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PRESENT-DAY WOMEN COMPOSERS 315
that have won a more instantaneous success than Teresa del Riego's " O, dry those tears"; in fact it may be said to have created a record in the song-publishing world by selling to the tune of sixty thousand copies in the first six weeks after publication. It has been translated into three different languages—Italian, German, and Russian—and has been more parodied, perhaps, than any song of recent years, appearing on picture post cards, and even being reproduced in art pottery forms. The composer has received letters from admirers of the song in all parts of the world—a more pleasing compliment than the one paid by the music pirates, who made a ferocious onslaught upon it just as it was at the zenith of its popularity.
The first song of this composer's to be published (but not her first composition, as she wrote an Ave Maria in her teens) was " Speak on, sweet voices." After being for five years at the Convent of La Ste Union des Sacres Cceurs at High-gate, she devoted herself to the study of composition and singing, and also took up the violin, but dropped the latter in order to give more time to composition. It was when living on the river near Henley that she wrote the song ''Red Clover," which is always associated in her mind with a lovely old apple tree near Hambledon Lock, where boughs covered with masses of |
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