v, and Tschaikovsky. He even
frequented the Philharmonic Concerts, which were then conducted by a
composer of sentimental drawing-room ballads, and though he would not
class this conductor with Richter or Henry J. Wood, he yet believed that
somehow, by the magic of the sacred name of the Philharmonic Society,
the balladmonger in the man expired in the act of raising the baton and
was replaced by a serious and sensitive artist. He was accustomed to
hear the same pieces of music again and again and again, and they were
all or nearly all very fine, indisputably great. It never occurred to
him that once they had been unfamiliar and had had to fight for the
notice of persons who indulged in music exactly as he indulged in music.
He had no traffic with the unfamiliar. Unfamiliar items on a programme
displeased him. He had heard compositions by Richard Strauss, but he
could make nothing of them, and his timid, untravelled taste feared to
like them. Mr. Enwright himself was mainly inimical to Strauss, as to
most of modern Germany, perhaps because of the new architecture in
Berlin. George knew that there existed young English composers with such
names as Cyril Scott, Balfour Gardiner, Donald Tovey--for he had seen
these names recently on the front page of _The Daily Telegraph_--but he
had never gone to the extent of listening to their works. He was
entirely sure that they could not hold a candle to Wagner, and his
sub-conscious idea was that it was rather like their cheek to compose at
all. He had not noticed that Hugo Wolf had just died, nor indeed had he
noticed that Hugo Wolf had ever lived.

Nevertheless this lofty and exclusive adherent of the 'best' music was
not prejudiced in advance against _The Gay Spark_. He was anxious to
enjoy it and he expected to enjoy it. _The Gay Spark_ had already an
enormous prestige; it bore the agreeable, captivating label of Vienna;
and immense sums were being made out of it in all the capitals of the
world. George did not hope for immortal strains, but he anticipated a
distinguished, lilting gaiety, and in the 'book' a witty and
cosmopolitan flavour that would lift the thing high above such English
musical comedies as he had seen. It was impossible that a work of so
universal and prodigious a vogue should not have unquestionable virtues.

The sight of the red-nosed comedian rather shocked George, who had
supposed that red-nosed comedians belonged to the past. However, the man
was atoned fo