"That is better. But I advise you, before you begin with the composition of your great work, to write a few Scotch songs as an exercise, like Wagner, who wrote a few songs as studies for his Tristan."
The advice seemed good to me, and I composed fifteen Scotch songs as an exercise for Macbeth which, according to Mr. Doblana, was itself but an exercise for future operas. I chose them among the many lyrics, which exist in good metrical German translations, so that I had them ready in both languages. I wrote my songs in what seemed to me an incredibly short time at the rate of a song a day. Modest as I am, I must nevertheless confess that they are not bad, considering that I am ... no, that I was a British composer. British composers have been told so many times about their having no talent that they have come to believe it. But it is not true. We have quite as much heart and feeling and imagination as other nations. Only we have also the fog. Which means that we may be allowed to be born in our isles, but that we will do well to go and compose somewhere else. This is what by chance I had done. Thus it happened that my fifteen Scotch songs were quite possible, and one at least was good. But who would not have been inspired by Sir Walter's immortal words?
"Breathes there the man, with soul so dead.
Who never to himself hath said
This is my own, my native land!
Whose heart hath ne'er within him burn'd,
As home his footsteps he hath turn'd,
From wandering on a foreign strand!"
These songs have never been printed, yet I am glad to have written them. They sleep in a drawer in a nice cosy house in Belsize Park. They sleep, but they are not dead. They live in my memory and remind me of the most beautiful day which was yet given me to live.
Post.
And an exceptionally big mail, containing three letters and a few papers. The "Illustrated London News," sent to me by an old aunt. They are full of war pictures which she forwards to me so that I may have an idea how things look in reality, as we in the trenches have certainly only a very vague idea of the aspect of the whole business.