I remember his singing,
| "And how would you get your ships along, Admiral, |
| If your sails and oars were shot overboard?" |
I sang solemnly,
"I'd shubble them along with shubbles."
Afterwards when I began to sing from printed music with him I remember saying one evening as he was playing hymns and unfamiliar English ballads for me to sing,
"Papa, please let me look at the music and follow the notes up and down."
I really began reading music at four years old. We played and sang all our childhood. When Marjorie was seven and I was six we sang Even-song at the village church, as the members of the regular choir were ill or absent. Marjorie had a heavenly childish soprano and I a heavy nondescript voice. But I always pleased my father by singing real "second voice" and not just following the soprano in thirds.
He used to give us a note, and we then had to run round our rather large house humming it. It was the deepest disgrace we ever knew if we had sharped or flatted when we got back to the starting point. He taught us musical terms by making us dance to different rhythms he played, and would call out "Allegro," "Vivace," "Adagio," "Molto allegro," "Legato," and so forth, to which we had to change instantly. Whenever any one came to the house, we played and sang for them, and though it might have been rather awful for the visitors it was very good for us to get used to an audience.
He used to arrange fairy tales like "Bluebeard" in doggerel verses and write accompaniments to them, and we then learned them by heart and rehearsed them, and some grand night played them for all the neighbours. I remember the way we showed Bluebeard's chamber where the heads of his wives were kept. We hung a sheet on the wall and Marjorie and I stood in front of it, with pale faces, closed eyes and open mouths, and our long hair pinned up high above our heads on the sheet. Another sheet was then stretched across us, just below our chins, and the effect was rather ghastly in a dim light. I remember we sang at the last:
| "Oh, Bluebeard, oh, Bluebeard, |
| Frustrated, checkmated, |
| Dissipated, agitated, |
| Castigated, lacerated, |
| Bluebeard!" |