The Journal of a Disappointed Man

The face of Sir Henry Wood strikes me as very much like the traditional pictures of Jesus Christ, tho' Sir Henry is dark--the melanic Messiah I call him (very much to my own delight). Rodin ought to do him in stone--Chesterfield's ideal of a man--a Corinthian edifice on Tuscan foundations. In Sir Henry's case there can be no disputing the Tuscan foundations. However swift and elegant the movements of his arms, his splendid lower extremities remain as firm as stone columns. While the music is calm and serene his right hand and baton execute in concert with the left, perfect geometric curves around his head. Then as it gathers in force and volume, when the bows begin to dart swiftly across the fiddles and the trumpets and trombones blaze away in a conflagration, we are all expectant--and even a little fearful, to observe his sabre-like cuts. The tension grows ... I hold my breath.... Sir Henry snatches a second to throw back a lock of his hair that has fallen limply across his forehead, then goes on in unrelenting pursuit, cutting and slashing at hordes of invisible fiends that leap howling out towards him. There is a great turmoil of combat, but the Conductor struggles on till the great explosion happens. But in spite of that, you see him still standing thro' a cloud of great chords, quite undaunted. His sword zigzags up and down the scale--suddenly the closed fist of his left hand shoots up straight and points to the zenith--like the arm of a heathen priest appealing to Baal to bring down fire from Heaven.... But the appeal avails nought and it looks as tho' it were all up for poor Sir Henry. The music is just as infuriated--his body writhes with it--the melanic Messiah crucified by the inappeasable desire to express by visible gestures all that he feels in his heart. He surrenders --so you think--he opens out both arms wide and baring his breast, dares them all to do their worst--like the picture of Moffat the missionary among the savages of the Dark Continent!