Page:Poetical works of Mathilde Blind.djvu/60

 34 nature of great depth as well as simplicity. No man was more given to enunciate, in a quiet, homely way, maxims of wisdom so profound and true that they sometimes seemed to have been fetched up from the depths below "the brief fathom-line of thought or sense." His wisdom was a stimulus to Mathilde, his simplicity a refreshment. She repaid him and his wife with a true affection, evinced in later years, after his death, by her purchase of a picture by him that she might present it to the Luxembourg. Her acquaintance with them was of long date, but she first resided under their roof when Madox Brown lived at Manchester, painting the frescoes which adorn the Town Hall:—

"I used," she tells Mrs. Wolfsohn, "to go daily to the Town Hall, where Madox Brown has a tent erected in the chief room, so as to protect him from the prying of all the passing people. At the other end of the room is a huge organ, on which Mr. Pyne, the organist, practises daily. It is a wonderful instrument, seeming to combine all other instruments in one. I am sure this splendid music helps to mould the picture. It seemed quite an existence apart, belonging to some higher region, to sit there and listen at twilight to the melodies of Bach and Spohr and Berlioz swelling and rolling through the great lofty hall, while two gas-jets in the corner threw the colours of the fresco on which Mr. Brown is at work into stronger relief. Every now and then the latter seemed to be so enchanted by some particularly fine passage that he would jump up and listen, then pop his head over the partition and shout across the room, 'This is quite maddening, Pyne!' to the vast delight of the organist, who is heart and soul in his music, and seems scarcely able to pass a day without popping in upon Madox Brown."

Mathilde's residence at Manchester gained her many