Page:The Yellow Book - 03.djvu/94

 was a hard worker. We said he would do great things; but I thought in those days, and indeed I still think—and, what is more to the purpose, men who were themselves musicians and composers, men whose names are known, were before me in thinking—that he had already done great things, that the songs he had already published were achievements. They seemed to us original in conception, accomplished and felicitous in treatment; they were full of melody and movement, full of harmonic surprises; they had style and they had "go." One would have imagined they must please at once the cultivated and the general public. I could never understand why they weren't popular. They would be printed; they would be praised at length, and under distinguished signatures, in the reviews; they would enjoy an unusual success of approbation; but—they wouldn't sell, and they wouldn't get themselves sung at concerts. If they had been too good, if they had been over the heads of people—but they weren't. Plenty of work quite as good, quite as modern, yet no whit more tuneful or interesting, was making its authors rich. We couldn't understand it, we had to conclude it was a fluke, a question of chance, of accident. Pair was still a very young man; he must go on knocking, and some day—to-morrow, next week, next year, but some day certainly—the door of public favour would be opened to him. Meanwhile his position was by no means an unenviable one, goodness knows. To have your orbit in the art world of Paris, and to be recognised there as a star; to be written about in the Revue des Deux-Mondes; to possess the friendship of the masters, to know that they believe in you, to hear them prophesy, "He will do great things"—all that is something, even if your wares don't "take on" in the market-place.

"It's a good job, though, that I haven't got to live by them," Pair said; and there indeed he touched a salient point. His