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 little progress? I do not really know. And so cold was I by the end of the hour that I did not care. Such is the burden of our human clay: our spirits soar to some icy heaven while our bodies creep back to the tame hearth.
My invitation to Dégeulasse and his family had been accepted with alacrity and (still giftless towards two o'clock, no one at all having made any reference to my birthday) I was comforting myself by planning my soirée when a village boy rode up my drive on a donkey bringing a message from the vicar of Bidnold, the Reverend Timothy Sackpole. I was requested to come at once to the church.
"Why?" I enquired of the boy.
"I do not know, Sir."
"How like a clergyman, not to give a reason!"
"Except that it be dire and urgent."
"That is not a reason, lad. That is a tick of the ecclesiastical mind."
As my horse was being saddled, this thought assailed me: had the conceited Sackpole somehow found out that this day saw the dawn of my thirty-ninth year? Did he foresee some divine punishment for this stumbling Aquarian if he were not brought before an altar before the sun set? Being only a little past the shortest day of the year, the sun was indeed going down already – hence the supposed urgency of the message? Though it amuses me to go now and again to hear a sermon from Sackpole, I am not seen at church as often as I should be, preferring to send my prayers to God in the quiet of my room or (as already described) in the company of a lardy cake. It was thus quite possible that this clergyman, who strikes me as a petulant person, should wish to deliver himself of some reprimand, the tone and substance of which I could already hear in my mind. He would begin by asking me to what I had given any thought on this the anniversary of my birth. I would reply that my mind had circled vainly about an empty table on which I had imagined Celia placing the gift of an embossed music case or a handsome picture frame. He would answer that such preoccupations will bar me from the Kingdom of Heaven…