"Polly! What's the time?" obtrusively cackled the elderly parrot whose cage hangs in one of the rooms of Sir Arthur's delightful retreat at Walton-on-Thames. It was a wonderfully fine afternoon, and this was my final call on Sir Arthur Sullivan in regard to this article. Sir Arthur had just finished writing the opening bars of his rendering of the Christmas hymn, "It came upon the midnight clear," so that it might form a souvenir-autograph for this issue of THE STRAND MAGAZINE.

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The experience throughout - from the time that I had my first chat on the subject in the study of his town house in Victoria Street - had been such a pleasant one that, as Polly, apparently happy in its exceedingly limited powers of human expression, reiterated her chuckling inquiry for the third or fourth time, the query served to remind me that even journalistic inquisitiveness has its finality, no matter how delightful the process may have proved - to the interviewer.

Sir Arthur's loquacious parrot is, I am afraid, only a vague humorist, and whether or no the bird's insistence upon knowing the hour of the clock may have acted as a valuable hint to innumerable callers - though this is mere speculation on my part - yet the reiteration of the word "time" might well be made the basis of a more serious text, for each succeeding year has served to give an added lustre to the fame of our greatest English composer; and, moreover, although Sir Arthur is now in his fifty-sixth year, his energy has not one whit abated. In talking with him, it is indeed difficult to realize that his first composition - the music to Shakespeare's "Tempest " - was composed so far back as 1860, and that his first opera was produced thirty years ago. Indeed, Sir Arthur Sullivan's professional experience extends over a very considerable period of our wonderful Victorian Era, and furnishes by no means the least important part of its history. Rarely has any man's work achieved such success in a lifetime, and as during that period Sir Arthur has known everyone worth knowing, it may fairly be said that his reminiscences, if ever he cared to write them, would form one of the most interesting volumes of autobiography ever published. To the fertility of his rare genius Sir Arthur Sullivan has added an infinite capacity for unceasing hard work. There is hardly any phase of musical composition which he has not treated and beautified, and the fruit of his wonderful versatility is to be found in oratorio, hymns, songs, and cantatas, as well as in the ever-popular Gilbert-Sullivan operas, which have been such a source of "innocent merriment," and a perpetual delight, to hundreds of thousands on both sides of the Atlantic. One of the happiest features of what is, perhaps, the most distinguished artistic career of our own time is the real personal popularity which has kept pace with the spontaneous and far-reaching recognition which has been accorded to Sir Arthur Sullivan's genius as a composer. Although without prejudice on the subject, Sir Arthur is not particularly amenable to the wiles of the interviewer, so that from this point of view I may perhaps add my own humble testimony to the fact that, although I have worried Sir Arthur on many occasions, I have always been struck with his unfailing and wholly natural courtesy - "old-fashioned" some people might term it; but, if so, one must be pardoned for hoping that it is an old fashion which will never get quite out of date.

Sir Arthur was the younger son of Mr. Thomas Sullivan, a clever Irishman who from 1845 to 1856 occupied the position of bandmaster at the Military College, Sandhurst, whilst his mother was descended from an old Italian family, and the Italian blood in his veins may, perhaps, serve as an explanation - to those who are curious in questions of heredity - for the almost un-English vivacity of manner which is one of Sir Arthur's most salient characteristics, whilst he has added to it a very English (or Irish) dogged determination and persistence, a quality which has been remarkably displayed in the way in which he has done his best work under the greatest difficulties, and a great part of his most melodious and most humorous light operas were composed and orchestrated in the midst of illness and in the intervals of great physical pain.

"Yes, that was the first time I saw my name in print," and Sir Arthur points to a cutting from the Illustrated London News, dated 1856, which is framed and hung on the wall, announcing the fact that Master Arthur Seymour Sullivan, aged fourteen, had won the Mendelssohn Scholarship; and it is easy to see from the composer's manner that no subsequent "notice", of whatever character, has ever given him equal pleasure. Then comes a tour of exploration round the house in search of personal photographs and similar curios reproduced in these pages, and to which it will be possible to refer later on.

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Young Arthur Sullivan's practical training in orchestral matters began very early, for there were hardly any instruments in his father's band at Sandhurst which he did not learn to play with facility. Mr. Sullivan was happy in the belief that his younger son possessed rare musical ability, although he could have had no conception of the pre-eminent distinction which his son was destined to attain. At the age of eleven nothing would satisfy the embryo musician but that his father should get him into the choir at the Chapel Royal. "His voice was very sweet," said Mr. Helmore, who was then master at the Chapel Royal, "and his style of singing was far more sympathetic than that of most boys." The young musician was only three years in the choir, yet long enough to make his first attempt at musical composition. He was the author of a boyish effort, "0 Israel," and an anthem, which was duly sung in the choir. Sir Arthur referred to these very early efforts with a smile of compunction, but it was in part due to this training that - when, in 1856, the Mendelssohn Scholarship was instituted - the erstwhile chorister came out at the head of the list. It may be of interest to mention that Sir Joseph Barnby was one of the candidates. "And so it happened," said Sir Arthur, "that I did not experience any exceptional struggles or difficulties when I began my profession, for the winning of the scholarship gave me a certain prestige and many good friends, so that I took some very pleasant letters of introduction with me when I left England to study in Leipzig. Yes, that portrait of me (when a student at Leipzig) was taken when I was eighteen, and when I was in the throes of my first serious composition, the 'Tempest' music, which was not produced in England until two years afterwards, when I was twenty."

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The success which attended the "Tempest" music, when it was produced at a Crystal Palace Concert on the composer's return to London in 1862, was immediate and emphatic, and amongst those who came to hear it performed on the second occasion was the great novelist, Charles Dickens. He was waiting outside the artists' room as Sullivan came out, and going up to him and shaking him by the hand, he said: "I don't profess to know anything about music, but I do know that I have listened to a very beautiful work." Soon after this, Dickens accompanied Chorley and the then Mr. Sullivan to Paris, and Sir Arthur told me :-

"I always found Dickens a most delightful companion. Apart from his high spirits and engaging manner, one might give two special reasons for this," said Sir Arthur. "On the one hand he was so unassuming - he never obtruded his own work upon you. I have never yielded to anyone in my admiration of Dickens's work; but, speaking of him as a companion, I can safely say that one would never have known that Dickens was an author from his conversation - I mean, that he never discussed himself with you ; whilst, on the other hand, I have often since wondered at the wonderful interest he would apparently take in the conversation of us younger men. He would treat our feeblest banalities as if they were the choicest witticisms, or the ripe meditations of a matured judgement"; and, as Sir Arthur smiled at the recollection, he told me how vividly he remembered the fine face, the keen eyes, and the varied expressions of the novelist's face, and how wonderfully it used to light up as he talked with you.

"There was quite a little coterie of us in those days," Sir Arthur continued. "First of all there were Charles Dickens and his daughters, Charles Collins, his son-in-law, and his brother, Wilkie Collins, and then there was Mrs. Lehmann, one of the married daughters of old Robert Chambers. Dear old Chorley used to have a house in Eaton Place, where we were wont to assemble and have little dinners. Browning was one of us. I liked him immensely, but as a conversationalist he was, at that time, somewhat overwhelming - you couldn't get a word in. It was marvellous how Browning sustained his interest in everything, especially in music. Up to the last he used to regularly attend the Monday Popular Recitals, and so on."