Am working at harmony for 1½ hours daily instead of piano, which I practise only on Sundays and Wednesdays. The Beethoven Variations in A flat give me great joy. Though, of course, constituting a quite different atmosphere, their strength and beauty remind me always of the freshness of Keats’ Prologue to ‘Endymion’.
One of the advantages of reaction is, I think, that it causes a whole variety of atmospheres. I know that I can colour different scenes in all sorts of ways, making them interested [interesting?] and exalted.
Mám’s pupils repeated their recital of a few days ago at Horgans’ this evening. They played splendidly, but their reception was cold. Evidently they were not fit objects for the hospitality of Mrs. Horgan’s snobbery. ((Aloys seems at times to have felt unwelcome in the Horgan house. Mrs. Horgan could have believed it was he who animated her two step-sons Ivor and Joe to escapades which may have led to complaints from the victims. He was certainly, to judge by his own accounts, at least a very willing partner in their rather wild activities. There will hardly have been any animosity against the family: John J. was extremely kind to Aloys senior after 1914, doing all he could to prevent his being interned. Both Mary Horgans were students of Tilly’s and the second Mary Horgan did a B.Mus. in Cork with Aloys as her professor, graduating in 1944.)) Mr. Horgan was really kind and enjoyed it immensely. Grayton Adams, a charming fellow lately come from India and a pupil of Mám’s, and I had great sport, ambushing and bedecking a group of the artists on their way home with a deluge of leaves. Had interesting talk with Pope Mahony, ((Eoin [´Pope’] O’Mahony (1904-1970), a Cork barrister also called to the English Bar. He was a member of the Irish Georgian Society, Military History Society and the Knights of Malta. He was an enthusiastic genealogist; with a popular radio programme ´Meet the Clans’.)) a brilliantly loquacious good-for-nothing of the University. He told me that Arthur Young visited the Mitchelstown caves, and scratched his name on one of the rocks there. I did not see it.
