Oskar Fried, with his idolatrous lackey, came uninvited to my house. They arrived at ten and left at six. I found Fried a very remarkable man—magnetic, of forceful personality, but with the manners and point of view of a gutter-snipe. He asked me point-blank what I could do for him.
“In what way?” I asked him, through Purvis, our interpreter.
“It is obvious in what way,” returned Purvis, without passing on the question to Fried.
“Well,” said I, “I have already written about Fried in the papers. And, really, I have no influence. I am not very popular with the Hallé Concerts Society people, and if I were to begin to recommend Fried.... But, in any [152] ]case, I have not yet heard your friend conduct. It is impossible for me to recommend a man of whose talents I know nothing save by hearsay. You see that, don’t you?”
“I’m afraid I don’t,” said Purvis. “You are a musical critic in Manchester, whilst I am a musical critic in Berlin, and I tell you that Fried is the man you want here. Surely that is enough? You must take it from me. I say it.”
I smiled and, glancing at Fried, watched his thin, eager face, with its peering eyes which looked inquiringly first at Purvis and then at me.
Purvis came next day and the day after that, and I began to wonder in precisely what relation he stood to Fried. When together, they seemed to be just business friends, and it occurred to me that the long typewritten Life of Fried that Purvis had written was merely a gigantic piece of bluff. Finally, I decided to cut both men adrift altogether, and the next time Purvis called I was out.
When I heard Fried conduct, I at once recognised his great powers: he had undoubted genius. But he was never invited to become the permanent conductor of the Hallé Concerts Society. Perchance his table manners were adversely reported upon by Dr Brodsky, or Mr Gustave Behrens, or the discreet and reserved Mr Forsyth.
[153]
]CHAPTER XIII
MANCHESTER PEOPLE
If there is one thing more than another that the ordinary person cannot endure, it is to hear a man from Manchester praising his own city. Somebody from Leeds may tell him how beautiful a town Leeds is, and he will not turn a hair; he will listen unruffled to a Liverpudlian discoursing on the peculiar glories of the great city on the Mersey; but if the man from Manchester wishes to be tolerated, he must never let fall a word in praise of the place that witnessed his astounding birth. Why this is so, I cannot explain. I merely record the fact.