As an English liberal, Johnstone was naturally a welcome guest in the society of the Reform party; and on his return to England he was to meet Stepniak at the house of their common friend, York Powell, and to enroll himself among the Friends of Russian Freedom. But he was more in sympathy with the members of the Reform movement than with their objects. While in Russia, such connections secured him a mild surveillance on the part of the officials, and he had a little difficulty in obtaining the necessary passport to leave the country; but these vexations did not prevent him from holding that a paternal government was required in Russia, and that his countrymen as a whole were to blame for their harsh judgment of a civilisation merely because it ran counter to their own political ideals. The late Bishop Creighton arrived at precisely the same conclusion after his visit to Russia to attend the Coronation in 1896.
Aged 26.
On his way home he spent some months in Buda-Pesth, Vienna, and the Tyrol, and made his first visit to Bayreuth and the Passion Play at Oberammergau.
Shortly after his return to England Johnstone accepted a mastership in Modern Languages at the Edinburgh Academy, where his elder brother had been a classical master for some years. He came into residence in September, 1890, and Edinburgh was his home until he left that city for Manchester, in January, 1896. On the whole he was happy there; for though teaching foreign languages to boys is rather a thankless task, he was cheered from time to time by the successes of his pupils in examinations elsewhere, mainly those for entrance to Woolwich and Sandhurst. He could even confess, after a long summer holiday on the Continent, that "he was again thoroughly penetrated with the atmosphere of gray old long-faced Sawbath-keeping Edinburgh." After all, Johnstone, though he considered himself an Englishman, was, as may be gathered from his name, Scotch on his father's side; his mother, too, had a strain of Scotch blood. So perhaps that quiet self-contained manner and all that it implied came to him from north of the Tweed.
About this time, he was penetrated with the excellent purpose of training his bodily nerve. He knew that he could never be noticeably muscular, or anything more than wiry, with his light frame and high tension. But he would say, "we ought to be able to see a man fall from a high scaffolding on to the pavement, just before our feet, battered, and to do whatever is necessary without turning a hair." Accordingly, though himself most sensitive to pain and to the sight of it, he fraternised with the young doctors and surgeons whom he met, accompanied them to operations, watched the worst things, and even gave his help, which was more than once invited owing to his deftness and neatness of handling. In this way he got over any shrinking of the nerves. In Edinburgh he also managed to find some amusement. He was a foreigner in his adaptiveness to restaurant life, and found a quiet French café to his taste, where he took his visitors. The odd stratification of Edinburgh society into the various aristocracies of the country, University, professions and commerce, and its broad Scotch democratic feeling, entertained him. He was in one emergency summoned as French interpreter in the police court, and was pleased at having given satisfaction to himself and the magistrate, as the case was a somewhat delicate one and demanded nicety of expression. York Powell, writing to a friend in June, 1893, spoke of Johnstone as
"a fine fellow, very interesting; a musician doomed for the sins of others (for he is not a great sinner) to be a dominie in Edinboro', where he is consoled by an old Frenchman who can talk and understand; and they have, with one or two more, a little French club. Each pays sixpence a night for expenses, and you have simple refreshments and sound conversation."
Above all, his musical opportunities were good and varied, and he took the fullest advantage of them. Music in Edinburgh had, for many years, maintained a high standard. The orchestral concerts were second only to those conducted by Hallé and Richter; the latter brought his own band occasionally, and every solo player of eminence came there from time to time. He found many congenial friends, and was a frequent guest at the houses of Mrs. Sellar, the widow of the Professor of Humanity at Edinburgh, and Dr. Berry Hart, the famous surgeon, where musical amateurs met constantly; and he was a member of the "Rhyme and Reason Club," where literary and artistic questions were discussed.
His most noteworthy contribution to the Club was a paper on the "Relation of Music to the Words in Songs," which he afterwards read at the Manchester College of Music, and which well merits a summary here (and some extracts). It shows how his mind was steadily working in the direction of musical criticism. Its origin was a statement made in a paper on Tennyson's songs, that poetry, if it be true poetry, is self-sufficient, and the addition of music to it, however fine the music may be in itself, is an intrusion and a disturbance for the true lover of poetry.
The first part of his paper is concerned with an examination into the nature of music and its place among the arts. He goes on to deplore the divorce between music and the songs of modern English poets, none of which are capable of being sung, and traces this divergence back to the days when Puritanism banished music from church and village green. Burns, he adds, wrote genuine songs; but he is the only song-writer since the days of Elizabeth, and worthy of being ranked with Heine. He concludes by claiming for music "that it is not an inferior art, a mere hand-maid to poetry, but a direct revelation of the principle of beauty and on a footing of honourable equality with poetry. The songs of all the really great lyrical poets are obviously and radiantly singable, and meant to be sung, and in their authors' lifetime they were sung. So far then from the finest lyrical poetry being impaired by association with music, it is only the maimed poetry of decadence that does not admit of such association, one unfailing mark of a lyric of the highest order being that it rises to the true singing quality." In the following passage Johnstone sets forth the ideal at which the composer of songs should aim:—