Walker-My_Musical_Ex.. - Walter Cosand

S/Ji STERNDALE BENNETT
five days. How well I remember every circumstance
of that time—even the fact that, trusting to a warm
and lovely spring, I had brought nothing to London
but summer dresses ; and though it was on the 17th
of May that I had my ^rst lesson, the weather had
suddenly become so cold and rainy, that both my
friend and I were extremely glad to find a good fire
burning in the drawing-room into which we were
ushered. After a minute or two Sterndale Bennett
came in, and in an extremely easy and natural
manner addressed us both, and turning to me, said
something to the effect, ' This is, then, the young lady
who has been waiting so long to have lessons from
me.' He then opened the piano, and asked me to
play to him, and after I had only got through about
four or five bars, exclaimed, 'Why, we have an
enthusiast here !' But I was painfully shy and timid
all we three sisters were hero-worshippers, and I
especially so, and I don't believe that I even ventured
a glance in reply. I certainly made no audible
answer.
A letter written home, which I found a little while
ago, describes my first impressions of Sir Sterndale
Bennett. ' He is very pale, and to my thinking quite
unlike anything you see every day ; very quaint—in
fact, like a face you see in an old picture.' Indeed, I
described him as resembling Ary Schaeffer's Dante,
which I had seen at an exhibition.
The presence of my kind-hearted but very prosaic
;