A little later, on our way home, we discussed the younger generation of composers, and I found him very [85] ]appreciative of the work done by his juniors. He particularly mentioned Havergal Brian, a composer who has more than justified what Elgar prophesied of him, though perhaps not in the manner Elgar anticipated.
Apropos of something or other, Elgar said, I think quite needlessly and a little vainly:
“You must not, as many people appear to do, imagine that I am a musician and nothing else. I am many things; I find time for many things. Do not picture me always bending over manuscript paper and writing down notes; months pass at frequent intervals when I write nothing at all. At present I am making a study of chemistry.”
I think I was expected to look surprised, or to give vent to an exclamation of surprise, but I did neither, for I also had made a study of chemistry, and it seemed to me the kind of work that any man of inquiring mind might take up. I did not for one moment imagine that I was living in the first half of the nineteenth century when practically all British musicians were musicians and nothing else and not always even musicians.
When we had returned to the house we sat before a large fire and, under the soothing influence of warmth and semi-darkness, stopped all argument. In the evening Lady Elgar accompanied me to the station, and all the way from Hereford to Manchester I turned over in my mind the strange problem that was presented to me by the fact that, though I was a passionate, almost fanatical lover of Elgar’s music, the creator of that music attracted me not at all. I saw in his mind a daintiness that was irritating, a refinement that was distressingly self-conscious.
Some years later Sir Edward Elgar moved to London, and when I saw him in his new home he tried to prove to me that living in London was cheaper than living in the country.
His attitude towards me on this occasion was peculiarly [86] ]strange. I represented a Labour paper, but Elgar did not know that I was at the same time writing leading articles for a London Conservative daily. He treated me with the most careful kindness, a kindness so careful, indeed, that it might be called patronising. It soon became quite clear to me that he imagined I myself came from the labouring classes, but I cannot boast that honour, and as he, the aristocrat, was in contact with me, the plebeian, it was his manifest duty and his undoubted pleasure to help me along the upward path. I was advised to read Shakespeare.
“Shakespeare,” said he, “frees the mind. You, as a journalist, will find him useful in so far as a close study of his works will purify your style and enlarge your vocabulary.”
“Which of the plays would you advise me to read?” asked I, with simulated innocence and playing up to him with eyes and voice.
The astounding man considered a minute and then mentioned half-a-dozen plays, the titles of which I carefully wrote down in my pocket-book.