Her health, always delicate, suffered wofully from this constant strain,
and caused her to experience the most painful exhaustion, which,
however, she never permitted to be an excuse for shirking an occupation
naturally distasteful to her,--and doubly so, that through all the din
of practice her thousand fancies clamored like caged birds eager for
liberty.
The moment her hour of leisure came, she would hide herself with her
best loved work in the quietest corner she could find; sometimes it was
a little room in-doors, sometimes the summer-house, sometimes under a
large mulberry-tree; and thus "Charles Auchester" and "Counterparts"
were written, the former without one correction,--sheet after sheet,
flung from her hand in the ardor of composition, being picked up and
read by the friend who was in all her literary secrets. At last this
same friend, finding she had no thought of publication, in a moment of
playful daring, persuaded her to send the manuscript to Benjamin
Disraeli, and he introduced it to his publishers. I quote from his
letter to the author, which may not be out of place here:--
"No greater book will ever be written upon music, and it will one day be
recognized as the imaginative classic of that divine art."
"Counterparts" and other tales soon followed.
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