Only the assurances of his wise and devoted wife at times prevented him from recalling a completed work.

Yet he was always touched, delighted, and genuinely cheered by what he felt to be sincere and thoughtful praise.

To a writer who had published an admiring article concerning some of his later music he wrote: "MY DEAR MR .-- --: "Your article was forwarded to me after all.

I wish to thank you for the warm-hearted and sympathetic enthusiasm which prompted your writing it.

While my outgivings have always been sincere, I feel only too often their inadequacy to express my ideals; thus what you speak of as accomplishment I fear is often but attempt.
Certainly your sympathy for my aims is most welcome and precious to me, and I thank you again most heartily." Those who knew the man only through his music have thought of him as wholly a dreamer and a recluse, a poet brooding in detachment, and unfriendly to the pedestrian and homely things of the world.