Restoration

to please her. Her voice still moves me more than I can express. When seated near her, before the fire in the Withdrawing Room or at the supper table, I long to reach out and touch her. When she returns to Kew, I know that I shall mourn her loss. I may even write foolish letters to her, saying what I do not dare to say to her face. For I am a paradoxical thing: a dispensable Aquarius. I lie foolishly sprawled in the gutter of the via della vita. My pails, brimming not with water but with my own appetites and vain pleas, have toppled me; I have not been kicked.

I am to become thirty-eight years old. I shall note the arrival, duration and waning of this day in the following manner. I shall sleep late, hoping to dream of tennis (a sport which used to make me strangely happy). I shall pass some hours of the morning with Musikmeister Hummel, pursuing my secret plan, the unfortunate venue of which appears to be the summer-house. In the afternoon, I shall paint Russians. In the evening I shall devise some merriment, pay some musicians, invite Mister James de Gourlay ('Monsieur Degeulasse', with whom, in that society mocks him for his pretensions, I now feel some kindred affection) and his wife and daughters to supper and to dancing. I will give Celia a good quantity of champagne in the hope that it will make her kind.

As the day approaches, the weather has turned very pretty, the fine frost of the mornings cut like diamonds by an unclouded sun. It is most pleasant to walk in my park with the Musikmeister and hear him agree to collude with my plan, which is that during the time when Celia is sitting for the portrait we shall retire together to some place where we shall not be overheard (I suggested the cellars, but Hummel is mortally afraid to set eyes on a rat there, so we have agreed upon the summer-house) and he will teach me, in secret, to master my instrument. I have impressed upon him that there is not much time, that before this spring comes I expect my wife to have returned to London. 'But it is my dearest wish,' I told him, 'before I lose her and do not set eyes upon her again for months, or even years, to play for one of her songs – and just the one will satisfy me – a perfect accompaniment. If you will help me to do that, Herr Hummel, you will have my lasting gratitude.'

The Musikmeister looked me up and down, as if expecting to find somewhere on my unpromising person some infinitesimal piece of evidence of musicality. Finding none, he had the courtesy to smile (where the uncouth Finn would have sneered) and promised me that he would do all he could. I see now that my first opinion of him was accurate: he is an honest and agreeable man, as indeed one might expect any friend of Sir Joshua's to be. And so I fall to pondering the truth of my own words to Celia. Does music teach wisdom? Does it civilise the soul? If all the men and women of England were plucking at strings and lisping into reeds would the mind of the nation be quieter and more comfortable with itself?

This, then, is the night of the day of the twenty-seventh of January 1665, my thirty-eighth birthday, and I will tell you of certain disturbing things that came to pass upon it. (I note for you in parentheses how agreeable I find the phrase 'came to pass' which I do not believe existed in the body of the language until King James's mighty scholars sat down and alchemised it from ancient sacred tongues and put it there.)

The day did not begin as I had imagined. I did not lie under my turquoise canopy dreaming sportive dreams till mid-morning, but rose early to find myself wondering whether I could hope for any gifts. I am childishly excited by presents, however insignificant they may be and always feel most grateful to the giver. The notion that I might pass the day without receiving one gift whatsoever depressed me not a little. At such moments of despondency, I long not merely to see the King, but to be the King, surrounded as he is by people pressing one upon another to lay offerings at his feet.

Knowing such thoughts to be most silly, I rose and washed my eyes and face, put on a brocaded gown and descended to my kitchen, where it amuses me sometimes to concoct for myself the kind of unskilled meal that I once made upon my fire in my rooms at Ludgate. My breakfast, then, consisted of a dish of eggs coddled with cream, upon which I laid some salted anchovies – a rather excellent invention, which I ate by the kitchen range.

Will Gates found me there and informed me that a carter had arrived from London, bringing 'a quantity of furs', these of course being the tabards made of badger pelts by old Trench. There were ten of them, each very adroitly sewn, with a badger's snout rearing up on either shoulder and a row of tails forming a black fringe around the hem. Having examined them (Trench, as instructed, had used a good woollen cloth for the linings), I persuaded Will to put his on. He protested at first, saying that he would not feel nimble nor ready for work in such a garment. 'Will,' I said, 'do not be pettish. They have been designed to leave the limbs free and agile.' Alas, Will did look somewhat awkward and hampered by his tabard. He is a very short, thin man and the garment appeared both too wide for him and too long, so that the badger tails trailed upon the floor and the badger snouts hung off his shoulders somewhat dejectedly. I could not suppress a little attack of mirth.

'Alas, Will,' I said, 'I think your particular tabard will have to be altered.'

'It's not worth the expense, Sir,' said Will, heaving the thing over his hard little head, 'for I shall not wear it.'

'You will wear it,' I declared. 'This entire household will keep these things upon them until springtime, thus preventing chills and agues and all manner of ailments.'

'Forgive me, Sir Robert,' said Will, 'but I shall not.'

'You will, Will,' I said feebly, but though I am master of my house and Will is an excellent servant, I could plainly see that upon this subject there is going to be some conflict between us.

Having dressed myself and put my own tabard on, I went in search of the Musikmeister, to whom I would offer to lend one during our chilly hours in the summer-house. Though my tabard feels, I admit, somewhat heavy, it imparts to the body an immediate and agreeable warmth. Furthermore, I look outlandish in it and require only some bizarre hat or headdress of fur to resemble very nicely the Russians of my dreams. And then a teasing thought entered my mind: Would the King not be amused by such a garment? Should I dare, on this my birthday that promised to be empty of gifts, to despatch one to Whitehall? Was it possible that my imagination could be father to a new Royal fashion? How excellent it would be if, when Celia returned to Court, she found all the fops and gallants hung with badger fur and the words 'tablier Merivel' upon all their laughing lips!

Determining to give the matter some deep thought (the King had sent me his gift of surgical instruments; would he be offended by some return gift from me?), I got my oboe and went to the room of Herr Hummel and from there we made our way, unseen by any, to the summer-house.

The place was indeed cold and not a little triste, the windows latticed over with cobwebs and the floor strewn with downy feathers, as if a dove chick had flown into the humble habitation and exploded in mid-air. I apologised to Herr Hummel, who had wisely put on his tabard, informing him that in summer the place was very pleasant and expressing my hope that he would return to visit me during that kinder season. He thanked me and suggested we begin upon the lesson straight away, before our fingers became too numb. He requested that I play a few scales for him, followed by 'some short piece of your choice'. This could only be Swans Do All A-Swimming Go, it being the one thing I could play from beginning to end without fault.

He listened. His face betrayed no scorn or dismay. When I had finished, he did allow himself the ghost of a sigh. 'Very well,' he said. 'I think we must begin again. You are self-tutored, perhaps?'

'Yes, entirely.'

'And, alas, the fingering is awkward, Sir Robert, and the position of the lips upon the reed too forward. You must whisper to your reed, you see. Not kiss or suck it.'

'Ah.'

'But you will learn quickly, I think. You have the zeal to learn.'

'Yes. Zeal I have.'

'So.'

Here, Herr Hummel gently took my instrument from me, blew away my spittle and raised it to his own mouth, making some strange contortions with his lips before allowing them to settle in a hesitant-seeming posture around the reed. He then bid me watch carefully the fingering he employed for the scale of C, his hands seeming hardly to move at all. I noticed that his fingers are white and slender, as if the bone had coloured the flesh, whereas mine are somewhat red and plump. Clearly, I have not been fashioned to be an oboe player. I determined, however, that this would not make me lose heart. Music – that plaintive song at my wedding – had made me turn my face from medicine. For all those lost years of work, it owed me some recompense.

This first lesson lasted for the best part of an hour, during which time our breath clouded the glass panels of the summer-house and my feet seemed clamped into iron shoes, so achingly chill did they become. Did I make a