Tag Archives: journal

Mondays With Muddy

19 Monday Dec 2016

Posted by in MOndays with Muddy, Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , , ,

Here is the next installment of Landscape With Figures, the unpublished manuscript of my grandmother, Beatrice Allen Page:

“Came upon a woman sitting on a camp stool by the side of the road, easel set up in front of her, painting the harbor, which was bright blue today and tufted with little white sales. The picture was almost finished and it was clearly the work of a novice although the woman must have been in her sixties.

She had heard my approaching footsteps and as I was about to pass her, she looked up with a disarming smile and said, ‘It’s pretty awful, isn’t it? I’ve only been painting for about six months.’ And then she went right on to save me the embarrassment of an answer: ‘But I just love it. I see so much that I never saw before.’

Her enjoyment and friendliness were catching and we chatted for several minutes before I went on and left her to finish her picture.

I suppose I’ve always been a little scornful of the amateur artist who plays with his or her talent when he’s or she’s in the mood (I wish there were a pronounce that applied to both sexes) and knows nothing of the self-discipline, the hard work, the ‘agony and the ecstasy’ of the professional.

However, when I think of that woman painting her ‘pretty awful’ picture with such zest, I realize I have undervalued the amateur. As the word conveys, and as she remarked, she ‘loved’ what she was doing. Years ago I read somewhere, or perhaps someone said it to me, a sentence that comes back to me now: Whatever is done with love endures.

That woman’s painting will obviously not endure as art but I have a feeling the act of painting it may endure in some indirect way. It is developing her perceptiveness, increasing her joie de vivre. That joy within herself may spill over onto others – some of it spilled onto me. As a result, later in the day when a man beat me to the one available space in a parking lot over in town which he could clearly see I was aiming for, instead of scowling at him, I smiled affably. He in turn, as a result of my amiability, may have behaved more sympathetically toward the employee he had perhaps meant to bawl out, who in turn my have gone home after work and patched up a quarrel with his wife. And so on and so on. Granted I’m being a little fanciful; who is to say that the joy of one human being in painting a picture, no matter how bad, is not a contribution to other lives?”

Mondays With Muddy

19 Monday Dec 2016

Posted by in MOndays with Muddy, Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , ,

This is the next excerpt of my grandmother’s unpublished manuscript, Landscape with Figures:

“I’ve used the word ‘awareness’ over and over in this journal but with a growing dissatisfaction, partly beccause it has been overused and partly because more and more it seems to me too rational for what I mean. I’ve been trying to think of some analagous word that would pertain not only to the quickening of the mind and feelings but to the senses, the muscles, the whole body; a word that would cover everything from the most sensitive intuitiveness to the ‘knowingness’ that draws the salmon back to its natal waters to spawn, or causes a plant to turn toward the light. A word that would have its head in the stars and its feet on the ground. I wish I could find it.

Speaking of words, I’ve suddenly had a new insight into that word ‘obedience.’ I have always thought of it in terms of obeying the orders of some arbitrary authority, but we also speak of obeying certain principles. To state it in reverse, if you disobey the laws of harmony, you get discord. If you try to disobey the law of gravity by jumping off a high tower with the intention of remaining in mid-air, you fall and get killed. To think of obedience as bringing oneself into accord with natural, or supernatural, forces gives me a quite different feeling about it.”

 

Mondays With Muddy

05 Monday Dec 2016

Posted by in blog, Uncategorized, writing

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

, , , , , ,

Here is the next installment of Landscape With Figures, the unpublished manuscript of my grandmother, Beatrice Allen Page:

” When I woke up a little later than usual this morning, there were already floccules of shell-pink and mauve and dove-gray scattered loosely over the pale sky above the ocean, and through my east window I could see coral and luminous gold streaks just above the spot where the sun was due to appear.

A few minutes later I watched a fiery red sun blaze above the horizon. I could only keep my eyes on it for a second at a time as it rose higher and turned to burning gold. Its rays slanted through the pines, gilding the tips of the needles. Whenever a current of air stirred the branches, the spider threads slung between the twigs were revealed by the tiny hyphens of slippery light that shuttled back and forth on the invisable filaments. Down by the edge of the field the leaves of the poplars looked like thousands of shining coins tossed into the air. Everywhere I looked there was a radiance and freshness.

I wished with all my heart there were someone I could thank for it. Gratitude unfocused and unexpressed is almost painful, like a lump in the throat when you hold back tears.

My mind began to play over all the other beauty I have been privileged to enjoy this summer, not only the beauty of earth and sea and sky, but the beauty – and the truth and the goodness and the love – I have seen in human beings. I thought of Mr. Hollis’s utter simplicity and artlessness. I thought of the little girls painting sand dollars with pure delight. I thought of Dr. Rosenblum’s devotion to music and his wife’s devotion to him. I thought of hte look in Laura’s eyes when she said, ‘I love each and every one of my children with my whole heart!’ I thought of that crystal-clear morning when I was sitting down on the ledges and could almost…almost see through the invisible veil…

And suddenly it struck me with amazement and chagrin that I was not unlike the oldest Peabody sister, Elizabeth, who bumped into a tree when walking across Boston Common and explained, ‘I saw it but I did not realize it.’

How could I have seen evidence of God all about me and not have realized it, I wondered. The answer came at once, clearly, and to my dismay: Because I didn’t want to realize it. It was not that I could not believe in God, but that I did not want to. I still don’t want to. I am afraid of what it may reveal to me about myself. I am afraid of finding I have been living in the dark and may be blinded by the light, like the people in Plato’s cave. I am afraid of being called upon to make sacrifices. I don’t want to give up the directing of my own life, my own egoism, my pride and little vanities, my independence. I hate the word ‘obedience.’

I shall not give up without a struggle. It is only late morning as I write this, but combat fatigue is already beginning to set in.”

 

It’s Almost Book Time, Y’All

05 Monday Dec 2016

Posted by in art, dementia, Fractured Memories, painting, Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Several people have expressed an interest in purchasing my new book as a holiday gift. It’s part coffee table art book and part memoir, and it’s full of ridiculousness and love. I’ve been pushing the publisher to get it out in time, but they’ve been frustratingly slow with everything and are anticipating a release date in January. So, I’m offering the book for PREORDER on my own website. When you order, I’ll email you a nice little mock-up of the cover for you to print out and put in a card. You can order your copy at http://shop.emilypageart.com/products/fractured-memories.

Book cover 1.jpg

Mondays With Muddy

28 Monday Nov 2016

Posted by in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , , ,

This is the next installment of the unpublished manuscript, Landscape with Figures, by my grandmother, Beatrice Allen Page:

“When I set out as usual for a walk this morning, I had no particular destination in mind. It just happened that I was passing the church over by the cove as people were arriving for the service, and on an impulse I went in too.

It is a typical old New England church, painted white and built with a lovely simplicity of line. On the inside there is a center aisle flanked by two sections of semi-circular pews, all of which had little doors a the ends which latched securely with a decisive click. I thought for a moment I’d actually been locked in just in case I changed my mind. As a matter of fact, my presence wasn’t needed that badly – the place was almost full. Most of the people I’ve met this summer attend one of the churches over in town if they attend any. However, this Stoneleigh church draws people from several communities in the area, most them local residents, I surmise, but with a fairly good percentage of summer people mixed in.

The cornerstone of the congregation seemed to be a row of old ladies with fine, strong features who sat stiff and erect in the front left pew. From where I saw on the opposite side, some rows back, I had an oblique view of their profiles. They looked as if thtey might all be Emerson’s sisters petrified by time.

I was surprised when the minister entered; I hadn’t expected him to be so young. I decided he must be fresh out of seminary and that this was his first incumbency or whatever it’s called.

All through the hymns and preliminaries to the sermon I felt self-conscious and vaguely guilty, as if I were an imposter. It is a long time since I’ve been in church except for a wedding or a funeral. My feeling of awkwardness was increased when I suddenly realized I had no money with me. When the offering was taken up, however, my interest in the way it was done made me forget my embarrassment. Instead of passing a plate, the ushers carefully thrust into each pew a pole from which was suspended a mulberry-colored velvet pouch that delicately muffled the clink of coins.

When the minister began his sermon, I tried to concentrate on what he was saying but most of the time I was thinking about him instead. He was a dark-haired, dark-eyed, very personable young man with good diction, and in spite of his youth his delivery was confident without being cocksure. I liked him, even though I didn’t take in much of what he was saying.

But what was he like when he was not in the pulpit, I wondered? Was he a person I could talk with comfortable or would there be too great a gap between our viewpoints? What made him enter the ministry? Did he grow up with a strong religious faith or was it something he had to struggle to acquire or was it something hat struck him our of the blue? Was he primarily interested in saving souls or in making the church relevant to the world we live in? Had he found a treasure forever beyond my reach?

If I had listened carefully to what he was saying, I might have learned the answers to some of my questions, but my mind and gaze wandered from him to the people around me. What were they really thinking about, what did they feel, what did they really believe? Was that ruddy, stocky, well-dressed man, for instance, really absorbed in the minister’s words or barely holding back his impatience to go fishing on this lovely day? And that slightly pained-looking woman in the flowered print dress – was she having trouble understanding the sermon or did her shoes hurt her?

When the service was over, I tried to sidle out inconspicuously but several strangers came up and greeted me cordially and then my friends, the Mitchells, appeared, looking as surprised to see me there as I was to see them. They offered me a ride home which I declined, but I chatted with them for a few minutes as we walked out together. It seems they’ve been attending that church in the summer ever since they started coming to Stoneleigh nine years ago.

As I was turning to go, Frank asked, ‘Why haven’t we seen you here before?’ I couldn’t decide whether it was an honest questions or whether he was teasing me.

‘It’s a good question,’ I laughed, and went on my way thinking that was the end of it.

But this evening the question has come back.  A little while ago I heard the chapel bell over in the village ringing for vesper service. As always, it seemed to me to have a lonely sound and put me in a slightly melancholy mood.

I visualized a little flock of the faithful straggling along the road – the ones who had no time for churchgoing in the morning, such as the domestics who work for the summer people, or the very pious and forlorn who felt a need to attend church both morning and evening. The image depressed me. I thought it was because I felt sorry for them.

Then without my intention or volition the image changed. I was no longer the creator of it, I was a passive spectator. Instead of a scattering of people along the road, I saw thousands and thousands of people stretching way back into the distance, far beyond eye range – a distance in time as well as space – all pressing forward together toward the chapel. The phrase ‘strnagers and pilgrims on the earth’ went through my mind, and to my utter astonishment I realized it was for myself I felt sorry. I felt a pang of envy and of loneliness. I wanted to belong to that procession.

It was then that Frank’s question came back to me and I asked myself; if instead of evading the question, I had answered it honestly, what would I have said?

I suppose my answer would have gone like this: ‘You don’t see me in church because I’m not sure I even believe in God. I’m one of those who are ‘lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot.’ I’l like to believe in God but I can’t.’

And then if he had asked me why I couldn’t, I suppose I’d have brought up the old argument about all the undeserved suffering in the world not jibing with a lovely and omnipotent Deity, along with all the other timeworn intellectual objections to which no one, so far as I know, has ever found or received an explanation any more specific or satisfactory than the one Job got.

That would have been my answer to Frank. But would it have really been an honest answer? A vague uneasiness tells me it would not. But then  what is the answer?”

Mondays With Muddy

21 Monday Nov 2016

Posted by in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , ,

Here is the next excerpt from Beatrice Allen Page’s unpublished manuscript, Landscape With Figures. Her final sentence is exquisite:

“Sometimes an ordinary word, when dropped into a receptive frame of mind, opens up into something quite unsuspected, like those Japanese paper pellets which, when dropped into water, unfold and expand into tiny flowers.

Driving home from town, my glance happened to fall on a sign: Greenwood Lane. Hundreds of streets must be named Greenwood; hundreds of people must bear that surname; it is probably the name of several country inns; it is possibly the brand name of some product. I must have seen and heard it dozens of times.

Yet not until today did I suddenly realize what a lovely, evocative word it is – a fresh, cool, shady word from which to escape the heat, not only in its sense but in its sound. I kept murmering ‘Greenwood’ over and over all the way home and it was amazing how it seemed to alleviate the blistering heat.

It was almost as refreshing as the cool, consoling breeze that arose about sundown to wipe the sweat off the face of the day and unpin the treetops so they could shake their leaves loose with a sigh of relief.”

Mondays With Muddy

14 Monday Nov 2016

Posted by in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , ,

This is the next installment from Beatrice Allen Page’s unpublished manuscript, Landscape With Figures:

“For some unknown reason, when I was sitting on the beach this morning the world looked rounder than usual. A sky translucent as bone china arched over an ocean that looked extraordinarily full, as if it might brim over. The balance of the world seemed very precarious. The planet might so easily tilt an inch or two, and then the ocean spilling over the horizon would tilt it further until within moments the whole sea, all the seas, would be pouring over the edge, carrying people, animals, trees, mountains, houses, everything with them pell-mell, helter-skelter. Whoever and whatever wasn’t drowned or crushed by the weight of  water would be catapulted out into the void.

Newton would have been amused at my naivete but for a second I had an inkling of why some people have a phobia about open spaces. I was glad when my ‘vision’ awas interrupted by the arrival of some other people.

One of the men began telling us about a dinner that had been given in his honor. It was quite a long story and his pleasure and complacency were evident throughout the whole recital. When he left us to take a swim, Alice G. said to me sotto voce, ‘Men are so conceited.’

My own opinion is that men in general have less spurious humility than women. They tend toward an obvious, childlike, innocent vanity that is almost appealing. Most of them openly delight in having their pictures taken. They receive honors, publicity, awards of one kind or another with a sort of Little Jack Horner attitude of ‘see-what-a-big-boy-am-I!’

Women are often less candid and try to disguise their vanity with the result it doesn’t have the childlike quality that makes it forgivable. We tend to put on an air of false modesty and then fish for compliments. A=I found a remark of Alice’s a few minutes later much more irritating than Mr. J’s ingenuous boasting.

Apropos some book that had been mentioned, she remarked, ‘I never read novels. I just don’t have the time.’ The implication was that she didn’t have time to waste on reading anything to trivial. In other words, it was an indirect way of boasting about her superior intelligence.

I’ve heard many people make that statement and it always irks me. Reading a good novel is such an enlargement of life. You experience things vicariously that you never could in your own limited life, you visit places you’ll never see in actuality, you entertain new ideas, and most of all you get to know all kinds of people, which deepens your understanding.

Understanding leads to compassion and compassion leads to caring and concern, so I might as well label the end result caritas. It’s a less ambiguous word than love.

Aren’t we being told over and over, both by the psychiatrists and the clergy, that love is the only thing that can unite human beings and so overcome the hate and indifference that is destroying the world? Ergo, if reading fiction is one small step leading to that goal, who dares say it is a waste of time?

Having said that, I am amazed at my own stupidity in ever having questioned not only the justification for art but the desperate need for it in an age of confusion and violence and despair, since art extends our boundaries, opens up greater heights and depths of existence, is ‘life-enhancing.’ If ever we needed dedicated poets and painters and musicians and artists of all kinds, it is now.”

Mondays With Muddy (on a Tuesday)

08 Tuesday Nov 2016

Posted by in MOndays with Muddy, Uncategorized, writing

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , ,

Admittedly, I’m a bit late with Mondays with Muddy this week. My laptop to a vacation to a service center, and when I got it back, the “d” key wasn’t working, so it had to make a return trip. So I’ve been getting by with S’s computer and my work computer, but it’s been making my time online kind of sparse. I finally got it back today and am working on playing catch up.

But I figure we could all use a charming distraction from this election day with some of my grandmother’s writing. So, without further ado, here is the next excerpt from Beatrice Allen Page’s unpublished manuscript, Landscape with Figures:

“A discussion over cocktails at the Stuarts’ as to where we would live and in what period if we had the choice. It made me realize what a provincial New Englander I am at heart. I’ve often thought I’d like to have lived in Concord during the era of Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, Bronson Alcott, Channing and their friends. I’m not sure that I’d have liked them all or agreed with their strong opinion (anymore than they always areed with one another), but at least you could be certain of an interesting conversation whenever two or three were gathered together.

The town itself was quiet and attractive and neighborly. If you felt in the mood for solitude, there were lovely walks to be taken through outlying meadows and woods and beside the placid Concord Rive with its white pond lilies. I have the impression it was an age of hope and optimism that the world was bound to grow better and better, although everyone seemed to have his own pet scheme for making it better. Or is that impression simply nostalgia?

Carrying my ‘ifs’ a little further, I ask myself: if I could have lived in Concord at that time, and if I could have been anyone I wanted, who would I have chosen to be? The answer is Sophia Peabody Hawthorne. In fact, she comes promptly to mind and excludes all other possibilities.

Sophia, the youngest of the three Peabody sisters, was the prettiest and most charming. She was bookish (she not only read Shakespeare and the English classics, she read Isaiah in Hebrew and Luke in Greek), but not in any pedantic, bluestocking sense; she was gay and witty. She was also a gifted painter but hapy to neglect her own talent to nourish her adored husband’s, ever sensitive to his needs as a person and as a writer, protecting his privacy, never losing faith in his talent, giving him faith in himself through her totally committed heart, always struggling to make ends meet financially and spare him the burden of such worries. In short, an altogether endearing person from a masculine viewpoint, I should imagine.

The real reason I’d have liked to be Sophia, however, is not because she was such an admirable wife, but because she was Nathaniel Hawthorne’s wife. I fell in love with him in high school when I first saw a picture of him and have never entirely got over it. Judging from Sophia’s description of him, who could blame me or any woman for falling in love with him? She wrote her mother he was ‘a union of power and gentleness, softness and spirit, passion and divine reason…ardent, rapt, tender…’

Nevertheless, one little episode has bothered me ever since I read it a few years ago, in Louise Tharp’s fascinating book on the Peabody sisters, I think. When he came upon his ten-year-old daughter, Rose, writing a story, he scolded her severely and forbade her ever to do such a thing again. Why? It was both cruel and seemingly senseless, and so unlike him. You would have expected him to be proud of her, to have encouraged her, or at least to have reacted with indulgent amusement.

True, he didn’t think much of women writers, although he seemed to have no objections to women painters – or at least those who gave it up for him. Writing, he thought, deprived women of delicacy; they might just as well walk through the street stark naked. Such an attitude just doesn’t fit my image of his character. Even if it had been his misfortune to read only poor writers among the female sex, surely he was intelligent enough to realize there might be a few good ones, too.

It hurts to discover such insensitivity in the man you love, so I try to find some explanation that will put a better light on it. Perhaps Hawthorne, knowing the torment of not being able to write the way he wanted, or sometimes not being able to write at all, of fearing he could not complete a book he’d started, or having completed one, fearing he’d never be able to write another – perhaps knowing all the agony and frustration he’d endured as a writer, he wanted to save his child from such suffering. So he punished her much as a parent spanks a child for running out into the street, not because it was doing something wicked but to make sure it will never get hurt.

That must be the explanation, I tell myself. Still, I’m glad I didn’t know about the episode when I was visiting the Old Manse some years ago. It would have spoiled my impression of the Hawthornes’ idyllic family life.

I remember sitting down on the window seat in the upstairs hall that day and imagining myself as Sophia. It was a lovely summer day and as I gazed out on the tranquil Concord River, I could almost see Thoreau drifting down it in his green dory, as I imagined Sophia must have seen him sometimes. Yielding to an impulse, I exclaimed, as I imagined she must have, ‘Here comes Henry!’

Instinctively, all the sightseers passing through the hall turned their heads to look out the window, before they eyed me a little uneasily and filed on down the stairs.”

Mondays With Muddy

31 Monday Oct 2016

Posted by in MOndays with Muddy, Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , ,

This is the next excerpt from Beatrice Allen Page’s unpublished manuscript, Landscape With Figures:

“A very soft, feathery, pocket-sized breeze has sprung up this morning. I wish I could think of another word for it. ‘Breeze’ has too sharp an edge: it should be reserved for small winds that are brisk and invigorating. As a matter of fact, on consulting the dictionary, I find that it was originally a nautical term deriving from a Spanish and Portuguese word meaning ‘northeast wind,’ and similar to an Italian word meaning ‘cold wind from the north.’

The only word I know for the kind of wind barely stirring the curtains now is ‘zephyr’ and that’s too poetic and affected for everyday use. Apparently the only way to get around the difficulty is to make a phrase: a ‘breath of air,’ for instance, or a ‘current of air,’ or a ‘tiny puff of wind.’

There is another word I feel is missing when I shift my eyes to the poplar down by the edge of the field. When a good breeze blows through them and the sun is shining on the leaves, they appear to twinkle. But when, as today, there are just little puffs of air stirring through them, the sunlight glinting and glancing off them is not quivery enough to be called a twinkle. I can’t think of any word that describes the rather indolent, intermittent gleaming.

In spite of the richness and flexibility of the English language, it lacks a number of needed words. Most of the new words that are added to the language are either technical or slang. Why do so few writers create new words? There is James Joyce, of course, but his neologisms were mostly made up of combinations of words or plays on words. Gerard Manly Hopkins created several words that admirably served their intended purpose – words like ‘inscape’ and ‘wanwood,’ for example – but they have never become part of general usage.

What is harder to understand is why we have let so many useful and onomatopoetic words fall into desuetude. For instance, the old New England word, ‘scoon,’ meaning to skim, sail or skip upon the water, from which ‘schooner’ presumably derives. Or ‘dornick,’ meaning a stone of a size suitable for throwing. And ‘springal,’ meaning an active youth. How better describe that appealingly gangly lad I saw on the beach early this morning, just looking for something to do, than as a springal searching for dornicks to throw in the water?”

Mondays With Muddy

24 Monday Oct 2016

Posted by in MOndays with Muddy, music, Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , , ,

This is the next installment of my grandmother’s unpublished manuscript. Beatrice Allen Page’s Landscape With Figures:

“I’ve had occasional glimpses of the Rosenblums sitting on their porch or out in their yard, but apparently they don’t care for swimming and beach-sitting and prefer to stay quietly by themselves. So we’d never met. As I was walking past their house late this morning, however, Mrs. R was just coming out. Even now, a trace of real beauty lurks behind the overlay of heavy make-up and dyed black hair, and there is a faint suggestion of a kind of queenliness in her carriage in spite of the lumpy figure stretch the too-tight dress.

Impulsively I stopped, introduced myself, and told her how much I’ve enjoyed her husband’s cello playing.

She gave me a searching, suspicious, even slightly hostile look which took me aback. Then abruptly she changed, having apparently decided I meant what I said and was not just gushing. Her face took on a glow of warm responsiveness and in a rather deep and slightly raspy voice that was not unattractive, she insisted upon my coming in to meet her husband, promptly abandoning whatever plans she may have had in mind when she came out.

I spent a delightful hour with them, in the course of which I gathered certain facts. He is a cardiologist and what he called a ‘prevented’ cellist, meaning I suppose that he never considered himself good enough to become a professional musician.

‘I’m like Chekhov,’ he explained happily. ‘I have both a wife and a mistress. Medicine is my wife and music is my mistress.’ He talks in a slightly  hesitant way with an accent, and the enlarged eyes behind the thick glasses look at you with gentleness and humor.

‘It is a good in-stru-ment,’ he said, patting the cello lovingly. ‘Good enough for me. It sounds. But sometimes I dare allow myself to imagine it is a Stradivarius. And I, I am Piatigorsky, or sometimes Casals.’

His wife laughed appreciatively although she has undoubtedly heard his little jokes dozens of times. She was once a professional pianist. There were autographed photographs – lares and penates that accompany them everywhere, I suspect – of Toscanini, Horowitz and other musical greats, ranged about on tables, but I could not get close enough to any of them to read the inscription and find out what her name had been. I had a feeling she did not want to reveal it, that she preferred to close off the past from the present. Arthritis in her hands put a stop to her career, which perhaps accounts for the slightly bitter cast of her mouth.

‘But she plays accom-pan-i-ments for me sometimes,’ Dr. R said, bestowing an affectionate look on her.

Their muual pride and joy is their son who is a violinist and currently hoping to land a job with one of the major symphony orchestras. They clearly have great expectations for him.

‘He has a good tone,’ said Dr. R. ‘Full, bi-i-g’ He drew the word out so it sounded almost like ‘beeg’ and opened his arms out in a wide, circular movement. ‘Everything is bi-i-g, full, round. Rococo.’ I doubt if that was the word he meant; I think it just sounded as if it should be. Then as if he were anxious not to brag too brazenly, he added, ‘But the lit-tle things, I tell him the get ground under.’ He twisted his heel into the rug to demonstrate. Nevertheless, when he raised his head, his homely face was alight with the pride he could not conceal.

‘Sometimes he and my husband play duets together,’ Mrs. R said, and added simply, ‘It is beautiful to hear.”

In St. Louis Dr. R plays in an amateur chamber music group. His medical practice keeps him so busy, however, that he has little time to practice the cello. ‘But,’ he says, ‘I play ev-er-y day. No matter how I feel. Even if only for three minutes. One must nev-er miss a sing-le day.’

To see that kind of loving enthusiasm and discipline, particularly without hope of recognition for one’s talent, always makes me feel good. I don’t see it very often. It has made my day.”