IV GEORG HENSCHEL

Georg Henschel was from the very first a great admirer of Irving away back from 1879, and so he used to come to the Lyceum and sometimes stay to supper in the Beefsteak Room, or in the room we used before it. I shall never forget one night when he sang to us. There were a very few others present, all friends and all lovers of music. Two items linger in my memory unfailingly; one a lullaby of Handel and the other the “Elders’ Song” from Handel’s Susannah. We had all become great friends before he went to Boston where—I think succeeding Gerische—he took over the conductorship of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. He had wished to study practically orchestral music. One forenoon—February 28, 1884—by previous arrangement Irving and I went to the Music Hall to hear his orchestra play Schumann’s Manfred. It was quite a private performance given entirely for Irving; the gentlemen of the orchestra, all fine musicians, were delighted to play for him. He was entranced with the music and the rendering of it. When we were driving back to the Vendôme Hotel in Commonwealth Avenue where we were both staying he talked all the time about the possibilities of producing Byron’s play. He had had it in his mind for a long time as a work to be undertaken; indeed the répétition which we had just heard was the outcome of his having mentioned the matter to Henschel on a previous occasion. He was nearer to making up his mind to a definite production that morning than he had ever been or ever was afterwards.

It was agreed between them that later on, if he should undertake to do Julius Cæsar, for which he had already arranged the book, Henschel was to compose the music for it.