In adopting this attitude, there was nothing whatever of outward posing. He simply did faithfully what he found lying before him to do, and did not look beyond.
Life at Lichtenthal passed quickly onwards, and the time approached when Frau Schumann would pay her annual visit to Switzerland. At the close of one of my lessons she said to me:
'I have been thinking that perhaps you might like to have some lessons from Herr Brahms whilst I am away. It would be a very great advantage for you in every way, and he would be able to help you immensely with your technique. He has made a special study of it, and can do anything he likes with his fingers on the piano. He does not usually give lessons, but if you like I will ask him, and I think he would do it as a favour to me.'
I must here explain that my visit to Germany had been undertaken with the special object of correcting certain deficiencies in my mechanism which Frau Schumann had pointed out, she having advised me to study for a year with this aim particularly in view.
It need hardly be said that I now eagerly accepted her proffered kindness, and it was decided that she should sound Herr Brahms on the question of his willingness to give me lessons. If he should show himself favourable to the project, the arrangement was to be considered as decided, subject only to the approval of my father, who was on the point of starting from London to join me at Lichtenthal. The next morning Frau Schumann informed me that Brahms had consented to the plan, and a few days later, on my receiving my father's ready assent to my request, all preliminaries were settled, and it was arranged that I should have two lessons every week from Brahms.
'You must ask him to play to you,' Frau Schumann said; 'and if he will do it, it will give you a real opportunity to hear him. And now, now you will begin to know Brahms.'
Brahms as Teacher of the Pianoforte.
Brahms united in himself each and every quality that might be supposed to exist in an absolutely ideal teacher of the pianoforte, without having a single modifying drawback. I do not wish to rhapsodize; he would have been the first to object to this. Such lessons could only have come from such a man. I have never to this day got over the wonder of his giving them, or the wonder and the joy of its having fallen to my lot to receive them.
He was strict and absolute; he was gentle and patient and encouraging; he was not only clear, he was light itself; he knew exhaustively, and could teach, and did teach, by the shortest possible methods, every detail of technical study; he was unwearied in his efforts to make his pupil grasp the full musical meaning of whatever work might be in hand; he was even punctual.
I cannot hope in what I may say to convey more than a faint impression of what his lessons were to me. From the very first hour of coming under his immediate musical influence I felt that it was a power which would continue to act upon and develop within me to the end of life. Perhaps, however, I may succeed in helping lovers of his music to add to their conception of his character and his gifts, by writing of him as he was in a capacity in which, so far as I know, he has not hitherto been described. Such personal details as I may introduce will be given with the object of illustrating that side of Brahms' character which I once knew so well; of exhibiting him as the all-capable, single-hearted, encouraging, inspired and inspiring teacher and friend.