“I think that what he discovered on his latest voyage was the effect of a banjo on the human mind,” laughed Phyllis. “He was aboard Lord Earlscourt’s yacht, the Water Nymph. Some other men were there also. One of them had an idea that he could play upon the banjo. He was wrong, Mr. Courtland thinks.”
“A good many people are subject to curious notions of the same type. They usually take an optimistic view of the susceptibilities of enjoyment of their neighbors—not that there is any connection between enjoyment and a banjo.”
“Mr. Courtland said just now that when Dr. Johnson gave it as his opinion that music was, of all noises, the least disagreeable, the banjo had not been invented.”
“That assumes that there is some connection between music and the banjo, and that’s going just a little too far, don’t you think?”
“I should like to hear Dr. Johnson’s criticism of Paderewski.”
“His criticism of Signor Piozzi is extant: a fine piece of eighteenth century directness.”
“I sometimes long for an hour or two of the eighteenth century. You remember Fanny Burney’s reference to the gentleman who thought it preposterous that Reynolds should have increased his price for a portrait to thirty guineas, though he admitted that Reynolds was a good enough sort of man for a painter. I think I should like to have an hour with that man.”
“I long for more than that. I should like to have seen David Garrick’s reproduction, for the benefit of his schoolfellows, of Dr. Johnson’s love passages with his very mature wife. I should also like to have heard the complete story of old Grouse in the gun room.”
“Told by Squire Hardcastle, of course?”
“Of course. I question if there was anything very much better aboard the Water Nymph. By the way, Lady Earlscourt invited me to join the yachting party. She did not mention it to her husband, however. She thought that there should be a chaplain aboard. Now, considering that Lord Earlscourt had told me the previous day that he was compelled to take to the sea solely on account of the way people were worrying him about me, I think that I did the right thing when I told her that I should be compelled to stay at home until the appearance of a certain paper of mine in the Zeit Geist Review.”