My Musical Life

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83-4

text excerpt

I had three rooms at the furthest extremity of the old court leading into the Bishop's Hostel. Open windows commanding two Quads made me a very formidable and undesirable neighbour. Incessant practising with a saloon pistol with which I was a crack shot on my doors added a general liveliness to the situation. Occasionally I received midnight expostulations. It was agreed at last that firing was not to go on after eight o'clock, nor music after ten. This latter rule was, I admit, more honoured in the breach than the observance, and often have I seen MR. FROST or JOHN LUNN musical fellows of neighbouring colleges pounding away in their shirt-sleeves, cigar in mouth, at my piano till past midnight, while I myself, the present EARL OF MAR, and MR. GEORGE COOKE still a notable violoncello player in London (1883) &c., made up the quartet or quintet in the rear. The consumption of beer and buttered muffins after tea was unusually large on certain hot nights. The listeners who stepped in to smoke and chat, declared that under the infliction of music additional support was absolutely needed. The dean occasionally sent polite and deprecatory messages from over the way, whilst Messrs. HAMMOND and BURN, fellows of Trinity, who "kept" just underneath me on the same stair-case, exhibited a certain angelic forbearance with the pandemonium upstairs which, after the lapse of twenty-five years, I cannot sufficiently admire.

excerpt from 'My Musical Life' pp. 83-4 (235 words)

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