And you?" I said, "I, too, am well. What is that, my
dear Dolmetsch, that you carry under your left arm?" He answered, "It
is a Mass by Palestrina." "Will you read me the score?" I asked. I was
afraid he would say no. But Dolmetsch is not one of those men who say
no, and he read me the score. He did not read very well, but I had
never heard it before, so when he finished I begged of him he would
read it to me again. He said, "Very well, M**re, I will read it to you
again." I remember his exact words, because they seemed to me at the
time to be the sort of thing that only Dolmetsch could have said. It
was a foggy morning in Victoria Street, and while Dolmetsch read again
the first few bars, I thought how Renoir would have loved to paint
in such an atmosphere the tops of the plane trees that flaccidly show
above the wall of Buckingham Palace.... Why had I never been invited
to Buckingham Palace? I did not want to go there, but it would have
been nice to have been asked.... How _brave gaillard_ was Renoir, and
how well he painted from that subfusc palette!...
My roving thoughts were caught back to the divine score which
Arnold Dolmetsch was reading to me. How well placed they were, those
semibreves! Could anyone but Palestrina have placed them so nicely? I
wondered what girl Palestrina was courting when he conceived them.
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