SIR HERBERT S. OAKELEY THE LIFE OF SIR HERBERT STANLEY OAKELEY KNIGHT; HON. COMPOSER OF MUSIC TO H.M. IN SCOTLAND ; EMERITUS PROFESSOR, EDINBURGH ; M.A. OXFORD; D.C.L. TORONTO; LL.D. EDINBURGH, ABERDEEN, GLASGOW; MUS. DOC. OXFORD, EDIN- BURGH, ST. ANDREWS, DUBLIN, CANTERBURY, ADELAIDE; HON. MEMB. PHILHARMONIC, LONDON; FILARMONICA, BOLOGNA; FILARMONICA AND 8. CECILIA, ROME; VICE-PRESIDENT, TRIN. COLL., LONDON COMPILED BY HIS BROTHER EDWARD MURRAY OAKELEY LONDON GEORGE ALLEN, 156, CHARING CROSS ROAD 1904 [All rights reserved] M05 Printed by Hai.i.antynf., Hanson &• Co. At the Ballantyne Press PREFACE Ellesmere in Helps's "Social Pressure" sug- gests that all entertainments, public and private, would be bettered if "bisected." Nor must the entertainments of Literature be exempted from the scope of the dictum ; nay, not even the joys of Music : Oratorios, for instance, and Operas new and old. Much more, then, does prolixity in books about Music and Musicians stand con- demned. "To tell all is to become a bore." The compiler's aim in this short Memoir has been to omit all mere details, while preserving everything that seemed to make for faithful portraiture or general interest. Enough, at any rate, he hopes he has told of a life not poor in interest, and felt by all brought into relation with it to have been one of singular goodness and charm ; enough and not too much to ivi 8829 viii PREFACE attract a circle of readers wider even than the circle of Herbert Oakeley's personal friends and admirers. E. M. O. This book may seem to suffer from a plethora of inverted commas. They are necessary, however, to begin with, to distin- guish exact quotations from my brother's notes or diaries, on which the work is largely founded. CO N T E N T S I. Ealing, Bocking, Preparatory Schools (1S30-1843) II. Rugby, Bath (i 843-1 849) . III. Oxford, Canterbury, etc. (1849-1S55) . 26 IV. Canterbury, Leipzig, Norwich, Hampton Court (1855-185S) .... 48 V. The " Guardian " — Music at Home and Abroad (1858-1866) .... 58 VI. Edinburgh ; the Reid Professorship Election, etc. (1865-1866) . . 109 VII. Edinburgh ; Reid Festivals and other Concerts (1866-1891) . . . 119 VIII. Edinburgh ; Lectures and Addresses (1866-1890) 134 IX. Edinburgh; Organ Recitals (1866-1891) 150 X. St. Andrews, Aberdeen, Glasgow . . 158 XI. Music at Home and Abroad (1867-1872) 167 X CONTENTS CHAP. PAGE XII. St. Niklaus, Geneva, Brighton (1872) . 177 XIII. Some Honours; Three University Com- memorations (1871-1890) . . . 181 XI\'. Music at Home and Abroad (1873-1890) 199 XV. Dover, etc. (1891-1903) .... 223 XVI. Notes on some Compositions (by Divers Writers) . . . . . . 226 Conclusion 245 appendix- List of Published Works . . . 249 Note on Sir Herbert Oakeley's Pianoforte Playing . . . 251 INDEX 253 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Sir Herbert Oakeley {PJiotograviire) . Fro7iiispiece PAGE Lord Valletort's Rooms at Christ Church, Oxford ....... 33 Canterbury and Durham Cathedrals {from models) ....... 39 Salisbury and Lincoln Cathedrals {from f?iodeIs) ....... 105 Herbert S. Oakeley in 1866 . . . . 119 Bach Autograph, B Minor Organ Prelude . 155 Music Class-room Organ, Edinburgh University 157 SIR HERBERT S. OAKELEY CHAPTER I EALING— BOCKING— FIRST SCHOOLS In beginning this record of a life for many years devoted to the cause of music in Scot- land, it will not be unsuitable to mention the curious genealogical fact, that the ancient English stock from which Herbert Oakeley sprung had persistently, since the middle of the eighteenth century, chosen to ally itself with the then far-distant North. Shropshire Oakeleys (cadets of "Oakeley of Oakeley") for three successive generations took to wife re- spectively Aberdeenshire Strachan, Fifeshire Beatson, and Perthshire Murray ; and through the second and also through the third of these marriages the future Edinburgh Professor was a cousin — though somewhat distant, even by the characteristically hospitable reckoning of 2 SIR HERBERT S. OAKELEY the land of cakes and of clans — to the founder o[ his Chair, the late General Robertson Reid. His father, Sir Herbert Oakeley (whose father, Sir Charles, had received a baronetcy for his services as Governor of Madras), was a Student of Christ Church, and obtained his First Class in Litieris H^imanioribus, when only nineteen, in 1810/ He was Domestic Chaplain to the Bishop of London (Dr. Howley, afterwards Archbishop of Canter- bury), V^icar of Ealing from 1822 to 1834, Dean and Rector of Bocking, 1 834-1 845. In 1841 he succeeded his friend, Dr. Lyall, as Archdeacon of Colchester. He died in 1845. Herbert Stanley Oakeley was born in 1830 at Ealing Vicarage. He soon began to dis- close his musical aptitudes ; and when four ^ Other First Class men in this and the next years were John Keble, the author of "The Christian Year"; Sir William Hamilton, the famous Edinburgh Professor; Bishop Coleridge ; and Dr. Hawkins, well known as Provost of Oriel, and still more permanently famous as the writer of a testimonial containing the prophecy that if Arnold were elected to the headmastership of Rugby he would " change the face of education all through the Public Schools of England." EALING 3 years old, being shown the notes on the piano and told what to call them, he could, with- out seeing the keys, name any note or com- bination of notes which was sounded. This sense of absolute pitch is often passed over with less notice than it deserves. If a miracle is "that which occurs very seldom," this gift is certainly miraculous. But perhaps it is no wonder that those who do not possess the power should not be loud in its praises, or should even incline to disparage it. But why is it so rare ? Is the wondrous musical instrument of some three thousand strings — each tuned, thinks Helmholtz, to a certain tone — discovered by Corti in the human ear, more complete in the ears of some few select ones than in the mass of mankind ? The analogy that so strangely subsists between sound and colour seems here to fail, or even to turn to contradiction ; at least if one may assume that the sensation of pitch in the octave answers to the perception of colours in the spectrum. For in that case, while about one pair of eyes in thirty (but of 4 SIR HERBERT S. OAKELEY Quakers' eyes, one pair in seventeen) ^ is colour blind, at least ninety-nine hearers in a hundred are tojie deaf. It is true that the essential difference in character between keys comes in to help many of the "tone deaf." If D be sounded after C (a good time after), only about one in a hundred, I fancy, would recog- nise it as a tone higher. But if a tune played first in the key of C is then played in the key of D, a good many of the ninety and nine unjust ears can recognise a different effect, not referable to the difference of pitch : a change of colour, not merely of shade ; as though the tune, red in C, had become yellow in D. I of course by no means pledge myself to a particular colour of different keys ; a kind of fancifulness which perhaps found a climax in the poet Schubart's comparison of the key of E minor to "a young girl in a white frock with a red rose at her breast " ! My brother, at any rate, possessed both faculties — sensation of pitch and of key — in absolute perfection, as a single anecdote will ^ Traiisaciions of Ophihalniological Soc, 1881, p. 198. EALING 5 show. Entering with him a room where neither of us had before been, I went to the piano and struck a note, A flat. "G," he said to my surprise, for I had never yet known him wrong. I made no remark, but struck with the A flat the other notes of the chord, C and E flat. Then he said : " Ah now, how do you think I know that this piano is half a tone flat ? — The first note was really G, but the chord is the chord of A flat." As a critic at concerts he found this per- ception of pitch very useful, and occasionally amusing. I remember well his question at some concert (about i860) slyly addressed to his next neighbour, the musical critic of the Athencsumy "Is she not singing it in E flat instead of E ? " and the gruff answer, " I haven't the least idea," The Bishop of Colchester, an old friend of his, writes: "I can give an amusing instance of his accuracy of ear. When he was staying with us at High Wych the pig squeaked. He at once cried 'G sharp!' Some one ran to the piano ; and G sharp it was ! " 6 SIR HERBERT S. OAKELEY Herbert Oakeley's intimate friend, Sir Frede- rick Ouseley, was a celebrated possessor of this same power. He could sing any note desired ; and name any note sounded, and that whether it proceeded from the band's blown trumpets, or the family's blown noses, or from any other source of sound whatever ; even in- cluding church bells, whose pitch, in conse- quence of prominent harmonics, is particularly difficult to determine. When quite a child he could play correctly on a keyboard covered with a pocket handkerchief (a trick also of the other child, Herbert Oakeley) ; and by- some such feat he reduced the volubility of Lablache to the two words, " Le Diable ! " In my brother's childhood, Broadwood's pianos were tuned as low as some 432 double vibrations per second for A on the second space in the treble clef. He used to say that his ear retained that pitch throughout life, and that compositions early known to him always sounded unlike themselves when ren- dered at the higher pitch used in England from 1840 to 1890. This seems so curious EALING 7 that it is worth while to quote another equally- well authenticated instance — indeed, two in- stances — of the same experience, resulting from the same faculty. " When about nine, returning one day from a visit to an uncle who lived in the same town as we, and touching our piano, I " (Charles Halle) "said to my father that the pitch of my uncle's piano was a quarter of a tone lower than that of ours, and verification proved me to be correct, to the evident satisfaction of my parents. It became an amusement to them and to their friends to put me in a corner of the room, strike several notes together, some- times the most incongruous and discordant ones, and make me name them, from the lowest upwards, which I invariably accomplished. " This faculty has proved to have one draw- back — that the pitch of that period in Germany, a good half-tone lower than the present one in England, has remained so impressed on my brain, that when I now hear a piece of music for the first time, it seems to me in a higher key than it really is written in ; I hear 8 SIR HERBERT S. OAKELEY it in C when it is in B, and have to trans- late it, so to say. My friend Joachim shares this peculiarity with me, and it is now and then very perplexing." ^ In 1834 the family went to a new home, as Sir Herbert was appointed Dean of Bocking, near Braintree. The picturesque old Deanery they found in but poor repair, and Lady Oakeley recognised on the nursery walls the self-same papers whose patterns had interested or teased her in her own childhood ; for, thirty years earlier, her father, Lord Charles Murray Aynsley, had held this same living. The chief event of Herbert's childhood was his first hearing of a Cathedral service. His parents made a journey to Lichfield, far dis- tant in those pre-railway days from Bocking. Their vehicle was the old-fashioned "chariot," pronounced "charrot," with "dicky" and "im- perial," and post-horses. "The modern reader," says Mr. Ruskin, " may perhaps have as much difficulty in realising these savagely and clumsily locomotive periods, though so recent, as any ^ " Life of Sir Charles Halle," by his son, page 8. BOCKING 9 aspects of migratory Saxon or Goth." And certainly this is the modern reader's misfortune ; sadly aggravated too, since Mr. Ruskin wrote, by the advent of the still more modern loco- motive period of so-called "cars." Their route lay through Kirby, Market Har- borough, &c., and the return journey to Essex was made by way of Leicester, Huntingdon, and Cambridge. There Sir Herbert alighted from the " dicky," where he was sitting with his little eldest daughter, to see the inn and hear the news. She still (1904) remembers his words when he returned, and how strange and almost incredible, that 21st of June 1837, they sounded : " Well, a young Queen is now our Sovereign." For the black-edged newspaper in his hand announced " the demise of King William the Fourth." The boy never forgot his first entry into the then disfigured but always sublime cathedral at Lichfield. The choral music there was probably above the low level of the time, and the child, accustomed to no ritual more advanced than the squalling of village children to the accompaniment lo SIR HERBERT S. OAKELEY of tlute, clarinet, 'cello, and serpent,^ found the Lichfield singing a revelation, but also a mystery. " I took the gilt and white paint of the organ for ivory and gold, and good Mr. Spofforth — the hidden worker of miracles, who seemed to play two organs at once, and, for all one knew, blew the bellows also — for some saint or demigod." He remembered always that the chant for the Psalms of that twenty-eighth evening of May 1837 was the one called " Windsor," in B fiat, which in his own Psalter he has set to Psalm 81. In his ninth year, under the careful and loving supervision of his mother, who taught him how to put his ideas on paper, he made his first attempt at a written composition — an anthem, ending with David's lament over Absalom. In 1839 he was sent to Brentwood school. Its chief attractions to him were pianoforte lessons, taken from Mr. Coombe of Chelmsford, ' At Bocking, the village band accompanied the service till 1840, when the Dean — and his young son also — had the satis- faction of seeing an organ take the place of the so-called " Church instruments " of the past. PREPARATORY SCHOOLS ii afterwards organist at Bocking ; and still more the music at the services at Brentwood church. Here the Lichfield mystery was partly solved, when, after many barren Sundays, his master at last allowed him the fruition of a peep at the organ keyboard, and he discovered at a glance that the strange instrument possessed the well known sharps and flats of the pianoforte — and, ergo, that he could play it I (Accordingly, our eldest brother's diary records under 26th March 1842 that " Herby played on the organ in church ; the people were all astonished." And very little later he was entrusted with sole charge of the music on all Saints' days that chanced to fall in his holidays.) The organist, a lady saint this time, was playing as her final volun- tary the popular old tune "Helmsley" (" Lo, He comes "), and, as he entered the organ loft, St. Cecilia — or whoever she was — had her hands on the final chord of B flat ; " which sounded just like the pianoforte chord, and I returned to school quite satisfied." After two years at this and another school he was sent with his brother, Henry Evelyn 12 SIR HERBERT S. OAKELEY Oakeley/ to Mr. Everard's at Brighton, where he throve on "a hberal diet" of music and athletics ; often visiting St, George's chapel organ, and the old cricket ground north of the Steyne, where "Kent v. Surrey" and other great matches used to be played. Indeed, for a time Box and Pilch, Mynn and Lillywhite became his heroes, almost usurping the pedestals afterwards assigned to Bach and Beethoven, Handel and Mozart. But for some months both Box and Bach were made impossible by his dislocating his little finger whilst keeping wicket for his school. The late Lord Rosslyn, a friend of his at this Brighton school, described how late at night he and my brother would stealthily creep down from their dormitory to the master's draw- ine-room, and Herbert would move his hands over the keys of the piano, pretending to play, while the other boy (whose versatile character may be guessed to have contained even then a strong dash of romance) sat by and watched in awed silence the weird childish incantation. * Now Sir H. Evelyn Oakeley. CHAPTER II RUGBY— BATH, 1 843-1849 In August 1843 he went to Rugby, to the School House, the house of the headmaster, Dr. Tait, who, twenty-five years later, became the first of three successive Rugby Archbishops of Canterbury ; the intimate friend at Balliol of our uncle Frederick Oakeley, afterwards Canon in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Westminster, who had been the best musician in his o-eneration of the family : it is said on good authority that " the organist of Lichfield Cathedral was wont to allow him, when only eight years of age, to play the chant in the Psalms on week-days." He was remarkable too in other ways, and ever a laudatis laudat2ts ; Cardinal Newman describes him in his "Apologia" as "a man of elegant genius, of classical mind, of rare talent in literary composi- tion ; he was almost a typical Oxford man." And Mr. Gladstone wrote, "He gathered round him a congregation " (when incumbent of Margaret 14 SIR HERBERT S. OAKELEY Street Chapel, the germ of All Saints') "the most devout and hearty that I, for one, have ever seen in any community of the Christian world." Archbishop Tait wrote after his death, " I owed to your uncle more than perhaps to any man ; he took me under his care, and helped me when I was an unknown undergraduate. I have a dis- tinct remembrance at this moment of him in the Master of Balliol's study, when I was examined for Matriculation, and he never ceased all through our Oxford days to be my kind helper. It was a ereat erief to me when our intercourse was so greatly interfered with by the step through which — thouQ^h followino" conscience — he sacrificed so many bright earthly prospects, and gave himself to a system for which he was too good ! At every trial of my life he was true to me, and I never failed to feel deep affection for him." At Rugby began a more interesting time for Herbert Oakeley ; but the usual happiness of life at a Public School was in his case spoilt soon after he went there, by his loss of both father and mother within fifteen months. This to him involved, as it generally must to a clergyman's RUGBY 15 children, loss of home as well as of parents ; and though an elder sister did her best to fulfil the absent mother's part to the poor scattered brood, the calamity cast a deep shadow over his youth and manhood. His return in that orphaned state to school — to a Rugby much rougher than now, the Rugby of " Flashman " and his set, as well as of " Tom Brown," " Harry East," and "Arthur" — was a hard trial to a boy of his sensitive tem- perament. Even music seemed now to depress rather than comfort ; especially as he found little musical sympathy, a thing which he was always most eager for, and, while his mother lived, had never found wanting. " Of all types of humanity, those w"ho are possessed of artistic dispositions are notoriously most liable to an absorbing thirst for sympathy ; which is sometimes interpreted, by those who are not artistic, as a mere love of appreciation or notoriety."^ This "thirst" was certainly a leading feature of my brother's character. Nor was the natural but unfair misinterpretation of it altogether wanting in his experience. ^ " The Art of Music," by Sir Hubert Parry, chapter i. i6 SIR HERBERT S. OAKELEY A few kindred spirits at Rugby — one of the masters " who always used to ask for the open- ing movement of Handel's * Saul ' overture," and a few boys, especially C. A. Barry, who twenty years afterwards took his place as correspondent to the Guardian — helped to comfort him. And the " Big School " organ — then but a sorry " kist o' whistles " indeed — some chapel services taken for Mr. J. H. Walker the organist, and occasional windfalls like being asked to accompany the songs in " As You Like It" (acted by the boys), saved him from utter musical destitution. However, throughout his life the Rugby "seed- time " yielded " Year by year a richer store" of happiness, due to friendships formed in the old School House ; and his tune,^ composed long afterwards for the hymn just quoted, records and repeats with heightened expression the affection for Rugby which so largely prompted and 1 Called " Clifton College," and written for the hymn-book of that school — " The Rugby of the West," as a competent authority has designated it. RUGBY 17 permeated the words. One cannot, by the way, read that other Hne of this hymn — " All the good we here have gained " — without recalling what deep meaning it must have had to the writer, James Buckoll. For he was a Rugby master from before the coming of Arnold till after the departure of Temple ! This "seed-time" of forty-five years was certainly in Public School history a remarkable one indeed ! His hymn has attained wide acceptance, and with Sir Herbert Oakeley's setting has travelled far — on the broad back of " Hymns Ancient and Modern " — and is now sung in most English- singing countries.^ But this treasure, like others which she has eventually shared with the world, Rugby counts "first her own." In spite of Herbert Oakeley's early loss of parents and home, " The spell of home affection " (another felicitous phrase of Mr. Buckoll's) did not lose its potency as a memory and a motive throughout his whole life. ^ "Hymns Ancient and Modern," Nos. 576, 577. E i8 SIR HERBERT S. OAKELEY As my readers and I shall only casually revisit Rugby again after the present chapter, I shall here refer to the great occasion — in her annals — of the school concert in December 1 869, when in honour of Dr. Temple, who had just been ap- pointed Bishop of Exeter, Mr. James Rhoades's goodbye Ode was sung to Herbert Oakeley's music. To quote the School Magazine, The Meteor: — "The scene which followed the last piece but one almost baffles description. The assembled multitude rose to their feet to hear the Ode in honour of Dr. Temple. This was a simple, earnest poem by one Old Rugbeian, set to music by another ; and both words and music were admirably well suited to the solemn occasion. Dugdale's singing of the solo was all that could be wished, and it is needless to say that the chorus joined in with the most extraordinary fervour. At the conclusion of the Ode Dr. Temple rose, and with visible signs of strug- gling emotions within expressed in brief and manly words, which sank deep into the hearts of all present, his feeling of gratitude and encouragement at the words that he had RUGBY 19 heard sung.^ Nothing remained now but to sing with hoarse voices and dimmed eyes the National Anthem ; which was followed by cheering more prolonged and vigorous than any we ever heard in Big School. So ended a scene which none of those present will ever forget." The Ode which had the honour of suggest- ing "encouragement" to one of the least despondent of Englishmen is well worthy of reproduction here. It ran as follows — all the more trippingly too in its neat-fitting musical dress : Master, best beloved and best, Ours for ever, as to-night. Hands at parting may be pressed, Tears reluctant dim the sight ; But, where'er thy name be known, Rugby hails thee first her own. Yes, she hails thee loud and long, Ere the kindly hour departs, Once again with shout and song. Evermore with loyal hearts — Hearts too full to sing or say All their love and loss to-day. ^ His exact words were : " I can never forget that the last words Rugby spoke to me were an encouragement to aim high." 20 SIR HERBERT S. OAKELEY Much thou'st taught us ; see ! we keep, Noblest of thy counsels, one — Not to waver, not to weep When there's duty to be done. Staunch we stand, O Master, see, Ready e'en to part from thee ! Wider fields await thee now, Richer corn-land, bleaker fen ; Forth to sweeten and to sow Haste, O chief of husbandmen ! Where thou treadest still to bring Days of happy harvesting. England, take from us to-day One man more of mighty mould. Could we think to cheat thee ? Nay, Such thy hero-type of old. Strong and tender now, as then, Joy of youth and tower of men. Must we lose him ? Must he go ? Weak and selfish thought, away ! This at least 'tis ours to show, This our praise shall all men say — \Vhereso' honoured, loved or known, Rugby hailed him first her own. Leaving Rugby in 1S46, the subject of this memoir went to a private tutor at Bath. The Rev. E. Simms, with whom our eldest brother, Sir Charles, was already a pupil, was an excel- lent teacher, but his views on music — if he had BATH 21 any — had been corrupted by our well meaning guardian, who assured him that the musical proclivities of which the younger brother was suspected must be checked if possible ; ^ and added the warning, that if he did chance to play truant, he would probably be discovered in the nearest organ loft. This forecast was soon fulfilled to the letter. After a fortniorht's dose of classics and mathematics, the pupil decamped during school hours, and was run to earth at a choir practice at Christ Church, Montpelier ; where the attractions were a good organ, a fair choir, and above all an excellent and friendly organist, Mr. Vincent, the father of the esteemed Dr. Charles Vincent of a later day. What with Mr. Vincent and other tillers of the soil, the crop of "musical happenings"^ was far larger at Bath than at Rugby ; it now possessed, too, the appetising pungency of for- bidden fruit. To Bath came occasionally that great pioneer 1 It must be remembered that our uncle did but share the almost universal opinion of the time about the dangers of a musical bent. ^ To use a favourite Viticentian phrase. 22 SIR HERBERT S. OAKELEY of orchestral music ;in England, Mons. Julien, resplendent with gay-coloured waistcoat, gemmed baton, and velvet chair. His programmes con- sisted mainly of dance music or operatic excerpts, but also included some pieces of a higher stamp ; especially two Beethoven movements, the allegrettos from the seventh and eighth sym- phonies, both exquisitely performed by his band. This at least was something worth playing truant for ; and more than could be expected in those dark ages, long before the day of Manns and Halle, Richter and Henry Wood. Once Sims Reeves appeared at Bath, and sane Edofardo's orgeat scene in Lucia ; once also Grisi and Mario. But the greatest event was the coming of Jenny Lind, then at the height of her fame and powers. She repro- duced some of her operatic triumphs, including Agatha's heavenly scena (and the prayer) in Freischutz} and some Swedish airs. The effect produced on the young musician could be * Mr. Klein describes in "Thirty Years of Musical Life in London " how he heard her sing this prayer at a Norwich concert. " She was carried away by her emotion to such an extent, that she actually fell on her knees on the platform." BATH 23 compared, he used to say, only with one other musical experience, that of hearing Liszt for the first time at Rome in 1864. Indeed, from that moment he never wavered in his alle- giance — the word is no whit too strong — to that wondrously endowed Queen of Song, whose wide empire over the hearts of men included not only all the musicians and all the populace, but also many men of intellect distinguished in their generation for anything but music. Two of these proselytes of the gate, Archbishop Temple and Dean Stanley, I have heard speak of Jenny Lind as enthusiastically as any musician could. They appreciated her character and — more or less — her genius ; ^ though the Dean confessed his difficulty of telling one tune from another "except God Save the Queen, which one knows because every one stands up " ; and the Archbishop, asked at a Rugby concert if he did not find a certain Cantata (of porten- tous length and dulness) "somewhat tiring," ^ " Her praises were sounded everywhere," writes Hans Christian Andersen, " the praises not of the artist only, but of the woman. The two united awoke for her a true enthusiasm." 24 SIR HERBERT S. OAKELEY disclosed his attitude to the Art in the words, " Oh, I would as soon listen to this as to anything else!" (But he had travelled from Lambeth that day, after giving his famous Judgment on the use of altar lights, &c., and had also presided at a meeting three hours long of the Governing Body of Rugby School !) After the Lind concert, Herbert Oakeley, wild with enthusiasm, sent the singer a note — in his best French — of rapturous gratitude, with a copy of his first published composition, "The Rugby Waltzes," and received in answer her thanks in a few words of the same language, preserved amongst his chief treasures till his dying day. When reminded twenty years later of the incident, she said that though it was impossible to answer the hundreds of letters she used to get, she felt she could not leave this schoolboy's genuine enthusiasm without response. He used to quote with much gusto instances of the admiration inspired by Jenny Lind : how, for instance, Grisi, once her rival, long thought by all, not excluding herself, the greatest possible " Norma" that could be heard in the part, owned BATH 25 after hearing Jenny Lind that "there are after all two Normas, and I cannot say which is best." Charles Halle wrote, about the time of the Bath episode, " Never have I been moved by any singer as by her, and never again, I feel certain, shall I be. She possesses not only true art and enthusiasm and real but unconscious inspiration, but also perfection of execution in itself a marvel ; and one may say without fear of contradiction, we shall never see her like again." ^ Much the same said Mendelssohn: " There will not be born in a whole century another being so gifted as she ! She is as great an artist as ever lived ; and the greatest I have known ! " In fact — to repeat in the words of one of the most fascinating of Memoirs what I have already said — " The admiration for Jenny Lind was not a mere popular fever : its peculiar force lay in this, that it held enthralled the highest and best minds in Europe. It was the men of genius who recognised in her something akin to themselves."" 1 " Life of Sir Charles Halle," p. 113. 2 " Jenny Lind the Artist," Holland and Rockstro, p. 4. CHAPTER III OXFORD, 1849-1855 In 1849 Herbert Oakeley went up to Christ Church, and began " those four incomparable years" of University residence which are to so many, as to him, the happiest of Hfe. At his Matriculation, he records being pre- sented, according to ancient custom, with the University Statutes; and "qua Baronetti filius " with a better bound copy than the one usually provided ; further enriched, too, by his own charmingly irrelevant inscription: "October 17, 1849: the day Chopin died"! Christ Church was at this time ruled — many still live to add, with a rod of iron — by "the stern captain" of Ruskin's " Praeterita," "who with rounded brow and glittering dark eye led in his thunderous old Latin the responses of the morning prayer." Few Christ Church men of the time can forget the rasping and indig- nantly remonstrant tones of his " Te rogamus, OXFORD 27 audi nos." And those who, like Oakeley, were endowed with the excellent gift of the mimic, felt (in the words of one of them) that " this phenomenon awakened our dormant faculty : such a Heaven-sent subject is not to be lighted upon every day." So there arose quite a school of mimicry of Dean Gaisford — as in later years of Dr. Goulburn at Rugby ; and he is thus almost as well known to a younger generation as to his own. Forty years earlier our father and his friend Mr. (afterwards Bishop) Coleridge had been two of his favourite pupils. He used constantly to mistake for each other their two sons, Herbert Oakeley and William Coleridge, greatly to their friends' amusement and to their own embarrass- ment, A bit of conversation at the Dean's table has survived, but it needs the vox viva of the mimic. It was the first occasion of my brother's dining at the Deanery. The host glares at the two friends, as one not sure of his man, and puts out a feeler to Coleridge : " Where are your rooms, Mr. Oakeley.-*" "The worst rooms in Christ Church, Mr. Dean, — the top of No. 7 in 28 SIR HERBERT S. OAKELEY Peckwater." ^ "Those were my rooms, sir!" After a pause, disturbed only by some tittering and choking of the other victim, (to Oakeley) " What will you take, Mr. Coleridge ? " Oakeley (distant from the meats and otherwise con- fused) chances the reply, " Mutton, if you please, Mr. Dean." Gaisford, with shout of triumph, " No mutton here, sir!" (The dish was lamb.) Neither Herbert Oakeley nor his elder brother, Sir Charles, seem to have come in for the rever- sion of the old friendship between the Dean and our father ; for he appeared to delight in worry- ing both brothers, rusticating the elder for some trifling infraction of college rules, and very nearly sending down the younger for presuming to ask leave to attend the (jreat Duke of Wei- lington's funeral, in answer to which request "he simply shouted 'No, sir!'" About the same time he outraged the feelings of William Arnold (brother of Matthew Arnold, and father of Hugh Oakeley Arnold-Forster, now Secretary for War), a great friend of Charles 1 OakeUys rooms ; Coleridge answers for him. OXFORD 29 Oakeley, by blankly refusing him leave to go up to town to see his brother off to Australia. In some matters — for instance, in the giving and withholding of studentships — his administra- tion must have been extraordinary indeed. He absolutely refused to nominate T, E. Brown to one, though he was perhaps the most brilliant undergraduate of his time, and had just taken a double first in " Greats " ; and when urged to do so by all the resident students, tutors and censors included, he replied : " A Servitor never has been elected a Student ; ergo, he never shall be!" In another case, he is said to have sent for some one to nominate him for a student- ship, but finding that he was out hunting, to have changed his mind ! But this story may be more or less mythical. " Nevertheless, in spite of all his brusqueness and even boorishness, the Dean sometimes showed genuine kindness of heart, and was loyally devoted to Christ Church, and so was on the whole not unpopular in The House." "The House," not "The College," say the orthodox, lest they be suspected of harbouring 30 SIR HERBERT S. OAKELEY the portentous solecism " Christ Church College," pardonable only to the ignorant at home, though even to the learned abroad. A learned foreign University, however, v^ent even farther astray, by announcing certain '' ex Aede ChristV guests in 1888 (thinking to take these heretics tolerantly at their own valuation) as " members of the Christian Church" — " della Chiesa cristiana" — to the confusion of "ancient and religious" Foundations represented by others of the Eng- lish delegates at Bologna. Herbert Oakeley's feeling towards Christ Church was very much that of Mr. Ruskin, and, had his genius led him to literature in- stead of music, he might have written the beautiful chapter in "Praeterita" called "Christ Church Choir." For the "petrified music" of architecture, indeed, he had a peculiar aptitude, evinced in his Christ Church days by his be- ginning whilst an undergraduate to amass the unique collection of English and foreign Cathe- dral models^ (how Ruskin would have loved ' Made by a true artist, Mr. Gorringe of Cheltenham. OXFORD 31 them!) described in the Stra7id Magazine of July 1900. In his time at Oxford, as in Mr. Ruskin's, there was a large measure of truth in the generous hyperbole that "on the whole, of im- portant places and services for the Christian souls of England, the choir of Christ Church was virtually the navel, and seat of life. There remained in it the traditions of Saxon, Norman, Elizabethan, religion unbroken, — the memory of loyalty, the reality of learning ; and in nominal obedience at least, and in the heart of them with true docility, stood every morning, to be animated for the highest duties owed their country, the noblest of English youth. In this choir, written so closely and consecutively with indisputable British history, met every morning a congregation representing the best of what Britain had become, — orderly, as the crew of a man-of-war, in the goodly ship of their temple. Every man in his place, according to his rank, age, and learning ; every man of sense or heart there recognising that he was either fulfilling, or being prepared to fulfil, the gravest duties 32 SIR HERBERT S. OAKELEY required of Englishmen. There, in his stall, sat the greatest divine of England ; under his commandant niche, her greatest scholar ; the group of noblemen gave, in the Marquis of Kildare, Earl of Desart, Lord Emlyn, and Frank Charteris, afterwards Lord Wemyss, the brightest types of high race and active power. For all that I saw, and was made to think, in that cathedral choir, I am most thankful to this day."^ With the requisite changes of names, this represents exactly the Christ Church of Herbert Oakeley's time, and his attitude towards it. Sir Charles Alderson, one of his contemporaries at the University, says of him, " He had a niche of his own in a group of very brilliant fellow- students, among whom were included not a few who afterwards became eminent in letters and politics. In this circle his quiet humour, refined taste, and musical genius combined to make him a most attractive personality." And another friend. Lord Mount Edgcumbe, writes : " Herbert had been at Oxford, I think, some ' " Praeterita," vol. i. chap. xi. — a£ ^ '^ OXFORD 33 two years before I matriculated, and I found him in the set into which I naturally fell, which included Lothian, Carnarvon, Sandon (Har- rowby), Fred. Lygon (Beauchamp), Wilbraham Egerton (Egerton of Tatton), (Lord) Charles Bruce, Raglan Somerset, Edward Legge, W. Warren Vernon, Andrew Cockerell, and some others ; among whom he could always reckon upon an appreciative audience in his rooms, as also in my own, where I kept a piano for his benefit — or rather for ours, though no one except him played on it." His last habitat at Christ Church was No. 8 (the corner first floor) of " Peckwater," where there was room for the old Bocking Broadwood of low pitch — now equipped with organ pedals — and for other household gods. He found the choral music at Christ Church "woefully disappointing," and "as matters be- came steadily worse," he at last begged the Senior Censor to allow him to absent himself from the Sunday afternoon service, "when the noise was at its heic^ht." The Censor aave the required permission, remarking in the c 34 SIR HERBERT S. OAKELEY vernacular tongue (hardly suited to his pro- found scholarship, curious intellectual power, and brilliant conversation), " Well, to a musical man the singing must be " 'orrid ! " Certainly, if the followinor sincrular statements of a recent o o chronicler^ are correct, we begin to understand how the "woefully disappointing" state of things deplored by Oakeley had come to pass : — " There was once, to be sure, a Dean of Christ Church who wrote charming glees and catches, and respectable Church music ; but these solecisms of Dean Aldrich were expiated by his successor, Cyril Jackson, who pro- nounced that a boy ' with no more ear nor a stone, nor no more voice nor an ass ' would make an excellent chorister; and by Gaisford, who appointed as singing men worn-out scouts and bed -makers." Mr. Tuckwell goes on to remark that music, in Oxford generally, had at this time but few votaries. "In the 'twenties and 'thirties there were probably not half-a- dozen amateurs in Oxford." Max M tiller, "fresh from musical Leipzig," tells much the same ' Tuckwell's " Reminiscences of Oxford," chapter vi. OXFORD 35 story in his " Auld Lang Syne"; as indeed does Halle, in his Autobiography, of England at large. The Professor of Music was Sir Henry Bishop, the versatile composer or adapter of some ninety operas — one of which contained the ever popular melody, " Home, Sweet Home" (which though called by him "a Sicilian air," is thought to have been his own composition) — not to mention his excellent part songs, and much other music besides. He had held the Reid Professorship at Edinburgh from 1841 to 1843, and succeeded Dr. Crotch in 1848 as Professor at Oxford, "with a salary of £\2 a year ; appearing only at Commemoration to play the ramshackle old organ in the Theatre."^ In 1855, on the death of Sir H. Bishop, Sir Frederick Ouseley was elected to the vacant Chair of Music. He had graduated both in Music and Arts — probably the first amateur who had taken the former degree. Though non- resident, he came up often to superintend ex- aminations, or deliver lectures, which were much ' Tuckwell's " Reminiscences of Oxford," chapter vi. 36 SIR HERBERT S. OAKELEY enlivened by Mr. Parratt's " illustrations " on organ or piano, and also by a band. He held his office with distinction for thirty-four years, and introduced some great reforms, the most important of which was the preliminary ex- amination in general culture ; from which music, alone of University subjects, had been before exempted. His death in 1889 was a great loss to the cause of Church music ; and as an ex- tempore player of fugues and the like, he was in my brother's very wide experience equalled in this country only by Dr. S. S. Wesley. At Magdalen the popular Mr. Blyth was organist, preparing the way for his two great successors, Stainer and Parratt. One of Oxford's chief musicians at this time was Dr. Stephen Elvey, brother of Sir George, and like him formerly a Canterbury chorister ; composer of some particularly smooth and sym- metrical chants, and editor of an excellently "pointed" Psalter. He was now University organist. Herbert Oakeley took from him lessons in harmony; and "summoned by those mellow- toned bells," often attended the evening service OXFORD 37 at New College. For there also Elvey was organist, and though by having lost his right leg debarred from playing rapid pedal passages, gave good readings of the slower fugues of "the 48"; and even managed to play with effect the great five-part C sharp minor, No. 4 of Part I., called by that excellent critic of architecture and music, Mr. H. S. Statham, "the finest piece of pianoforte music in ex- istence " ; something perhaps of an hyperbole, like Mr. Ruskin's account of Christ Church Choir above quoted ; but, even if so, none the worse for that, in a country which still needs waking up to realise the sad curtailment of its pleasures of life due to its want of appreciation of Bach ; a country one of whose favourite professors and song writers not so very long ago thus summed up the characteristics of him whom Schumann has called "almost the Messiah of Music" — "Bach's vocabulary was limited, his accent provincial, and his style obscure " ! The University Musical Society, of which Oakeley was Secretary, used to give concerts in the larcre room at the Star Hotel ; and it S8 SIR HERBERT S. OAKELEY was either here or at the Town Hall that Dr. Elvey, the conductor, at the part of the Halle- lujah Chorus where the trebles reach the high G, in his excitement achieved bathos instead of climax by stamping himself (with the wooden leg ?) through an insecure platform, and disappearing temporarily to the shades beneath. Here my brother made his appearance as pianist, playing Mendelssohn's "Andante and Rondo Capriccioso," and some of the then recently published "Songs without Words." He also introduced there some original pieces of his own (one of which — a Minuet — was subsequently published in his Pianoforte Suite, Op. 27). Mr. Tuckwell, author of the "Re- miniscences " quoted above, thus refers to the occasion in a letter to my brother written in December 1900: — " I remember one of your earliest perform- ances, if I mistake not, at the ' Amateur ' ; you called it ' Hommage a Handel,' and old Elvey quitted his conductor's stool to sit amongst the audience and listen to you with an approving Durham Cathedral From model made for H. S. O. by Mu. Cokkim;!': Canterbury Cathedral I-rom model made for H. S. O. by Mr. Gorki nge CANTERBURY— DURHAM 39 air. I find fewer even than formerly rendering homage to Handel to-day." Herbert Oakeley spent many of his vacations under the hospitable roof of the Dean of Canterbury and Mrs. Lyall, at Chart Rectory or at Canterbury Deanery, whence in 1849 his sister, Mrs. Drummond, was married in the Cathedral. Here his taste for Church music and archi- tecture, of which the foundation had been laid at Lichfield, was — to use a metaphor smacking (often unsuitably) of bricks and mortar — "cemented." Entrusted with the Dean's key, he loved to wander by moonlight through the glorious building, from Becket's crown to the west end. Its services made him intimate with almost the whole range of our Cathedral music. The choir, he used to say (after visiting all the Cathedrals) was second only to Durham. Those two great churches were then musically pre- eminent, while elsewhere there prevailed a laxity now almost inconceivable. He recalled as typical of the general lowness of standard how once the beginning of Psalm xii., " Help me, 40 SIR HERBERT S. OAKELEY Lord, for there is not one godly man left," quavered forth by some half-dozen voices more or less out of tune, "fell on the ear with dismal significance." In fact, the music often damped the devotional feelings excited by the architecture. In one famous instance, by the way, laxity itself gave genius its cue. In 1833, at the Church's greatest festival, at morning service in Hereford Cathedral, there was in the lay clerks' seats only "one godly man left" — and he was an amateur — to wit, the Dean's butler! But the difficulty had been foreseen ; and the result of the foresight may be read in Dr. Wesley's note to that most beautiful anthem, " Blessed be the God and Father." "This anthem was composed, by re- quest," (the Dean's?) "for the service on Easter day at Hereford Cathedral, on which occasion only trebles and a single bass voice were available." Even at Durham and Canterbury there were some inconjjruous elements. At the latter much scandal was caused by certain members of the Cathedral staff, who, when the clergy and choir began to conform to the ancient custom of enter- ing in procession, showed their fear of ritualistic CANTERBURY— DURHAM 41 tendencies by robing apart, and marching in separately, not to say defiantly and truculently, and through a different door from their col- o leagues. And at Durham, where it was the fine old custom of the place for the Canon in residence to show hospitality to any not un- promising looking stranger who appeared at the Sunday service, the most solemn parts of the ritual were apt to be marred by the strident voice of the verger — " Canon B.'s compliments, and he would be glad to see you at dinner this evening." The organist at Canterbury was the venerable Mr. Jones, "a perfect accompanist"; the pre- centor, the excellent and jovial Mr. Stratton ; who instigated Herbert Oakeley to try his hand at various forms of composition, including the now well-known E flat service and the still more widely current Quadruple chant for the 78th Psalm — "the one and only quadruple chant," as the late Dr. E. J. Hopkins of the Temple called it ; with its splendid effects, then quite a novel experiment, of harmony and unison ; which has remained in use at Canterbury with- out intermission from then (1853) ^^^^ "^^ (1904)- 42 SIR HERBERT S. OAKELEY Mr. Stratton used laughingly to say that, were it dropped, "there would be mutiny in Precincts and City." In the Long Vacation of 1850 Oakeley made a stay of some months at Durham, accompanied by his lifelong friend from Rugby days, Gregory Smith, Hertford and Ireland scholar; afterwards Hon. Canon of Worcester and Vicar of Great Malvern. Dean Waddington was then the stately head of the Chapter ; Bishop Phillpotts of Exeter, Canon Douglas, Canon Townsend, the Rev. J. B. Dykes were among the most prominent members of the Cathedral body. Dykes was Precentor ; a great musician, who has enriched our modern hymn-books with many treasures. But the devotional seriousness of his genius was by no means incompatible with the enjoyment of a good joke. Indeed, when at Cambridofe he was famed as a sino-er of comic songs ! But it need hardly be added that /lis comedy differed /o/o caelo from the trash that often usurps the name, in being both really comic and also musically interesting. Those who have been lucky enough to hear DURHAM 43 the performances in this kind of another Cam- bridge wit and musician, Mr. Sedley Taylor, will own that the thing is possible. I must not mention Mr. Taylor without expressing the gratitude we owe him for calling attention to Bellermann's curious find — in an old edition of Ouintilian, of all places in the world — of one of the few contemporary descriptions extant of Bach's playing. Ouintilian illustrates the capacity for doing several different things at the same time by the instance of a cithara player who played and sang and beat time all at once. The editor, Gesner (headmaster of the Thomasschule), annotates thus: "All these feats, O Quintilian, thou wouldst say were but of little account, couldst thou see Bach, my colleague at the Thomasschule, at the organ ; with hands going one way and hurrying feet the other, drawing forth whole troops, so to say, of the most diverse yet mutually agreeing sounds ; him, I say, couldst thou see, doing what several cithara players and six hundred pipers could not effect, and, besides, keeping all in order about him, and of thirty or forty musicians, recalling one 44 SIR HERBERT S. OAKELEY to time and accent by a nod, another by a stamp of the foot, a third by a menacing finger. I am in general a great admirer of antiquity, but I hold that my Bach contains within himself many Orpheuses and twenty Arions." For the whole description — too long to quote here — I must refer lovers of music to Mr. Sedley Taylor's excellent little book, "John Sebastian Bach." Mr. Dykes told my brother many good stories, but I remember only one (and that incompletely) about a recent missionary expedition of Canon Townsend and his wife and others to Rome, with a view of converting or at least modifying the belief of Pio Nono ; the Canon was describ- ing on his return with post-prandial exuberance the ambitious views and conciliatory language of the mission; ''we proposed to yield" so and so "if the Vatican would relinquish say the doctrine of Trans ," when at that point Henry of Exeter asked in his blandest and sweetest tones, "Am I to understand that you are speaking of yourself and Mrs. Townsend ?" " Bidding adieu to the quaintly picturesque city, Toledo-like, with its river winding round DURHAM— LOGIERAIT 45 the peninsula from which the rugged Minster looks down," he and his friend went on to the North, visiting his cousins at Mortonhall, near Edinburgh, and then seeking the Highland village of Logierait in the Atholl country, within easy reach of Kinnaird House, the home of the Hon. F. C. Drummond and his wife, Herbert Oakeley's sister; that "beauti- ful place in the midst of woods near Dunkeld on the Tay,"^ where some years before the good - humoured Duller family had been by turns amused and worried by the scathing wit of their temporary inmate, the dyspeptic sage Thomas Carlyle. Here the friends read and walked for some weeks. The "Electra" of Sophocles formed part of the work for Oxford " Smalls " that year. A beautifully written notebook on that Play still testifies to sound work done by Oake- ley at Logierait. But seldom, perhaps, has "... sad Electra's poet - had the power " ^ Froude's "Carlyle," vol. i. p. i8o j'^^. ^ Those who recognise the misapplication here will allow it to be justifiable. 46 SIR HERBERT S. OAKELEY to suggest to any of his readers so many reflections on the Art of Music as found their way into this small volume. " Reading be- tween " the lines " High Zeus in heaven is king, To whom thine all too bitter wrath committing, Neither forget thy foes nor hate them overmuch," ^ this student passes at once to the 37th Psalm — "Commit thy way to Him," and so on to "Oh, rest in the Lord" and Mendelssohn. And who but Handel should be suggested to him by the speech about the chariot race ? "Imitated," says the notebook, "from Homer; Sophocles was no plagiarist, but all the poets copy from Homer, just as musicians do from the greatest of composers," &c. Another Logie- rait notebook survives, labelled " Ecclesiastical History"; its texts are not given, but the commentary consists entirely of lists of stops of organs, English and foreign ! The next two Long Vacations were spent abroad with Oxford and other friends. Oakeley ^ Soph. El. 176, Whitelaw's Translation. OXFORD 47 took his degree in 1853, t)ut found it hard to leave beloved Oxford and the many friends still there, and so lingered on some time longer; not without hopes, too, of an All Souls' fellow- ship, and also of another coveted prize, the University Tennis^ racquet. Both honours, how- ever, fell to his friend, Godfrey Lushington of Balliol. ^ Bien entendu — real Tennis. No other claimant to the title existed in 1853. CHAPTER IV CANTERBURY— LEIPZIG, etc. ; 1855-1S58 At this time my brother purposed taking Holy Orders, and whilst at Canterbury used to read with Arthur Stanley, then one of the Canons. He happened to go "a theological walk" with him on the day when Tennyson's poem " Charge of the Light Brigade " had appeared in the Exammer} and the ever discursive teacher began — by way of interlude, or perhaps illus- tration — to recite the lines, and gradually re- membered them all. The friendship begun at Canterbury continued till Stanley's lamented death ; only a short time before which he in- terested himself in suggesting an epitaph on my brother's favourite Pomeranian dog "Floss" ; responding after a moment's thought to his request with the extempore pentameter, "Flos Regum Arthurus, flosculus ilia canum,"* ' December 9, 1854. - " Arthur the flower of kings ; this ' Floss ' of dogs the Floweret." CANTERBURY 49 and adding immediately the variant, '* Ut rosa flos florum, sic canis ista canum."^ Like his great contemporary, Mr. Gladstone, Stanley appreciated the suitability — in the hands of a scholar — of Latin, as for epitaphs, so also for notes and postcards. I wish I could give the context of the following note from him — beyond the fact that it was rather a lengthy epistle which obtained so pithy an answer : " Dear Herbert, Scribenda Scripsi, delenda delevi, A.P.S."^ His Latin cards, too, are generally fairly legible ; whereas it is well known that some of his friends possess amongst their choicest treasures notes from him which, though believed to be written in the vulg-ar tongue, are so far from being " understanded of the people " that they never yet have been, and probably never will be, deciphered ! I have a hazy recollection of another card from him, consulting my brother about some ' "As Rose is flower of flowers, so was that Dog of dogs." 2 " I have written what ought to be written, I have destroyed what ought to be destroyed." But the sixteen British farthings are poor enough change for the four good Roman pennies ! D 50 SIR HERBERT S. OAKELEY ornithological problem or other: " num psittacus supra pontem incedere debet," or something similar, but it is no longer to be found, so I will not hazard an English version. In 1855 Oakeley made a third and longer visit to Germany. This time Leipzig, from which the rich afterglow of Mendelssohn's noble work had not yet faded, was chosen for his goal, as perhaps even more classical in taste — and certainly less expensive — than its rival capitals of music, Vienna and Berlin. His un- certainty as to how long he could afford to stay making the Conservatorium impossible for him, he took private lessons from Moscheles and Plaidy, and in organ playing from Pap- peritz. In that genial musical atmosphere work prospered ; he made acquaintance too with Clara Schumann, Hauptmann, David, and Rontgen (senior). "These and other great names were more than enough to make the old town, dull in architecture and situation, interesting to the musician ; not to mention the glories of its past — for here had lived and worked Sebastian Bach, the mighty ' Cantor ' of the Thomasschule ; LEIPZIG— BERLIN 51 here Robert Schumann had explored ' fresh woods and pastures new ' in Music's fairy realms, and had revealed deeper art mysteries than any one since Beethoven was laid to rest. Here, too, the composer of 'St. Paul' had written that most touching passage in ' Happy and blest are they,' beginning ' For though the body die,' sung at his own funeral in 1847." Snatching a holiday in Berlin, he saw and played to Paul Mendelssohn, who, pleased with his enthusiasm, gave him a copy of the after- death portrait by Hensel of his illustrious brother, with the motto from the Book of Kings, or rather from the Elijah, "After the earthquake there came a fire," &c. He gave him, too, a Mendelssohn autograph. He made acquaintance here with Herr Fiirst, who had translated into German the words of his song, " Happy Hours" (sung by Sims Reeves several times), and called on Meyerbeer, whom he found adapting (for Covent Garden) his "Dinorah" to an Italian libretto; he worked standing, and to avoid stooping used a grand piano mounted on a platform. 52 SIR HERBERT S. OAKELEY Oakeley visited, too, the Royal Library, " whose treasures of Bach manuscripts and autographs are unequalled," containing as it does the first volume of "the 48" (the original " Wohltemperirte Clavier"), the lovely A flat fugue from Vol. 2, the great C and E minor organ fugues, six organ trios, and the Mass in B minor ; also Mozart's E flat symphony, and part of Beethoven's 9th. At Prague (likened by Rubinstein to Edin- burgh) he heard — at a garden concert ! — " an excellent orchestral transcription by Esser of Bach's organ * Passacaglia.' " Soon after his return to England the rumoured excellence of the Norwich boys' voices and of the ororan at Great Yarmouth drew him in that direction, especially as his Rugby friend, Olivier, was one of the six curates of Canon Hills, then Vicar of Yarmouth, afterwards Bishop of British Columbia. The organ in St. Nicolas' Church (said to be the widest church in England) " is, for once, well placed, being in one of the galleries of the broad aisles." Here he found delight in NORWICH— WINCHESTER 53 playing at services for the organist, Mr. Stonex, and at other times. For Norwich he acquired a great love. Dr. Buck, the well-known organist of the cathedral, and devoted trainer of its choir, he highly- reverenced ; and often used to enjoy again in retrospect the humours of a certain Sunday dinner with him, at which he had observed, with increasing curiosity, the continual despatch of Benjamin's messes to some invalid, as he at first supposed, in the next room. But Dr. Buck presently solved the mystery by explaining that his head chorister boy, interned in that inner chamber from which was no escape, was feeding in solitary state, " for unless I know every morsel that goes into that boy's mouth, I can't feel sure of the solo in this afternoon's anthem ! " About this time he "opened" the fine organ in Romsey Abbey. Sir Frederick Ouseley preached the sermon, and the two afterwards paid a visit to Dr. Wesley at Winchester. The great composer of " The Wilderness " helped Oakeley greatly both by example and precept. He wrote once to him, " I like your anthems ; 54 SIR HERBERT S. OAKELEY you strive after the high and original, and you go on the same tack as I do." But on this occasion Dr. Wesley "had cut his finger" and could not, or would not, play. He gave the friends, however, the run of the organ, and paid them the compliment of listening. Both of them were, of course, ardent admirers of the man and his genius, and could make allow- ance for his idiosyncrasies, by which strangers were often apt to be much upset — those two organists, for instance, who, having made a pilgrimage to Winchester to hear him play, ventured to express some little disappointment on meetino- him descendinof the orQ-an stairs after merely striking two Amen-Hke chords as his whole " Postludium," upon which he replied, " Do you then, gentlemen, expect me to give you an organ lesson ? " Dr. Wesley had a rooted objection to those injudicious embellishments of the text to which second-rate singers are prone. On a certain Christmas Eve my brother sat beside him at the organ. Part of the anthem was " The people that walked in darkness." At the passage " Have seen a great Light," the WINCHESTER— LAMBOURN 55 bass soloist, vainly thinking to improve Handel, introduced an elaborate turn of his own. Dr. Wesley, taking his hands off the keys, whispered, " Ha, ha ! my friend, all very fine ; but one bad turn deserves another," and left the abashed singer all alone, to walk in darkness for a good part of the rest of the piece ! Wesley's contemporary, John Goss, often asked my brother to "play out" at St. Paul's. His next-but-one successor, by the way. Sir G. Martin, was then a boy ; and the story of his boyhood in part belongs to my story : — for it is related that "his musical awakening began when in 1858 a passing stranger — Herbert Oakeley by name — played in Lambourn Church some fugues of Bach ; which so affected and unsettled the boy, that Music became henceforth the long- ing of his life." ^ Another musician, Mr. Warde Fowler, remembers the fugues, and promptly took the player's advice to procure some of them. In 1858 too Oakeley first met W. B. (now Sir W.) Richmond. Drawn together by a common love of Bach, the two became close ^ Musical Times, July 1897. 56 SIR HERBERT S. OAKELEY friends. A favourite lodging of my brother's at Hampton Court, blessed with a view down the cathedral-like aisles of Bushey Park, and within reach of Father Schmidt's organ in the royal chapel (and also near an excellent tennis court), witnessed many " noctes caenaeque deum," for even to the small hours of the morning^ the friends would play the grand organ fugues of the mighty master. Herbert Oakeley had no sympathy with the objection of some purists to thus making the pianoforte proxy for the organ. He was very fond of doing so himself, either solo or with a second performer as "pedal organ " ; and held that a consensus on this point of all the newspaper critics in London would avail nothing against the precept and example of Liszt, Clara Schumann, Rubinstein, Von Bulow, Paderewski, Sauer, and most other great players. And to the somewhat flimsy argu- ment that the organ fugues were not written for the modern pianoforte, he answered, " No more were ' the 48 ' or any other clavichord music." " Often at seven o'clock they would suddenly realise that it was morning." (''Sir W. Richmond," Art Journal^ Dec. 1902.) HAMPTON COURT 57 In London especially, where Bach's organ music is so seldom heard in the concert room, never till lately, the objection seems particularly Pharisaical. The last time I heard Clara Schumann play, she began with Bach's (organ) " Pastorale " and went on to the (organ) E minor Prelude and Fugue ! At Hampton Court was finished the Morning Service, " Oakeley in E flat," of which Stern- dale Bennett wrote, " Allow me to thank you very sincerely for your admirable service, which has greatly delighted me ; I hope to hear it some day performed in its proper place. " Dr. Buck, in the testimonial he wrote for my brother for the Edinburgh election, expressed the opinion that this Service was " in some parts equal to the best productions of Mendelssohn," an opinion which was received derisively by certain London critics, of whom more later. But when chal- lenged for his testimonial, the writer stuck to it valiantly. " I adhere to my opinion that there is as much genius shown in your brother's ' Te Deum ' as in Mendelssohn's." So he wrote, in a letter that I still possess. CHAPTER V THE "GUARDIAN"; MUSIC AT HOME AND ABROAD: 1858-1866 From 1858 to 1866 Mr, Oakeley spent much of his time in reporting choral festivals and concerts at home and abroad for the Guardian} He was well qualified for this employment, starting as he did where most might contentedly finish, namely, with a complete knowledge of classical composers and foreign orchestras, and also of cathedrals — their architecture as well as their music. Conse- quently he was able from the first to write accounts highly valued both by the editor of the paper and by its readers. But it is hardly to be expected that much of these criticisms would now be found generally interesting. I shall therefore give only some selections from them which seem not to have lost their point with lapse of years. In 1858 Leeds held its first Musical Festival. The magnificent Town Hall had been opened the 1 He wrote occasionally also later on music at home and abroad for the Guardia?i and other papers. Some selections from these later reports will appear in chapters xi. and .\iv. 58 LEEDS— SYDENHAM 59 day before the first concert by Queen Victoria in person, and thus no time was lost in putting the new possession to its best possible use. The selection of music was much better than at the recent Birmingham Festival, and in its execution also the influence of the conductor, Professor Sterndale Bennett, was in many ways as evident as welcome. His " Mendelssohnian reading" of the Overture and other parts of the Elijah, the Scotch Symphony, and some of the Messiah choruses, the critic found a great improvement on the immoderate speed of the Birmingham render- ings. On the other hand, " Rossini's finest over- ture, William Tell, though well played, seemed comparatively ineffective after the extraordinary performance of the work at Birmingham." Mr. Henry Smart extemporised on the half-com- pleted huge organ, but he was apparently " not in the mood " ; the critic found his playing disappoint- ing after Dr. Wesley ; " a series of modulations without form and void : quite uninteresting." The " May Queen," the conductor's new Cantata, was performed for the first time on this occasion, and was judged by the Guardian 6o SIR HERBERT S. OAKELEY " charming, though too redolent of Mendelssohn." And Gounod's " Nazareth," also new, "a beautiful composition, was given with remarkable taste by the rising young baritone, Charles Santley." " Clara Novello was never greater than in ' I know that my Redeemer .liveth ' and ' Rejoice greatly,' these two airs being perfectly given, with the exception of one or two commonplace alterations of the text. The sotto voce shake at the end of the former was not unworthy of Madame Jenny Lind-Goldschmidt herself." At the second Handel Festival, in 1859, he notes that "it is idle to deny that mere bigness is certainly an element of grandeur (as, indeed, the word ' grandeur ' itself denotes) whether in natural scenery or architecture ; or — as exempli- fied in Handel Festivals — even in music. Handel himself, it is said, would have liked cannon in the ' Hallelujah Chorus.' So he would clearly not have objected to the Sydenham version of his works." But the full splendour of the Sydenham effects is appreciable only by the front rows of the immense audience, and at the distance of the Press gallery it is quite lost : a SYDENHAM— GLOUCESTER 6i fact which possibly accounts for many depre- ciatory criticisms ! He quotes some fine sentences of Victor Schoelcher on "Israel": "No theme seems too great for Handel. He moves with sure step, at home amongst miracles. He has music for Sinai, and for the passage of the Red Sea. With what terrific reality is the thick darkness spread over the earth! . . . ' Israel' is an Alpine chain of transcendent choruses, broken by rugged passes of recitative, and a few green vales of song. . . . Words cannot depict these super- human effects of musical Art ! When you enjoy them, you wish to have around you those whom you love, in order that they too may share your delight." At the Gloucester Festival this year at one of the concerts Sims Reeves was ill and could not sing. The audience, enraged at the popular favourite's enforced absence, became turbulent. Clara Novello came forward and said — " Mr. Reeves being unwell has begged me to sing something in his place, though with less than his ability, that you may not be disappointed. 62 SIR HERBERT S. OAKELEY He explained the cause of his absence to the conductor, to whom alone artists engaged at this Festival are responsible ; and also to the stewards. I address you, ladies and gentlemen, because I will not suffer a brother artist to be unjustly accused, although he took precautions to avert disappointment." This brave and sensible little speech at once restored peace and contentment. A reporter in a Gloucester paper remarked of one of the evening concerts that " Beethoven's Symphony No. 2 is too long, and the audience would have been better pleased had only half been given, and instead of the rest, say the over- ture to ' Guy Mannering,' which is full of stirring Scotch airs." This absurd flight of provincial criticism, how- ever, was 0}ice in his experience surpassed, and that in the so-styled " Modern Athens."^ In this year, 1S59, he visited Ireland, and amongst the "wild echoes" of Killarney made his setting of Tennyson's "Bugle Song" in "The Princess," though quite unaware till long ^ As mentioned in a later chapter. KILLARNEY— SYDENHAM 63 afterwards, when Tennyson's Life came out, that the song owed its existence to the self-same "faintly blowing" "horns of Elfland," having been written at Killarney in 1850. Of the Mendelssohn Festival at Sydenham in i860, he wrote that much was lost in the enor- mous unconfined space ; " scarcely a note of the exquisite violoncello accompaniment of ' Blessed are the men ' was audible ; and the independent staccato figure in the ' Baal Chorus ' was quite drowned by the roaring of the Priests." The most striking part was the passage, " But yet the Lord," &c., where seven hundred tenors answered seven hundred basses on a minor second, preparing the sublime modulation from C major to D flat. " The trio ' Lift thine eyes ' was almost inaudible, and lost much of its effect in Bartholomew's trans- lation, which, however, is usually so satisfactory. For instance, for ' Hebe deine Augen ' we find the weak repetition ' Lift thine eyes, oh /?y? thine eyes,' and afterwards sad havoc is made of the word ' cometh,' which is given with every accen- tuation but the right one, and occurs three times on the notes which Mendelssohn, w^ith evident 64 SIR HERBERT S. OAKELEY purpose, set to the word ' Hulfe' (help). At the repetition of the passage the unfortunate verb is again worried and torn to pieces with renewed zest, as if the translator had wished to rival (British) Gregorian chanters in false accent and emphasis." Sims Reeves' wonderful high chest notes were not only audible throughout the concert room (or rather concert district), but penetrated far beyond, and were distinctly heard at the spot occupied by Bevington's organ. Madame Sainton, in " Oh rest in the Lord," dwelt on the closing strain — as sweet as a Lied ohne Worte — with such tenderness as must have gone to the hearts of the audience with as much force as any IVofte ohne Lieder from the pulpit. Parepa's singing was "probably, in the ab- sence of Madame Novello, the best that could be heard, but she took a most unwarrantable liberty in her final cadence in ' God Save the Queen,' introducing to the subdominant harmony of the key (B fiat) a certain A as an appogiatura." Under the conductor's desk was exhibited a portrait of the composer, which was lent for the SYDENHAM 65 occasion by Mr. Benecke ; also a fac-simile and translation of an autograph of the Prince Con- sort, which His Royal Highness inscribed in a book of the words of " Elijah," and presented to Mendelssohn at Exeter Hall in April 1847. The inscription, often quoted, but worth quoting once more, runs thus : — "To the noble artist, who, surrounded by the Baal-worship of corrupted Art, has been able, by his genius and science, to preserve faith- fully, like another Elijah, the worship of true Art, and once more to accustom our ear — lost in the whirl of an empty play of sounds — to the pure notes of expressive composition and legitimate harmony ; to the great master, who makes us conscious of the unity of his concep- tion through the whole maze of his creation — from the soft whispering to the mighty raging of the elements — written in token of grateful remembrance by Albert. "Buckingham Palace, April 24, 1847." The Prince's well-known musical talent and knowledge were remarkably shown in a E 66 SIR HERBERT S. OAKELEY conversation he had, very shortly before his death, with Mr. Oakeley, when there was a probabiHty of the latter being attached as Secretary to the Household of the Princess Alice at Darmstadt. (Eventually it was judged more suitable that the appointment in question should be filled by a German.) As might have been said also of Dean Stanley, Herbert Oakeley's strong sentiment of loyalty had nothing in common with the mere courtier's love of courts, but was of the chivalrous type not incongruous with the temperament of an artist ; whose ancestor, moreover, Lord George Murray, the almost victorious leader of the wild adventure of 1745, had been a main prop of one of those " lost causes " to which the romance of loyalty owes so much of its poetry. Like all who have realised how important a part was the Prince Consort's in the political and social history of the Queen's reign, Mr. Oake- ley greatly admired him, and, more than that, thoroughly appreciated him during his life- time, which unhappily cannot be said without qualification of most of the generation of SYDENHAM 67 Englishmen which the Prince served so excel- lently well. Mr. Oakeley's description of this Mendelssohn Festival in the Guardian led to his long" friend- ship with Sir George Grove, who, after reading his article, wrote to him as follows : — " I am sorry to find from your able and interesting report of the performance of the ' Elijah ' that your place was so bad a one. If you will kindly favour me with your name and address, I will take care that on similar occa- sions you are provided with seats of which no complaint can be made. One so well able to appreciate, and to describe what he appreciates, ought to have the best place in the building. Pray accept my best thanks for your report. It is but too seldom one finds one like it in the newspapers. I should like very much to meet you, and hope to have that pleasure before long. Meanwhile, believe me yours faithfully, George Grove." At Covent Garden in 1861 the feature of the season was the first appearance of a very young 68 SIR HERBERT S. OAKELEY soprano, born at Madrid in 1843, who, how- ever, had already sung in fifteen operas in America — Adelina Patti. "Her compass ex- tended to ' F in alt.' Her staccato was extra- ordinary, and her vocalisation very neat ; her voice as yet rather thin." Grisi and Mario visited London this year, and Alboni, with her marvellous voice of three octaves of perfect notes, from "fiddle G" to G above the line — "the Italian thrush," certainly, as Jenny Lind was the " Swedish nightingale." In the sleep-walking scene in the " Sonnam- bula," when Amina has to cross the frail bridge, the plank which ought to crack at the moment when the hand-lamp falls into the torrent had been so strengthened that even Alboni's weight could not produce the intended result, nor there- fore the usual panic among the more nervous of the audience, alarmed at the supposed accident. The Sacred Harmonic Society gave in 1861 two performances of Beethoven's Mass (No. 2) in D, announced (quite incorrectly!) as "Service in D " ; a ridiculous sop to the Puritan Cerberus, recalling the objection of Ananias in Ben SACRED HARMONIC SOCIETY 69 Jonson's "Alchemist" to the terribly Papistical sounding word Chnst-mas. The performances were far from irreproachable, and would certainly not have given Mendelssohn cause to qualify his remark, that he had never heard, and never expected to hear, the choral difficulties of the work successfully overcome. At any rate, the Gua7'dian thousfht much more trouble must be taken, and, especially, many more rehearsals be given, before this ''res sever a^' could become a '' verutn gaudium." The chief event of one of the New Phil- harmonic Concerts, conducted by Dr. Wylde, was "the performance of Beethoven's most difficult pianoforte concerto, No. 4 in G, by Mr. J. F. Barnett. His two cadenzas showed remarkable musical knowledge. Such execution and such conception of Beethoven is seldom attained by our countrymen." Charles Halle this year gave the whole of Beethoven's sonatas in eight recitals. At one of these Oakeley sat next to Professor Moscheles, who remarked that the staccato passages "suggestive of bassoons" in the Allegretto (not 70 SIR HERBERT S. OAKELEY Allegro) second movement of the E flat sonata (No. 1 8) "ought not to be so much hurried." So the tendency, even amongst great players, to undue speed, which we are apt to think specially characteristic of a later and more restless period, was already noticeable. On another occasion, when praising Joachim's perfect time in playing Bach, the Guardian complains that many players miss much of the old Master's grace and sentiment, by turning his com- positions into mere displays of execution ; an unfortunate tendency which the great old organist of Dresden, Johann Schneider, often alluded to as a " musikalische Krankheit " (musical disease) of the age. Touching another modern fashion, it is amus- ing to read that Halle, after playing the first twelve sonatas from memory, thought it ad- visable at his fourth concert to have the music before him, in order to humour the critics, who cavilled bitterly at the — to them — novel and unpleasing phenomenon ! However, by the time he reached No. 21 he seemed to think enough concession had been made to the Philistines, PIANOFORTE RECITALS 71 and returned to his own plan of " reciting," not reading. About the same year Thalberg gave some recitals in London, playing almost entirely his own operatic or other "transcriptions." His confessed excellences — superb touch, "singing" tone, subtle effects of contrast, cascades of ar- peggios from which his melodies (often trivial enough) stand out so perfectly distinct, caused the absence of the best from his programmes to be all the more keenly felt. But he received extra- ordinary applause, clearly showing how many people still find in second-rate pieces played by first-rate performers their greatest musical treat ; and marking the difference between London and Leipzig (for instance), where only the highest Art is received with the like raptures. At the 1862 International Exhibition he notes that Rossini, Verdi, Meyerbeer, Auber, and Stern- dale Bennett were asked to contribute Marches. " The Swan of Pesaro declined to spread once more for flight wings closely folded since 'William Tell' was finished in 1829." Verdi went beyond the request, sending a Cantata, which 72 SIR HERBERT S. OAKELEY unfortunately arrived too late. Meyerbeer sent a good March in three movements, the last being a fugue on " Rule Britannia," introducing three other subjects, and ending with a brilliant climax. Bennett set Tennyson's Exhibition Ode, but neither music nor poem was very successful in performance ; their greatest effect being lent them by the popular appreciation of the allusion to the lately dead Prince, at which all heads were uncovered : " O silent father of our kings to be. Mourned in this golden hour of jubilee. For this, for all, we weep our thanks to thee." Here he first heard "a clever young York- shireman, Mr." (now Sir Walter) " Parratt, play. He gave on the Willis organ, amongst other things, Bach's great Prelude and P"ugue in B minor, then very rarely heard in London." At the Gloucester Festival in 1862 Oakeley's song "Break, Break" was sung by Madame Sainton. This setting was approved of by the poet "on account of its changes of rhythm, suited to the sense." Mr. Tennyson objected, however, to the repetitions of words made EXHIBITION OF 1862— SYDENHAM jz in this as in other musical settings. " You musical fellows," he said to Mr. Oakeley, "make me say twice what I only said once ! " Certainly a most useful hint to the musicians of the period. Yet Poetry herself, in her lyrical — that is, in her most musical — moods, as, for instance, in the first line of the very lyric in question — " Break, break, break, on thy cold gray stones, O sea ! " sometimes says twice — and thrice — what Prose would say but once ; and this would seem to absolve Music, the sister art of expression, from too strict control on this head. At the Crystal Palace, Handel was again heard in all his majesty, especially in the un- surpassable '* Polyphemus " choruses, and those from "Solomon," including "Draw the tear from hopeless Love," &c. In 1863 he went abroad with a pupil. Shap- ing his course first to Haarlem, he finds the celebrated organ worthy of its reputation. "Its glory is the mellow tone of the pure tin pipes. The diapasons and pedal organ are all that could be wished, and also the vox Inwiana : here are no bleating sheep nor tremulous beldames, 74 SIR HERBERT S. OAKELEY but a really good suggestion of a distant choir. At Fribourg in Switzerland — and only there — does this Haarlem stop find its match, though Willis, Hill, Schulze, and Cavaille Coll have each almost lit upon the secret of the true 'klang.'" The organist (Bastian) and his clever daughter of fifteen played everything asked for, including — from the latter ! — Bach's A minor and E flat fugues, and Mendelssohn's sixth Sonata. The graceful spire of Strassburg — then " Strasbourg " — they found illuminated for the Fete Napoleon. At Fribourg they listened to Moser's organ ; and soon after heard a larger instrument than either Fribourg or Haarlem at Ulm ; " but its double pedal board made it difficult to play Handel's ' The waters over- whelmed them.'" At Munich, Franz Lachner, "a composer most unjustly neglected in England," was the great attraction. At Dresden they were surprised to find the populace everywhere able to listen, for a few pence, 2X garden concerts, to all the great master- pieces ; and here they saw and heard the great MUNICH— DRESDEN 75 organists Johann Schneider and Gustav Merkel. Schneider died soon after, 13th August 1864. The account of him signed "H. S. O." in Grove's "Dictionary of Music" speaks of his "grand extempore preludes to the opening chorale at the Hof-Kirche, in a style which since Bach's time has been made a special study in Germany, but is scarcely cultivated elsewhere. His instrument, by Silbermann, though old-fashioned in its mechan- ism, is of superb tone, and is well placed in the gallery. Schneider was the first authority of his day on the playing of Bach, and possessed a traditional readinof of his sublime works." Sir Frederick Ouseley wrote from Dresden, (October 21, 1851) "I heard the other day old Schneider, the best living organist, play on one of the best organs in Europe ; and / really have not had the heart to to2(ch an instrument since, so unapproachable does his excellence as a fugue player and accompanist appear to be." ^ Mr. H. F. Chorley well said of him, "whereas others struggle with Bach, Schneider //«jK<^^ with him." ^ Joyce's " Life of Ouseley," page 76. -^e SIR HERBERT S. OAKELEY He told many anecdotes of the great musicians he had taught. These included Mendelssohn, Schumann, Liszt, Merkel, Van Eyken, Topfer, Richter, &:c. One story of Mendelssohn was this : Schneider played to him and another — a Professor of music, I think — the B flat minor fugue from Vol. 2 of "the 48." (He was fond of playing the more "organic" of "the 48" on the organ. Readers of Mendelssohn's Letters will remember his surprise and delight at hearing the D major (Vol. i) from him.) At the end of it, Schneider, seeing the Pro- fessor looking about unmoved, feared the piece had failed to "find" its audience. But where was Mendelssohn '^. He was in tears in a remote gallery ! Thanks to Schneider's good custom of asking pupils at the end of their lessons what he should play to them, Herbert Oakeley heard him play all the greatest organ works of Bach ; also the six-part fugue on Frederick the Great's sub- ject, and many of "the 48." At Berlin they visited Paul Mendelssohn, and saw his treasures; and heard Haupt, the Hof organist, play the great fugue in E minor, BERLIN ^-j cleverly named by Best (from the shape in print of its subject) the "Wedge" Fugue. These "agnomina" — at least when assigned by competent people — are always interesting. Many will remember pugnacious old Samuel Wesley's letter about his pet names for some of " the 48 " fugues : — *"The Doctor's Fugue' you have accurately, as also 'The Judgment Fugue,' and what I call 'The Saints in Glory Fugue,' by which I mean that in E major. These will furnish enough for many Rounds against such as love darkness rather than light, because their eyes — and ears — are evil ! Even Germans themselves are not free from the envy of Bach's transcendent genius. I will not tell you the name of the person till Sunday (for I mean to be with you), neither would you believe, and perhaps can hardly credit it on my solemn asseveration, that a man of real talent compared one of those fugues which Horn has arranged (which you do not remember as it is not among ' the 48 ') to ' A Hog floundering in the mud.' " Bach's ''Mendelssohn A minor Fugue" got to 78 SIR HERBERT S. OAKELEY be commonly so called after the latter composer's first visit to England, where till then it was unknown. He played it frequently in London churches, and the story has often been told how, at the afternoon service at St. Paul's, loth September 1837, he had just reached its last page and the famous pedal solo, when the organ suddenly became dumb ! For the vergers, incensed that the congregation would stay to listen, wickedly conspired with the blowers, and forthwith "Venti velut agmine facto Qua data porta ruunt,"^ a contretemps or "counterblast" which must have somewhat sorely tried the player ; for, as Sir George Grove tells us, he "loved the organ, and was greatly excited when playing it"! Dr. Wesley, also, used to tell of Mendels- sohn's "excitement" in playing this same piece. " When he came to the great pedal solo at ' " The winds As in compact array, where vent is given, Rush forth." — Rhoades's translation of the "i^neid." SWITZERLAND 79 the end he just sat on the organ seat and tore his hair " ! ^ Herbert Oakeley was fond of imagining a kindred sublimity in music and mountain scenery, and would amuse himself with matching the great organ fugues with the giants of the Oberland : the A minor (just mentioned) with the Finsteraarhorn, the "augmented" C major with the Schreckhorn, the B minor with the Jungfrau, and so on. That these Alpine similitudes should have suggested themselves at all to my brother re- minds one how doubly disastrous for him was his terrible fall in Switzerland in 1872. For perhaps of many walkers in the Alps that year, he was the one organ player ; the only climber, that is, who had the full use of his feet, being not only a pedestrian, but also a ped- allist. Indeed for " doubly " I might well have written " trebly " disastrous, as the follow- ing letter from his friend, the Hon. W. Warren Vernon, will show : "I cannot tell you what ' An interesting point as to his "registering" is described by E. J. Hopkins in "Grove's Musical Dictionary" (art. "Mendels- sohn "). So SIR HERBERT S. OAKELEY pleasure you have given me by your kind present of the photograph of yourself in tennis costume. How it does carry me back to the days when we all used to collect in the ' Dedans ' of the tennis court, to see you play ! We considered you — and it was generally allowed — far and away the best player we had ; but it was unfortunate for you that in a match you could not help getting nervous, and failed in consequence to win matches against players to whom in an ordinary game we all thought you decidedly superior. Not only was your skill greater than that of your contemporaries at the University, but your movements were so grace- ful — I used to think that you bounded about like a young fawn — and, moreover, your easy style always reminded me of Barre, who looked so absolutely at home in a tennis court. " I cannot help alluding to this while thanking you for the photograph ; for when a man of an unusually athletic nature has the deplorable calamity to be struck down by an accident such as yours, and to be deprived of his former elasticity and vigour, it may seem to him a VIENNA 8i comfort to be reminded, by a friend who deeply sympathises with his misfortune, of what he once was. Dante says : ' Nessun maggior dolore, Che ricordarsi del tempo felice Nella miseria.' ^ That is true ; but I think that sometimes the converse is the case, and that when one is totally precluded from taking part in some particular exercise, it is a consoling thing to be reminded that one stood, as you did in former days, my dear Oakeley, in ' le jeu du Roi,' in the first rank." The travellers went on to Vienna, the town of Haydn, Mozart, Schubert, and Beethoven. The Viennese "man in the street," however, when asked by my brother, "Is yonder house the one where Beethoven lived ? " replied, " Beethoven } Das ist kein Wiener Name ; ich glaube der Herr ist gestorben." (Beethoven? That is not a Vienna name ; I think the gentle- man must be dead.) They made pilgrimage to " the sacred vale ' [Paraphrased by Tennyson — "A sorrow's crown of sorrows is remembering happier things."] F 82 SIR HERBERT S. OAKELEY of Heiligenstadt, where the Pastoral Symphony of Beethoven, with its gay reminiscences of that bird-haunted region, was devised ; where too, some years later, the composer, now stone deaf, asked his companion the sad question, what birds he heard. ' Here I composed my Pastoral Symphony ; and here the birds composed with me. Can you hear a yellow-hammer ? ' ' No,* wrote the friend on the conversation slate, ' and I only recollect the nightingale, quail, and cuckoo in the Symphony.' The composer in answer wrote on the slate the G major arpeggio passage for the first flute in the 58th and 59th bars of the * Brook Scene.' " The friend, who was more remarkable for humility than humour, seems to have concluded that the passage had been intended, like the other bird-reminiscences in the movement, as a direct imitation. But, inas- much as the little performer here in question is by no means given to arpeggios, either Beethoven must have merely meant that the passage recalled to him the moment when the bird was "com- posing with him," or else — which is likely enough — he was joking at his companion's expense. MUNICH— LONDON 83 Returning by Munich, then in mourning for its wayward ruler King Ludwig, Wagner's friend, they reached London by Easter ; and ** found the pitch higher, and the standard of performance lower, than in Germany." The Coriolanus Overture sounded in C sharp minor (instead of C), and the Pastoral Symphony chiefly in F sharp ! This, to some delicate ears at least, curiously altered the effects. "It was as if hues of sky, trees, and wild flowers had become rather less rich and less natural ; the murmurings of the brook in the second move- ment a trifle less soothing and dulcet, and the tints of its banks too pale a green. Whatever truths these fancies may represent, at least it is certain that the nightingale's complaint was altered to G flat and A flat, while the unduly elated cuckoo called E flat and C flat. A few weeks later the Symphony was heard again at its right pitch, and doubts and perplexities were dispelled. Instead of a constant attempt to reconcile, as it were, two stereoscopic photo- graphs not quite in focus, all now seemed clear and well defined." 84 SIR HERBERT S. OAKELEY In 1864 the choir and transept of Chichester Cathedral were under repairs rendered necessary by the effects of the catastrophe in i860, when the tower and spire, collapsing like a closing telescope, fell to the ground. So the Festival was held in the nave and aisles ; the only double aisles, except at Manchester, found in English cathedrals. The admirable pointing of Dr. Stephen Elvey was used (as always at this cathedral), and the generally ill-fated words "righteousness," "enemy," "victory," "wicked- ness," &c., for once got their rights of correct accentuation. The organ was finely played by Mr. E. H. Thorne, afterwards indefatigable at St. Anne's (Soho) in his devotion to the vocal and instrumental works of Bach. " Under the glorious and now almost un- equalled roof of Ely Cathedral," crowned by the far- visible lantern — "that excellent translation into Decorated Language of the Romanesque octagon of Germany and Italy," ^ was held one of the best Festivals of the year. The splendid decoration of that roof, which Mr. Gambler ' The Rev. J. L. Petit's "Church Architecture." CHICHESTER— ELY— ROME 85 Parry of Highnam Court (father of Sir Hubert Parry, and like him a true artist) was still at work in completing, was only one of many great works of restoration or embellishment lately taken in hand by the Dean and Chapter. The magnificence of the minsters and churches of the Fen country is proverbial ; it is indeed the boast of East Anglia that fine cathedrals looking over wide plains are no bad substitute for the glories of the more romantic scenery of the west and north, and this architectural superiority should afford some consolation to the typical mountain lover like Dr. Arnold, who felt some sinking of the heart when he looked out to the east from his study window at Rugby and said to himself that there was hardly a hill fifty feet high between him and the Ural Mountains! After the Choral Festival Season, a second tour abroad with the same friend as before occupied the next nine months. Five of these were spent at Rome, and a full account of Music in Italy was despatched to the Guardian, but was intercepted by the Pontifical Post. Some extracts from it follow : — 86 SIR HERBERT S. OAKELEY " The remark of the great Roman orator may- be accepted as descriptive of the present artistic state of Southern Italy. There, at least, 'The works of Nature are more perfect than those of Art.' ^ To the same effect writes Mendelssohn : ' In her scenery, and her monuments, and in these alone, lies true Art now in Italy ; and so it will ever be, for our instruction and delight, as long as Vesuvius stands fast, and the balmy air, and the sea, and the woods remain.' " To Oakeley, as to Mendelssohn, Music as an Art in Italy seemed dormant, though not dead ; for no one could deny that the people, if unenergetic, are still instinctively artistic. "But at the churches at Rome the music was generally light, trivial, and theatrical. The organists were strangely bent on introducing the most inappropriate operatic airs. As a typical instance — on the last day of December 1864, when the Pope repaired to the Church of the Gesu, to return thanks for the mercies of the year, and was making his solemn entry with his arms crossed on his breast — a player on one of the four organs ' " Meliora sunt ea quae natura quam quae arte perfecta sunt." ROME 87 saluted His Holiness with the well known tenor air in Flotow's Opera, ' Marta, Marta, tu sparisti ! '" ^ The ceremonies of the Holy Week have often been described, and as to the music in the Sistine Chapel especially every one knows Mendelssohn's interesting account. Our travellers went through the whole programme, including the exhausting four or five hours of standing in evening dress, crowded together like sheep in pens, to hear the singing of the " Miserere." They saw the cere- monies of Palm Sunday, for which the palm branches are sent from Bordighera, by traditional privilege granted by Sixtus V. to a native of that place, the sailor Bresca. For he it was who averted the imminent downfall of Caligula's obelisk in the Piazza of St. Peter's by shouting in the nick of time, " Acqua alle funi ! " (Water on the ropes). On the same occasion is sung Palestrina's " Pueri portantes ramos." The Lamentations, Nocturnes, and Laudes, sung to dull and uninteresting strains, and the 1 " Martha, Martha, whereto vanished ? " 88 SIR HERBERT S. OAKELEY fifteen Psalms to Gregorians — in all their sancta simplicitas — without organ too, the Pope not being present — reminded some present of "the use " of Presbyterian Scotland. "I cannot help it," says Mendelssohn of this part of the service, " but I own it does irritate me to hear such sacred and touching words sung to such dull, drawling music. They say it is Gregorian, &c,; no matter. If at that period there was not the capability to write in a different style, at all events we have now the power to do so. People came to me saying how splendid it had all been. This sounded to me like a bad joke, and yet they were quite in earnest ! " At the end of each Psalm, according to the ancient custom, one candle is extinguished ; and after the Fifteenth and last the only re- maining light is hidden behind the altar. The chapel grows almost dark, and the red vest- ments of the kneeling Pontiff are only just visible. Meanwhile, Michael Angelo's huge fresco, sixty-four feet in length, of the " Last Judgment" becomes ever more and more weird and terrible, till only vague and ghostly shadows ROME— EASTER MUSIC 89 of its gigantic figures are faintly discernible, moving towards eclipse. Then at last out of the gloom, after an awful silence, is wailed forth Allegri's " Miserere," a work famous as the com- position which marks (and partly makes) what Mendelssohn has called the most sublime moment of the Holy Week's Services, and also as the subject of a wonderful feat of Mozart's. " On the fourth day of Holy Week, 1770, that gifted boy — then just fourteen years old — wrote down the entire ' Miserere,' after having heard it sung once only in the Sistine Chapel. On Good Friday he returned with the MS. hidden in his cocked hat, and (at risk of excommunication !) corrected it with a pencil as the Service pro- ceeded. And not long afterwards, he sang and played it with such exact attention to the tradi- tional * embellishments ' that Cristofero, the principal soprano, who had himself sung it in the chapel, declared his performance perfect." Every day in the Holy Week has at St. Peter's its own functions and music ; the latter by Palestrina, Allegri, Marenzio, or Baini, The Easter Day ceremonies, beginning at 90 SIR HERBERT S. OAKELEY dawn with a salvo of artillery from the fortress of St. Angelo, culminate at the elevation of the consecrated elements, when the whole multitude that throngs the vast Basilica drop at once to their knees, the clang of the soldiers' muskets resounding through the building. Then " faint and far " from the lofty cupola the clear tones of the silver trumpets seem to emphasise rather than interrupt the profound silence of the previous moments. Distance here indeed lends enchant- ment, and softens into the ineffable sweetness of unearthly strains the rough blare of the instru- ments, though the composition is not really of any superlative excellence, nor is it executed by performers of any unusual skill. The com- poser was a certain Count in the " Guardia nobile " ; the trumpets are of no more precious metal than brass ; the players are members of the band that plays daily on the Pincian hill. Mr. Oakeley, like Archbishop Benson, be- came unusually statistical in describing the huge dimensions of everything in St. Peter's. How- ever " unsatisfactory in other matters," as Lowell says, " statistics are of service here. I have ROME— ST. PETER'S 91 seen a refined tourist who entered, Murray in hand, sternly resolved to have St. Peter's look small, brought to terms at once by being told that the canopy over the high altar (looking very much like a four-feet bedstead) was ninety- eight feet high. If he still obstinates himself, he is finished by being made to measure one of the marble putti, which look like rather stoutish babies, and are found to be six feet, every sculptor's son of them. Murray gives all these little strategical nudges to the Anglo- Saxon imagination ; but he knows that its finest nerves are in the pocket, and accordingly ends by letting you know how much the church cost . . . but almost the most illuminating fact after all is that this architectural world has also a separate atmosphere, distinct from that of Rome by several degrees, and unvarying throughout the year." Perhaps, however, the unstatistical methods of Poetry are even more effective : •' What is this that rises propped With pillars of prodigious girth ? Is it really on the earth. This miraculous dome of God ? 92 SIR HERBERT S. OAKELEY With arms wide open to embrace The entry of the human race? Has the angel's measuring rod Meted it out — and what he meted Have the sons of men completed ? " ' As my brother did not in any way resemble Lowell's typical John Bull, he did 7iot enter St. Peter's " with the dome of St. Paul's drawn tight over his eyes, like a criminal's cap, and ready for instant execution rather than confess that the English Wren had not a stronger wing than the Italian Anael." For he ends his description with some remarks rather deprecia- tory of the London Cathedral, which at that date — long before the coming of its new era, which began with Church and Lightfoot and Liddon and Stainer, and culminated, one may say, with the appearance within its walls of Sir W. Richmond — was, as he says, compared with its great prototype, " a very moth to a butterfly." As to the present musical status of our ci- devant "Moth," the revived and developed St. Paul's of to-day, all know how high our best judges place it. These, however, may perhaps ' Browning, " Christmas Eve and Easter Day." ST. PETER'S— ST. PAUL'S 93 be suspected of donning even at home that singular helmet of insular ignorance and Pro- testant prejudice with which Lowell equips the British visitor to St. Peter's ; so I would rather quote the saying of a most patriotic Frenchman and devoted Roman Catholic, as well as famous musician, Charles Gounod: "At St. Paul's one can hear the finest musical service in Christen- dom." Of new friends made at Rome, the chief was Franz Liszt. "The first interview with him was of surpassing interest. After some musical talk, he kindly asked to see some of my work, and to our delight walked to the Erard piano and put my song "Happy Hours" before him. By way of prelude — the cigar was in his right hand — he took with his left hand the chord of D flat in arpeggios from the lowest bass to the highest treble, about as quickly as any other hand could be passed over the instrument without touching it. Then he played the song through as a Lied ohne Worte, at its second verse introducing the melody between his hands, with improvised arpeggios on both sides of it. 94 SIR HERBERT S. OAKELEY Various things which he could not have previ- ously seen were on the desk, which he not only- dashed off at sight, but also extemporised upon. Some Church music he played in a style which suggested that he was also an organ player ; and one of his pupils afterwards mentioned having heard him play on an organ with pedal obbligato Bach's difficult fugue in A flat, No. 17, Book 2, of 'the 48.' " Some days later he gave a ' Recital ' (word th e n originally invented by himself) at the house of a lady, whose clever bust of him was in our 1862 Exhibition. The audience was limited — only nine. The piano was in the middle of the room. The great artist, who has the manners of royalty, came round and spoke to each of us, and then sat down to play. Although I have heard, and written about, all the great pianists of our time, I seemed to myself never before that afternoon to have realised the pos- sibilities of the pianoforte ! Difficulties so mastered as to have become mere child's play ; the most ethereal touch ; fire, poetry, tender- ness ; the marvels, ten times multiplied, of A RECITAL AT ROME 95 Thalberg ; the cantabile of Henselt, the science of Moscheles, the grace of Chopin, the classical perfection of Clara Schumann, the chastened refinement of Halle, the thundering onset of Rubinstein ; imagine all these combined, with still something else beyond them — something that is Liszt, and Liszt alone. No wonder that whatever difference of opinion exists in Germany as to other eminent players, the great Hungarian is acknowledged always to be enthroned above them all. Among his selec- tions were Chopin's A major Polonaise, his own exquisite D flat Etude, and, in a totally different style, his stupendous Fantasia on ' Ernani.' Then he persuaded our hostess to sing ' The Last ' (but ever-recurring) ' Rose of Summer,' during each verse of which he improvised a gradually developed accompaniment. In the last verse there occurred a passage of sixes, pianissimo e prestissimo^ where the wonderful hands went together up and down the key- board with the most astonishing equality and rapidity, suggesting Briareus with his hundred hands ; the player meanwhile looking anywhere 96 SIR HERBERT S. OAKELEY but at his fingers, and smiling at the astonish- ment of his audience at the alteration of harmony and improvement to the melody in its new and gorgeous attire, and at the surprise of the singer, who pluckily maintained her canto fe7'??io, not- withstanding the total change of accompaniment and colour of her tune at every recurrence of the first phrase, which by the way comes no less than six times in each verse. The memory of that recital will never perish ! " ^ Returning to London in March, he found the musical season in full career. Madame Clara Schumann was in the middle of her chivalrous attempt to popularise — 2?i partibus tjijidelmm — her husband's music : a work of no small difficulty when the professional guides of taste — or, at least, leaders of fashion — went on declarino- that Schu- mann was "an unmelodious mystic" [Atkenaum, 1865) "whose imagination and working power were both small — very small" {Orchestra), and whose works were " a remarkable example of the absence of intellectual power in art " {Orchestra, 1865); — the last egregious remark being an ' Letter of H. S. O. to Sir George Grove, Feb. 19, 1865. LONDON CONCERTS 97 attempt to correct the Times critic, who had been staggered in his unbelief by some recent splendid performances at the Crystal Palace under Herr A. Manns (backed up by George Grove) of Schumann's great symphonies, and was begin- ning manifestly to " hedge " ; for he had actually admitted, to the dismay of his brother Philistines, that Schumann's music, though suffering from "various grave defects," yet possessed some " intellectual elements." One of the writers of this trash liked to lurk in the artists' room at St. James's Hall, to avoid hearing his bete noir, the glorious Pianoforte Quintet. And indeed, perhaps — especially if the weather was wet — this was not the worst thing he could do ; for when present he is said to have made a point of walking out into Piccadilly at the beginning of the second movement ! The clique actually ventured also profanely to disparage Clara Schumann's playing. Sir George Grove writes to Herbert Oakeley (May 11, 1865), "The second performance of the 9th Symphony at the Crystal Palace was honoured by the presence of Madame Schumann, who was 98 SIR HERBERT S. OAKELEY pleased to pay me a visit that day, to my great contentment and delight. On Monday she played to me Bach's organ Prelude in B minor, his Chromatic Fantasia, and a heap of things by Robert Schumann. I cannot conceive anything finer. It is absurd to talk — as Chorley does — of her ' decadence.' " Incompetent criticism of English composers was as rampant at this period as of foreign ones. Take as an example the reception accorded in London to perhaps the noblest achievement of English Anthem writers of the period, Wesley's "Wilderness." The AthencBum found it "a weak, tiresome, and pedantic exercise, not likely to be again heard of." The Tmics judged it " deficient in melody, confused in harmony, full of modulation run mad ! " At Her Majesty's Theatre, Mr. Santley and Mile. lima di Murska sang with great success in Mozart's " Zauberflote." Towards the end of the opera an alarm of fire was raised, and one of those terrible panics whose consequences have often proved so disastrous seemed on the point of occurring. A mad rush for the doors was just SYDENHAM— PETERBOROUGH 99 beginning, when Mr. Santley, who was playing Papageno, interrupted the mellifluous Italian of his part to shout in the vernacular tongue, "All right — no fire at all!" His presence of mind, and clearness of enunciation, probably saved many lives that evening ! In 1S65, the Guardian again insisted on the glories of Handel, as realised at the Handel Festival. Special mention was made of "the sublime modulations and extraordinary ' tone- painting' of the splendid chorus, 'Envy, eldest born of hell ' on a ground bass " ; and of the incomparable singing of Sims Reeves in " Sound an alarm," and of Santley in " O ruddier than the cherry." At the Peterborough Festival of 1866, the critic finds an old enemy, the screen of 1780 — "erected" (as an apologetic inscription on the Thing's own back coyly asserted) "by the admirers of ecclesiastical architecture " — still blocking up the Cathedral, and making the success of a choral cratherinof difficult to secure. " It would be satisfactory to learn that Mr. G. Scott and Mr. H. Willis had paid official visits hither." loo SIR HERBERT S. OAKELEY Some specimens of technical criticisms may be given : — "The ' Venite ' was chanted to Crotch (single) in D, containing a point of imitation between alto and treble which necessitates a monotonous bass part, of two similar phrases. It would be better to dispense with the little contrapuntal device, and make the bass go in contrary motion ; the chant would then be a o-ood one. The chant in G for the Psalm is ascribed (and rightly as to its treble and bass) to Purcell. But Purcell most certainly eschewed consecutive fifths, and it is hard on that eminent English composer that so detestable a sequence should be printed in a chant bearing his name. In the fifth bar the arranger, anxious perhaps to escape a sequence of fifths between tenor and bass, which the pre- ceding bar might seem to him to threaten, has made the parts cross, and, desiring to avoid Scylla, has unfortunately fallen into Charybdis, by causing the alto and bass to move in fifths. We cannot but think from this and other weak- nesses in this Service-book that the help of a musician has been wanting in its compilation." CHORAL FESTIVALS xoi More than once he suggests that it would be better for these Choral Festival Service-books to be edited by the cathedral Precentor and Organist, instead of — as was often the case — by a committee of country clergy. Faulty harmoni- sation, especially of Gregorian chants, he often complains of. " Gregorians," by the way, seldom pleased him, however harmonised. The " Te Deum " (at a Festival at Peterborough) was chanted to the "5th Tone, ist ending," the melody of which consists of eight notes, one of which, the dominant of the key, occurs four times over. This seemed a monotonous setting for the glorious hymn in question ; moreover, the "Gre- gorian heresy " of assigning two notes to one syllable was repeated twenty-three times — at the end of all the verses but six ! Thus : — "To Thee, Cherubim and Selraphim || continual|ly do | cfy-y." The " Benedictus," also, was set to a Gregorian, "7th Tone, no ending" it might be called, "the last note being the supertonic, with dominant harmony." The predilection of many of the clergy at I02 SIR HERBERT S. OAKELEY that time for these old melodies — generally sung in unison and seldom in tune — he thought an unfortunate lapse into grievous heresy of a party generally sound enough in its aesthetics. In this he cordially agreed with Dr. Wesley, who stigma- tised the craze as "a return to a period of absolute barbarism," and with Sir George Macfarren, who thus summed up his amusing deliverance on the subject : " These well-meaning men, who wish to resuscitate the Gregorian chant in the Church of England, evince mistaken zeal, false antiquarian- ism, illogical deductiveness, artistic blindness, and ecclesiastical error." Sir F. A. Gore Ouseley (like most musicians) agreed entirely with his brother Professors. At the Doncaster Festival in 1866, Dr. Hook, Dean of Chichester, preached. Having, when Vicar of Leeds, had over him (speaking musically rather than ecclesiastically) Dr. S. S. Wesley as his Precentor, he was naturally not to be suspected of Gregorian heresies, and could with a good conscience utter in his sermon on this occasion the apophthegm : " It is better for people to come to church to hear ^^^^2^ music, than not to come at DONCASTER— LINCOLN 103 all : make your services attractive," and " dis- regard " (he might have added) " the cynic who wrote — ' Some to Church repair, Not for the doctrine, but the music there.' " Writing to the Guardian at a later date from Lincoln, Mr. Oakeley takes occasion to rejoice that " the music sung at the first Choral Festival held in this masterpiece of English architecture was also English" {i.e. not Gregorian). As to the peculiarly Anglican character of the building, he quotes an interesting letter lately written to the Gentleman s Magazine, in reference to the alleged influence of French workmen in its con- struction, by the great French architectural expert, M. Viollet le Due, who wrote, " The con- struction is English ; the ornaments are English ; the profiles of the mouldings " (and even of the gargoyles.'*) "are English; the execution of the work belongs to the English school of workmen of the beginning of the thirteenth century." Some general remarks on Wells, Salisbury, and Lichfield Cathedrals, from reports of Festivals held I04 SIR HERBERT S. OAKELEY there, shall close this summary of my brother's work for the Guardian. After noticing the picturesqueness of all the approaches to the little town of Wells — even the one by railway — he continues to the following effect : — " The Cathedral is small, its whole length only slightly exceeding the breadth of the principal fa9ade of St. Peter's. But it is one of the most in- teresting of the fair company of English minsters, and contains, as Mr. Street, the great architect, has remarked, all the adjuncts of a perfectly equipped Cathedral Church, namely, Lady Chapel, Chapter House, Vicars' Close, Cloisters, Crypt, Bishop's Throne, and Bishop's Palace — with moat and embattled walls — the finest in the kingdom. Besides this, it resembles Lichfield, Lincoln, and Peterborough in having a most remarkable and original west front. This architectural title-page faces an open space, and on turning the leaf and entering, the reader of the work is at once struck by the promise of interest, fulfilled through- out to the last page — the exquisite Lady Chapel, with its cloistered columns and richlv carved • / ia'fc^^ . . _■ ' ■ B^^^^^^ T 1 PI f^llKf ^^K ylflj 1 i^BlIn 1 ^ ^ lEUl ti Iti '''^IIWH^^^I ilflilH!^ I'l illilwiiil^^l ^^M liniyB ■ S Salisiu Kv Ca 1 ni:iiK Ai. J-'/v//i model made for II. S. O. by Mu. Cjokkinge LiNC