Note 122 — Part VII

In an account of his visit to Leipzig, which Tchaikovsky afterwards published as the Diary of My Tour in 1888, he characterises the German composer more fully: “Brahms is rather a short man, suggests a sort of amplitude, and possesses a very sympathetic appearance. His fine head—almost that of an old man—recalls the type of a handsome, benign, elderly Russian priest. His features are certainly not characteristic of German good looks, and I cannot conceive why some learned ethnographer (Brahms himself told me this after I had spoken of the impression his appearance made upon me) chose to reproduce his head on the first page of his books as being highly characteristic of German features. A certain softness of outline, pleasing curves, rather long and slightly grizzled hair, kind grey eyes, and a thick beard, freely sprinkled with white—all this recalled at once the type of pure-bred Great Russian so frequently met with among our clergy. Brahms’s manner is very simple, free from vanity, his humour jovial, and the few hours spent in his society left me with a very agreeable recollection.”