The eager air with which he returned to me fully explained what was to follow. I hastily, therefore, spoke first, in order to stop him, crying—“I never, sir, played to anybody but myself!—never!”
“No?” cried he, looking incredulous; “what, not to—
“Not even to me, sir!” cried my kind Mrs. Delany, who saw what was threatening me.
“No?—are you sure?” cried he, disappointed; “but—but you'll—”
“I have never, sir,” cried I, very earnestly, “played in my life, but when I could hear nobody else—quite alone, and from a mere love of any musical sounds.”
He repeated all this to the queen, whose answers I never heard; but when he once more came back, with a face that looked unwilling to give it up, in my fright I had recourse to dumb show, and raised my hands in a supplicating fold, with a most begging countenance to be excused. This, luckily, succeeded; he understood me very readily, and laughed a little, but made a sort of desisting, or rather complying, little bow, and said no more about it.
I felt very much obliged to him, for I saw his curiosity was all alive, I wished I could have kissed his hand. He still, however, kept me in talk, and still upon music.
“To me,” said he, “it appears quite as strange to meet with people who have no ear for music, and cannot distinguish one air from another, as to meet with people who are dumb. Lady Bell Finch once told me that she had heard there was some difference between a psalm, a minuet, and a country dance, but she declared they all sounded alike to her! There are people who have no eye for difference of colour. The Duke of Marlborough actually cannot tell scarlet from green!”
He then told me an anecdote of his mistaking one of those colours for another, which was very laughable, but I do not remember it clearly enough to write it. How unfortunate for true virtuosi that such an eye should possess objects worthy the most discerning—the treasures of Blenheim! “I do not find, though,” added his majesty, “that this defect runs in his family, for Lady Di Beauclerk, draws very finely.”
He then went to Mr. Bernard Dewes.