Walker-My_Musical_Ex.. - Walter Cosand

HENSELT 171
before him, and there was a goodly pile of it. He
seated himself, and Frau von Henselt, saying to me,
' You
and I can chat while my husband looks over
the music,' sat down beside me on the sofa, and we
got into talk. Henselt, meanwhile, seemed to be
turning over, piece by piece, all the music I had laid
before him. All of a sudden he broke in on our con-
versation with the question, ' Who is your favourite
composer, mem Fraiilein?' I answered without a
moment's hesitation (for that year I had lived myself
much into Schumann), ' Schumann.' When I said
this he made no further remark, but to my thinking
he seemed to scowl at me. When he and his wife
were going away, he arranged that I was to come to
him at twelve o'clock the next day ; and on Frau von
Henselt asking him what music he wished me to
bring to him, he gave the characteristic reply, ' She
shall play nothing with me that she has played with
anyone else ; I will not help her in anything over
which there has been any other influence than mine.'
The lesson fixed for the next day did not take place
until Wednesday; a note had in the meantime
informed me that his Excellency had forgotten, when
making the appointment with me, that both he and
his wife were previously engaged to a birthday recep-
tion at the house of old friends. On Wednesday,
then, I betook myself to Villa von Henselt, carrymg
with me a portfolio full of the pieces which I could
play from memory—Schumann's Concerto, the Kreis-