The musical library at Buckingham Palace is most remarkable and it is a pity that access to it is not easier.  Among other things, there are the manuscripts of Handel’s oratorios, written for the most part with disconcerting rapidity.  His Messiah was composed in fifteen days!  The rudimentary instrumentation of the time made such speed possible, yet who is there to-day who could write all those fugue choruses with such speed?  The fugue manner, which seems laborious to us, was current at the time and they were practised in it.  The library also contains works of Handel’s contemporaries, which are executed with the same mastery.  We cannot say whether they were written with the same rapidity as Handel’s, but it is easy to see that there was a general ability to do so, just as now it is a matter of common attainment to produce complicated orchestral effects, the possibility of which the old masters had no conception.  What made Handel superior to his rivals was the romantic and picturesque side of his works; probably also, his prodigious and unvarying fertility.

The last word has been said about Queen Victoria, yet the peculiar charm which radiated from her personality cannot be too highly praised.  She seemed the personification of England.  When she passed on, it seemed as though a great void were left.  All King Edward’s splendid qualities were necessary to take her place, combined with the effect of the world’s surprise at discovering a great king where they had expected to see only a brilliant prince who had been a constant lover of pomp and pleasure.

I was later admitted to Buckingham Palace to play with Josef Hollman, the violinist, before Queen Alexandra.  We both were eager for this opportunity which we were told was impossible.  The Queen was very busy, and, in addition, she was in mourning for the successive deaths of her father and mother, the King and Queen of Denmark.  Suddenly, however, we learned that she would receive us.  She was pale and appeared to be feeble, but she received us with the utmost cordiality.  She spoke to me about her mother, whom I had seen at Copenhagen with her sisters the Empress Dowager of Russia, and the Princess of Hanover whom politics deprived of a crown which was hers by right.  I have a very pleasant recollection of this visit.  I do not know how it happened but I remained speechless at this lead from the Queen.  She brought the subject up a second time and my timidity still prevented my responding.  I ought to have had many things to say to one so obviously eager to listen.  This Queen of Denmark, with her eighty years, was the most delightful old lady imaginable.  Erect, slight, alert of mind and unfaltering of speech, she reminded me vividly of my maternal great-aunt, that extraordinary woman, who gave me my first notions of things and directed my hand on the keys so well.

A singer whom I had never seen or heard of, but of whom I had heard poor reports, had written Queen Louise that I wanted to accompany her to court.  The Queen asked me if I knew her and if what she had written was true.  My surprise was so great that I could not repress a start, which I followed by an exclamation of denial, which appeared to amuse her greatly.  “I did not doubt it,” she said, “but I’m not sorry to be sure.”