Look at this old virginal, encased in what was once rich red velvet, but now faded and worn with the touch of many a vanished hand! Behold those keys, brown with age! Yet these were once white and responsive to the taper fingers of that most consummate diplomatist, Queen Bess. Surely it was just here, on this side, that my Lord of Leicester stood bending his proud head to eagerly plead an answer to his oft-repeated suit! Or perhaps it was impulsive Essex plucked and twitched the thing, while he sued for the pardon of an elderly, capricious coquette!
A little to the left of the historic virginal is the harp of the ill-fated Marie Antoinette, brave owner of that empty title, _Reine de France_. What has been the history of the graceful thing since that short space of calm when its tones resounded in the Queen’s _Salon_ at the Tuileries? Was it also dragged after the poor lady by a cruel infuriated mob, like the harp of her friend, Mademoiselle de Lamballe? Who knows! The tumbrels seem to rumble by us as we gaze, and the sickening refrain:
“Madame Veto avait promis De faire égorger tout Paris; Mais son coup a manqué Grâce à nos canonniers. Dansans la Carmagnole Vive le son, Vive le son, Dansans la Carmagnole Vive le son du canon”
Close beside this melancholy relic is the cheering cast of Brian Borroimbe’s harp, which was played on by that versatile King of Ireland during the eleventh century. A little farther--in an obscure corner--is the fiddle said to have belonged to James I. of England, and almost beneath it is a cast of the beautifully carved violin which is generally supposed to have been given to the Earl of Leicester by Queen Elizabeth. Facing this is Handel’s harpsichord, a plain, workmanlike little instrument of neutral tint, and, and--can it be? or--is it only the shadow of that pillar there that deceives us into imagining that we see a misty outlined figure near the keyboard?
At first it appears to take the form of a little child, stretching his small fingers with loving patience from note to note, while now and again he glances timorously round, as though fearful of detection.
Surely now it is Mr Handel himself: this man before us, in full bob-wig and handsome habiliments, can be no other than the successful favourite of the highest in the land. There he sits, with an expression of “Vat de tevil do I care!” on his face, hammering out “The Harmonious Blacksmith.” Not the man to trouble himself about women, or succumb to the tender passion, yet women were ever helpful and friendly to him. As he plays, a strange medley of figures gather round him: there is handsome Sir Robert l’Estrange, smarting under the indignity of being called “Cromwell’s fiddler”: Cuzzoni--at a distance--for she has not forgotten Handel’s threat to throw her out of the window at the last rehearsal. Also there is the poet Gay, and Lord Burlington: Her Grace of Chandos, with her shadow, Mr Pope: Hogarth, Smollett, and that rogue, Colley Cibber, bursting with some merry squib, which must be bottled up until the end of Mr Handel’s piece, for fear of rousing that gentleman’s fiery temper.