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Ethel Smyth and Henry Brewster Ethel Smyth and Henry Brewster The relationship between composer Ethel Smyth and American philosopher, poet and aesthete Henry Brewster (1850-1908) was, according to Ethel herself, the most important of her life. Their lasting friendship, ended only with Henry’s death in 1908. However, Henry was married to Julia, Lisl von Herzogenberg’s sister, and their relationship caused a permanent rift with the Herzogenbergs much to Ethel’s despair as they had been close friends and Heinrich, Lisl’s husband, was her musical tutor for some years. However, from 1890 and especially after Lisl’s death in 1892, the relationship was renewed and much valued by Ethel. There was extensive debate and correspondence between them, and they spent time together in Italy, France and England. In addition to debates on the arts and philosophy, Henry assisted with the libretti for Ethel’s first two operas, ‘Fantasio’ and ‘Der Wald’ and he wrote the libretto for her operatic masterpiece ‘The Wreckers’ (originally in French, his preferred language): his philosophical poem ‘The Prison’ was used by Ethel as the basis for her last major work, her choral symphony of the same name. The following excerpts all taken verbatim from Ethel’s books of memoires describe the background to and depth of this important friendship in her own words. Passages concerning Lisl von Herzogenberg and Julia Brewster where they had a significant impact on the relationship are included. L.E. Orchard, Volunteer, Surrey History Centre. A few explanatory comments, where appropriate, are given in italics. The sources of the excerpts are given by acronyms for the individual books as follows: ITR Impressions that Remained; Longmans, Green, 1919 SOL Streaks of Life; Longmans, Green, 1921 FBOB Final Burning of Boats; Longmans, Green 1928 FPIE Female Pipings in Eden; Peter Davies 1933 ATWO As Time Went On; Longmans, Green 1936 1. Background Of the other couple of prospective friends, the Brewsters, I had of course learned a great deal from Lisl (von Herzogenberg), her deep admiration for her extraordinary sister being the main theme of many letters. It appeared that these relations were super-humans and that they lived in an Ivory Tower, knowing not a soul in Florence except the Hildebrands....I knew that Julia Brewster was eleven years older than her husband...and heard about their extraordinary views on marriage which did not commend themselves to Lisl...It appeared that they had only gone through the marriage ceremony in church to avoid wounding the feelings of Julia’s family and had found it very ‘comic’ at the time – but it was not looked on as a binding engagement. If either of the couple should weary of married life or care for someone 1 else, it was understood that that the bond was dissoluble, and there was a firm belief on both sides that no such event could possibly destroy, or even essentially interrupt their ‘friendship’ as they called it, founded as it was on more stable elements than mere marriage. This much I had gleaned from hearsay concerning Lisl’s relations; face to face with them I soon found out that the hermit was Julia, her husband being rather an embryonic lover of humanity, hitherto accustomed, owing to circumstances, to pay exclusive attention to abstractions. As I learned many years afterwards, Julia was beginning to notice in him a new and strange impulse to extend a furtive hand to his fellow creatures and thought it wisest to offer no opposition. (ITR p66/67) ...should one tell how the boy of sixteen fell in love with a woman eleven years his senior – a woman as strange and other-worldly as himself – vowed to marry her, and five years later accomplished his end? Or would it be wiser to evoke at once the memory of the middle-aged man he was when his English friends first came to know him? (FPIE p87) H.B. was half English, half American, born and bred in France, and domiciled in Italy..... His hair and beard were very fair, his eyes brown and curiously wide apart, and his height, I think, 5ft.10in. His wife.....was half German and half Danish. besides which Slav blood ran in her veins.....she died in 1897 of the same hereditary heart disease that five years previously had stricken down her sister.....their home language was French and they would rather have relapsed into eternal silence than address each other in the bourgeois second person singular (FPIE p96) 2. Meeting the Brewsters and the developing relationship with Henry Then, in 1882, irresistibly drawn southwards by a furious longing to see Italy, I wintered in Florence where dwelt Lisl’s sister Julia, whose marriage with one Henry Brewster - a man eleven years younger than herself, half American, half English, and by education and affinity a Frenchman – was based on a theory any wise woman would adopt under similar circumstances; namely, that if either of them should fall in love with someone else, it was not to be considered a tragedy nor a cause of division.........Almost immediately Harry Brewster fell in love with me, informed Julia of the fact (which appears to have been unnecessary), and with her approval went off to Africa to shoot lions and get over his infatuation. I had not the faintest suspicion of the real cause of this sporting expedition, from which he returned shortly before my departure for England, to the best of his belief, and also of Julia’s, completely cured. (ATWO p7) My acquaintance with the man destined to become my greatest friend began, it is amusing to reflect, with ‘a little aversion’ on my part, although his personality was delightful. Having for years had no real intercourse with anyone save his wife, he was always very shy-a shyness of a well-brought-up child, and which took the form of extreme simplicity, as though he were falling back on first principles to see him through....this trait was of charming effect and in spite of it he managed to be witty, 2 amusing, and when he felt one liked him, companionable. He seemed to have read all books, to have thought all thoughts; and last but not least was extremely good looking, clean shaven but for a moustache, a perfect nose and brow, brown eyes set curiously apart, and fair fluffy hair. It was the face of a dreamer and yet of an acute observer, and his manner was the gentlest, kindest, most courteous manner imaginable....Half American, half English, brought up in France, he was a passionate Latin, and the presence of an Anglo-maniac, loud in praise of the sportsman type of male, and what was worse, in love with Germany, goaded him into paradoxes and ‘boutades’ it was impossible to listen to with equanimity.....To sum up, the Brewsters came under no known category; both of them were stimulating, original talkers and quite ready to discuss their ethical scheme, including its application to domestic life, but of course only as a general thesis. (ITR p67/68) It was H.B. who first persuaded me to study Flaubert, Baudelaire and Verlaine seriously, introduced me to Anatole France, and kindled a flame of enthusiasm for French literature generally that was an endless subject of dispute between me and Lisl - both by letter and otherwise. On that rock, however, I beat in vain; there is no bridging the gulf between Latin and Teutonic civilisation, and her aversion to French poetry is common to all Germans, though few of them express it as frankly and forcibly as did she. (ITR p75) But in the early ‘eighties a change came over the spirit of Henry Brewster’s dream; he began to show signs of a desire to turn toward life. There now began a new life for H.B. For the first time he became, so to speak, available for humanity..... in 1893 he had come over to London to hear my Mass in D. (FPIE p96/99) (Spring 1884) Julia having now ceased to ration my visits, I saw the Brewsters constantly, and found them more and more delightful...... he is the sort of man it is impossible, besides all the rest, not to be fond of in a most comfortable way. Speaking for myself, what with comparing notes about mankind, morals, art, literature, anything and everything, what with the laughter and fighting and utter good comradeship, I have never had such a delightful relation with any man in my life (ITR p108) 3. Difficulties with Lisl and Julia Now all this time, crippled by a mountaineering accident, I had seen little or nothing of Italy, so adopted with enthusiasm Julia’s suggestion that I should come back again in the winter. Towards the close of that second stay (May 1884) I found out that I was now in love with Harry Brewster. And if I had never suspected his former feeling for me, still less did I know that, as so often happens with a passion supposed to be cured, his had returned like a strong man armed.....I however declared, in spite of his protesting, that the incident was closed....During the course of the winter ’84-’85 which I spent at Leipzig, Harry persuaded me to reopen negotiations, Julia having assured him again and again, so he said, that she was merely waiting to be certain our mutual feeling was genuine. Twice did Harry 3 suddenly descend on Leipzig to argue with me. During these visits he succeeded in overriding my disbelief in Julia’s consent. It must be understood that Lisl was from the first sceptical as to her sister’s conditional acquiescence...
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