Never to my dying day shall I forget the way he [Charles Santley] sang “Absent, yet Present.” I had indeed been right when I thought that no one living would ever be able to sing it like him ! He threw a fire, a passion, into the music that absolutely startled me. It was splendidly virile, splendidly strong. I had no idea that anything written by me could ever have sounded like that. Then he went through “Montrose’s Love Song,” which he sang with the same vigour, the same glorious sense of rhythm that he put into his interpretation of “ To Anthea.”

I had always loved his singing, but when I heard my own music treated so superbly, it was an absolute revelation to me […]