I lived on in Lady Greville's house, going with her, wherever she stayed—London, Paris, and Nice—until I was thirteen. Then she sent me away to study music at a small German capital, in the house of one of the few surviving pupils of Weber. We parted as we had lived together, without affection.
Personally Lady Greville did not like me; if anything, she felt an actual repugnance towards me. All the care she lavished on me was for the sake of my talent, not for myself. She took a great deal of trouble in superintending, not only my musical education, but my general culture. She designed little mediæval costumes for me, and was indefatigable in her endeavours to impart to my manners that finish which a gutter education had denied me.
There is a charming portrait of me, by a well-known English artist, that hangs now in her ladyship's drawing-room. A pale boy of twelve, clad in an old-fashioned suit of ruby velvet; a boy with huge, black eyes, and long curls of the same colour, is standing by an oak music-stand, holding before him a Cremona violin, whose rich colouring is relieved admirably by the beautiful old point lace with which the boy's doublet is slashed. It is a charming picture. The famous artist who painted it considers it his best portrait, and Lady Greville is proud of it.
But her pride is of the same quality as that which made her value my presence. I was in her eyes merely the complement of her famous fiddle.
I heard her one day express a certain feeling of relief at my approaching departure.
'You regret having taken him up?' asked her nephew curiously.
'No,' she said, 'that would be folly. He repays all one's trouble, as soon as he touches his fiddle—but I don't like him.'
'He can play like the great Pan,' says Felix.
'Yes, and like Pan he is half a beast.'
'You may make a musician out of him,' answered the young man, examining his pink nails with a certain admiration, 'but you will never make him a gentleman.'