it tells you the same as the eye? Helen's one aim is to
translate tunes into the language of painting, and pictures
into the language of music. It's very ingenious, and she
says several pretty things in the process, but what's
gained, I'd like to know? Oh, it's all rubbish, radically
false. If Monet's really Debussy, and Debussy's really
Monet, neither gentleman is worth his salt--that's my opinion.

Evidently these sisters quarrelled.

"Now, this very symphony that we've just been
having--she won't let it alone. She labels it with meanings
from start to finish; turns it into literature. I wonder if
the day will ever return when music will be treated as
music. Yet I don't know. There's my brother--behind us.
He treats music as music, and oh, my goodness! He makes me
angrier than anyone, simply furious. With him I daren't
even argue."

An unhappy family, if talented.

"But, of course, the real villain is Wagner. He has
done more than any man in the nineteenth century towards the
muddling of arts. I do feel that music is in a very serious
state just now, though extraordinarily interesting. Every
now and then in history there do come these terrible
geniuses, like Wagner, who stir up all the wells of thought
at once. For a moment it's splendid. Such a splash as
never was. But afterwards--such a lot of mud; and the
wells--as it were, they communicate with each other too