"I once heard your father's glee, 'By Celia's Arbour,' sung by a few of
the Leeds Chorus, in Worcester, during the Festival. They had gathered
together in the bar of the hotel where I was staying. I had gone to bed
and was awakened out of my sleep, and I thought I had never heard it
sung to such perfection, the voices were so well balanced.
"There, there you are," said Mr. Lloyd, "that's what I mean. I was
something like that in the buttered biscuit days, and when I sang at
the Princess Royal's wedding."
[Illustration: A FAMILY GROUP.
_From a Photo by Elliott & Fry._]
A bright-faced little lad had stepped up to join the elder members in
a glee for five voices. He wore an Eton suit. The piece selected was a
sonnet by Lord Mornington:--
O, Bird of Eve! whose love-sick notes,
I hear across the dale,
Who nightly to the moon and me
Dost tell thy hapless tale!
The lad's voice was as true as the trill of the bird of which he sang,
and this time it was the great tenor who sat and--thought, of those
happy Westminster days, of those bewildering banquets at which he used
to sing, of the glasses of port, the palatable biscuits, the useful
two-shilling pieces. Perhaps he thought of more.
The lad sang again and again, until at twenty past nine o'clock, ten
minutes before dispersing, the chairman gave out the number of the last
glee, and Edward Lloyd shared my book as we listened to S. Webbe's
beautiful music set to--
Rise, my joy, sweet mirth attend,
I'm resolved to be thy friend;
Sneaking Phoebus hides his head,
He's with Thetis gone to bed:
Tho' he will not on me shine,
Still there's brightness in the wine;
From Bacchus I'll such lustre borrow,
My face shall be a sun to-morrow!