THE next time I visited Vienna, I went with Hans Richter to see him. He greeted Richter warmly, and when I was introduced gave me a most distant and suspicious bow. I bethought me of the stranger at Heidelberg, and looked out for squalls. I was quite sure he was aware of who I was, but was going to measure my capacity for lion-hunting.
His chance came; he offered Richter a cigar, and was then handing the box to me, when he snatched it back with a curt, “You are English, you don’t smoke!”* To which I replied, with an impertinence which it required some courage to assume, “I beg pardon, the English not only smoke, but they even compose music sometimes,” making a simultaneous dash after the retreating cigar-box. For one moment he looked at me like a dangerous mastiff, and then burst out laughing. The ice was broken and never froze again.
Stanford was in fact Irish, a Dubliner and proud of it, but also strongly in favour of Ireland remaining within the United Kingdom. He was heartbroken when the Republic of Ireland was formed in 1922.