"Well," he continued, "it may not lie in my mouth to
say it--and perhaps I ought not to say it--I know I am most responsible for
the Wagner craze--but I consider him a ---- fraud."
He had just come from a long "classic entertainment," was worn out with
travel and worry, and meant nothing of the sort.
After a very tiresome concert when he was railing at the hard lines of a
peripatetic musician I said: "Come with me and I will give you a soothing
quail and as dry a glass of champagne as you ever had in your life."
The wine was poured out and he took a sip.
"I don't call that dry wine," he crossly said, and took another sip. "My
God," without a pause he continued, "isn't that great?"
Of course he was impulsive, even impetuous. Beneath his seeming cold
exterior and admirable self-control--the discipline of the master
artist--lay the moods and tenses of the musical temperament. He knew little
or nothing outside of music and did not care to learn. I tried to interest
him in politics. It was of no use. First he laughed my suggestions to scorn
and then swore like a trooper. German he was, through and through. It
was well that he passed away before the world war. Pat Gilmore--"Patrick
Sarsfield," we always called him--was a born politician, and if he had not
been a musician he would have been a statesman. I kept the peace between
him and Theodore Thomas by an ingenious system of telling all kinds of kind
things each had said of the other, my "repetitions" being pure inventions
of my own.
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