib, graceful, it was scarcely fitted for 
 the performance of classical music, except where 
 its nobler characteristics were maintained and all 
 else discarded, as by Arabella Goddard. The 
 player who most resembled Thalberg was 
 Guglielmo Andreoli, the elder of the pianist 
 brothers, who had been his pupil, and was 
 essentially a fantasia-player. Our own Arabella 
 Goddard having been already dwelt upon, the 
 name which seems to follow those of Liszt and 
 Thalberg in the list of celebrated pianists is that 
 of Clara Schumann. 
 
 The daughter of a certain Friedrich Wieck, 
 musician and professor — who was, by the way, by 
 reason of his arbitrariness and brusquerie, very 
 
Robert and Clara Schumann 243 
 
 unpopular among the younger German musicians 
 of his day — Clara, a sweet girl as well as a born 
 artist, appeared in Germany as a prodigy as early 
 as in her twelfth year. So delightful was she 
 later on, both as child-woman and virtuoso, that 
 she turned the heads of most of the young men 
 artists on her appearance in Weimar, notably 
 that of the somewhat fantastic and exceedingly 
 impassioned young composer, Robert Schumann. 
 Old Mr. Wieck appears to have had some hard 
 work in keeping his Clara's admirers at bay. 
 Most of all he appears to have disliked 
 Robert Schumann. But love seems to laugh 
 at fathers, as it proverbially does at locksmiths. 
 The fervid young genius touched Clara's heart. 
 While remaining a dutiful daughter in all 
 else, she allowed Robert Schumann to become 
 secretly the one hero of her life. 
 
 The rough course of their mutual affection 
 would form a most interesting page in the 
 book of Cupid, For a long time Wieck 
 remained obdurate, only relenting, if indeed he 
 was ever really reconciled to his daughter's 
 marriage, after it had taken place, and she was 
 
 16 — 2 
 
244 Musical Memories 
 
 wife of Robert Schumann beyond recall. The 
 anxieties, hopes, fears, and final triumphant 
 ecstasy of the most poetical of German com- 
 posers is musically depicted in the more 
 romantic of his works. The beautiful piano- 
 forte quintet is, from its first passionate out- 
 burst of appeal to its final passages, suggestive 
 of the joys of a lover's success and wedding- 
 bells, as fine a love-poem as can be found in 
 literature or music ; and the succession of varia- 
 tions of rather than on a theme confessedly 
 written by Clara — the ' Davidsbijndler ' — de- 
 serves to rank with the admirable quintet as an 
 erotic gem of the first water. 
 
 The names of Robert Schumann and his wife 
 Clara are so indissolubly interwoven by the simi- 
 larity of their gifts that it is impossible almost 
 to speak of one without the other. When 
 Clara became Frau Schumann her reputation 
 was already considerable in other countries as 
 well as in her own. Schumann also was 
 fairly started on his career. But many were the 
 heart-burnings, and constant the struggles, of the 
 youthful couple. Clara was always brave. 
 
The Henselts and Schumann 245 
 
 cheerful, loving ; but her husband's mental 
 powers were less evenly balanced. The troubles 
 of married life, which only developed her moral 
 excellence, embittered him. By degrees he 
 became gloomier, his humour more uncertain 
 and fitful, his tastes more eccentric and capri- 
 cious. The life of the wife of a man threatened 
 with mental aberration can be little else but a 
 long, slow martyrdom. A greater crown is 
 the due of Clara Schumann for her constant 
 and unflagging attempts to keep the dread 
 enemy that threatened her husband at bay, than 
 for her lifelong devotion to her art. Grandly 
 unselfish, she succeeded in maintaining a certain 
 amount of sanity in her exacting spouse until 
 the tendency defied poor human efforts. Robert 
 Schumann died mad. But he had, according to 
 those who knew him, been scarcely a responsible 
 being for many years before. 
 
 Madame von Henselt, who had entertained 
 the Schumanns in St. Petersburg, related many an 
 anecdote of the fretful Robert's self-absorption 
 and total disregard of his wife's well-being. One 
 day, for instance, the Henselts drove them to see 
 
246 Musical Memories 
 
 a certain tower whence a fine view of the city 
 and its environs is attainable. Robert, who was 
 in one of his querulous moods, glanced up at the 
 tower, and saying, ' Come, Clara,' took his place 
 in the carriage again. ' I go not there ; it would 
 make me schwindlich,' he growled to Madame 
 von Henselt. ' But surely your wife will come?' 
 she asked, as he pulled Clara's arm. ' Clara 
 goes not where I cannot go,' he said crossly, 
 and the obedient spouse murmured an apology 
 to her hostess, and meekly resumed her seat at 
 his side. Henselt, the most arbitrary and 
 dictatorial of husbands, was greatly disgusted 
 with Schumann for manifesting similar ten- 
 dencies. 
 
 While ' dreeing her weird ' as faithful slave 
 to a genius, Clara Schumann's great qualities as 
 a musician developed to their fullest extent. 
 Gifted with all the attributes necessary for the 
 making of a perfect pianist, she had music in 
 her soul. It was her native language, in which 
 her warm heart found utterance as well as her 
 poetical mind. Then that superexcellent faculty 
 of the true woman, the capacity to play second 
 
Clara Schumann s Playing 247 
 
 to man, to be what woman was evidently mean 
 to be, stood her in such good stead as the in- 
 terpreter of the great composers. She could 
 not help being original. Her tone, full, rich 
 resonant, was peculiar to herself, and stood out 
 alone among the tones produced by other great 
 pianists. Her accent, rhythm, spirit, enthusiasm, 
 would have been recognizable, had one heard 
 her without seeing her. Yet she approached an 
 interpretation with humble reverence for the 
 composer's intentions, and her playing of Bach, 
 Beethoven and the older classics was an expe- 
 rience never to be forgotten. Her phrasing 
 was exquisite. To hear a melody played by 
 Clara Schumann was to hear it as its utterance 
 could hardly be equalled, certainly not surpassed, 
 by the greatest among vocalists. Those who 
 were lukewarm in their appreciation of the 
 sonatas of Beethoven as pianoforte pieces waxed 
 enthusiastic when they heard them at her hands. 
 Such a noble talent had the power of awaken- 
 ing, to a remarkable extent, musical gifts — per- 
 haps hitherto dormant — in others. It was this 
 faculty, among those necessary to a teacher. 
 
248 Musical Memories 
 
 which made her so successful in the training of 
 young artists. Some of our best pianists at the 
 present time were her pupils — notably Miss 
 Fanny Davies, a worthy representative of the 
 Schumann school. 
 
 A contemporary of Madame Schumann, who 
 was heard at his best in Schumann's music, was 
 Alfred Jaell. A short, rotund man, with a 
 countenance beaming with good humour, he 
 was, in spite of his unwieldiness, full of life and 
 energy. Life and energy indeed, as well as, on 
 occasion, a certain amount of poetical feeling, 
 were the chief attractions of his style. A draw- 
 back was the constant staccato of dwarfed, fat 
 hands. Legato such as that common in the 
 playing of Henselt, Thalberg, and Liszt was 
 impossible to him. But the tone drawn from 
 a concert grand by those same fat hands was 
 unique. It was round, full, yet sweet and pene- 
 trating — the very biggest, fullest pianoforte 
 tone to be heard at the time when tone in 
 a pianist was a greater desideratum than it is 
 now. After a brilliant career, Jaell died in 
 Paris in 1882, aged fifty. 
 
Herr Ernst Pauer 
 
 249 
 
 Quite another species of player was repre- 
 sented by Hans von Biilow. His was essentially 
 the strong, robust German style. His tone rang 
 like steel, and was almost as hard. Arbitrary 
 and unsympathetic, his playing claimed respect 
 for its virtuosity rather than from any natural 
 genius. He had evidently given devoted study 
 to the works of the great masters, and was their 
 faithflil exponent according to his lights. 
 Lubeck was a more genial, imaginative player 
 in this unfascinating school. 
 
 Plante, Ritter — there were many virtuosi 
 beginning their career when the Schumanns 
 ' flourished.' It would take a long catalogue to 
 enumerate them, but they might be classified as 
 being of the genera headed by one or other of 
 the great names which are writ large in the book 
 of Time. 
 
 A pianist who — when he arrived in England 
 early in the fifties — little dreamt, perhaps, that 
 he had come to the island of fogs to stay, was 
 Herr Ernst Pauer. In its initial stage his 
 playing was magnificent. Fresh from the loom 
 of years of hard, patient work, it was, while 
 
250 Musical Memories 
 
 perfect in technique, brilliant, passionate, an out- 
 pouring of all shades of emotion from grave to 
 gay. It had the beaut e de diable which is the 
 charm of youth. It was fascinating, exciting, 
 yet satisfying. Playing at the house of Karl 
 Mangold shortly after one of Henselt's visits — 
 and to the same audience which had sat at the 
 feet of that singular genius — Ernst Pauer en- 
 thralled those same hearers, and convinced them 
 that he had any sort of career before him he 
 might elect to choose. He chose. He would 
 not be a wandering star travelling from city to 
 city and country to country to receive the 
 adulation of the musical faithful. He settled 
 here in London, as we all know, and in a few 
 years the youthful fire was gradually extinguished 
 by the placid Indifference of the then musical 
 world, and his Muse veiled her face — he became 
 the virtuoso and professor 'par excellence, and 
 such has since remained, 
 
 London was not — can scarcely ever be^a 
 city where musicians have leisure to live an 
 artist life such as they live abroad, notably in 
 the cities of the Conservatoires. Where money- 
 
Artist Life in London 251 
 
 making has to be the first consideration, art is 
 always on the wane — always fading, withering, 
 needing strenuous exertions to keep it properly 
 and wholesomely alive. Thus the danger to 
 resident London artists that their first inspira- 
 tions may be dimmed — that the commonplace 
 atmosphere and matter-of-fact hard work may 
 gradually kill the divine spark within them. 
 We constantly hear of native or resident com- 
 posers leaving town and ' burying themselves ' 
 in the country to write their works, and the fact 
 is not astonishing. 
 
 Meanwhile, if the ' artist life,' the romantic 
 Bohemianism of art, be wanting, there are com- 
 pensations. Hard-working musicians may, and 
 often do, succeed in making incomes double, 
 and even treble the amount of the highest sum 
 to be yearly netted in any other country. And 
 English patrons are staunch, in some cases mu- 
 nificent. Their name is legion — but as they are 
 mostly private individuals, it would be indiscreet 
 to allude to them personally here. Meanwhile 
 to one, lately deceased, reference should in 
 justice be made when pianists are on the tapis. 
 
252 Musical Memories 
 
 This was the prominent member of a celebrated 
 firm — Mr. Henry Broadwood. 
 
 Mr. Henry Broadwood, whose charming per- 
 sonality as a courtly, genial English gentleman 
 will be ever a dear remembrance to artists and 
 amateurs alike, was somewhat of a recluse — living 
 the typical life of a country squire on his estate 
 in Sussex (Lyne, near Horsham). Educated 
 first at Harrow, then at Trinity College, Cam- 
 bridge, his subsequent studentship at Heidelberg 
 was a good prologue to his future relations 
 with musicians, which were of a wide and 
 generous character. One of the fourth genera-- 
 tion of the renowned pianoforte-makers, he was 
 possibly as solicitous in his regard for the in- 
 struments bearing his name as if he had him- 
 self been their inventor. They were con- 
 stantly in his thoughts, one of the ' leading 
 motives' of his life, and its first and most 
 pressing care. To see him look at one of his 
 pianos was a revelation of the inner life of the 
 man. His glance told a whole history of hope, 
 fear, pride, and subtle anxiety, as the gaze of 
 a mother will tell when she fixes it upon a 
 
Mr. Henry Broadwood 253 
 
 child. And he seemed to recognize and dis- 
 tinguish the merits of each member of the krge 
 flock of splendid concert grands which thronged 
 the rooms in Great Pulteney Street, as a 
 shepherd knows his sheep. It is well known 
 among pianoforte-players that if the later-in- 
 vented instruments, such as Bechstein, Steinway, 
 and others, are easier to play upon — effects being 
 produced by the instrument almost as much as 
 by the performer — the tone of a Broadwood 
 grand remains unique and unapproachable. It 
 may be more difficult to get at — in fact, it may 
 be honestly said that it is ; but when it is got 
 at, it stands alone among pianoforte-tone, as the 
 tone of a Stradivarius stands alone among that 
 of all other violins. 
 
 This tone was Mr. Henry Broadwood's 
 delight, and to preserve it with jealous care was 
 the aim of his life. His British common-sense 
 telling him that it is impossible to better the 
 best, he resolutely clung to the old rules and 
 methods which had made the firm what it is, 
 and resisted innovations. Should his successors 
 continue conservative, the day will probably 
 
254 Musical Memories 
 
 come when the tone of pianofortes generally 
 will degenerate into a glassy, steely, nondescript 
 sound — which might be that of musical glasses 
 or any other spurious instrument — except in the 
 case of the Broadwood pianos, which among the 
 pretty, brilliant tinkling which pleases audiences 
 nowadays will continue to give out the rich, 
 sonorous, true pianoforte tone for which the 
 later classical music was written. 
 
 Among the first artist-friendships of Mr. 
 Broadwood's was that with the English pianist 
 and composer, Sterndale Bennett. Later on 
 he was very intimate with James Davison, who 
 greatly liked and admired him. To all pianists, 
 irrespective of nationality, he was a good and 
 kindly friend. Among these were Madame 
 Schumann, Sir Charles Halle, Herr Pauer, 
 Madame Goddard, and many another. 
 
 Mr. Henry Broadwood was, as has been 
 said, somewhat of a country recluse, his hobby 
 being salmon-fishing ; not, as in the case of 
 Professor Ella, as a theme for table-talk, but as 
 a real sportsman and lover of the gentle crafi:. 
 He lived to a fair old age, to the last as keenly 
 
A Rustic Funeral 255 
 
 interested in his pianofortes as ever ; and passed 
 away at Lyne, after a lengthened illness, in 
 July, 1893. 
 
 His funeral, in the pretty village churchyard 
 of Rusper, near Lyne, was attended by all sorts 
 and conditions of men who sincerely loved him. 
 His family, personal friends, and tenantry from 
 the neighbourhood mingled with his partners, 
 employes, and workmen from town. One and 
 all showed that they felt a common sorrow. 
 But more than those assembled in God's acre 
 that day regretted the death of a good and 
 gifted man. His loss was felt, more or less, 
 throughout the whole musical profession. 
 
[ 256 ] 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 The violin and violinists — The sisters Milanollo — The 
 sisters Ferni — ^Paganini — Joseph Joachim — Vieux- 
 temps and Ernst — Wieniawski — Jean Becker and 
 Aloys Kettenus — -Blagrove and Carrodus — Camillo 
 Sivori — A winter at Nice — Sophie Cruvelli (the 
 Vicomtesse de Vigier) — Artists at Nice — Amateurs 
 at Nice — Various soirees — Collectors of stringed in- 
 struments — Captain Grindlay — The visitors — The 
 doctors — Jeffrey Prov^se — Magnanimity of a physician. 
 
 So much for the pianists. At the present time 
 the king among wood instruments, the piano- 
 forte, has a powerful rival in that which holds 
 the position among ' strings ' which the soprano 
 has among vocalists — the violin. 
 
 Although the popularity of the violin as a 
 playing instrument among amateurs, notably of 
 the gentler sex, appears at first sight to be of very 
 
The Milanollos 257 
 
 recent date — some people asserting with confi- 
 dence that there were few or no feminine players 
 before the advent of Madame Norman-Neruda 
 — the movement was initiated longi ago, when 
 the gifted prodigy, Teresa Milanollo, was a 
 sensation of the hour in the forties. Maria 
 Milanollo, her younger sister, played duets in 
 public with her. But although Maria had great 
 talent, Teresa was a genius. She -played in all 
 styles with insight and fervour, and those who 
 frequently heard her declare her technique to 
 have been equal to that of the greatest men 
 players of the day. 
 
 The success of the Milanollos induced other 
 gifted young girls to emulate them. The 
 sisters Ferni (Carolina Ferni was afterwards a 
 well-known singer in her own and other 
 countries) were followed by other accomplished 
 solo and duet players. Lady Halle may be 
 the most excellent among all the lady players, 
 but she is not by any means the first to have 
 distinguished herself in her enviable metier. 
 
 Of course, the brilliant list of great violinists 
 is headed by Paganini, the [most eccentric if the 
 
 17 
 
258 Musical Memories 
 
 most unapproachable. As those who had the 
 privilege of hearing the man who stands alone 
 among violinists, even as Turner did among 
 painters, are fast dying out, it would be 
 interesting were a collection made of their 
 reminiscences. At present, all we hear of the 
 extraordinary genius is some stale anecdote now 
 and again which deals with the idiosyncrasies 
 of the human being, rather than with the salient 
 characteristics of the artist. 
 
 But however extraordinary and inimitable 
 Nicolo Paganini may have been — and, prac- 
 tically, those born after his too early death in 
 1 840 have no means of knowing except by the 
 scant records in the press and still scantier 
 traditions — there is little doubt that while 
 Joseph Joachim lives we have no reason to 
 deplore that Paganini existed before our day. 
 Artists and amateurs alike — whatever their bias 
 may be, however much they may admire this 
 or that great player — are bound to admit that 
 Joachim stands alone and unsurpassed as 
 musician and violinist combined. No one has 
 ever equalled him in the interpretation of the 
 
Great Violinists 259 
 
 great works of the master-minds. While his 
 tone and superb simplicity are unrivalled, his 
 execution is uniformly perfect. The hearer is 
 apt to fancy, while listening to him, that for 
 him difficulties have never existed — the reward, 
 doubtless, of a lifetime of hard work, in which 
 only those with the highest and noblest gifts 
 can persevere. 
 
 Joachim may be said, without misrepresenta- 
 tion, to occupy a unique position among virtuosi. 
 After his name there comes a hiatus. Then 
 may perhaps be bracketed the two distinctive 
 players, Ernst and Vieuxtemps. Ernst had a 
 pure style and a clear, penetrating tone ; great 
 facility in those highest flights of skill which 
 confound even the cleverest executants, and 
 passion, enthusiasm. In later years, however, 
 his intonation was uncertain — a defect which 
 marred his performances. 
 
 Vieuxtemps, who was born at Verviers In 
 1820, was first heard here when in his prime. 
 He 'led' at the Monday Popular Concerts in 
 their early days, but was also to be heard at the 
 two Philharmonics, the Musical Society, and 
 
 17—2 
 
26o Musical Memories 
 
 other orchestral and chamber concerts. He was 
 quite the lion of his first London seasons. 
 Davison wrote enthusiastically about him in 
 the Times, Chorley was amiable in the columns 
 of the Athenaeum, and the public applauded him 
 liberally whenever and wherever he appeared. 
 He may be said to have united the classical and 
 ad captandum styles in a tactful and subtle 
 manner of his own. If not as great as Joachim 
 in the one, or emulating Paganini in the other, 
 the very combination of the two gave him a 
 power peculiarly his own. To the writer, he 
 lacked the spontaneity of genius which at the 
 present day gives Sarasate such an influence 
 over his hearers. Meanwhile, his tone was 
 singularly sweet, his phrasing remarkable, his 
 grip of the work he was interpreting absolute. 
 As a composer for his instrument he takes high 
 rank, his concerto being a standard work. 
 
 After Vieuxtemps, the name of Wieniawski 
 occurs as a natural sequence. Henri Wieni- 
 awski's playing was more that of natural genius 
 than of the highest art. He excelled, naturally, 
 in concerted music — such as Beethoven's quartets. 
 
Wieniawski 261 
 
 and other acknowledged chefs-d'oeuvre in chamber 
 music. He made great effects in the chief of 
 the violin concertos. But he varied. He had 
 his good and bad days, his moods and humours, 
 the bane of genius which is not of the very 
 loftiest calibre. Sometimes he would play little 
 better than a second-rate artist of limited repu- 
 tation, while at others he would excite his hearers 
 to unbounded enthusiasm — and deservedly, 
 for he would play like one inspired. Of Hebrew 
 origin, his dark, pensive, melancholy face and 
 slight, somewhat stooping form, his abstracted 
 gaze and mysterious smile, reminded one forcibly 
 of certain conceptions of the Redeemer by some 
 of the old masters among the Spanish and 
 Italian painters. In his best moments he was 
 essentially a poet, and also essentially a player 
 influenced by the passing emotions of the hour ; 
 thus, his interpretations were rarely, if ever, 
 twice alike, and while he had his almost fanatical 
 admirers, he also had his severe critics. He 
 died all too soon at Moscow in 1880, before 
 he had attained the age of fifty. 
 
 These — Joachim, Ernst, Vieuxtemps, and 
 
262 Musical Memories 
 
 Wieniawski — may be said to be the chief among 
 the many fine violin-players ' flourishing ' in 
 the sixties. There were others innumerable. 
 Jean Becker, a true musician, introduced by 
 Professor Ella, who surpassed his careful master, 
 the violinist and composer, Aloys Kettenus, in 
 public favour ; Henry Blagrove, whose tone 
 and technique had the breadth and purity of the 
 English style, in which he had a worthy fol- 
 lower in the late Mr. Carrodus ; and those who 
 were the writer's personal friends, Ole Bull and 
 Camillo Sivori. 
 
 As a first London season in the early sixties 
 contains the agreeable memory of Ole Bull, so 
 a winter in the sunny South towards their end 
 numbered pleasant hdurs spent in the society of 
 a great favourite throughout the world — Camillo 
 Sivori. 
 
 There can scarcely be a musical season in a 
 Southern health-resort as musical seasons are in 
 great cities. But among the beautiful towns of 
 the Riviera in the last decade of the second 
 French Empire, Nice was somewhat of an artistic 
 centre. Artists ail, and need recuperation, even 
 
Music at Nice 263 
 
 more than less highly-strung people ; and Nice in 
 the sixties — although less crowded with ordinary 
 tourists, or would-be fortune-makers at Monte 
 Carlo, than it is now — numbered many celebri- 
 ties, musical and otherwise, among its winter 
 population. 
 
 The majority of those who travel know the 
 great white town on the banks of the Medi- 
 terranean : the marble villas bordering the 
 Promenade Anglaise and its avenue of palms ; 
 the grand sweep of bay, where the tideless sea 
 ripples steely blue against an azure expanse of 
 sky, or tosses in great gray waves against a 
 still grayer mass of clouds ; the tiers of barren 
 hills crowned by the round-backed Mont Chauve, 
 sterile and forbidding even when bathed in the 
 glory of the Southern sunlight ; and : beyond, 
 Antibes, stretching a long, meagre arm out into 
 the sea. Everyone who has been there knows 
 the beauty of the orange groves, with the golden 
 fruit peeping out among the , glossy dark leaves 
 and waxen blossoms ; the weirdly-twisted olives 
 studding the terraces and fields ; the rose hedges 
 enclosing the tree-ferns, palms, and pepper-trees 
 
264 Musical Memories 
 
 of the Jardin Publique ; the motley crowd of 
 gay French and Italians, bright Americans, and 
 less excitable English ; Algerians in turban and 
 sash-encircled robe ; Spaniards arrived from 
 Biarritz ; here and there a staid and sober 
 German, gazing with placid wonderment through 
 his spectacles ; the gay and pretty carriages, 
 with their peculiar breed of slim-legged, graceful 
 horses, inbred with the Arab. Bells everywhere, 
 as accompaniment to the slow swish of the oily 
 waves upon the beach — church and cathedral 
 bells, bells from the great, grim Franciscan 
 convent on the hill, bells on the horses' net- 
 covered, tossing heads. And, to enhance the 
 stimulating influence of the scene, the glorious 
 sunshine and the salt breeze laden with delicate 
 perfume ; the light, invigorating air which, 
 strengthened by its journey across the water. Is 
 yet freighted with the scent of roses, lemon and 
 orange blossom, and in early spring with the 
 white bean bloom, which is out in the fields 
 upon the hillsides — the life-giving atmosphere 
 which solaces the dying, and brings new powers 
 to the convalescent. 
 
Sophie Cruvelli 265 
 
 On the slope between Nice and Villefranche 
 was the gilded cage of a once - celebrated 
 songstress. Sophie Kruwel (Italianized into 
 Cruvelli), a young German girl possessed of a 
 magnificent voice, a certain adaptability, and a 
 grand physique, had studied in the Italian school, 
 and made her debut in Venice when she was two 
 or three and twenty. Her success was almost 
 immediate, and she was secured as prima donna 
 by the impresarios of the several great opera- 
 houses in Europe. In London she was, during 
 the forties and early fifties, the fashion of 
 the moment, possessing to the full that im- 
 perious personality which is a power in itself, 
 and which among the unthinking carries all 
 before it. 
 
 In 1856 the Baron (afterwards Vicomte) de 
 Vigier fell in love with the robust German 
 damsel. She succeeded in marrying him, as 
 later on she succeeded in reducing him to an 
 unheard-of docility. None but a husband who 
 was obedience itself would have played cavaliere 
 servente to his wife, as did the Vicomte in the 
 sixties. Wherever his astonishing wife went, he 
 
266 Musical Memories 
 
 followed ; and his squireship was an onerous 
 role, for the lady was activity itself 
 
 She was quite a feature of the French Nice. 
 Every day she wore a fresh toilette. Fair, tall, 
 beautifully cosmetiqued and bewigged (the 
 colour of the wig varied with the costume), she 
 disputed the belleship of the season with the 
 celebrated lady politician and remarkable woman, 
 Madame Ratazzi. Every day the rivals walked 
 or drove through the fashionable throng on the 
 promenade, magnetizing the gaze of passers-by, 
 while the object of the adulation of their 
 crowds of toadies. What they had been over- 
 heard to say, how they looked, what they were, 
 were the topics of conversation at the lesser 
 hotels and -pensions. There was not much going 
 on at Nice at that time. The opera-house 
 failed to attract — although occasionally the 
 director placarded some wandering star who 
 appeared for a few nights. The concerts at the 
 pretty building on the shore, the Casino (since 
 burnt down), were few and far between. The 
 dances at the ' Cercle ' were mostly in the after- 
 noon. Madame la Vicomtesse de Vigier was 
 
Cruvelli at Home 267 
 
 quite one of the daily amusements : one day 
 dressed in one extravagant style, perhaps a la 
 milkmaid, with a tiny Dolly Varden hat and a 
 Watteau rustic costume ; the next en grande 
 tenue in the loudest prevailing Parisian fashion, 
 and wearing many of her splendid diamonds, 
 and so on. Indeed, she was quite a little per- 
 petual carnival of one. 
 
 The writer having been introduced to her by 
 her old friend and patron, James Davison — who 
 had helped to establish Cruvelli's popularity in 
 London — was received by her in her villa on the 
 hill. She lived in state. To reach the sanctum 
 where she rested between her appearances in 
 public — for, in her enforced retirement from the 
 operatic stage, it really seemed as if her displays 
 in daily life served her as pseudo-performances — 
 one had to pass through Moorish corridors, the 
 delicate tracery of whose arches — hung with a 
 strange blue and silvery stuff, looped back here 
 and there to show the fine sea-view — resembled 
 those of certain courts of the Alhambra. Then 
 came a Chinese hall, where strange monsters in 
 china and bronze, and curious carved cabinets. 
 
268 Musical Memories 
 
 stood about the marble floor. The Vicomtesse 
 sipped her morning Spanish chocolate dressed 
 gorgeously in fanciful peignoirs, elegant caps 
 coquettishly shrouding her own short hair. She 
 was, in the intimacy of her boudoir, brusque 
 and dictatorial. She had no false delicacy in 
 speaking the truth, as she believed it to be. 
 She had little faith in Ni^ois audiences. 
 
 ' Do you think they would come to my 
 concerts pour les pauvres to help the poor 
 creatures V she said once. ' Do you think they 
 would come if I sang like an archangel, if they 
 had not the curiosity to hear Sophie Cruvelli, 
 and to see what new toilette is worn by Madame 
 de Vigier .? Bah !' And in her energy she 
 kicked off her dainty slipper ; and the Vicomte, 
 standing gravely on the hearthrug in his quiet 
 black morning dress, stuck his eyeglass in his 
 eye, stooped, picked it up, and, with something 
 akin to reverence, replaced it on her thick little 
 German foot. 
 
 These concerts pour les pauvres were quite 
 the musical occurrences par excellence of the 
 season, and the best artists who were in any 
 
The Andreolis 269 
 
 part of the Riviera in search of health or for 
 some other cause would come to Nice to take 
 part in them. 
 
 These were more often instrumentalists than 
 vocalists. Indeed, several great instrumental 
 performers, notably Paganini, have breathed 
 their last in the flowery city by the sea. 
 
 Resident at Nice — except, of course, for the 
 summer months, when the town is shut up, and 
 the stone walls and pavement are well-nigh in- 
 candescent — were several French and Italian 
 instrumentalists, the best known here of whom 
 was Carlo Andreoli, the younger of a clever 
 pair of brothers. The sons of the organist of 
 Mirandola, near Modena, they spent their boy- 
 hood alternately practising the piano and running 
 barefoot about the chestnut woods, the flour of 
 whose nuts made their daily bread. Early in 
 youth they ' toured ' through Italy as prodigies, 
 often getting into scrapes, as on one occasion, 
 when at a hotel, some stranger plied them 
 with wine, and when the hour of their concert 
 arrived, they were hopelessly asleep. Guglielmo, 
 the elder, a tall, thin youth, with sunken cheeks. 
 
270 Musical Memories 
 
 brilliant black eyes, and a helmet of close 
 curls which produced a woolly effect at a 
 distance, made a success in London with his 
 exquisitely - finished and poetical playing of 
 Liszt, Thalberg, and other modern composers. 
 He died at Nice — soon after it ceased to be 
 the Italian Nizza — slipped out of life when 
 lying in the open air, exhausted by consumption, 
 listening longingly to the murmur of his beloved 
 Mediterranean as it kissed the shore. His 
 was the stronger spirit of the two. When his 
 influence was removed, his younger brother 
 chose to consider himself a classical player, and 
 followed the established German school of Beet- 
 hoven-playing. He descended to Mendelssohn, 
 Chopin, and even Liszt. But he had abandoned 
 the track on which his feet were set, and in 
 consequence was really great in nothing. 
 
 Plante, then still in his retirement in the 
 Pyrenees, came to Nice quite unexpectedly, 
 and played in public pour les pauvres. His 
 was a ruminative, profoundly thoughtful nature, 
 and at that time it seemed quite an uncertainty 
 to his friends whether he would remain the 
 
Amateurs of Nice 271 
 
 servant of his beloved art, or entering some 
 religious order would become a priest. 
 
 His playing has been alluded to. In all 
 that was simplest and purest he most excelled. 
 Mozart himself could scarcely have interpreted 
 his own thoughts more exquisitely than Plante 
 did at this epoch of his career. 
 
 There were many amateurs among resident 
 Ni^ois as well as among French, English, and 
 , American winterers. 
 
 Among the aristocratic French, the Comte de 
 Cessoles was a distinguished amateur violinist. 
 He gave occasional soirees in his ' hotel,' where 
 the scene — with the salons furnished in the First 
 Empire style, and thronged with fair dames 
 and demoiselles in the dress of the Second — was 
 worthy of the pencil of a Watteau. Made- 
 moiselle de Cessoles was a beautiful girl, who 
 knew how to fit her costume to her surround- 
 ings. At these soirees any clever artist then 
 in Nice was to be heard ; the Comte de 
 Cessoles himself would perhaps lead a quartet 
 or play in some pianoforte trio or concerted 
 piece ; and although Beethoven was in evidence. 
 
272 Musical Memories 
 
 as in Paris, the audience would maintain a 
 cheerful silence, and were not ostensibly bored. 
 The Count possessed a fine musical library and 
 a choice, if small, collection of violins. 
 
 But the collector of stringed instruments who 
 could boast of a collection equal to that of any 
 amateur in Europe was a certain Monsieur 
 Gautier — a Ni^ois who, having considered 
 himself an Italian until Nizza changed hands 
 and became Nice, suffered from an unbroken 
 sense of injury in finding himself a French 
 subject. 
 
 He lived in a retired house in the ' old town,' 
 where, in its centre, around the cathedral, the 
 narrow streets abound in macaroni, polenta, and 
 fish-sellers, and the overhanging eaves of the 
 tall old houses shut in the odours, while ex- 
 cluding the sunshine. This house stood apart, 
 with a small enclosed garden of orange-trees in 
 front, and he and his collection and his curious 
 old Ni^ois man-servant lived in the first-floor, 
 while his younger and obsequious and devoted 
 avocat brother occupied the remainder with his 
 wife and family. 
 
An Amateur Collection 273 
 
 A short, broad little man, with close-cut 
 grizzled hair, pale Roman features, and blue, 
 suspicious eyes, Monsieur Gautier was a typical 
 old bachelor in his tastes and dislikes. He had 
 been Mayor under the Italian Government, and 
 still maintained a stern and uncompromising 
 attitude towards the usurped and rehabilitated 
 Nice. ' This is still, and will always be, Nizza,' 
 he would say, with a comprehensive wave of 
 the hand indicating the truly Ni^ois quarter ; 
 and he would pass through the new town with 
 a frown and a sneer on his compressed lips, his 
 coat tightly buttoned, and nervously grasping 
 his huge lined white cotton umbrella. 
 
 His beloved collection, which occupied a 
 museum of its own, solaced even his outraged 
 Italian feelings. He grew expansive, seated 
 among his beloved instruments — which num- 
 bered more than one Stradivarius, one or two of 
 Joseph Guarnerius', as well as Amatis and others, 
 and some ancient instruments, among them a 
 lyre and a viol-di-gamba. Time evidently 
 seemed at a standstill to him when he captured 
 a fresh musician to inspect his treasures, and he 
 
 18 
 
274 Musical Memories 
 
 would sit, with the violin or viola resting on 
 his knee, contemplating it with a fond if not 
 a fatuous smile as he related its history and 
 expatiated on its merits and qualities, until 
 perchance some movement or glance of his less 
 interested auditors would recall him to himself. 
 The smile and temporary abandon would vanish, 
 and he would grimly restore his cherished pos- 
 session to its case or casket, and with quiet 
 sarcasm curtail the remainder of the private 
 view. 
 
 He was himself no mean fiddler, and a sound 
 classical player. But nothing pleased him better 
 than to play second to a professional violinist 
 at his weekly musical evenings — which were 
 frequented by nearly every artist visiting Nice, 
 and by a select few amateurs who were, like 
 himself, enthusiastic. These evenings were the 
 happiness of his secluded dilettante existence. 
 The long-tailed grand piano would be drawn 
 out from the wall of the music-room, desks and 
 suitable seats assembled in its bend ; chairs 
 arranged at a respectful distance for the 
 audience, and wax candles placed carefully 
 
Sivori 275 
 
 where they would afford a soft yet sufficient 
 light to the players. Then the privileged few 
 would arrive and be received with an air of 
 much ceremony and expectancy ; the artists and 
 playing amateurs would take their places, and 
 the programme of the evening, mostly chosen 
 by the new-comer among the artists, would be 
 gone through with a judicial gravity and earnest- 
 ness, as if in some important public concert — 
 with an interval, during which artists and 
 audience adjourned to the salle-a-manger to be 
 refreshed with the a V Anglais e (flavoured with 
 vanilla), strops, cakes, and on rare occasions 
 liqueur or cafe noir. 
 
 When Sivori suddenly arrived and was 
 brought by a brother artist. Monsieur Gautier 
 was in the seventh heaven. 
 
 Camillo Sivori was a small, thin man, with a 
 narrow, oval face, ordinary features, small, dark, 
 kindly eyes, and a deprecatory smile. Unlike 
 many among small-statured folk, he seemed to 
 feel as lowly as he at first sight appeared. In 
 the sixties he was already more than middle- 
 aged, although still a bachelor, A public 
 
 18—2 
 
276 Musical Memories 
 
 favourite, who had only to be heard to excite his 
 audiences to a fury of applause, he thought 
 little or nothing of his powers, which, though 
 vast for an intense and romantic executant of 
 modern tours de force, seemed of little use to 
 him in the works of classical composers. 
 
 He played the extravagant difficulties invented 
 by Paganini — as if with diabolic ingenuity to 
 circumvent his violinist successors — as mere 
 bagatelles. The celebrated ' Clochettes,' which 
 few of even the bolder executants attempt, the 
 treatment of the harmonics being both extrava- 
 gant and thankless, was quite one of his ordinary 
 contributions to programmes. His tone was 
 extraordinary — at one moment in the lower 
 notes, rich and full as if he handled a mellow 
 tenor or 'cello ; at the next pure and silvery in 
 the topmost heights, where tone waxes thin until 
 it disappears in the harmonics. Never the 
 shadow of a false intonation, never the sugges- 
 tion of a flaw in the most rapid, the wildest 
 executive feats. 
 
 Yet he pooh-poohed these abnormal gifts of 
 his, and looked distressed if they were eulogized. 
 
An Evening with Sivori 277 
 
 ' People insist upon my playing these things,' 
 he would say, colouring and shrugging the slim 
 shoulders which would not assume breadth, in 
 spite of a loose thick coat. ' What would you ? 
 Once please an audience with some popular piece, 
 and you are bound to play it for ever ! Yet 
 for myself I would never play these trifles.' 
 
 He believed he had only to play the classic 
 and ponderous, and he would be for ever ex- 
 onerated from the performance of airy impossi- 
 bilities such as the ' Clochettes ' and other 
 mirabilia expected from him. ' For my own 
 pleasure I should play Beethoven, and little else,' 
 he assured his friends. 
 
 ' He shall play what he pleases here^ said 
 Monsieur Gautier emphatically. And on the 
 first Gautier evening of Sivori's stay, when with 
 much ceremony the priceless Stradivarius — which 
 had been vainly begged of its possessor by most 
 of the great fiddlers in turn — was placed in his 
 hands, its proud owner entreated his renowned 
 compatriot to choose the night's entertainment. 
 
 The little man smiled, evidently gratified. 
 Then as the assembled company— the salle-a- 
 
278 Musical Memories 
 
 manger was crowded as well as the music-room — 
 sat still as mice, watching expectantly, the great 
 red-bound volumes of classics were hauled out, 
 and there was a whispered conversation between 
 Sivori and Andreoli, the amateur violoncellist 
 looking on with an interested smile. Leaves 
 were turned over, there was discussion, dissen- 
 sion, the whispers became animated talk, and the 
 host began to compare his watch with the clocks, 
 when it was suddenly settled that the piece de 
 resistance of the evening should be the Grand 
 Trio in B flat of Beethoven. 
 
 , The three performers took their seats, Mon- 
 sieur Gautier retreated to his privileged corner, 
 and the trio began. At first it was merely a fair 
 performance, somewhat timid — but soon Sivori's 
 breadth of phrasing and beautiful tone told, and 
 the first movement ended quite triumphantly. 
 
 ' You see.?' said the little man, nodding as he 
 tuned his fiddle with the satisfied glee of a 
 schoolboy. Then the slow movement began. 
 
 No sooner had the pianist struck the first few 
 chords than Sivori looked round astonished. 
 Still, he chimed In. However, the first subject 
 
Artist Wanderings 279 
 
 had hardly concluded before Andreoli stopped 
 short. 
 
 ' I beg your pardon^ — I was playing in a wrong 
 key,' he exclaimed in confusion. ' It was my 
 fault ; I ought not to have joined in,' said Sivori 
 generously. There were mutual apologies, 
 excuses, self- accusations, and the movement 
 began afresh. But this time in the key in which 
 it was written, furnishing an example of how 
 accidents may happen unexpectedly to the best- 
 regulated artists. 
 
 There was a simplicity and gaiety about Sivori, 
 the holiday humour of a child out of school, 
 which infected his companions. In the im- 
 promptu excursions into the mountains, wild- 
 flower-picking in the olive plantations, strolls 
 through the bean-fields on the hillsides, he 
 laughed and talked until the dreariest of the 
 little company cheered up and grew expansive. 
 The little man was all goodwill and charity, and 
 instinctively the whining beggars and importu- 
 nate flower-girls knew it, and he was followed, 
 persecuted, and pelted with tiny bouquets to 
 that tiresome cry, ' Via four rien,' until the 
 
280 Musical Memories 
 
 sterner of the party drove them away. He 
 would not hurt the feelings of the most brazen 
 of the number, and would run back, distressed, 
 to throw coins after his banished tormentors. 
 In his graver moments he betrayed considerable 
 knowledge of the world — which seemed to have 
 shown its better aspect to his sympathetic 
 nature, and which he spoke of as he might have 
 spoken of some half-tamed monster, good in the 
 main — which would act fairly if cajoled and 
 stroked, yet which might turn and bite unless 
 one were warily on guard. A natural musician, 
 he was restless if many hours had elapsed since 
 his loved fiddle was in his hands, and there was 
 a look of almost relief on his quaint, pleasant 
 face when he once more lifted his instrument 
 from its soft silken bed. 
 
 Arrived at Nice for a brief rest between two 
 concert-tours, the days and hours fled all too 
 swiftly, and the time of enforced departure came 
 as almost a surprise. He would fain have 
 stayed, but was compelled to keep his engage- 
 ments. He parted from his friends with a silent 
 grip of the hand, and with tears in his eyes. 
 
Jeffrey Prowse 281 
 
 Another artist in a different and a greater 
 art — that of literature — was then wintering in 
 Cimiez ; and as his personality was one of 
 supreme interest to everyone who came in con- 
 tact with him, he must not pass without mention 
 here. 
 
 Many of those who are reading these words 
 will remember certain humorous so - called 
 sporting papers in the early days of the weekly 
 comic paper, Fun, signed ' Nicholas.' Nicholas 
 was presumably a sad old boy in his way. He 
 volunteered in his peculiar manner to initiate his 
 readers into the mysteries of many things con- 
 nected with sport and out-door games, but 
 somehow wriggled out when the time for 
 elucidation came. The old English game of 
 ' Knurr and Spell ' was chief among his unful- 
 filled promises. Yet, bad old man as Nicholas 
 evidently was, everyone had a sneaking liking 
 for him — little dreaming that behind the imper- 
 sonation was a personality utterly different from 
 the mendacious old tippler whose genial humour 
 covered a multitude of sins. 
 
 The creator of ' Nicholas ' was a certain 
 
282 Musical Memories 
 
 Jeffrey Prowse, one of the wittiest and most 
 brilliant of the staff of writers who fill the 
 columns of the Daily Telegraph. It would be 
 well if his writings could be collected and 
 published, sparkling with wit and redolent of 
 the fulness of youthful vigour as they were — a 
 virility of mind which was not accompanied by 
 a corresponding physical strength. Very early 
 in his promising career, ' Jeff Prowse,' as he was 
 called by his friends, broke down in the first 
 weakness of phthisis, and was sent to the 
 Riviera, as special correspondent, by the pro- 
 prietors of the Daily Telegraph. 
 
 Here he lived — up on the hill at Cimiez, 
 where the colder winds cannot penetrate — in a 
 curious old house standing in an old-fashioned 
 Italian garden, then a pension kept by some 
 English ladies who were very good to him. 
 Here he penned those occasional articles ' From 
 our own Correspondent,' relating the current 
 news of the Riviera, the arrivals and departures, 
 the musical performances, the balls, the Carnival ; 
 and here, in a long, low-ceiled salle, painted in 
 the Italian manner to suggest a vineyard, the 
 
Mr. Prowse at Cimiez 283 
 
 writer, after the formalities of letters of intro- 
 duction, made his acquaintance. 
 
 A slim, dark little man, with an open, clever 
 face and brilliant brown or hazel eyes, he had the 
 friendly, yet self-disparaging, almost shy manners 
 which so often accompany great talent. His 
 voice was husky — a bad sign in his disease — and 
 his cough persistent. Yet, as the interview pro- 
 ceeded, he soon expanded into the cheery, witty 
 companion beloved of his many friends. He 
 was eagerly awaiting the doctor's permission to 
 ' go down into town,' an excursion he was only 
 allowed when the winds were not out. 
 
 The season was a bland one, and many after- 
 wards were the drives and excursions brightened 
 by the presence of the brilliant invalid. He had 
 a quiet, unassuming way of drawing people out, 
 and they seldom suspected that they were under 
 cross-examination by a humorist until some 
 chance remark set them first wondering, then 
 laughing. He had a painter's appreciation of 
 the beauties of Nature, a musician's enjoyment 
 of music, and withal the fund of caustic wit 
 which lay almost too ready to hand — but in spite 
 
284 Musical Memories 
 
 of which his was the gentlest of natures, and the 
 most compassionate to others. 
 
 It is naturally somewhat of a melancholy 
 experience to one making a flourishing con- 
 valescence, to be the companion of another who 
 is daily, hourly sinking into the grave, without 
 the shadow of a hope of improvement. 
 
 A bright and courageous invalid was Jeffrey 
 Prowse. Still, he was then, months before the 
 end, unable fully to enjoy the lovely air, the bright 
 sunshine, the glorious sea and sky, the carpet of 
 flowers. Even dainties, too, were distastefiil to 
 him, and his walking powers had left him for 
 ever. Hectic fever had set in, and from this 
 he would suffer an access now and then, which 
 confined him to his room. He described his 
 nights' entertainments with comic enjoyment — 
 how, when delirious, his far-away friends would 
 appear, and, while rallying or scolding him, 
 would possess themselves mockingly of his purse 
 and valuables, letters and papers, and rush ofi^, 
 waving them at him, while he was too weak to 
 remonstrate. Instead of complaining of his 
 sufi^erings, he laughed at them. Cheerful he 
 
An Excursion 285 
 
 remained, and on the alert for sly quips and 
 quirks anent the topics or the incidents of the 
 passing hour. 
 
 The last occasion on which he was well 
 enough to come ' down into town ' will ever be 
 a vivid recollection of the writer's. He came 
 to luncheon, swathed in a big plaid in Scottish 
 fashion ; and afterwards there was a drive into 
 the mountains to see a well-known market- 
 garden, whose proprietor boasted of having dis- 
 covered new plants which would take the place 
 of certain mineral products in chemistry. 
 
 The garden was an interesting one, and its 
 owner seemed to consider it the principal feature 
 of the Riviera. Discovering the fact that his 
 visitor was a British journalist, he insisted on 
 showing him all his ' discoveries,' notably a field 
 of waving green something, which looked like 
 coarse young wheat, but which he called 
 ' bromine.' The writer was a little surprised at 
 the solemn acceptance by Jeff Prowse of the 
 rodomontade of the market -gardener, and on 
 the homeward drive made a remark that he 
 must have felt his patience somewhat exhausted. 
 
286 Musical Memories 
 
 ' Poor man ! it amused him, and did me no 
 harm,' he said innocently. A few days later 
 the ' bromine ' amused more than its pseudo- 
 inventor, forming part of one of the dry, 
 humorous letters ' From our own Correspon- 
 dent ' in the Daily Telegraph. 
 
 After that, Nice saw Jeffrey Prowse no more 
 until after the writer had followed in the wake 
 of the homegoers. Many months later, on a 
 foggy winter afternoon, crossing a suburban road, 
 she came suddenly upon a marble tombstone, 
 leaning up against the railing of a stonemason's 
 yard. It seemed to confront her suddenly, in 
 almost ghostly fashion : ' In Loving Memory of 
 Jeffrey Prowse, . . . Erected by his Fellow- 
 workers.' 
 
 Distance had allowed the news of his death 
 to reach a friend in this strange and grue- 
 some fashion, which, could he have foreseen it, 
 he would certainly have made the subject of one 
 of his grave yet grimly-playful sayings, his 
 gentle ironies on the theme of our passage life. 
 ***** 
 
 Many another familiar personality in that 
 
Captain Grindlay 287 
 
 little winter lifetime of thirty years ago comes 
 flocking into the bright picture, whose back- 
 ground was mountain, sea, and sky. Of English 
 amateurs, there were many whose true feeling 
 for the art and goodness to artists are grateful 
 memories. 
 
 The ' father ' of the British residents was a 
 fine old English gentleman. Captain Grindlay, 
 the retired chief of the well-known East India 
 firm. Although eighty years of age or more, 
 and troubled with deafness, he took an active 
 interest in everything that was on foot to pro- 
 mote the cheerfulness of the English colony, 
 both the habitues and the chance visitors. He 
 lived with his aged sister, Madame Imbert, 
 in a pretty house, where the Anglo-Indian and 
 modern French styles blended and made up a 
 picturesque ' interior.' From the first, he took 
 the writer and her little family under his wing, 
 escorting her everywhere in his carriage, and 
 introducing her to everyone worth knowing. 
 Weak, tottering as he was, he would never hear 
 the word 'fatigue,' but after a day's driving 
 about, visiting and shopping, would repair 
 
288 Musical Memories 
 
 gallantly to dinner or evening party, as the 
 case might be, to watch the interests of the new 
 protegee, who was only one of a long list of 
 those who had enjoyed his generous friendship. 
 
 There was the Viscountess Combermere, a 
 dilettante musician of a good old school ; Mrs. 
 Charlton — sister of Mr. John Walter of the 
 Times — a pupil of Thalberg whose playing re- 
 sembled her master's ; a sweet old dame, Mrs. 
 Hope, who was as much a mother to the con- 
 valescent writer as Captain Grindlay was a father ; 
 Mr. and Mrs. Archdeckne, the well-known art- 
 patrons, who occupied a suite of rooms in one 
 of the largest hotels each winter and gave musical 
 soirees ; and others too numerous to mention. 
 Among Americans, there was the Baroness de 
 Hoffmann ; Mrs. Evans — whose husband was of 
 such signal service to the Empress Eugenie when 
 she suddenly left Paris one memorable day some 
 years later, after the catasti;ophe of Sedan — and 
 others. 
 
 The doctors sowed their kindnesses broadcast. 
 There was naturally a certain amount of rivalry 
 among them, because human nature will assert 
 
The Doctors 289 
 
 itself, and the warmth of Southern surroundings 
 is distinctly adverse to a stony impassibility. 
 When the diphtheria epidemic set in shortly 
 after Christmas, with such dire results in some 
 cases that there was almost a panic among the 
 visitors, the writer was attacked ; and when good 
 nursing was impossible, a certain Dr. Travis — an 
 old gentleman who had almost retired from 
 practice through delicate health — offered himself 
 to the doctor attending the writer, between 
 which popular physician and himself relations 
 had of late been somewhat strained, to remain 
 in the hotel and watch the case — which had as- 
 sumed a critical aspect^ — under his orders. With 
 death threatening a worker's life, feuds, coldness, 
 all petty worldly cobwebs, were swept away. 
 True character showed, and it was of the 
 highest. 
 
 Many a time in a chequered career has the 
 writer, humanly speaking, owed her life to some 
 fellow-creature — and in the experience of most 
 artists there are innumerable instances of a 
 similar kind. It is a certain fact that an artist 
 has only to seek strangers to find friends. He 
 
 19 
 
290 Musical Memories 
 
 has simply, as it were, to close his eyes and hold 
 out his hand to find it in some powerful grasp 
 which will lead him out of his slough of de- 
 spond, if so it is, into pleasant pastures. 
 
[ 291 ] 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 English composers in mid -century — Michael Balfe — 
 Vincent Wallace — John Barnett and his relations — 
 Sterndale Bennett — Sir Arthur Sullivan — Mr. F. H. 
 Cowen — Conclusion. 
 
 When the musical history of the nineteenth 
 century comes to be written, it will be found 
 that England has therein produced some remark- 
 able composers of literally world-wide renown. 
 In fact, truth compels the reluctant admission 
 that at this very day — if one wishes to hear the 
 compositions of those born earlier in the century, 
 such as Balfe, Wallace, and others — one can best 
 do so out of one's native country, 
 
 Balfe and Wallace were recognized abroad 
 as composers of eminence from their very 
 
 19 — 2 
 
292 Musical Memories 
 
 beginning. Their claims to European popu- 
 larity may be briefly enumerated. 
 
 Michael Balfe was of Irish extraction, being 
 born at Limerick in 1808. His precocious 
 talent induced his teacher, O'Rourke, to bring 
 him out as a prodigy at eight years of age. 
 This astonishing infant actually composed in 
 his tender years a ballad entitled ' A Lover's 
 Mistake,' which was sung by Madame Vestris 
 in ' Paul Pry.' After this ebullition of pre- 
 cocity, the boy appears to have calmed down 
 into a faithful student of the violin, and we 
 find him at sixteen studying composition under 
 C. F. Horn, the organist of St. George's Chapel, 
 Windsor. A year later he proceeded to Rome, 
 where he continued his contrapuntal apprentice- 
 ship under that Federici who was afterwards 
 head of the Milan Conservatoire. Two years 
 later was penned his first and somewhat un- 
 ambitious work, the ballet of ' La Perouse.' 
 He had a good baritone voice, and, with his 
 artistic gifts, it is not astonishing to find that 
 Rossini, provided that he consented to be pre- 
 pared by the well-known voice-trainer, Bordogni, 
 
Balfe 293 
 
 oiFered to bring him out in Italian opera in 
 Paris. 
 
 At twenty his operatic career began. He 
 made his debut in Paris as Figaro, then became 
 principal baritone at Palermo. But at Palermo 
 his creative talent asserted itself, and in the 
 brief space of twenty days he wrote his first 
 opera, ' I Rivali di se stessi.' His English 
 career began when he was six or seven and 
 twenty. After singing for a season in public 
 and private, he plunged boldly into composi- 
 tion, and produced opera after opera, sometimes 
 taking the baritone parts he had himself con- 
 structed. Then he dabbled in management, 
 burnt his fingers in the production of English 
 opera at the Lyceum, and repaired, disconsolate, 
 to Paris — where he remained to write and suc- 
 cessfully produce two operas. 
 
 There must have been a certain bitterness in 
 being uniformly more successful in foreign 
 countries than in his own. That he was so is 
 a fact. While pleasing the exacting audiences 
 of Vienna and Paris, the ' National Concerts ' he 
 conducted in London at Her Majesty's Theatre 
 
294 Musical Memories 
 
 were a failure. Yet he repeatedly returned to 
 England to try his luck — coldly though his 
 mother-country looked upon her gifted son — 
 crowned with alien laurels, the decorations he 
 wore having been placed upon his breast by the 
 hands of foreign potentates. 
 
 About thirty or more operas were written by 
 him in some score of years. Beginning with 
 the ' Rivali ' and ' Enrico IV.,' the ' Siege of 
 Rochelle ' and ' Maid of Artois ' were succeeded 
 by ' Catherine Grey ' and ' Joan of Arc' 
 ' Diadeste ' preceded ' Keolanthe ' (produced at 
 the Lyceum Theatre in 1840). In 1843 ' Les 
 Puits d'Amour ' was produced in Paris, and 
 after writing the ' Quatre Fils d'Aymon ' and 
 bringing out the successful ' Bohemian Girl,' he 
 proceeded steadily with a long list, comprising 
 the more or less celebrated works — ' The 
 Daughter of St. Mark,' ' Seville,' ' The Bonds- 
 man,' ' Maid of Honour,' ' Sicilian Bride,' ' Rose 
 of Castile,' ' Satanella,' ' Bianca,' ' Puritan's 
 Daughter,' ' Armourer of Nantes,' ' Blanche de 
 Nevers,' 'Sleeping Queen,' and his final opera, 
 ' The Knight of the Leopard,' which, four years 
 
Vincent Wallace 295 
 
 after his death in 1870 at Rowney Abbey, 
 Hertfordshire, was produced at Drury Lane in 
 Italian as ' II Talismano.' 
 
 Ever melodious, with any amount of grace in 
 his treatment of his subjects, Balfe's mellifluous 
 music has had its rival in that of Vincent 
 Wallace. 
 
 William Vincent Wallace was, as his name 
 would suggest, of Scotch parentage. But he 
 was of Irish birth, having come into the world 
 in the year 18 14 in Waterford. His father was 
 engaged later for the orchestra of the Theatre 
 Royal, Dublin, in which band his young sons 
 took part, Vincent playing violin, and his 
 brother the flute. Vincent's first stirring ex- 
 perience was his hearing Paganini play at the 
 Dublin Musical Festival in 1831. He had 
 himself previously appeared in public, but the 
 real awakening of his talent was when he first 
 heard the extraordinary genius who was at once 
 the delight and despair of aspirants. He flung 
 himself almost wildly into work, and after two 
 or three years, when he was about one-and- 
 twenty, he left his country for Australia. From 
 
296 Musical Memories 
 
 thence he proceeded to Tasmania and New 
 Zealand, then took it into his head to visit 
 other climes. The East Indies, Nepaul, Cash- 
 mere, Valparaiso, Buenos Ayres, Havana, Vera 
 Cruz, Mexico, were the scenes of many of hi? 
 musical exploits and more or less romantic 
 adventures. We are unaware if any auto- 
 biographical catalogue of his experiences exists, 
 but if so, it would make fascinating reading. 
 It was after this bold enterprise that his enthu- 
 siasm found another and perhaps a nobler 
 channel in musical composition. He wrote his 
 chefs-d'ceuvre ' Maritana ' and ' Matilda of 
 Hungary.' Then, two years later, he went to 
 Germany, where his claims to be reckoned a 
 melodious composer of the first rank were at 
 once acknowledged, and where his music is 
 still in universal use in concert and other pro- 
 grammes. Meanwhile, he was not an abider 
 in cities, but a confirmed wanderer. In 1850 
 he was in New York, one of the principal 
 partners in a piano factory, which speedily came 
 to grief, he having shortly before narrowly 
 escaped death in a steamboat explosion. Only 
 
Barnett 297 
 
 in 1853 did London see him again, and not 
 then for very long. ' Lurline,' the ' Amber 
 Witch,' and the ' Desert Flower ' are the most 
 popular of a long list of his operas. 
 
 In the invention of melodies he was supreme. 
 The purity, the scope, the rhythm of some of 
 his themes are not surpassed by any com- 
 poser of any epoch. His wild and restless life 
 was against his rising to any altitude as a 
 harmonist, as science lives in the study rather 
 than in the prairie or jungle ; and his passion 
 for wandering was against his happiness in 
 domesticity, his attempts in that line having 
 scarcely promoted the well-being of either 
 others or himself But, as a sweet songster 
 whose ideas seem to have gushed fresh from the 
 natural founts of inspiration, he will be remem- 
 bered when many of the more heavily-freighted 
 writers live only in the obscurity of libraries. 
 
 Another gifted Briton whose principal life- 
 work has an abiding-place in European re- 
 pertoires is Meyerbeer's cousin in music as 
 well as in blood — John Barnett, the composer 
 of the ' Mountain Sylph.' 
 
298 Musical Memories 
 
 Of both German and Hungarian extraction 
 (his father, Bernhard Beer, being a member of 
 the celebrated Prussian family, his mother a 
 Hungarian lady), his gifts show the depth of 
 the one nation and the originality of the other ; 
 and born in England, where his name was 
 Anglicized into Barnett, the calm and method 
 of his mother-country seemed to lend solidity 
 and balance to the musical talent which he 
 showed in almost infancy. 
 
 As a tiny boy, young Barnett sang like a 
 bird, while he showed such quickness of per- 
 ception and adaptability of resource that when 
 he was a lad of eleven he made his debut in 
 public at the Lyceum as Dick in the ' Ship- 
 wreck.' Such early publicity militates against 
 study. Yet the boy was one of the highly- 
 strung, hypersensitive creatures who learn 
 every minute — ay, every moment — of their 
 waking hours, either wearing themselves out 
 and collapsing, if their physique Is not up to 
 the demands made upon It, or arriving at man- 
 hood living storehouses of every sort and kind 
 of knowledge. Between his performances young 
 
Barnett 299 
 
 Barnett had lessons from many different masters : 
 Ferdinand . Ries, Sexto Perez, Kalkbrenner, for 
 pianoforte ; William Horsley and Xavier 
 Schneider, of Frankfort, in composition. Only 
 when his voice broke and changed did the bent 
 of his genius display itself, and the erstwhile 
 singer and dramatic artist begin to produce such 
 works as ' Charles the Twelfth,' ' The Carnival 
 of Naples,' ' Fair Rosamond,' ' Kathleen ' (to 
 Sheridan Knowles' libretto), and that which 
 will possibly remain his representative work, 
 although there are important manuscripts of 
 his still unheard and unjudged by the public — • 
 the ' Mountain Sylph.' 
 
 This romantic and poetical opera, whose 
 libretto was written by Mr. J. Thackeray 
 (cousin to the renowned novelist), was pro- 
 duced at the Lyceum in 1834, and at once 
 established its composer as a man of mark. 
 Little though its numbers are heard amongst 
 us now, in other countries audiences know its 
 charming themes and graceful modulations well. 
 Its introduction was followed by the production 
 of ' Fair Rosamond ' and ' Farinell ' (in which 
 
300 Musical Memories 
 
 Michael Balfe took the principal character). 
 Then, having married a wife — the daughter of 
 the famous violoncellist, Robert Lindley — Mr. 
 Barnett turned his thoughts to an income- 
 making which can scarcely attend the career of 
 an operatic composer devoted to art alone, and 
 retired to a teaching life at Cheltenham. 
 
 But in his quiet home, some distance from 
 the town, on one of the lovely Cotswold Hills, 
 he has been a diligent worker. Many more or 
 less important manuscripts survive him, and 
 sooner or later are bound to be heard and appre- 
 ciated — establishing their author on a far higher 
 pinnacle than that at present awarded him by a 
 country ignorant of his claims upon it. Perhaps 
 those music students who are now first beginning 
 to realize that, although English, there is music 
 within them to be unearthed by their own 
 efforts, will be the producers of England's store 
 of hidden works in a happier future. There is 
 little doubt that English music lies buried in 
 cupboards and on shelves which is a mine of 
 unknown wealth. May the twentieth century 
 see it disinterred and established by coming 
 
The Barnett Family 301 
 
 musicians who are, perhaps, still babbling their 
 infant songs like the young birds at dawn of 
 day — unconscious of an important future. 
 
 The family of Beer have given more than one 
 or two valuable followers to the art. The agree- 
 able composer and established pianist, Mr. John 
 Francis Barnett, and the graceful player, Miss 
 Emma Barnett, are related to the composer of 
 the ' Mountain Sylph.' But the many and 
 varied qualities which are conspicuous in his 
 writings have directly descended to his two 
 daughters — who before their marriage pursued 
 a short but successful career as the ' Sisters 
 Doria,' vocalists who rivalled the ' Sisters Mar- 
 chisio ' in the perfection of their duet-singing. 
 Of these two ladies, the charming singer married 
 to Mr. R. E. Francillon, the well-known writer, 
 has also inherited a certain spontaneous genius 
 for composition. Her songs possess a peculiar 
 individuality which may perhaps be a Hungarian 
 inheritance, but which has the singular fasci- 
 nation of Hungarian music, all the more 
 delightful because it is unconscious. Mrs. Fran- 
 cillon has the gift of producing a musical 
 
302 Musical Memories 
 
 replica of whatever poem — and she only chooses 
 poetry, not verse — she selects. Some of her 
 manuscripts are published, but she has still to 
 make the public acquainted with her as a new 
 English composer of the end of the century. 
 
 Before passing to the acknowledged stars of 
 the present, reference must be made to another 
 eminent composer whose music also takes far 
 higher rank abroad than at home — Sterndale 
 Bennett. 
 
 In some of the foreign biographical diction- 
 aries Sterndale Bennett is credited with being 
 the composer of the ' Mountain Sylph,' an error 
 which should be corrected. 
 
 As most of us know, he was at his best as a 
 composer for his own instrument, the pianoforte 
 — although his 'Symphony in G minor,' his ' May 
 Queen,' his 'Ajax,' and the charming over- 
 tures to the ' Naiads,' ' Parisina,' ' Paradise and 
 the Peri,' and the ' Wood-nymphs ' (through 
 •which title the confounding him with Barnett 
 doubtless arose), are familiar to concert-goers. 
 His oratorio, too, the ' Woman of Samaria,' is 
 a representative work. But it is in his concerti. 
 
Sterndale Bennett 303 
 
 chamber music, and many pianoforte pieces that 
 his gifts are displayed to the fullest advantage. 
 Melodious, pathetic, thoughtful in the main, in 
 all the delicacy of detail calculated to exhibit a 
 player to the highest degree, they excel — and the 
 passages are, compared with those of the finger- 
 racking modern schools, wonderfully under the 
 hand as it naturally falls upon the keyboard, 
 and therefore easy to execute. 
 
 The son of an organist, as, curiously enough, 
 so many distinguished instrumentalists have been, 
 he was born at Sheffield. But his father died 
 when he was three years old, and he was trans- 
 planted to Cambridge — the home of his grand- 
 parents — where at eight years of age he began 
 to sing in the choir of King's College Chapel. 
 Two years later he was studying composition 
 under Lucas and Dr. Crotch, and the pianoforte 
 under Holmes and Cipriani Potter in the Royal 
 Academy in Tenterden Street. He was then 
 only ten years old, young indeed for serious 
 study ; but so earnestly did he pursue his art, 
 so entire was his devotion to his lifework, that 
 when he was a stripling of seventeen he played 
 
304 Musical Memories 
 
 his recently-composed Concerto in D minor at 
 the prize concert at the Academy. Such feats 
 rival those related of the very greatest world- 
 renowned musicians ; and it is not astonishing 
 to find one who was present, and who had him- 
 self been a still more precocious genius, Felix 
 Mendelssohn Bartholdy, recognizing a kindred 
 spirit in the ambitious youth. Doubtless his 
 was not a mere passing recognition. In any 
 case, a year or two later the Messrs. Broadwood 
 offered to send the young man to Leipzig at 
 their own expense. At this nursery of musical 
 talent Bennett came under the influence of 
 Robert Schumann as well as of Mendelssohn, 
 and these very different minds agreed in their 
 estimate of his gifts. After a second visit to 
 Leipzig, he began his English career in 1 843, 
 playing in public, composing, and teaching. 
 His pupils agree in their respect for his teaching 
 powers ; but although plunged in tuition, found- 
 ing the Bach Society, conducting the Philhar- 
 monic Concerts, and constantly being heard in 
 public, he continued, almost incessantly, to 
 compose — a fact the long list of his many fine 
 
Sir Arthur Sullivan 305 
 
 works bears witness to. His comer ti in D 
 minor, F minor, E flat, and C minor ; his 
 sextet, trio, studies, romances, ' sketches,' 
 suites de pieces, are only his contributions to 
 the literature of his instrument. His oratorio 
 the ' Woman of Samaria,' his ' Symphony in 
 G minor,' and other vocal and orchestral works, 
 were also born to live. 
 
 For many years he was principal of the Royal 
 Academy of Music. But towards the close of 
 his life — he died in 1875 — his health declined, 
 as the health of those overworked in their grow- 
 ing years inevitably will. Mild, yet firm, there 
 was the absence of tempestuous passion in his 
 personality which is conspicuous in his works. 
 There is a faint resemblance in his portraits 
 to those of Chopin, Weber and -Mendelssohn. 
 Musicians, especially creative musicians, some- 
 times have this slight, indefinable family likeness 
 to each other, more in contour and expression 
 than in feature. 
 
 The foregoing were some of the conspicuous 
 composers in the mid-century. Paramount 
 among those born some decades later is Sir 
 
 20 
 
3o6 Musical Memories 
 
 Arthur Sullivan. Like to his predecessors, his 
 career began modestly enough. Born in London 
 in 1842, he was entered at the Royal Academy 
 at the age of fourteen, after he had been a 
 chorister under Helmore in the Chapel Royal. 
 Pupil in Tenterden Street of Goss and Bennett, 
 at Leipzig — where his studentship was a brilliant 
 one — he had lessons of Plaidy, Moscheles, 
 Richter, Rietz, and Hauptmann. That he was 
 diffident of his powers is shown by his accepting 
 the position of organist at St. Michael's, Chester 
 Square, and later on conducting the music at 
 St. Peter's, Onslow Gardens, and the band at 
 the Royal Aquarium. 
 
 Yet his ' Tempest ' music had set the public 
 raving and the critics prophesying. His pen 
 was eagerly watched. Nor, though he has 
 occupied himself in the ordinary walks of 
 musical life, has he disappointed his admirers. 
 Masterpiece after masterpiece has been given by 
 him — literally, to the world : for his compatriots 
 are not his most enthusiastic admirers ; in 
 Germany, for instance, his name in programmes 
 is a sine qua non^ His delightful operas — why, 
 
Mr. F. H. Cowen 307 
 
 by the way, does the 'Sapphire Necklace' remain 
 unheard? — are only one branch of his versatile 
 genius. His oratorios, ' The Light of the 
 World,' ' The Prodigal Son,' ' The Martyr of 
 Antioch ;' his cantatas, ' Kenilworth,' ' On 
 Shore and Sea,' ' The Golden Legend,' etc. ; his 
 ' In Memoriam,' ' Symphony in C,' and last, 
 but not least, his wonderful inspiration, 'The 
 Tempest,' are, among many others, fresh in the 
 public memory. 
 
 Let us hope that Sir Arthur will not rest on 
 his laurels, and that many a future triumph of 
 his has still to be recorded. 
 
 Many honourable names among British com- 
 posers come flocking to the mind at this 
 juncture, but as they do not belong strictly to 
 the era alluded to above, must be reluctantly 
 relegated to some future recorder of our 
 musical progress. One, however, may have 
 a cursory mention as having begun his suc- 
 cessful career in the sixties, Mr. F. H. Cowen, 
 Then, a brilliant lad — to whom everything in 
 and connected with his art seemed second nature 
 — he was in the first throes of musical creation, 
 
 20 — 2 
 
308 Musical Memories 
 
 after astonishing the Leipzig professors and 
 earning the nickname of ' the Beethoven boy ' 
 [der Beethoven Bube). Mr. Cowen's music has an 
 originality which is perhaps most pronounced in 
 his beautiful cantata, ' The Sleeping Beauty,' and 
 his exquisite orchestral morfeaux 'The Language 
 of Flowers.' 
 
 A parting word at the end of a musical life 
 to those who are still at its beginning. 
 
 The career of an artist seems bright enough. 
 The world smiles upon the gifted. Friends 
 abound. There is much good-fellowship among 
 those of the same craft, and the applause of the 
 many sounds sweet to the ears. 
 
 But this is reaping a harvest which is only 
 sown in one way — by hard and constant work. 
 And this work must not be half-hearted or 
 desponding. The initial step to be taken 
 when one is enrolled as a follower of any art is 
 to make a great act of renunciation. Every- 
 thing has to be sacrificed by the art-student. 
 Relations, friends, society, friendly gatherings, 
 visits — all must be sternly put aside. He must 
 
To Musical Aspirants 309 
 
 rise for work, and at early hours indeed; for 
 his work he must arrange his days, and order 
 his life. And this must be the rule — work 
 alone — every week of the month, every month 
 of the whole year. 
 
 Let him slacken, and weary, and chafe, and 
 he is bound to fail. Art will have none of him 
 — be his the most brilliant genius ever born into 
 the world. 
 
 Let him work diligently for a time, and then 
 halt to recruit himself, and he has practically 
 lost the race. Ars longa, vita brevis. The 
 longest life, or part of a life, which can be spent 
 in the service of an art, is all too short. 
 
 Then, the road to be followed is monotonous 
 and dull, and from the beginning to the end its 
 milestones are failures and disappointments. 
 
 The student may plod steadily on under 
 guidance — or alone. If in leading-strings under 
 a teacher, he will constantly fail to satisfy his 
 master. If alone, he will — on the very brink of 
 what appears to be success — have some sudden 
 and to him inexplicable downfalls. 
 
 Why ? Experience answers the same to all : 
 
3IO Musical Memories 
 
 because we do not climb to excellence by our 
 successes, but by our failures. 
 
 Our failures are our real masters : they teach 
 us what we should and could learn in no 
 other way. Examine as many lives of the 
 successful as you please : they all tell that story, 
 ever ancient, but ever new to the uninitiated. 
 Failure is the test of fitness, not success ; for 
 the unfit drop away discouraged, the eligible 
 persevere. 
 
 The climb to perfection in anything is a 
 slippery and dangerous one. Those who think 
 of aught but the safest spot where next to plant 
 their footsteps have frequent falls. 
 
 But in any case the falls must come. No 
 term of study was ever yet concluded without 
 them. No artist ever obtained a crown without 
 bitter and cruel disappointments. And the 
 greater the powers of the artist, the more intense 
 his efforts to give them a medium of expression, 
 the more crushing his rebuffs. 
 
 There will be hours when all seems lost ; 
 when there seems no hope anywhere, within or 
 without ; when, numbed and paralyzed by 
 
The End 3 1 1 
 
 defeat, the human being seems a poor lump of 
 flesh, a mere mass of dumb, blank suffering. 
 
 And the hour when this happens is the hour 
 when he holds his life practically in his own 
 hands — when he can mould it almost as he 
 pleases. For if he can rise up and go on as if 
 nothing, had happened — if he can begin again 
 as if there had been no past — he has practically 
 conquered the world. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 Adler, Vincent, ig, 22 
 Alard, M., 5, 6, 16, 114, 172 
 Albert, Prince, 114 
 Alexis, M. , 46 
 Amussat, 58 
 Anderson, Mrs., 107 
 Andreoli, Guglielmo, 242, 269, 270 
 Andreoli, Carlo, 269, 270, 278, 279 
 Andrieux, 58 
 ' Angelina," 175 
 'Antient Concerts," 114 
 Anningaud et Jacquard, Soci^t^, 
 
 114, 172 
 Artot, Mdlle. Desir^e, 168 
 Ascher, M., 56, 57 
 Ashdown and Pan'y, 202 
 Athenaum, the, iii, 112, 155, 260 
 Auber, 5, 62 
 
 Bach, Sebastian, iii, 122 
 Bache, Mr. Walter, 241 
 Balfe, Michael, 292-295, 300 
 ' Ballo in Maschera," SS 
 Band,'.Queen's Private, 102, 114 
 Banks, Miss, no, 172 
 Barcinska, Mme. Isabelle, 50 
 Harnett, John, 297-300 
 , , John Francis, 301 
 
 Bamett, the Misses, 301 
 Beale, Mr. Willert, 82, 221 
 Becker, Jean, 262 
 Beer, Bemhard, 298 ; the family of, 
 
 301 
 Beethoven, L. van: his music in 
 
 Paris, 5, 6 ; in London, in et 
 
 seq. , 203 ; anecdote of, 226 ; 
 
 Hiller and. 231 
 Bellini, 24 
 
 Benedict, Sir Julius, 122, 172, 208 
 * Benefit concerts," 123 
 Bennett, Mr. Joseph, 154 
 
 ,, Sterndale, 149, 254, 302- 
 306 
 Berger, Mr. Francesco, 203 
 Berlioz, Hector: life, 57-63 ; genius, 
 
 63 ; at home, 65 ; visit to writer, 
 
 69 ; opinion of Davison, 153 
 Betts, Mr. Percy, 155 
 Bevignani, Signer, 222 
 Billing, Miss, 174 
 Black, Dr., 192, 193 
 Blagrove, Mr. Henry, no, 172, 
 
 262 
 Blumner, Herr Sigismund, 203 
 Boieldieu, 24 
 Boscovitch, Herr, 173 
 
3H 
 
 Index 
 
 Brahms, Herr, iii 
 
 Broadwood, the firm of, 42, 84, 
 108, 304 
 ,, pianofortes, 8, 253 
 
 ,, Mr. Henry, 252 
 
 Bull, Ole, 173, 203-207, 262 
 
 Bulow, Hans von, 249 
 
 Canova, 185 
 
 Carlyle on originality, 211 
 Carrodus, Mr., no, 262 
 Carvalho, M., 62 
 Cessoles, Comte de, 271 
 Chappell, Mr. Arthur, 102, 104 
 Charlton, Mrs. , 288 
 Charton-Demeur, Mme., 62 
 Cherubini, 24 
 
 Chevillard, Sooi^t^ Maurin et, 6 
 Chopin, Fr^d6ric : his life, 30 et 
 seq.; pupils, 24-29 ; visits to 
 London, related by Mr. A. J. 
 Hipkins, F.S.A., 42-44; death 
 and funeral, 47-49 ; museum of 
 relics, 50 
 Chorley, Mr. H. Fothergill, iii- 
 113; his life, 129 et seq.: per- 
 sonaUty, 133 ; Ella and, 133 ; 
 his friends, 134 ; contributions 
 to journals, 135 ; books, 135 ; 
 as critic, 136 ; death, 137 ; 
 opinions, 150, 164, 165, 171, 174 
 Clark, Mr. Scotson, 203 
 Clauss, Wilhelmlna, 175 
 Corabermere, Viscountess, 288 
 Concert-rooms in Paris, 7 
 Concerts : in Paris, 5 ; Conserva- 
 toire, 5; Popular classical (Pas- 
 deloup), 5; chamber, 6; in 
 London, \a\et seq.; Sacred Har- 
 monic, 102, 171 ; Philharmonic, 
 102, III, 112, 165, 171 ; New 
 
 Philharmonic, 102, 104, 112 ; 
 
 Musical Union, 102, 113-117, 
 
 165 ; Monday Popular, 102, 172 ; 
 
 Vocal Association, 102, 172 ; 
 
 Musical Society, 102, 147 ; 
 
 Henry Leslie's Choir, 102, 172 ; 
 
 Musical Art Union, 102, 112, 
 
 172 ; Crystal Palace, 112, 173 ; 
 
 Musard's Promenade, 172 
 Conservatoire, Paris, 5, 58 
 
 St. Petersburg, 168 
 Cooper, Mr., no 
 
 ,, Mr. Wilbye, no, 174 
 Cowen, Mr. F. H. , 185, 186, 307, 
 
 308 
 Cramer's studies, 96 
 Critics, the musical, 125 
 Crotch, Dr., 303 
 Cruvelli, Sophie, 265-268 
 Crystal Palace concerts, 112, 148 
 Cummings, Mr. W. H., 174 
 Czar, the, 169 
 Czartoryska,the Princess: at home, 
 
 26 ; on Chopin, 52 
 Czartoryski, Prince, 26, 49 
 Czetwertynski, Princess, 30 
 
 Daily News, the, 153, 155 
 
 Daily Telegraph, the, 155, 282 
 
 Daubert, Herr, 172 
 
 Davison, J. W., 53, 67, 104, 107, 
 in, 128, 133, 137 ; sketch of, 
 139 ; Weist Hill and, 141 ; 
 opinions, 151, 155, 171 ; intro- 
 duction from, 267 
 
 Davison, Mr. W. D., 143,144, 151, 
 
 152 
 Dehn, Siegfried, 163 
 Delacroix, Eugene, 49 
 Dilke, Mr. C. Wentworth, 130 
 Dolby, Mme. Sainton, 106, 173 
 
Index 
 
 315 
 
 Dor6, Guslave, 208 
 Doria, the Sisters, 301 
 Downshire, the Dowager Mar- 
 chioness of, 187 
 Dudevant, Mme. (George Sand), 
 
 29>34 
 Dudley, the Earl of, 177-186 
 
 Edwards, Miss Amelia B. , 188, 189 
 ,, Mr. Sutherland, 142, 143 
 
 Ella, Professor J., 8, 9, 102, 113, 
 114; his career, 115-117 ; visit 
 to, 118 ; Ella and Henselt, 120 ; 
 Ella and Chorley, 133 
 
 Emperor Napoleon III. and Pari- 
 sian music, 4, 55 
 
 England, Chopin in, 42 
 
 Erard, Sebastian and Pierre, 10 
 ,, Mme., II, 13, 14 ei seq.; 
 evening with, 16 ; in Lon- 
 don, 193, 212 
 
 Ernst, 259, 261 
 
 Essipoff, Mme. Annette, 100 
 
 Evans, Mrs., 288 
 
 Exeter Hall, 102, 171 
 
 ' Faust,' Gounod's, 6, 135 
 
 Federici, 292 
 
 Ferni, the Sisters, 257 
 
 Festivals, Beethoven and Mendels- 
 sohn, 6 
 
 Field, John, 96, 97 
 
 Filtsch, Chopin's pupil, 53 
 
 Fingering, Chopin's, 31, 44 
 
 Fladt, Frau von, 75 
 
 ' Floriani, Lucrezia,' 40 
 
 Flower, Miss, 188 
 
 Fontana, M. Jules de, 28, 51 
 
 Franchomme, M., 16, 39, 45, 49, 
 114 
 
 Francillon, Mrs. R. E., 301, 302 
 
 Frost, Mr. H. F., 155 
 Fuller, Mr., 186 
 
 Gabriel, Miss Virginia, 134, 176 
 Galignani, the brothers, 71 ; dinner 
 with, 72 
 ,, Mme., 72 
 Gautier, M. , 272, 273 
 Gay-Lussac, 58 
 ' George Sand,' 29, 34, 36-41 
 Gewandhaus concerts, the, 147, 
 
 232 
 Gladkowska, Constantia, 35 
 Glinka, 163 
 Glover, Mr. Howard, 122, 142, 
 
 172 
 Goddard, Mme. Arabella, life of, 
 
 107 ; playing of, 108, 109, 117, 
 
 242, 254 
 Goldschmidt, Herr, 208 
 
 Mme. Lind-, 208, 
 209 
 Goss, Sir John, 306 
 Gounod, Charles, 6 
 Graphic, the, 155 
 Graziani, Signer, 55 
 Gr^try, 24 
 
 Grindlay, Captain, 287, 288 
 Grisi, Mme., 171, 213 
 Grossmith, Mr. George, 143, 144 
 Gruneisen, Mr., 153 
 Grzymala, M., 45 
 Guerrabella, Mme., 173 
 Guildhall School of Music, 148 
 Gutmann, M., 45 
 Gye, Mr., 171 
 
 Hall6, Sir Charles, 109, 124, 172, 
 240, 254 
 ,, Lady, 257 
 Handel, 5, 70 
 
3i6 
 
 Ind 
 
 ex 
 
 Hanover Square Rooms, the, 165 
 Harmonic Concerts, Sacred, 102 
 Hauptmann, 306 
 Haydn, 5, iii, 112, 171 
 Helen of Russia, Grand-Duchess, 
 
 163 
 Henry Leslie's Choir, 102 
 Henselt, Adolphe von, 15, 51, 68 ; 
 
 birth, education, and life, 74-79 ; 
 
 visit to London, 80-85 '• I'f^ in 
 
 Silesia, 88-100 ; life in Russia, 
 
 98, 99 ; his system, loo ; meeting 
 
 with Ella, 120, 121 ; and Mr. 
 
 Beale, 221 ; and Schumann, 
 
 24s, 246 
 Henselt, Frau von, 85, 86, 245 
 
 ,, Alexander von, 94 
 Herz, Salle, 7 
 Hichens, Mr. R. S., 156 
 Hiller, Ferdinand, 75, 195 ; his 
 
 life and works, 228-232 ; meeting 
 
 with, 233-236 
 Hipkins, Mr. A. J., F.S.A., on 
 
 Chopin's visit to London in 
 
 1848, 42-44 ; his playing, 44 
 Hoffmann, Baroness de, 288 
 Hogarth, Mr., 153 
 Hohler, Mr. Tom, i86 
 Home, Mr., 190-192 
 Hope, Mrs., 288 
 Hosmer, Miss Hatty, 190 
 Hummel, J. N., 75, 76, 108, in, 
 
 229, 230 
 
 Illustrated London News, the, 153 
 Imbert, Mme., 287 
 
 Jacquard, Soci^t^Armingaud et, 6 
 
 Jaell, Alfred, 173, 248 
 
 Janin, Jules, 41 
 
 Jansa, Herr Leopold, 223-228 
 
 Jewsbury, Miss Maria, 132 
 Joachim, Herr, 158-160 
 JuUien, M. Louis, 172 
 
 Kalkbrenner, Herr, 107, 299 
 
 Karasowski, M., 39 
 
 ' Karol, Prince,' Chopin as, 40 
 
 Kettenus, Aloys, 262 
 
 Klein, Mr. H., 155 
 
 Klindworth, Herr, 102, 112, 166, 
 
 172 
 Kruls, Mdlle. Marie, 222 
 Kuhd, Mr., 122, 172 
 
 Lachner, Franz, 6 
 
 Lasser, Herr, 75 
 
 Lazare, Martin, 202 
 
 Lesseps, M. Ferdinand de, 72 
 
 Lewis, Sir George, 188 
 
 Liebhart, Mdlle., 220, 221 
 
 Lincoln, Mr. H., 153 
 
 Lind, Jenny, 208, 209 
 
 Lindley, Robert, 300 
 
 Liszt, the Abb^, 29, 74, 100, 161, 
 229, 239, 241, 270 
 
 Lloyd, Mr. Edward, 106 
 
 London, 2 : Chopin in, 42 ; Hen- 
 selt in, 80 : music in, loi et 
 seq. ; artist life in, 251 
 
 Louis of Bavaria, King, 75 
 
 Lubeck, Ernst, 6, 14 ; Berlioz on, 
 15 ; playing of, 17 ; tragic end 
 of, 20, 21; in London, 173, 202 
 
 Lucas, Mr., 303 
 
 Maitland, Mr. Fuller, 156 
 Majorca, Chopin in, 37, 38 
 Mangold, Karl, 75, 120, 218 
 Manns, Herr, 112 
 Mapleson, Colonel, 171 
 March, Mr. G. , 177 
 
Index 
 
 317 
 
 Marchesi, Mme., 195 
 
 Marchisio, the Sisters, 301 
 
 Mario, SIgnor, 56 
 
 Massart, 5 
 
 Maurin et Chevillard, Soci^t^, 6 
 
 ' Maynard, Walter,' 222 
 
 Meara, Mdlle. , 50 
 
 M^hul, 113 
 
 Mellon, Alfred, 102, 147 
 
 Mendelssohn, s, 43, 112, 113, 124, 
 
 141, 147, 231, 304 
 Menter, Mme. Sophie, 100 
 Mettemich, the Princess, 55 
 Meyerbeer, 5, 48, 147, 163, 297 
 Milanollo, Teresa and Maria, 257 
 Miolan-Carvalho, Mme., 171 
 Monday Popular Concerts, 102, 
 
 108, no, 112 
 ' Monster concerts,' 121 
 Montjauze, M. , 62 
 Morning Post, the, 142 
 Moscheles, Herr, 306 
 Mozart, Si iS. "2, 171 
 Muette, Chateau de la, 11 
 Musical Art Union, 102, 112, 117, 
 
 122 
 Musical Society's Concerts, 102, 
 
 147, 171, 172 
 Musical Union, the, 102, 113-117 
 Musset, Alfred de, 42 
 
 Napoleon III., his influence upon 
 
 Parisian music, 4 
 Napoleon, Arthur, 119, 202 
 Nice, a musical season at, 263 et 
 
 se.q, 
 Nicolai, 6 
 Nohant, Mme. Sand's estate of, 
 
 37 
 Norman-N^ruda, Mme., 257 
 Novello, Mme. Clara, 106 
 
 Oldenburg, Prince and Princess, 
 
 79 
 O'Rourke, 292 
 Orlowski, M. , 33 
 
 Paderewski, M., 239 
 Paganini, 257, 258, 276, 295 
 Palmer, Miss, no, 173 
 Parepa, Mme., 172 
 Paris : in the sixties, 3 ; music 
 
 in, 4 
 Parry, Mr. H. F., 203 
 Pasdeloup concerts, 5 
 Pasta, Mme., 213 
 Patey, Mme., 106, 173 
 Patti, Adelina, r5i, 171 
 Pauer, Herr Ernst, 123, 249, 250, 
 
 254 
 Pere la Chaise, 24, 49 
 Perez, Sexto, 299 
 Philharmonic Concerts, 102, in, 
 
 112, 165, 166, 171 
 Philharmonic Concerts, New, 102, 
 
 171 
 Philp, Miss Elizabeth, 190, 194 
 
 et seq. 
 Pinsuti, Cavali^re, 187 
 Plaidy, 300 
 
 Plants, Franfois, 6, 15, 270, 271 
 Plantis, Mdlle. de, 20 
 Pleyel, the firm of, 7-9 ; pianos, 
 
 27. 33 
 Poland, Chopin's feeling for, 31 
 Potocka, Countess Delphine, 45 
 Potter, Cipriani, 303 
 Power, Hiram, 183, 184 
 Prowse, Jeffrey, 282-286 
 Pyne and Harrison Company, 
 
 the, 171 
 
 Radziwill, Prince, 30 
 
3i8 
 
 Index 
 
 Raff, III 
 
 Rameau, m 
 
 Ratazzi, Mme., 266 
 
 Reeves, Mr. Sims, 106, 136, 174 
 
 Recio, Marie, 60 
 
 Relics, Chopin, 49 
 
 Richter, Herr, 306 
 
 Ries, Ferdinand, 299 
 
 Rietz, 306 
 
 Ritter, Theodore, 17 
 
 Robinson, Mrs. Joseph, 235 
 
 Roeckel, Edward, 75 
 
 Rossini, 5, 73 
 
 Rothschild, Baronne de, 45 
 
 Royal Academy of Music, 148, 
 
 305 
 Royal College of Music, 148 
 Rozinski, Mme. von, 94 
 Rubinstein, Anton, 119, 157-160 
 et seq. 
 ,, Nicolas, 173 
 
 RudersdorfT, Mme., 218-220 
 Ryan, Desmond, 142 
 
 Sacred Harmonic Society, 102, 171 
 St. James's Hall, 116, 122, 124, 
 
 151. 172 
 Sainton, M., 205 
 Santley, Mr., 106, no, 174 
 Sarasate, Pablo, 174, 239, 260 
 Sargood, Mrs., 188 
 
 Mr. Serjeant, 188 
 Schaeffer, M. , 13 
 
 ,, Mdlle. Marie, 14 
 Scheffer, Ary, 51, 73 
 Schirmann, Mme. von, 94 
 Schmitt, Aloys, 229 
 Schneider, Xavier, 299 
 Schubert, in 
 Schulhoff, s6 
 Schultz, Edward and Leonard, 75 
 
 Schumann. Robert, s, m. I49. 
 
 243-248 
 Clara, 75, 175, 242- 
 
 248, 254 
 Seeling, Hans, 18, 21 
 Sherrington, Mme. Lemmens, 
 
 no, 173 
 Sivori, Camillo, 262,263, 275-280 
 Sleigh, Mr. Serjeant, i83, 189 
 Smith, Sydney, 56 
 Smithson, Henrietta, 59, 67 
 Soci^t^s, Paris, 6 
 Spohr, III 
 Spontini, 5 
 
 ,, Mme. de, 14 
 Standard, the, 155 
 Sterling, Miss Antoinette, 197 
 Stirling, Miss, 41, 45, 49, 50 
 Strauss, Herr, 173 
 Sullivan, Sir Arthur, 227, 305-307 
 
 'Tannhauser,' 55 
 Tarnowski, Comte Stanislas, 40 
 Teleffsen, M., 24-26 
 Tennant, Mr., 172 
 Tenterden Street, 103 
 Thackeray, Mr. J., 299 
 Thalberg, 74, 107, 212, 213, 229, 
 242, 270, 288 
 ,, Mdlle. Zar^, 213 
 Th^nard, 58 
 
 Thomas, Mr. Lewis, no 
 Tietjens, Mdlle., 171, 213-218 
 Times, the, 104, 112, 137, 141, 
 
 142, 288 
 Travis, Dr., 289 
 Turner, 258 
 
 Veltheim, Mdlle., 30 
 Vera, Signer, 187 
 Vestris, Mme., 292 
 
Index 
 
 319 
 
 Vienna, Chopin in, 30 
 Vieuxtemps, 259, 260 
 Villeroy, Duchesse de, 10 
 Villoing, 160 
 Vocal Association, 102 
 Von Lenz, 78 
 
 Wagner, Richard, 6, 55, 64, 70, 
 
 146 
 Wallace, Vincent, 295-297 
 Walter, Mr. John, 288 
 Warsaw : Conservatoire of, 30, 33 ; 
 
 Chopin's heart in, 49 
 
 Waterlow, Sir Sydney, 208 
 Weber, Carl Maria von, 5, 147 
 Weiss, Mr., no, 174 
 Westmoreland, the Earl of, 188 
 Wieck, Friedrich, 242, 243 
 Wielhorski, Count, 163 
 Wieniawski, Henri, 260-262 
 Willis's Rooms, 115, 123 
 Wittering, Mr. and Mrs. , 72 
 Wyld, Mr. William, 72 
 
 Zywny, 30 
 
 THE END. 
 
 BILLING AND SONS, PRINTERS, GUILDFORD. 
 
 C, C. &' Cd