Conductors (Music) -- United States -- Biography; Damrosch, Walter, 1862-1950
I had agreed to conduct a concert in London on the 19th of June, and so
very reluctantly said a temporary good-by to our party at York. This
concert was given by Ovide Musin, an eminent young Belgian violinist,
who wished to perform a concerto of my father’s which he had played in
New York about eight years before under my father’s own direction. I had
an excellent London orchestra of seventy-five players and also gave
Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony and the Liszt Hungarian Rhapsody Number
One. It was my first experience as a conductor in England, and as the
concert passed off very well I was much elated, especially when, just
before catching my train for Durham to rejoin the coaching party, I read
some complimentary criticisms of the concert in the _London Times_ and
_Telegraph_.
It was raining when I left the railroad station in Durham to walk to the
road along which Mr. Carnegie’s coach was to appear. I well remember my
thrill of joy when I heard a merry fanfare played on the coaching horn
by one of the footmen—whom, by the way, I always envied for his
virtuosity on this instrument—and shortly after, at a turn of the road,
I saw the coach appear with everybody on top attired in gray rain-coats
and waving a friendly welcome. My wife has always insisted to my
children that on this entire trip I wore a double-breasted frock coat
which had done previous duty at my matinée concerts in America, but I
think this is a gross slander and not based on fact.
We crossed the border into Scotland and of course stopped at Walter
Scott’s home and also visited the ruins of Linlithgow Castle, in which
Mary Queen of Scots was born. And here the four reporters, who had been
as constant as leeches and as inevitable as death and the taxgatherer,
solemnly entered the ruins and gave Mr. Blaine a telegram which they had
just received announcing Benjamin Harrison’s nomination at the
convention. As Mr. Blaine had expected this for weeks, the news did not
excite him greatly. He bade a friendly good-by to the four young
sleuth-hounds, several of whom have since achieved fame in their
profession, and we continued our journey farther north until we arrived
at Mr. Carnegie’s home, Cluny Castle, on the evening of July 3.
It was bitter cold and the wind was whistling shrilly over the Dalwhinny
Moors as we first caught sight of Cluny, but an American flag was
floating proudly over its turrets, and inside warm fires and a delicious
dinner were awaiting us.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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