Beethoven's Dream. From painting by Aimé de Lemud.
Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, in her story of "The Silent Partner," tells how "a line engraving after De Lemud could make a 'forgetting' in the life of a factory girl.
"An engraving that lay against a rich easel in a corner of the room attracted the girl's attention presently. She went down on her knees to examine it. It chanced to be Lemud's dreaming Beethoven. Sip was very still about it.
"'What is that fellow doing?' she asked, after a while. 'Him with the stick in his hand.'
"She pointed to the leader of the shadowy orchestra, touching the baton through the glass, with her brown fingers.
"'I have always supposed,' said Perley, 'that he was only floating with the rest; you see the orchestra behind him.'
"'Floating after those women with their arms up? No, he isn't.'
"'What is he doing?'
"It's riding over him—the orchestra. He can't master it. Don't you see? It sweeps him along. He can't help himself. They come and come. How fast they come! How he fights and falls! Oh, I know how they come! That's the way things come to me; things I could do, things I could say, things I could get rid of if I had the chance; they come in the mills mostly; they tumble over me just so; I never have the chance. How he fights! I didn't know there was any such picture in the world. I'd like to look at that picture day and night. See! Oh, I know how they come!'
"'Miss Kelso—' after another silence, and still upon her knees before the driving dream and the restless dreamer. 'You see, that's it. That's like your pretty things. I'd keep your pretty things if I was you. It ain't that there shouldn't be music anywhere. It's only that the music shouldn't ride over the master. Seems to me it is like that.'"