9, John Street, Adelphi. SIR, Without a wish to mix up your respectable publication with my quarrels and grievances, I trust you will make known the following remarks to your readers, and allow them to judge for themselves whether they are called for or gratuitous. A few months ago I was informed of certain reformations about to take place in the Philharmonic Society, and of certain resolutions agreed upon at a meeting of the members. I refrained from making known to the public then that portion of the business which concerned me, because I gained my information in confidence; but since that time, I have heard it from those who have made no secret of it: I shall, therefore, treat the public with a ‘plain unvarnished tale,’ serving to show the extreme liberality of the Philharmonic Society. Soon after the publication of my strictures upon the unjust conduct of these gentlemen towards native artists, their truth was doubtless felt; and a meeting was called for the laudable purpose of arranging plans to treat artists in future more generously than they had treated me. We not unfrequently find that ungenerous persons (like bad paymasters, who either pay beforehand or not at all) stride from one extreme to the other: thus the Society acted as preposterously on the one hand, as they had before done on the other; and, with a show of liberality which I had not given them credit for, they now resolved upon engaging English writers by wholesale, to compose for them, thereby giving the lie to all I had advanced against them. Mr. A. then proposed his intimate friend Mr. B., and Mr. C. did the same kind act for Mr. D., until the whole alphabet of English composers was proposed and received. Some of the gentlemen (I mention no names) who were to be called upon to write had scarcely made up their minds whether they should set up for composers or not; and I doubt not that there was at the time a great run upon Messrs. Boosey and Co. for all the partiture of the classical writers. Now then was the glorious time for the Society to lay aside all personal feeling towards me, and to do me justice, in common with others of no greater pretensions than myself. At this meeting of the members of the Philharmonic, there was but one gentleman (whose name I do not feel myself at liberty to mention) who felt and stated, in finding that my name was not in the most remote manner alluded to, that I had been unjustly treated by them, and that, as a liberal body, they ought to make the amende honorable by employing me with the rest; and that if it was to be presumed that I was the first cause of a revolution in the arrangements of the Society, that I ought at least to share in the benefits of it. No sooner did the hated name echo from director to member, than the hue and cry was raised, the motion negatived on all hands, the member silenced, and the Philharmonic Society, in the very midst of their (newly-acquired) glowing liberality, forgetting themselves, threw off their “borrowed robes,” and appeared in their native nudity. I am not vain enough to say that my trifling efforts were worthy of performance at their concerts, but I may boldly assert that my abilities (such as they are) had nothing at all to do with their rejection of me: had I been a Beethoven, I doubt not that they would have treated the bare mention of my name in the same manner. They were actuated by a paltry feeling of revenge and animosity, and hailed the opportunity of casting an affront upon me; but in this way alone could they do it: they dared not to revenge themselves openly upon me, but under cover of a meeting to which they knew I could not gain admittance to tax them with their injustice. Having learnt the result of the transaction, I came to the natural conclusion, that I had judged these gentlemen aright. Had they waived that ill feeling towards me, which was occasioned by any act of mine which they might have deemed improper, and had admitted me upon the score of any musical talent which I might possess, their conduct would have been magnanimous, and I should have sorely regretted having exposed their former ill treatment of me to the public, but— Ex pede Herculem, they did the very thing to convince the world that my original opinion of them was a just one. However disposed I might have been to have judged them liberally, it was not likely that a body of men who had before treated me so scurvily either would or could now behave like true artistes, and, in the anxious wish to advance music in England, lose sight of all private picque. In conclusion, should any further question arise whether, in the first instance, they treated me as I have represented, let it be borne in mind that I advanced, boldly, a string of facts which were given publicity to, through the medium of the Harmonicon: I signed my name, gave my address, and was ready for any confutation, either public or private. The only reply to my former letter was a weak and futile attempt to prove that Messrs. ATTWOOD and POTTER were not so clever as I asserted them to be; but the main point was not attempted to be disputed, and my brave antagonist shielded himself under cover of a fictitious name. These gentlemen thought it wisest to suffer my assertions to go uncontradicted, because they could not disprove them; and, moreover, because they knew that I had in the background strong evidence of the TRUTH of my statement, even among the members of their own Society. I have the honour, Sir, |
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