 Frederick
later recalled his parents and childhood:
"My father loved music and used to tinker on the piano when
he knew he was alone. He was a great concert-goer and often had
chamber music in his house. My mother was not musical at all but
she had great imagination and was rather fantastically inclined.
She was very romantic, and out of the smallest episode would invent
a wonderful story.
My brother Max and I used to buy 'penny dreadfuls', such as Dick
Turpin, Sixteen string Jack and Sweeny Todd, the barber of Fleet
Street - in this tale the barber's customers used to disappear through
a trap door and were taken away to be converted into pork pies!
We used to read these books in bed when we were supposed to be asleep,
and we had a contrivance to turn the gas up and down by means of
a string. Once my mother caught us in the act and confiscated a
whole pile of these penny dreadfuls. A few days later we surprised
her, with a very red excited face, poring over them herself.
We children had two ponies, and we loved riding over the moors
at Ilkley, then only a tiny village, where we often spent the summer.
I cannot remember the first time I began to play the piano; it
must have been very early in my life. I played by ear and I used
to be brought down in a little velvet suit after dinner to play
for the company. My mother would say "Now make up something",
and then I would improvise. When I was six or seven I began taking
violin lessons from Mr Bauerkeller of the Halle orchestra, who came
over from Manchester especially to teach me."
 The
family often spent the summer in Ilkley, where Julius rented a house,
to escape the smoke and grime of industrial Bradford. Fritz and
his brother Max once ran away from Claremont and were seen in Brook
Street, Ilkley, by a family friend who, having telegraphed their
parents, duly despatched the children back to Bradford by train.
Julius insisted on the children being immaculately
turned out at all times. He is reported as being a very strict father
who ruled the house with a rod of iron.
"Proud, unbending and intolerant, he was a characteristic
product of Prussian rigidity; and while he may have inspired respect,
he signally failed to stimulate affection...It was fortunate for
Fritz that he was blessed with a nature both cheerful and resilient,
and was thereby able to endure with a greater equanimity than his
brothers and sisters the repressive environment in which they were
being raised. He was the ringleader in every childish scrap...
The story that, after a single hearing of a Chopin
waltz, he was able to play it from memory must be qualified by his
own admission later - 'not of course, very correctly' ."
From 'Frederick Delius' by Sir Thomas Beecham, 1959
 The
Theatre Royal on Manningham Lane had opened in 1864 as the Royal
Alexandra Theatre and was well known for its pantomimes. The annual
pantomime was a popular childhood treat.
"On the great day a considerable part of the front row of the
Dress Circle used to be occupied by the little Deliuses. Papa used
to bring his friends from the club to see us all sitting there.
We appeared so solemn that my Uncle Theodore declared 'the children
don't seem to be enjoying it at all'. 'Wait and see', replied Father.
The following day he took uncle up to the nursery from which came
an uproar of sound. We were all there under Fritz's management re-enacting
the pantomime of Bluebeard with Fritz in the title role."
Clare Delius 'Frederick Delius; Memories of my brother',
1935
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