In Bohemia with Du Maurier - The First Of A Series Of Reminiscences by Felix Moscheles
page 62 of 72 (86%)
page 62 of 72 (86%)
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We have read of him before:--
"Sir Lewis Cornelys, as everybody knows, lives in a palace on Campden Hill, a house of many windows, and, whichever window he looks out of, he sees his own garden and very little else. There was no pleasanter or more festive house than his in London, winter or summer." I quote this, as probably it may not be known to everybody that Sir Lewis was knighted on the memorable occasion of Trilby's birthday, when she was presented at the drawing--and every other--room. With much kindly fore-thought his friend and biographer allows him to be eighty years old in the early sixties, thereby enabling him to have attained to-day the ripe old age of one hundred and fourteen. Well, he was one of du Maurier's earliest friends, and when Taffy the Laird, and Little Billie, "a-smokin' their pipes and cigyars," told the cabby to drive to Mechelen Lodge, I found my way to what I called Moray Lodge, and met them there. And there too, to be sure, was Glorioli, "the tall, good-looking swarthy foreigner from whose scarcely parted, moist, thick, bearded lips issued the most ravishing sounds that had ever been heard from throat of man or woman or boy." As we now empty one or the other of the million bottles that are about, marked "De Soria, Bordeaux," we often think with gratitude of the great wine-grower and still greater singer, so correctly described as "singing best for love or glory in the studios of his friends." To return to Arthur Lewis:-- |
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