Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Third Supplement.djvu/148

 mass of dark hair, brown eyes, and a fresh complexion. He was a kindly man, with very courteous but rather stately manners. Although reserved and somewhat shy, he had many friends, and was universally esteemed by the members of the bar; to his juniors there he was ever kind and helpful. His main intellectual interest, apart from the law, was in mathematics; within a few months of his death he was reading books on the differential calculus. For his vacations his chief diversion was in foreign travel. As he would never take more work than he could properly do, and was slow and conscientious in doing it, he was never a rich man, About the acquisition of money he was as careless as he was lavish in spending it. His daughter records that he only once tried the experiment of riding in an omnibus; his brother, a bill-broker who died a millionaire, was never known to ride in anything else. Cohen was always a professing Jew, and proud of the traditions of the race. He was for many years president of the Jewish board of deputies. It was characteristic of him that he resigned when the first of his children married outside the Jewish community. His portrait was painted by J. S. Sargent in 1897. He died 8 November 1914, at his house in Great Cumberland Place, and was buried by the side of his wife in the Jewish cemetery at Willesden.  COLERIDGE-TAYLOR, SAMUEL (1875-1912), musical composer, was born in London at 15 Theobalds Road, Holborn, 15 August 1875. His father, Dr. Paul Taylor, was a native of Sierra Leone. He was brought up by his mother, Alice née Hare, at Croydon, where he lived practically all his life and where he died. His mother was poor, and Coleridge-Taylor’s education began at an elementary school where his musical ability was sufficiently evident for the schoolmaster to get him admitted into the choir of St. George’s Presbyterian church, Croydon. Education might have gone no farther but for the interest of Colonel Herbert Walters, who discovered the boy’s talent, removed him into the choir of St. Mary’s church, Addiscombe, and in 1891 sent him as a student of the violin to the Royal College of Music. Here he came under the notice of (Sir) Charles Villiers Stanford, who advised him to take to composition as his principal study. In 1893 he won a scholarship at the College. He held it for four years, and during that time gained general recognition as one of the most talented of young composers. Over twenty of his works were first heard at College concerts, including a string quartet in D minor, a clarinet quintet (which so greatly impressed Joseph Joachim that he led a performance of it in Berlin in 1897), a nonet for piano, wind, and strings, and three movements of a symphony in A minor. As a composition pupil of Stanford, Coleridge-Taylor was firmly grounded in the classics, but even in these student days his highest admiration was given to the music of Dvorak, whom he loved to extol above Brahms. Spontaneity of melody, piquancy of rhythm, and glowing colour meant more to him than the subtle intellectualities of the great Germans.

Coleridge-Taylor had surrendered his scholarship when, on 11 November 1898, the concert was given, at the College, which produced his ‘Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast’ and made him famous. Sir Hubert Parry wrote (Musical Times, October 1912): ‘It had got abroad in some unaccountable and mysterious manner that something of unusual interest was going to happen, and when the time came or the concert the “tin tabernacle” (i.e. the temporary concert hall of the Royal College of Music) was besieged by eager crowds, a large proportion of whom were shut out, but accommodation was found for Sir Arthur Sullivan and other musicians of eminence. Expectation was not disappointed, and “Hiawatha” started on a career which, when confirmed by the production of “The Death of Minnehaha” at the North Staffordshire festival in the following year (1899) and of a final section by the Royal Choral Society in 1900, established it as one of the most universally beloved works of modern English music.’

The production of the whole work by the Royal Choral Society at the Albert Hall on 22 March 1900 set the seal on Coleridge-Taylor’s unique achievement, and he was asked to compose for one festival after another. But he could never find another book with just that simplicity of narrative, that naive human interest combined with exotic imagery, which made Longfellow his ideal partner in song. ‘The Blind Girl of Castel Cuillé’ (Leeds 1901), ‘Meg Blane’ (Sheffield 1902), and an oratorio ‘The Atonement’ (Hereford 1903) were all failures in comparison with ‘Hiawatha’.  122