‘Fancy a tea party with Grieg?’: From the archive: January 1913

I will not attempt to describe my feelings as for the first time I grasped the warm hand of him whom I have so long worshipped at a distance. I could honestly rhapsodize, but I will restrain myself, convinced that there is no man living who would appreciate it less than the subject of this essay. Dr. Brodsky is a fit subject for rhapsody, and both personally and by his remarkable career would justify it, but truth to tell there is about him a natural reserve and modesty, an almost self deprecatory instinct which instinctively tells one that anything of the nature of panegyric would be extremely distasteful to him. Suffice it to say that I should not have considered it a greater honour to shake hands with any European monarch…