His pupils, he found, were scattered, and he gave himself up without restraint to the pleasures of creative writing.  These were days of quiet and deep happiness.  He read much, often aloud in the evening—­fairy-tales, of which he was devotedly fond, legendary lore of different countries, mediaeval romances, Keats, Shelley, Tennyson, Benvenuto Cellini’s Memoirs, Victor Hugo, Heine; and also Mark Twain.  Later, in the spring, the days were devoted partly to composition and partly to long walks with his wife in the beautiful Frankfort woods, where was suggested to MacDowell the particular mood that found embodiment, many years later, in one of the last things that he wrote:  “From a German Forest,” in the collection of “Fireside Tales.”

The following summer (1885), the death of a friend of his earlier Frankfort days, Lindsay Deas, a Scotchman, left vacant in Edinburgh the post of examiner for the Royal Academy of Music, and Deas’s family presented MacDowell’s name as a candidate.  A trip to London was undertaken for the purpose of securing the place, if possible—­since composition alone could not be depended upon for a livelihood; but again his youth, as well as his nationality and his “modern tendencies,” militated against him.  He was obliged to admit that he had been a protege of “that dreadful man Liszt,” as the potentate of Weimar was characterised by Lady Macfarren, an all-powerful factor in the control of the institution; and that proving finally his abandonment to a nefarious modernity, he was again rejected.

Upon their return to Germany the MacDowells moved from Frankfort to Wiesbaden, where they spent the winter of 1885-86, living in a small pension.  The first concerto (op. 15) had recently been published by Breitkopf and Haertel.  The same year (1885) was marked by the completion of the second concerto in D-minor, begun at Frankfort in the previous winter, and the publication by Breitkopf and Haertel of the full score of “Hamlet and Ophelia,"[3] with a dedication to Henry Irving and Ellen Terry, from whose performances in London MacDowell had caught the suggestion for the music.  In the summer of 1886 MacDowell and his wife again yielded to their passion for travelling and went to London to buy furniture, for they had wearied of living in pensions and hotels and had determined to set up housekeeping.  When they returned they hired a little flat in the Jahnstrasse and installed themselves therewith just enough furniture to give them countenance.  Here Mrs. MacDowell suffered an illness which threatened for a time to bring a tragic termination to their happiness, and through which the hope of a child was lost to them.

[3] The published score of this opus bears the title (in German):  “Hamlet; Ophelia:  Two Poems for Grand Orchestra.”  But MacDowell afterward changed his mind concerning this designation, and preferred to entitle the work:  “First Symphonic Poem (a.  ‘Hamlet’; b.  ’Ophelia’).”  This alteration is written in MacDowell’s handwriting in his copy of the printed score.  When “Lancelot and Elaine” was published three years later it bore the sub-title:  “Second Symphonic Poem.”