Extracted from The Life of Liza Lehmann, by Herself:
"Hearing me on one of her visits to London, Madame Clara Schumann took a fancy to my singing, and at quite an early stage of my career invited me to stay with her in Frankfort, where she most kindly offered to impart to me the tradition of her husband's songs. I had already so many concert engagements that I could go only for three weeks; but during those three weeks she gave me a lesson every day in those wonderful Lieder only too little heard at London concerts nowadays.
"While I was there Johannes Brahms came on a visit for a few days; but he took no interest whatever in the "English Miss," which was his way of referring to me, and my charming hostess was quite offended with him because he never asked to hear me sing. I was very thankful; for, truth to tell, his rather bluff and coarse manners made me shrink into my shell; and when, one morning at breakfast, he gobbled up a whole tin of sardines and made assurance doubly sure by drinking the oil from the tin at a draught, he, so to say, finished me off as well as the sardines!"
"Hearing me on one of her visits to London, Madame Clara Schumann took a fancy to my singing, and at quite an early stage of my career invited me to stay with her in Frankfort, where she most kindly offered to impart to me the tradition of her husband's songs. I had already so many concert engagements that I could go only for three weeks; but during those three weeks she gave me a lesson every day in those wonderful Lieder only too little heard at London concerts nowadays.
"While I was there Johannes Brahms came on a visit for a few days; but he took no interest whatever in the "English Miss," which was his way of referring to me, and my charming hostess was quite offended with him because he never asked to hear me sing. I was very thankful; for, truth to tell, his rather bluff and coarse manners made me shrink into my shell; and when, one morning at breakfast, he gobbled up a whole tin of sardines and made assurance doubly sure by drinking the oil from the tin at a draught, he, so to say, finished me off as well as the sardines!"
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