2-720-401 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

'Beckoned silently to the rest to follow him', (1907). The young Handel is discovered playing the spinet in an attic at night: '....faint musical sounds proceeding from behind the closed door...the master softly lifted the latch, and, having peeped into the room, beckoned silently to the rest to follow him...For there, seated before the spinet, was the white-robed figure of the child, his face half turned towards them, and his eyes, as they caught the light of the lantern, revealing the dreamy, rapt expression of one who is lost to every earthly surrounding.' An episode from the life of German composer George Frideric Handel (1685-1759). From "Story-Lives of Great Musicians", by F.J. Rowbotham. [Wells Gardner, Darton & Co. Ltd, London, 1907]