“The purest English is talked in South Lincolnshire. The dialect begins at Spilsby in Mid-Lincolnshire, and that is the dialect of my Lincolnshire poems.”
He was fond of telling Lincolnshire stories. T. “An old farmer, at the time when railways were beginning, receiving a visit from the parson, moved uneasily in his bed, crying out, ‘What with faäth, and what with real bad harvests, and what with them graät, horrid steäm-kettles, and what with the soön goin’ raound the earth, and the earth goin’ raound the soön, as soom saäy she do, I am cleän maäzed an’ the sooner I gits out of this ’ere world, the better;’ and he turned his face to the wall and died.”
I close my chapter of fragments and echoes still abiding with me; men privileged as I was can hear the voice and hate a gramophone. My aim has been to show the everyday life, the plain unvarnished words which were the daily change with the first man of his age and a rank-and-file acquaintance just able, and no more, to appreciate such kindness.
Haec olim meminisse iuvabit.
MUSIC, TENNYSON, AND JOACHIM
By Sir Charles Stanford
My acquaintance, or rather my friendship, with Alfred Tennyson (for he had an all-compelling power of making real friends of, and being a true friend to, those far junior to himself) dated only from 1879, when he was in years seventy, but in mental vigour the contemporary of the youngest man he happened to be with. Previously, however, in 1875, I had had experience of his thoughtful kindness. He had chosen me, an unknown and untried composer, to write the incidental music to his tragedy of “Queen Mary” for its production at the Lyceum Theatre, then under the management of Mrs. Bateman. Many difficulties were put in the way of the performance of the music, into the causes of which I had neither the wish nor the means to penetrate. Finally, however, the management gave as an explanation that the music could not be performed, as the number of orchestral players required for its proper presentment would necessitate the sacrifice of two rows of stalls. To my young and disappointed soul came the news of a generous action which would have been a source of pride to many a composer of assured position and fame. The Poet had offered, unknown to me, to bear the expense of the sacrificed seats for many nights, in order to allow my small share of the work to be heard. The offer was refused, but the generous action remains—one amongst the thousands of such quiet and stealthy kindnesses which came as second nature to him, and were probably as speedily forgotten by himself as they were lastingly remembered by their recipients.[71]