My mother was gifted in many ways. She used to paint charmingly; and has told me that when she was a young girl and could not get paint brushes, she made her own of hairs pulled from their old horse's tail.
My maternal grandfather was not at all musical. He used to say that to him the sweetest note on the piano was when the cover went down! Yet it was he who accidentally discovered a fortunate possession of mine—something that has remained in my keeping ever since, and, like many fortunate gifts, has at times troubled as much as it has consoled me.
One day he was standing by the piano in one room and I was playing on the floor in another. He idly struck a note and asked my mother:
"What note is that I am striking? Guess!"
"How can I tell?" said my mother. "No one could tell that."
"Why, mother!" I cried from the next room, "don't you know what note that is?"
"I do not," said my mother, "and neither do you."
"I do, too," I declared. "It's the first of the three black keys going up!"
It was, in fact, F sharp, and in this manner it was discovered that I had what we musicians call "absolute pitch"; the ability to place and name a note the moment it is heard. As I have said, this has often proved to be a very trying gift, for it is, and always has been impossible for me to decipher a song in a different key from that in which it is written. If it is written in C, I hear it in C; and conceive the hideous discord in my brain while the orchestra or the pianist renders it in D flat! When I see a "Do," I want to sing it as a "Do," and not as a "Re."
This episode must have been when I was about five years old, and soon afterward I began taking regular piano lessons. I remember my teacher quite well. He used to come out from New Haven by the Naugatuck railway—that had just been completed and was a great curiosity—for the purpose of instructing a class of which I was a member.