"And did you ever bite the apple, Mr. Lloyd?" I asked.
"No," he replied, merrily; "my mouth was not large enough! I must not forget Dr. Wordsworth, who was a canon in my time at the Cathedral. My great recollection of him is that, when he was in office as canon, he used to preach for an hour, and sometimes longer. It was the privilege of a senior boy to repair to his house in the cloisters, and, together with his companion choristers, to stand round a table and be catechized for one hour after the service. In those early days, I fear that I did not appreciate this privilege!
MR. LLOYD'S FATHER.
From a Painting.
"I sang at the wedding of the Princess Royal, at the Chapel Royal, St. James's. I sat in the gallery, and in my memory can almost hear now Mr. Harper, the great trumpeter, 'heralding' the wedding party. I met many choir boys who have since become famous. In those early days Sir John Stainer was then a senior boy at St. Paul's, and we frequently met at the rooms of the old Madrigal Society, in Lyle Street—let to them by the Royal Society of Musicians—where, for our singing, we were rewarded with a glass of port, a buttered biscuit, and two shillings. The two shillings were invariably spent before I got home. I also met Sir Arthur Sullivan and Alfred Cellier at cricket. The boys of the Chapel Royal and St. Paul's and Westminster frequently tried their powers with the bat and ball against one another; Sullivan was my elder. Cellier was always the life and soul of the game of cricket: a thorough good fellow, although he did bowl me out once.
"Still, I am happy to place on record the important historical fact that the Westminster boys invariably won."
Although Mr. Lloyd's voice may be said to have never really broken, at fifteen years of age he left the Abbey and went to a school in Southwark, where, after remaining for twelve months, he went to his mother's, at Cheltenham. He had said good-bye to the choristers' stalls at Westminster, well educated in the music of the great Church writers. He was on enviably familiar terms with such old masters as Gibbons, Blow, Boyce, and Purcell, a foundation for all that was to follow after. At his mother's suggestion he learnt the violin, and she, who herself had studied the piano under Mrs. Anderson, the music-mistress of the Queen, gave him lessons in pianoforte playing. However, although the young lad took kindly to the bow, he couldn't settle down to the piano. He remained in Cheltenham until twenty, when he returned to London to his aunt's.
"I sang at a church at Belsize Park," said Mr. Lloyd, "and received thirty pounds a year. I did the solo singing, and was regarded as a light tenor, never thinking for a moment that I should develop into anything particular. But I was always endeavouring to improve myself. When I was twenty-one, as luck would have it, my uncle, Dr. John Larkin Hopkins, organist of Trinity College, Cambridge, came on a visit to my aunt, and my mother, who was also up from Cheltenham on a little holiday, asked my uncle if he would hear me sing. He did so. I sang"—and here Mr. Lloyd gave the opening lines of "You and I":—
'Tis years since we parted, you and I,
In the sweet summer time long ago.