Visit of the
Bear"), after Hans Christian Andersen, were at first intended to form
a miniature orchestral suite; but an opportunity arose to have them
printed as piano duets, and the orchestral sketches were destroyed--a
regrettable outcome, as it seems.

His pupils, he found, were scattered, and he gave himself up without
restraint to the pleasures of creative writing. These were days of
quiet and deep happiness. He read much, often aloud in the
evening--fairy-tales, of which he was devotedly fond, legendary lore
of different countries, mediaeval romances, Keats, Shelley, Tennyson,
Benvenuto Cellini's Memoirs, Victor Hugo, Heine; and also Mark Twain.
Later, in the spring, the days were devoted partly to composition and
partly to long walks with his wife in the beautiful Frankfort woods,
where was suggested to MacDowell the particular mood that found
embodiment, many years later, in one of the last things that he wrote:
"From a German Forest," in the collection of "Fireside Tales."

The following summer (1885), the death of a friend of his earlier
Frankfort days, Lindsay Deas, a Scotchman, left vacant in Edinburgh
the post of examiner for the Royal Academy of Music, and Deas's family
presented MacDowell's name as a candidate. A trip to London was
undertaken for the purpose of securing the place, if possible--since
composition alone could not be depended upon for a livelihood; but
again his youth, as well as his nationality and his "modern
tendencies," militated against him. He was obliged to admit that he
had been a protege of "that dreadful man Liszt," as the potentate of
Weimar was characterised by Lady Macfarren, an all-powerful factor in
the control of the institution; and that proving finally his
abandonment to a nefarious modernity, he was again rejected.

Upon their return to Germany the MacDowells moved from Frankfort to
Wiesbaden, where they spent the winter of 1885-86, living in a small
pension. The first concerto (op. 15) had recently been published by
Breitkopf and Haertel. The same year (1885) was marked by the
completion of the second concerto in D-minor, begun at Frankfort in
the previous winter, and the publication by Breitkopf and Haertel of
the full score of "Hamlet and Ophelia,"[3] with a dedication to Henry
Irving and Ellen Terry, from whose performances in London MacDowell
had caught the suggestion for the music. In the summer of 1886
MacDowell and his wife again yielded to their passion for trav