ABSTRACT
Joseph McCabe was of Irish/English stock and made a strong contrast with his son. John McCabe expresses his relationship with his father as one of great respect, a phrase that also tells something of a distance between them. John has strong memories of a later fishing trip in a Lakeland stream with his father, when he had been given a fresh fish-head as bait and, much to his delight, had caught an eel. Another Uncle Fritz Gottschalk owned a large music shop in Cologne, selling sheet music and instruments and specialising in violins. A photograph of this extensive emporium is in Elisabeth's photograph album, still in John's possession. In post-war British society a child composer was seen as being remarkable and noteworthy enough to feature in the local paper, and press photograph taken at about the age of six shows a diminutive McCabe seated at an upright piano with sheets of childish music manuscript on the music stand beside him.
