Every now and then they play to the Professor, who, according to the stage at which they have arrived, agrees to give them lessons fortnightly, monthly—or perhaps not at all for the present.
In former days, when he had more strength, he took the most talented of his pupils through the technical training himself; but the present plan is better, for he is not naturally of a patient disposition. Emerson says a man should be judged by his intentions. If that is so, Leschetizky stands high in the scale, for he is full of good intentions. They are with him always; but, as a dilapidated American was heard to murmur at the end of a bad lesson: "They must have paved a considerable stretch of the side-walks in hell by now," for they invariably leave him at the moment when they are most wanted.
The Professor intends to make allowances for all difficulties. He knows how tenaciously bad habits will stick, how hard they are to dislodge, and how long the fingers retain their old established ways, in spite of the best will in the world to train them to the new. He quite realises what a tax this minute and detailed method of analysis is to the unpractised mind, and how irksome are the first steps on the road to it. He is full of benevolent sympathy. But when the time for the lesson comes, everything but the immediate need of getting the thing done in the right way is obliterated from his mind, and in the enthusiasm of the moment all traces of this benevolence speedily disappear. He forgets the pupil is full of original sin and cannot wait for the signs of grace.
This leads to misunderstanding. It leads also to the sudden exit of the pupil; to the slamming of doors; to the crushing of music on the floor; to grim remarks about a future better spent "in tomato-planting." Once it led to total darkness. In the intensity of his feelings the master arose, hastily put out the gas, rushed away, and left his pupils sitting round the class in silence and gloom until things were patched up by some comforting soul outside.
Leschetizky loves his pupils as if they were his own children; but, as a good father, he considers his duty better done through the aid of discipline than of sympathy, believing the scourge to be of greater profit to their musical souls than the prop. Especially if he sees they are suffering from parental pampering. He is much troubled by parents. They come to him imbued with the notion that their particular offspring is quite unusually and supremely gifted, and the offspring himself is still more imbued with that notion. It is expedient, therefore, to remove these parents to a distance, in order that the mist of adoration may disperse, and leave the field clear for the child to find his true level. Otherwise valuable time may be wasted in making headway against the inability of the parent to view discipline in any light but that of cruelty, and of the pupil to consider himself other than a sacrifice on the altar of his master's whims.
Leschetizky makes unsparing use of his power to analyse character in his teaching, unhesitatingly saying anything, however hard to bear, that he thinks may be a spur to the pupil's development. He has the gift of insight to a very remarkable degree, and although his own nature is not pliable enough to unbend to every other, he makes few mistakes in his summing up as a whole. Like all highly-strung people he is extremely sensitive to personality. This sensibility affects him in various ways. In the morning when the door-bell announces the arrival of the first pupil, should the Professor chance to be in a fastidious frame of mind, he steals downstairs to find out who it is, and if on peeping surreptitiously into the room he sees some one antipathetic to him, he promptly steals upstairs again and stays there a quarter of an hour or more to recover the blow. If the pupil has caught a glimpse of his face, he would generally prefer to go home, but knowing that if he does, he may never have another lesson, he elects to face the worst and wait till the Professor feels inclined to come down again. When he comes down—if he has resigned himself to the inevitable, and if the pupil be of a tactful disposition—all may yet go well; the sinner be received into favour again, and sent home proud in the knowledge that he has gained the day and left a legacy of happy relations behind him after all.
The early lessons with Leschetizky are at once a revelation and an ordeal. If the quality of the pupil's intellect be at all strained—and his horizon too circumscribed for him to have found it out before—it will now be made quite clear to him.
In the first place he is expected to make all his corrections on the spot, for to Leschetizky's rapid brain comprehension is synonymous with performance—to understand is to be able to do. He is expected to hold these corrections firmly in his head, and to have the wit to apply them to new cases immediately. Nerve, quick observation, retentive memory, presence of mind must all be his. He must be neither too quick nor too slow, being careful not to step in before the master has finished what he has to say and the illustration is complete, lest there be a sudden pause, and Leschetizky, regarding him with a baleful eye, sit back with folded hands, and inquire which of the two is to play: "Are you giving the lesson, or am I?" He must follow the different kinds of touch, the pedalling, the fingering, the variety of effects that may be drawn out of the instrument—all so difficult and puzzling in the initial stages—and be able to reproduce them on the spot. The most vivid and concentrated interest is exacted from him in every detail, infinite patience and unwearied effort.
Leschetizky cannot endure half-heartedness. Caring so intensely for music and for all that concerns it, an apathetic attitude is as unbearable to him, as disloyalty to his country would be to a patriot, and he resents it with his whole nature. Nor does he hesitate to show it. Enthusiasm he must and will have. A temperament devoid of it is an enigma he cannot solve. He expects a ready appreciation. He likes people to talk, to ask him questions, to be cheerful. He cannot bear dismal solemnity. If the pupil be of a taciturn order, Leschetizky is quite sure something must be seriously wrong with his mind; or that he has not understood what he has been told, and is afraid to say so; or, what is most probable, that he possesses a very disagreeable character.