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Meanwhile I did not consider myself bound to abandon my St. Petersburg connection, nor the plans I had founded upon it. Nor did I entirely disbelieve the assurances of Remenyi, who boasted that he had great influence with the Magyar magnates, and assured me it would be no great matter to obtain a pension in Buda-Pesth, such as I had thought of securing in St.
I have taken a nap on horseback; I have marched for miles, a musket on my shoulder, in complete slumberous unconsciousness; I have nodded while Phelps was acting, snoozed while Mario was singing, and played the marmot while Remenyi was fiddling; awful confession, I have dozed through an important debate in the House of Commons! I am yawning at present. It is to be hoped the reader is not.
Neither his character nor his playing was of such a nature as to appeal to the great mass of people in the way in which Remenyi and Ole Bull won their hearts. Wilhelmj was massive in person and in tone. He stood for dignity in his actions, appearance, and playing, and was honoured by the more cultivated and educated portion of the people.
Most of them were probably the property of the Huguenots, who after the edict of Nantes went to Holland and thence to South Africa, to which place they were banished by the Dutch government. It was related by Remenyi that when he was a young man in Hamburg, in 1853, he was to appear at a fashionable soirée one night, but at the last moment his accompanist was too ill to play.
Does anybody sing Schubert's songs nowadays, or are they invariably left to the violins, which can interpret their "eternal passion, eternal pain," so thrillingly? I never, I regret to say, heard the "Serenade" sung in a way which seemed to me adequate, not to compare with the way in which Remenyi plays it.
Speaking of those days or nights, Edison says: "Years ago one of the great violinists was Remenyi. After his performances were over he used to come down to '65' and talk economics, philosophy, moral science, and everything else. He was highly educated and had great mental capacity. He would talk with me, but I never asked him to bring his violin.
"Oh no, sir: go into the fields. See!" and he opened the window, "every one has left the castle." And actually the master of the house and his guests were all defiling through the garden-gate, having had only three hours' sleep. M. Franz soon joined them, and heard from them the story of Remenyi. At the age of seventeen he had been attached to the person of Görgey during the Hungarian war.
Among celebrated violinists few have led more romantic or adventurous lives than Edouard Remenyi, whose name is not yet forgotten in this country.
He was well sketched in a journal of the time, which said: "Remenyi is gifted with a vivacious, generous, rather mocking disposition which rebels against monotony, and whose originality shines through everything, and in spite of everything.
Remenyi went to a music store and asked for an accompanist. The proprietor sent Johannes Brahms, then a lad of sixteen, who was struggling for existence and teaching for a very small sum. Remenyi and Brahms became so interested in each other that they forgot all about the soirée, and sat up till four the next morning chatting and playing together.
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