As a pianist, as in all other matters touching his own capacities, he was often tortured by doubts concerning the effect of his performances. "I shall never forget," recalls his wife, "the first time he played it [the "Eroica" sonata] in Boston. We all thought he did it wonderfully. But when I went around to the green-room door to find him, fearing something might be wrong, as he had not come to me, he had gone. When I got home, accompanied by two friends, there he was almost in a corner, white, and as if he were guilty of some crime, and he said as we came in: 'I can play better than that. But I was so tired!' We almost wept with the pity of the unnecessary suffering, which was yet so real and intense. In a short time he was more himself, and naïvely admitted that he had played three movements well, but had been a 'd---- fool in one.' I grew to be very used to this as the years went on, for he could not help emphasising to himself what he did badly, and ignoring the good." He left few uncompleted works. There are among his manuscripts three movements of a symphony, two movements of a suite for string orchestra, a suite for violin and piano, some songs and piano pieces, and a large number of sketches. He had schemes for a music-drama on an Arthurian subject, and sketched a single act of it. He had planned this work upon novel lines: there was to be comparatively little singing, and much emphasis was to be laid upon the orchestral commentary; the action was to be carried on by a combination of pantomime and tableaux, and the scenic element was to be conspicuous--a suggestion which he got in part from E.A. Abbey's Holy Grail frescoes in the Boston Public Library. But he had determined to write his own text: and the prospective labour of this, made more formidable by his restricted leisure, finally discouraged him, and he abandoned the project. Five years before his death he destroyed the sketches that he had made; only a few fragments remain.