6 
HELEN ABBOTT MICHAEL 
entree. In her renderings of the works of the great masters, 
she was notable for her union of strength and delicacy of 
touch with sympathetic appreciation. She read at sight with 
extraordinary fluency and correctness. She speedily secured a 
reputation as being one of the ablest amateur pianists of her 
native city. 
This reputation she carried abroad with her in 1878, and 
at the concert given at Ventnor in the Isle of Wight in aid of 
the Distress Fund,” — after the training-ship Eurydice , on its 
way home from Bermuda, foundered off Dunnose Headland 
with a loss of three hundred lives, — she played three selections, 
and was characterized by a local newspaper as “a performer 
of great finish and artistic appreciation of her subject.” An¬ 
other newspaper said her performance “was marvelously 
clever and testified to a most thorough acquaintance with the 
pianoforte.” 
She spent that winter in Paris, and how well she improved 
her opportunities and what an impression she made are well 
shown by a recent letter from M. Alphonse Duvernoy of the 
Conservatoire. He says: — 
“ She had a superior mind open to everything. Her eagerness 
for instruction recognized no obstacles, and under a frail exterior 
she concealed an energy and will power of which many men 
might have been envious. In a word, by her nature she was 
one of the elect, and I was happy to appreciate her at her real 
value. . . . She worked under my direction from July, 1878, 
until the end of April, 1879. Remarkably gifted for music, she 
made very rapid progress, and her execution was sufficiently 
advanced to allow her to grapple with the works of the great 
masters, for whom she felt a passionate admiration. In May, 
1879, she returned to America, and was back in Paris in 1880. 
At this time she devoted herself to chamber music, into which 
she was initiated by two eminent artists — MM. Armingaud 
the violinist and Jacquard the violoncellist. In 1881 she ceased 
to work with these gentlemen, whom she entirely won by the 
quickness of her intelligence and by her musical feeling.” 
Madame Arabella Goddard, the eminent pianist, who made 
her last public appearances in connection with Sir Arthur 
