Читать книгу Set Down in Malice: A Book of Reminiscences онлайн

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I was very young, said Bishop Welldon. I was ssss1 enthusiastic; I was inexperienced; I was “artistic”; I was a jumper-at-conclusions.

When he finished and, with one of his good-natured smiles, turned and looked at me, I was crumbling bread very rapidly, rolling the bread into soiled little pills, putting the little pills all in a row.

Later on in the evening Bishop Welldon, a little group of jolly people and I myself sat and smoked and drank very inferior coffee. DrWalford Davies did not join us. He shot little pointed darts at me from his eyes, but (as, of course, you must have anticipated) when he and I parted he was most studiously polite.

And, on my way to my tram, I hummed Davies’ Hame! Hame! Hame! to myself and pondered over the mystery that enables a man to write such a wonderful, soul-searching melody and yet possess an intellect of quality only ... well, so-so.

Here a little child I stand,

Heaving up my either hand ...

Do you know Walford Davies’ setting of that Grace, the setting he made some years ago for one of the daughters of the late Canon Gorton? If you do, if, as I do, you adore its Blake-like simplicity, its Ariel freshness, you will not mind his hatred of Wagner. Only, it is rather strange, don’t you think, that we outsiders who love Wagner (and I believe, don’t you, that all intense lovers of Wagner must be rather outsiderish?) should be able to love Walford Davies also, though he (most unhappy!) can’t or won’t love us?