MISS MAUDE WHITE'S REMINISCENCES.* IT is understood that about the
hardest task which confronts the writer of an autobiography nowadays is the choice of an unhackneyed title. Miss White has been content with a very simple label for her volume of reminiscences, but it has the merit of being in perfect harmony with the contents. Her friends come first throughout the whole recital, and this attitude of grateful affection is perhaps the chief and the most engaging of the many pleasant features of her book. She has evidently been very fortunate both in and outside her family circle, but after all friends are to the friendly. It is not merely easy, it is a privilege to be able to befriend and encourage people who combine talent with gratitude. But Miss White has not only been endowed with a genius for friendship and hero-worship ; she has cheerfulness and a lively sense of humour, which is perhaps never so conspicuous as when it is indulged at her own expense. She rarely gives her friends away—no small achievement in so intimate a record—but has no mercy on herself. Musicians have as a rule a reputation for egotism second only to actors, but here is a famous song-writer who frankly owns that she has never found it easy to read the alto and tenor clefs ; that she has an atrociously had ear ; that she can hear a piece of music three or four times without recognizing it; and that, as a young girl, she sang quite cheerfully out of tune without the slightest idea that she was doing so ! We have spoken of her sense of humour, and may add that it is shown not only by a profusion of anecdote, but in a happy extravagance of phrase. Of the dress she was condemned to wear at her gymnastic lessons while a schoolgirl in Paris, she says that "it was like the dreadful sort of reach-me-down suit that a shy little orang-utan might wear if suddenly called upon to join in mixed bathing with a bevy of old-maid gorillas of unusual modesty." When she learned that Mr. Rockstro, one of her teachers, had been a personal friend of Mendelssohn, she simply could not get over the fact. " If he had told me that he bad, in the days of his youth, played Cat's Cradle with the Queen of Sheba, or Puss in the Corner with Moses and Aaron, I could not have been more surprised." And this attractive quality is evidently a family characteristic, for she tells us of a cousin who wrote to his fiancée that, "compared to any faith in you, the Rock of Gibraltar is a quivering mould of blanc-mange."
The wide range of Miss White's sympathies may be traced to heredity as well as environment and opportunity. Her father was English, but his mother was of Bohemian extraction, while both grandmothers were Irish. Both her grandfathers
• Friends end Memories. By Maude Vakiie White. London: EdwardArnold: [12s. 6d. net.]
were naval officers. Lieutenant Harrington served under Nelson on board the Victory' at Trafalgar, while Captain John 'White cn leaving the Service was appointed British Consul at Valparaiso, where his son joined him in business, and the family connexion with Chile Las lasted to this day. Miss White was born in Normandy, spent two years of her
childhood in Germany, went to a school in Paris, has been a traveller all her life—paying two extended visits to Chile—
and latterly made her home for several years in Sicily. We must pass rapidly over her pleasant memories of Heidelberg, but may note that at her first school there were thirty-nine boys and one girl—herself. The change to Mme. Lalande's school and pension in the Rue Kepler in the palmy days of the Second Empire must have been considerable. There she had for schoolfellows two granddaughters of Berauger, and was taught dancing by the great Taglioni. Mate. Lalande's pensiennaires included Russian Princesses and American heiresses, and the pupils caught glimpses of that gay society which led one of its leaders to observe, after the dibciee, "Anyhow, we bad a devilish good time." In these days her father had a house in Staffordshire, a charming old place with a ghost, which did not affect the high spirits of his large and cheerful family. On his death they moved to Cheshire, but Miss White spent a good deal of her time in London at the house of her trustee, Mr. Rose-Innes, a Chilean merchant, a lover of the arts, and a most generous and kindly man. Her serious musical studies began with piano lessons from Herr Ernst Pauer, and were continued, after a trip to Italy, under Mr. Rockstro at Torquay. She gives us a charming picture of the gentleness, the goodness, and the unselfishness of Mr. Rockstro—qualities that she found repeated on her return to London in her next instructor, Mr. Oliver May. Already she had begun to compose songs, and was encouraged to persevere by a favourable report from J. W. Davison, then musical critic to the Times. Her cousin, Miss Sophie Robertson, sang one of these early songs at a party given by Mrs. Gladstone.
Miss White was invited to dinner, and Mr. Gladstone's courtesy after she had accompanied her cousin completely won her heart. "I thought him a perfect darling ! I knew nothing' about politics. I only knew that one of the people I loved best in the world admired him very much, and would 1.ar pleased that he had been kind to me. From that time forth I was an enthusiastic Liberal." After failing with distinction in an. examination for a scholarship at the Royal Academy, she entered that institution as an ordinary student in the autumn of 1876, studying harmony and composition under Sir George Macfarren, the Principal, and the pianoforte under- Mr. Westlake. Iles genera est rerum gandivm, and Mica White appears to have thoroughly enjoyed going through the mill which converted her from an amateur into a pro- fessional. " Old Mac " was a candid yet helpful critic, keenly alive to her limitations, dissuading her from the composition of concertos, but recognizing her genuine lyrical gift. Her songs were not only sung at pupils' concerts, but published by Stanley Lucas, a firm with which she established most friendly
relations. She worked Lard and went out a good deal into society, where her friends, with Mary Wakefield as their chief, established, as she gratefully puts it, a "League, of Kindness" for her special benefit. To this period belongs the beginning of many new friendships, in particular those with Alfred and Spencer Lyttelton, and nowhere have we seen a more touching or affectionate tribute to the heart of gold that lay beneath Spencer Lyttelton's gruff and brusque exterior. In
1879 her perseverance in mastering the technical side of her art was splendidly rewarded by her success in carrying off the Mendelssohn Scholarship—a success whieh she generously discounts after her wont—and the introduction of her "Absent, yet Present" by Sir Charles Santley at the "Pops" launched her on a prosperous career as a song-writer. The
nature of her debt to her interpreters prompts Miss White- to some interesting remarks on the relation between composer and singer:— "Even a very humble composer like myself knows by experienee how seldom it is that any one interprets a piece of music just exactly as one has conceived it oneself. It really is the rarest thing on earth. How often and often after successful perform- ances of my own songs have not really clever musicians come up te congratulate me heartily on the way they have been sung, under the impression that there could not be two opinions on the sulr. ject ; and yet I heave been secretly chafing under a cruel sense of disappointment, for it has seemed to me that the one thing necessary—the subtle something that is the essence of the sung-, has hardly been indicated—has often been entirely absent. But sometimes a singer crosses one's path who has the heart of a poet, and then, oh, the difference, the splendid difference ! No one aver sang those earlier songs of mine, ' Absent, yet Present,' • To Blossoms," Heureux qui pent Ajmer," When Passion's Trance,' To Electra,' and 'The Devout Lover,' like Santley. The way he sang the closing phrase of the latter song was so beautiful and touching that those who never heard it can hardly imagine the difference between his interpretation and that of every one else. He once wrote me during those first few weeks of our friendship a little note that I prized more than I can say. In it he said among other things= Your young enthusiasm has roused to life the youth in me that was dead.' I think many a middle-aged artist has felt a certain lassitude, a certain weariness, that has utterly vanished when brought into contact with a youthful temperament which reminds him of his own young days. Santley was wonderfully kind to me. Sometimes after singing Montrose's Love Song' he would say laughingly—' You must tell me when your Montrose turns up, you know.' There was something in Santley's voice that touched me to tears. I have seldom heard it in any other. It suggested youth—fearless, passionate, enthusiastic youth. It also suggested a terrible (rapacity for suffering. The only singer in whose voice I have beard just that same ring is my dear friend Harry Plunket Greene, of whom I shall speak later on, for he is another singer to whom I owe a great deal. Whenever I hear even an echo of that sound in either the speaking or singing voice of any human being it undoes me. The years roll away. Youth's sweet-scented manuscript' once more lies open; 'the nightingale that in the branches sang' sings once again. Again I stand on the threshold of life, forgetful for a moment of the long years that separate me from those glowing days when I couldn't believe that I wasn't going to be gloriously happy some day, when I couldn't believe that suffering and disillusion and bitter disappointment are the common lot, and that I certainly deserved no more than any one else. But blessed is the human being who, having seen happiness pass by his own door, reaches the early evening of his life without fainting by the way, and lives long enough to see the radiant figure pause and knock at the door of a dear child or a beloved friend. For him a star shines in the darkness, still a garden by the water blows,' and he realises with a thrill of unspeakable joy that his heart's desire is not always for himself."
The remainder of this record, though it deals freely with the musical activities of the writer, is far more largely concerned with her ever-widening circle of friends, and her travels, if not from China to Peru, at least from Moscow to Chile. Her account of the scenery, the cuisine, and the fruits of Chile is most alluring. By way of contrast, she gives us a delightful account of the pleasant artistic coterie of Broadway, with its annual cricket match between literary men and artists, winding up with a dance in the studio of Frank Millet, the much-beloved artist who went down with the Titanic.' It is a record chequered by ups and downs of fortune, much ill- health, and the death of dear friends and relations, but un- marred by a grumble or a grievance. The wealth of good _stories which enlivens these pages makes choice embarrassing, :but we may content ourselves with some specimens of the • epistolary style of that admirable artist and humorist, Herr Raimund von Zur Miihlen:-
• '
His English was most original—once, when he wanted me to accompany him at a concert he wrote- ‘DzAs FRIEND,—Will you pour upon me the basin of your lindnoss, and play two of your songs for me ? '
I answered that I'd be only too delighted to allow him to plunge about in the hip-bath of my benevolence. And once, when I wrote to ask him whether it was possible to go to Carlsbad as early as February, be answered by return— 'DEAR Famitn,—Carlsbad is open all the year round for roundish ladies ! '
He also informed me in one letter that he had been ill,—something the matter with his foot. The doctor advised sea baths, where- upon he wrote- ' . . . So next August I go to dip the marble whiteness of my left leg in the Baltic.'"
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