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64 as the case might be. Hitherto for various reasons I had met none of these evidently remarkable personalities; then suddenly Fate made good, and in the course of a single week Livia Frege, Lili Wach, and Elisabeth von Herzogenberg swam into my orbit."

Frau Frege has already been mentioned. Lili Wach was Mendelssohn's youngest daughter, "the only absolutely normal and satisfactory specimen I have ever met of a much-to-be-pitied genus, the children of celebrated personalities." Frau Frege was older than the other two.

"I used to note the beauty in her face and voice when she spoke of Mendelssohn, who, with his wife, had been of her most intimate friends. A world that since then had begotten Brahms, not to speak of Wagner, was growing contemptuous of its former idol, and she was aware of the fact, but did not consider it necessary even to discuss the matter. No insistence on his merit, no apology—just the old love and faith. I thought this attitude wonderful, but to carry it through you had to be Livia of the light-holding sapphire eyes."

Elisabeth von Herzogenberg (Lisl), wife of Heinrich von Herzogenberg, the only aristocrat in town who was also a good composer, was destined to be the dominant figure in Miss Smyth's life, though the friendship was violently and permanently interrupted through, it seems, Miss Smyth's relation to Frau von Herzogenberg's sister and brother-in-law, Julia and Henry Brewster. But almost from their first meeting Miss Smyth appropriated the Herzogenberg couple, and not long afterwards Heinrich von Herzogenberg took her under his wing as a pupil, thus rescuing her from the "farcical" instruction at the Conservatorium.

It was inevitable that through the Herzogenbergs, Miss Smyth-Brahms should meet Brahms himself.

"Early in 1879, I think some time in January, Brahms came to Leipzig to conduct his Violin Concerto—played, of course, by Joachim From the very first I had worshipped Brahms's music, as I do some of it now; hence was predisposed to admire the man. But without exactly disliking him, his personality neither impressed nor attracted me, and I never could understand why the faithful had