No; I’m not going to be a chronicler in this chapter. It sounds a dull subject, I know, but many things happened in Gloucester, Hereford and Worcester in mellow September days that were vastly amusing and which were not reported in the papers, and it is about these I am going to tell you.
It used to be very charming to go to one of these cathedrals early each autumn, drink cider, listen to music six hours a day, walk by the river, have jolly “rags” in the hotel at night, and come home again at the end of a week or ten days. September is a tired month, I always think ... if not tired, a little languorous.... It has many days in which one wants to walk about just quietly, enjoying being alive. It would be wrong to fuss and work really hard. I suppose that in all those wonderful places in which I have spent so many happy weeks—Worcester, Lincoln, Gloucester, Hereford, Norwich—people ruminate and browse at all times. Certainly I have seen them browsing in herds in September days. I once watched the Bishop of Hereford browsing. He stood perfectly still and seemed to be contemplating and measuring and gently wondering about the growth of a healthy nasturtium.
Everybody used to migrate to these festivals. Well, not quite everybody ... but you know what I mean; just the very people you most awfully wanted to meet again and talk to and hear music with: people like Granville Bantock, Ernest Newman, Samuel Langford, John Coates, Dr McNaught, Frederic Austin, Herbert Hughes. [188] ]London used to send thirty or forty critics, and the provinces about the same number. And from the surrounding towns would pour in county families, middle-class families anxious (poor deluded ones!) to keep abreast of the musical times (or do I mean The Musical Times?), maiden ladies still and for ever ecstatic over Mendelssohn’s poor old Elijah, fierce choir-masters with ideas on choral singing, village organists who really believed that Dr Brewer was the Last Word, immaculate young men with æsthetic fever and a decided leaning towards Elgar’s The Dream of Gerontius (always alluded to by them as The Dream), very “nee-ice” young ladies who when at home played the violin, and, last of all, deans (oh yes, lots of deans), minor canons, slim curates, parsons of all kinds, squires without money, squarsons.
It was hard for us musical critics to take these festivals quite as seriously as the festivals expected us to do, for it always seemed incredible to us that London or Birmingham or Glasgow should have the least desire to know how the choruses of Handel’s The Messiah were sung in a little town like Gloucester. Moreover, many of us were amused at the tragic seriousness of these age-old festivals—festivals at which, as a rule, only two new works of any importance were produced and over which old oratorios—an impossible form of art—hung like a heavy cloud. So we used to amuse ourselves in our different ways, and the ringleaders in our occasional rags were generally Granville Bantock and Ernest Newman.
Almost every detail of one of these joyous occasions lingers in my memory. Dr McNaught, the doyen of us all, an experienced critic, a witty speaker, and a most profound musician, was the not unwilling victim. Bantock or, to give him his full title, Professor Granville Bantock, M.A., had brought from Birmingham two live eels in a tank. When he bought these sturdy creatures, he must have had in his mind some jollification or other, and when [189] ]I met him in the streets of Hereford (I think it was Hereford) during the morning of the Festival’s first day, he asked me what was the most amusing thing I could think of that could be done with two live eels.
“Eels!” exclaimed I, in amazement. “Do you mean to tell me that you really possess two live eels?”
“Yes, here in Hereford. One gets a little dull here after a couple of hours, and, after all, eels are very lively fry. They break the monotony of life.” He paused a moment. “And,” he added rather dreamily, “they swish their tails so busily. I suppose an eel’s tail is the busiest thing in the world. Come and have a look; they’re in my room at the hotel.”
And there they were in a tank: dark objects in dark water, swirling about with enormous enthusiasm.
The day passed and no amusing idea occurred to me. Bantock conducted one of his works in the cathedral that evening—a very important and solemn occasion, and when we critics had left our “copy” at the post-office for telegraphic transmission to our respective newspapers, we foregathered in the hotel.
Now Dr McNaught had gone to spend the late hours with a friend and was not expected back till nearly midnight; it became obvious, therefore, both to Bantock and myself, that the eels must, in some way, be made to surprise him on his return. We placed the slimy creatures in a washhand basin in his bedroom, poured water upon them, and gazed down upon them with knitted brows.