"GENIUS"
By ELINOR MORDAUNT
(From _Hutchinson's Magazine_ and _The Century Magazine_)
1921, 1922
I have written before of Ben Cohen, with his eternal poring and humming
over the scores of great masters; of the timber-yard at Canning Town,
for ever changing and for ever the same, devouring forests with the
eternal wind-like rush of saws, slide of gigantic planes; practical and
chill; wrapped in river-fogs, and yet exotic with the dust of cedar,
camphor, paregoric.
In those days Ben Cohen was wont to read music as other boys read their
penny-dreadfuls, avidly, with the imagined sounds like great waves for
ever a-rush through his soul.
In the very beginning it was any music, just music. Then for a while
Wagner held him. Any Wagnerian concert, any mixed entertainment which
included Wagner--it seemed as though he sniffed them upon the
breeze--and he would tramp for miles, wait for hours; biting cold,
sleet, snow, mud, rain, all alike disregarded by that persistence which
the very poor must bring to the pursuit of pleasure, the capture of
cheap seats.
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