Walker-My_Musical_Ex.. - Walter Cosand

MV MUSICAL EKPERIENCES
friend, who I knew well looked on the motive of this
visit to London as utterly absurd, made me still more
timid than I would naturally have been ; and Stern-
dale Bennett, finding that I uttered scarcely a word,
did not know, I should say, what to make of me. I
played several times to him, and each time was dis-
turbed by the wish to ask him whether he thought
favourably of me, and the fear lest his reply would
dash my hopes for ever. What with this, and my
natural shyness, I played each time rather worse
instead of better. I thought of writing to him, but
could not bring myself to do this, and I owe it again
to a seeming chance that I did not return home,
believing all my hopes to be a delusion. My friend
luckily took cold just then, and I had to fare off alone
to take my lesson from Sterndale Bennett; and
strangely enough, after playing one movement of
Dussek's Invocation—and as badly as possible, to my
way of thiaking—I forgot myself, and suddenly ex-
claimed, ' It is no use ; I know I shall never be able
to play !' and then I was so ashamed of having said
so much that I would have gone on with the piece,
but for his kind words, and the still kinder tone in
which they were uttered. I cannot recall them
exactly, but they were in the form of a question
' what it was in my playing that I felt was not as I
wished it.' And then I told him how I loved music,
and wondered why I should be able to do' so little,
when so many, to whom it was nothing, were yet able
—