The following night we met again at the Midland Institute, Birmingham, where Ernest Newman was giving one of his witty and brilliant lectures. Bantock insisted upon my sitting on the platform, though for what reason I do not know, unless it was to satisfy his impish instinct for putting shy and self-conscious people into prominent positions. At that time he and Newman were the closest of friends, and as Newman and I were on very friendly terms, Bantock was disposed to regard me very favourably; at all events, before we parted that evening, he showed me clearly enough that he did not actually dislike me, for he invited me to visit him for a week-end whenever I saw my way clear to do so. From that time onward [248] ]I met him frequently in his own house, in Manchester, London, Wrexham, Gloucester, Liverpool, Birmingham and elsewhere.
Soon it became a regular practice of mine to run over from Manchester to Liverpool every alternate Saturday to attend the afternoon rehearsal and the evening concert of the Philharmonic Society, the orchestra of which Bantock conducted. These were very pleasant meetings, for a party of us used to stay at the London and North Western Hotel and we would sit until the small hours of Sunday morning talking music, returning to our respective homes on Sunday afternoon. At these times Bantock was at his best, and Bantock’s best makes the finest company in the world. In his presence one always feels warm and deeply comfortable, and yet very much alive; he made a glow; he reconciled one to oneself. I would not call him a brilliant, or even a good, talker, but I can with truth call him a very wise one; and in argument he is unassailable.
. . . . . . . .
Though I used frequently to go to Liverpool to hear Bantock conduct, I did not do so because I regarded him as a great artist with the baton. Of his ability in this direction, there is no doubt; but that he is an interpretative genius no qualified critic would assert. No: it was the personality of the man himself, and the new, modern works he used to include in his programmes that drew me to Liverpool. Bantock, at that period, was almost passionately modern. I remember with amusement how pettish he used sometimes to pretend to be when, perhaps in deference to public opinion (but perhaps he was overruled by a Committee?), he felt compelled to include a Beethoven symphony in one of his concerts.
On one occasion I met him at Lime Street Station, Liverpool, when he emerged from the train carrying a bundle of loose scores under his arm.
[249]
]“Let me carry your books for you,” said I.
He selected the least bulky and lightest of the scores he was carrying, and handed it to me.
“You are always a good chap, Cumberland,” he remarked. “Do take this; it’s the heaviest of the lot: Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. So very heavy.” He sighed. “And so dry that merely to carry it makes me thirsty. How many times have you heard it?”
But he was poking a cigar into my mouth, and I could not answer until it was well alight.
“At least fifty or sixty. Oh, more than that! Eight times, say, every year for the last fifteen years—one hundred and twenty.”