Walker-My_Musical_Ex.. - Walter Cosand

HENSELT 187
and decided on one among the various lodgings which
she hoped to have found for me.
All this time, curiously enough, I had never
dreamed of becoming Henselt's pupil in St.
Petersburg; for the mother of Mademoiselle Eanus-
chewitz told me that her daughter was the only
private pupil that Henselt had ever had, and on my
repeating this to Henselt one day in Warmbrunn,
with a view to feeling my way with him, he had said,
' It is true.' From this I had naturally got the im-
pression that Henselt only taught in his official
capacity as Inspector of the Imperially - endowed
Schools, and that Mademoiselle Katy actually was the
only one who had ever had a private lesson from
him; whereas what both the mother of the young
lady and Hensqjt himself meant to say was that she
was the only one who had ever been from first to last
Henselt's pupil, without the intervention of a pre-
paratory teacher. It had been Henselt's custom in
all other cases to let a preparatory teacher give the
pupil a grind, and thus smooth the way for him,
and obviate the necessity for his descending to the
level of the pupil. Of this I knew nothing whatever,
and, going to Eussia to study the Henselt method,
the utmost I had allowed myself to hope was that
he might possibly allow me to play to him now and
then — at the niost, perhaps, once in six or eight
weeks.
Being imder the impression, therefore, that I