Tafelmusik (2)

Style and flattery will get you the life you deserve: one table setting after another, beer sand cards in the park at Raneleigh, some lame poet enthusing over the pale moon under the pricking stars while Lord Petersham glimpses himself in the sheen of his boots and smiles as he pulls out the snuffbox for this very day. At least the unnamed gentleman who each evening squires a different doll from his own bisque collection knows that that’s all he wants.

Does all that powder make them happier? There’s the Duchess of Devonshire, snooting past with her lap dog, as big a yawn as ever. Look at sly little Miss Wilson Lady prattling on; she’s absolutely smitten with the divertimento! Smitten: as if this were a love affair and she needs to be hit between the eyes to actually feel something. Divertimenti do not smite: only God does.

Here’s a modest proposal: Shut your eyes for five minutes and listen. Easy music, yet it demonstrates respectable employment of chordal modulation and is utterly capable of transporting a weary soul out of this frenzy and onto the plain of perfect comprehension—and there is your bliss, flowing beneath all the fretting; there is your ecstasy & ruin & entitlement, all the religion you’ll ever need.