ABSTRACT

In 1884 Hallé passed what we would now consider normal retirement age – 65 – but his vigour continued almost undiminished. His place of eminence in British social circles was now established. One of his projects in the mid-1880s was the raising of a fund to purchase an annuity for his old Paris friend, the pianist and composer Stephen Heller, who was suffering from blindness and had fallen on hard times. ‘The Testimonial’, as Hallé called it, took him several months and immense trouble to complete, beginning with a visit to Heller in Paris in April, 1885. ‘He consents & after a hard struggle, so my object is gained,’ 2 Hallé wrote home. 1 Before that he had been sending his own money to Heller to keep him from penury. He persuaded Sir Frederick Leighton (president of the Royal Academy) and the poet Robert Browning to join him on a committee, and wrote to The Times and other newspapers to gather donations and establish subcommittees in major towns.