Impressions and Comments | Page 6

the civilised that harshness and
discord are permitted to prevail. Henry Ellis, in the narrative of his
experiences in Hudson's Bay in the eighteenth century, tells how a
party of Eskimo--a people peculiarly tender to their children--came to
the English settlement, told heart-brokenly of hardship and famine so
severe that one of the children had been eaten. The English only
laughed and the indignant Eskimo went on their way. What savages
anywhere in the world would have laughed? I recall seeing, years ago,
a man enter a railway carriage, fling aside the rug a traveller had
deposited to retain a corner seat and obstinately hold that seat. Would
such a man be permitted to live among savages? If the eugenic ideals
that are now floating before men's eyes never lead us to any Heaven at
all, but merely discourage among us the generation of human creatures
below the level of decent savagery, they will serve their turn.
September 7.--The music of César Franck always brings before me a
man who is seeking peace with himself and consolation with God, at a
height, above the crowd, in isolation, as it were in the uppermost turret
of a church tower. It recalls the memory of the unforgettable evening
when Denyn played on the carillon at Malines, and from the canal side
I looked up at the little red casement high in the huge Cathedral tower
where the great player seemed to be breathing out his soul, in solitude,
among the stars. Always when I hear the music of Franck--a Fleming,
also, it may well be by no accident--I seem to be in contact with a
sensitive and solitary spirit, absorbed in self-communion, weaving the
web of its own Heaven and achieving the fulfilment of its own rapture.
In this symphonic poem, "Les Djinns," the attitude more tenderly

revealed in the "Variations Symphoniques," and, above all, the sonata
in A Major, is dramatically represented. The solitary dreamer in his
tower is surrounded and assailed by evil spirits, we hear the beating of
their great wings as they troop past, but the dreamer is strong and
undismayed, and in the end he is left in peace, alone.
_September 10_.--It was an overture by Elgar, and the full solemn
sonorous music had drawn to its properly majestic close. Beside me sat
an artist friend who is a lover of music, and regularly attends these
Promenade Concerts. He removed the cigarette from his lips and
chuckled softly to himself for some moments. Then he replaced the
cigarette and joined in the tempestuous and prolonged applause. I
looked at him inquiringly. "It is a sort of variation of the theme," he
said, "that he sometimes calls the Cosmic Angels Working Together or
the Soul of Man Striving with the Divine Essence." I glanced at the
programme again. The title was "Cockaigne."
September 17.--It has often seemed to me that the bearing of musical
conductors is significant for the study of national characteristics, and
especially for the difference between the English and the Continental
neuro-psychic systems. One always feels inhibition and suppression
(such as a Freudian has found characteristic of the English) in the
movements of the English conductor, some psychic element holding
the nervous play in check, and producing a stiff wooden embarrassed
rigidity or an ostentatiously languid and careless indifference. At the
extreme remove from this is Birnbaum, that gigantic and feverishly
active spider, whose bent body seems to crouch over the whole
orchestra, his magically elongated arms to stretch out so far that his
wand touches the big drum. But even the quietest of these foreign
conductors, Nikisch, for example, gives no impression of psychic
inhibition, but rather of that refined and deliberate economy of means
which marks the accomplished artist. Among English conductors one
may regard Wood (_lucus a non lucendo!_) as an exception. Most of
the rest--I speak of those of the old school, since those of the new
school can sometimes be volatile and feverish enough--seem to be
saying all the time: "I am in an awkward and embarrassing position,
though I shall muddle through successfully. The fact is I am rather out

of my element here. I am really a Gentleman."
October 2.--Whenever I come down to Cornwall I realise the curious
contradiction which lies in this region as at once a Land of Granite and
a Land of Mist. On the one hand archaic rocks, primitive, mighty,
unchanging, deep-rooted in the bases of the world. On the other hand,
iridescent vapour, for ever changing, one moment covering the land
with radiant colour, another enveloping it in a pall of gloom.
I can also see two contradictory types of people among the inhabitants
of this land. On the one hand, a people of massive and solid build, a
slow-moving people of firm, primitive