When I first met him he was little more than a brilliant boy full of rich promise. He lived at Stourport, where I used to go occasionally and pass a few days with him on the river. I knew of nothing against him save that he was an organist, and I feared that he might be tempted to remain an organist and build up a teaching “practice,” just as a doctor builds up a practice. But I was mistaken. He ventured on London, suffered obscurity for a year or two, worked like a fiery little devil, and at length threw up the hack-work that kept him alive. Then he emerged, very engaging and very likeable, into the real musical world of London. Sir Thomas Beecham gave him Tristan und Isolde and other operas to conduct, the London Philharmonic Society invited him to interpret to it one of his own works, and concerts devoted entirely to his compositions were given in several provincial towns. In five years he will be recognised as the greatest conductor England has yet given us; in ten years he will have a European reputation as a composer.
[259]
]What is he like? He is mercurial, passionate, loyal, snobbish, charming, outspoken, very open to his friends.
“I am snobbish, Gerald; we have agreed about that, so you won’t quarrel with me, will you?” he has asked several times.
“Apropos?” I have answered.
“Well, I really can’t stick your pal, So-and-so. An out-and-out bounder.”
“Yes, Julius. But he bounds so beautifully. Besides, he has real talent.”
“But you’ll never ask me to meet him, will you?”
“When I’m rich, Julius, I shall have two flats—one where you and your friends can come, and another where my bounderish friends may foregather. But I’m afraid I shall be oftener at the flat you visit than at the other. You are a beast—what makes you so snobbish? And why do you continue to like me, who am not ‘quite’ a gentleman in your eyes?”
“Oh, but you are, Gerald. Well, perhaps you’re not. Only in your case it doesn’t seem to matter. You are so full of affectations—jolly little affectations, I admit, but still....”
I don’t think anything will break our friendship, for Julius is good and generous enough to allow me to say the rudest things in the world to him. He only laughs. For my part, I can forgive him anything, for he admires my poems. And I suppose he will always forgive me much for I admire without stint his genius as a conductor and his genius as a composer. I think that at heart he will always remain a boy, a boy full of passionate dignity, of untarnished ideals, of frequent impulses.