Walker-My_Musical_Ex.. - Walter Cosand

TAUSIG 39
was useless to think any more about the matter. On
hearing this I was in great dismay, when my mother
suddenly proposed that we should visit the artist ; that
she should introduce me to him as. a pupil of Stern-
dale Bennett, and ask if he could not instruct some-
one to sell us a ticket for his performance. We were
told that Tausig was haughty and inaccessible, that if
we went to his rooms he would not receive us ; and,
even supposing that we got an interview, that he
would say, ' selling tickets was no business of his.'
Fortune, however, favoured us in a way of which our
German friends had little thought. Tausig was not
at home when we reached his rooms, but we suc-
ceeded in persuading the woman who opened when we
rung to allow us to come in and await her master's
return in his rooms. We sat there for an hour or
more, and I well remember the impression produced
on me by this first glimpse into an artist's sanctum.
A confusion prevailed here such as I had never before
seen. Unbound volumes of French philosophy
Cousin, for instance—were scattered about on the
broad window-sills. Music of Bach, in more than
one edition, was lying on chau-s near the piano.
There was no look of comfort in the room, no sug-
gestion of the refinement given by a woman's ordering
hand. The atmosphere, nevertheless, wafted in on
me in a subtle and mysterious way the sensation of
a life centred in art—a life whose poetry, comfort, re-
finement, were all comprehended in art.
—