“Good! damned good!” he exclaimed, turning to his companion. “You’ve got it. Hasn’t he, Cumberland?”
“Got what?”
“It. Him. Bantock, I mean. Now, don’t you think—concede us this one little point—don’t you think that this thirty-two-part choral work of Bantock’s is just Moody and Sankey over again? Glorified, of course: gilt-edged, tooled, diamond-studded, bound in lizard-skin, if you like: but still Moody and still Sankey.”
I clutched the sleeve of a passing waiter and ordered a double whisky.
“One can only drink,” said I. “And when people disagree so fundamentally as we do, whisky is the only tipple that makes one forget.”
But, either late that night or late the following night, we found music in which we could both take keen pleasure. Herbert Hughes played us some of his songs, and I remember Samuel Langford, breathing rather heavily behind me, becoming more and more enthusiastic as the night wore on. Williams, to whom also the songs were new, took a vivid interest in them.
“I like your Herbert Hughes,” said Langford.
[257]
]“My Herbert Hughes?”
“Well, you do rather monopolise him. And I don’t wonder. He’s what one calls the ... the ...”
“The goods?”