Walker-My_Musical_Ex.. - Walter Cosand

SI/? STERNDALE BENNETT
without ever perceiving the gaps, the gulfs rather,
that lay between what I wished to do and what I
actually accomplished. But the consciousness dawned
on me at last ; and though I had as yet not -the faintest
idea of the toil that must be undergone before one
reaches even the most moderate degree of excellence,
still it became clear to me that I wanted guidance
for my head and my fingers. Lady Eastlake's
charming musical novel, Charles Anchester, chanced
into our house just about this time : and we all were
charmed with Starwood Burney, the little boy who
called the key-board of the piano ' the beautiful cold
keys.' We were told that ' Sterndale Bennett' was
meant by ' Starwood Burney '; and, curiously enough,
much about the same date, a friend gave me some
copies of the Musical- World, which were written when
Sterndale Bennett was a boy. In this paper, his
beautiful playing of his own compositions at twelve
years old was graphically described; and how, later
on, he went to Leipzig, and how Mendelssohn had
loved and valued him. It is a singular fact that it
is to these two apparently chance influences from
without that I owe the good fortune of having studied
under Sterndale Bennett—for no one whom we knew
believed that an Englishman could be a musician
and in the school where I had spent nine months,
the feeling was distinctly in favour of everything
foreign, and against everything English. I began at
once to beset my mother to send me to London and
;