DEAR GUIDO (but _not_ of Polenta),--I have been quite _mortified_ at your neglect of me, and invoked the muses in vain! and call'd on the ghosts of Titian and Raffael, but they did not heed my sighs! I am always glad to see you, and wish I could _see your works_! All my cotemporaries and comrades are dying off, and I _cannot_ last long--so come to my "Evenings at Home" when you dine in my "Quartier" and are going to your club. Alas! for dear Henry Greville! I knew him from his most early youth. _Both_ his parents were my _early_ friends from _my_ youth, and his elder brother my cotemporary. Come! Benvenuto Cellini--venite! _Monday, February 1873._ Leighton's passion for music led him to encourage all that was best in instrumental as well as in vocal performance. The Monday Popular Concerts were started by Messrs. Chappell in 1859, the first being given on the 3rd January. From their commencement Leighton was a subscriber, and very rarely missed being present. It was in the 'seventies that Leighton instituted those yearly feasts of music, which were among the real treats of the year.[54] His dear friend Joachim was to the end the _pièce de résistance_ of these gatherings. Never did the Great Master seem so inspired as when he played in that studio. Leighton wrote to his sister, Mrs. Matthews, April 1871:-- DEAREST GUSSY,--You heard, no doubt, that I gave a party the other day, and that it went off well. To me perhaps the most striking thing of the evening was Joachim's playing of Bach's "Chacone" up in my gallery. I was at the other end of the room, and the effect from the distance of the dark figure in the uncertain light up there, and barely relieved from the gold background and dark recess, struck me as one of the most poetic and fascinating things that I remember. At the opposite end of the room in the apse was a blazing crimson rhododendron tree, which looked glorious where it reached up into the golden semi-dome. Madame Viardot sang the "Divinités du Styx," from the "Alcestis," quite magnificently, and then, later in the evening, a composition of her own in which I delight--a Spanish-Arab ditty, with a sort of intermittent mandoline scraping accompaniment. It is the complaint of some forsaken woman, and wanders and quavers in a doleful sort of way that calls up to me in a startling manner visions and memories of Cadiz and Cordova, and sunny distant lands that smell of jasmine. A little Miss Brandes, a pupil of Madame Schumann, played too. She is full of talent and promise, and has had an immense success. Mme. Joachim sang "Mignon" (Beethoven) excellently. [Illustration: Sketch executed on the spot by Mr. Theodore Blake Wirgman of their Majesties the King and Queen attending a Popular Concert in St. James's Hall, Lord Leighton being one of the Royal party. About 1893.]