Delius As I Knew Him
A Classic Memoir by Eric Fenby…
“It was in such a mood of intense gratitude for all the loveliness Frederick Delius had brought into my life that I first wrote to him, in the hope that it might give him pleasure to know that his music had meant so much in the life of a very young man.”
So begins Eric Fenby’s 1936, Delius — As I Knew Him, which is a loving memoir of the time the young Yorkshireman spent as Delius’s amanuensis (from 1928 to 1934) at the composer’s home in Grez-sur-Loing when the composer was blind and paralysed and confined to a wheelchair.
Delius sent a positive reply to that first letter saying how much he had enjoyed reading it, and how pleased he was that young people enjoyed his music so much, and that he knew Scarborough well, and, as a schoolboy had often spent his holidays in Filey, and that his Mass of Life was to be performed in Britain the following year “…when perhaps you may be able to hear it.”
Fenby was thrilled and wrote again suggesting he come over to France and see if there was any way he might be of help to Delius, who was finding it near impossible to compose.
Delius’s reply was again positive:
Grez-sur-Loing, Bourron
29.8.1928
Dear Mr Fenby:
