Walker-My_Musical_Ex.. - Walter Cosand

MY MUSICAL EXPERIENCES
even to myself, entirely explain the source of my
dissatisfaction.
More than one critic observed, in reviewing my book,
that if the Beethoven incident were true, it was an
interesting contribution to the various details relating
to this great musician which are being collected
under the head of ' Beethoveniana.' When this half-
formulated suggestion of doubt came under my eye,
it was naturally my wish to prove that in this, as in
every other fact related in the book, I had indulged
in no flights of the imagination. The lock of hair
and the pen had been shown to me, and by persons
with whom I had lived in close intercourse for several
weeks, without ever perceiving in them the slightest
leaning to exaggeration, or the shadow of an en-
deavour to exalt their grandfather — for whose
memory, nevertheless, they felt the deepest reverence
—into a colossal figure. I wrote to these ladies
accordingly, and they were not alone so kind as to
answer my letter with little delay, but on a musical
critic expressing a wish to have the date of the actual
visit when Prau Hummel obtained the lock of hair
and the pen from the dying musician, they wrote me
a second letter, giving all the particulars which we
wished to know. The letters are given intact, because
of the one interesting fact which they verify; and
though I have not alluded to other relics contained in
the Hummel house, there are, besides the lock of hair