Samuel Butler: The Way of All Flesh

86. CHAPTER LXXXVI (continued)

"And are you still as fond of music as ever, Mr Pontifex?" said Miss Skinner to Ernest during the course of lunch.

"Of some kinds of music, yes, Miss Skinner, but you know I never did like modern music."

"Isn't that rather dreadful?--Don't you think you rather"--she was going to have added, "ought to?" but she left it unsaid, feeling doubtless that she had sufficiently conveyed her meaning.

"I would like modern music, if I could; I have been trying all my life to like it, but I succeed less and less the older I grow."

"And pray, where do you consider modern music to begin?"

"With Sebastian Bach."

"And don't you like Beethoven?"

"No, I used to think I did, when I was younger, but I know now that I never really liked him."

"Ah! how can you say so? You cannot understand him, you never could say this if you understood him. For me a simple chord of Beethoven is enough. This is happiness."

Ernest was amused at her strong family likeness to her father--a likeness which had grown upon her as she had become older, and which extended even to voice and manner of speaking. He remembered how he had heard me describe the game of chess I had played with the doctor in days gone by, and with his mind's ear seemed to hear Miss Skinner saying, as though it were an epitaph:-

"Stay:
I may presently take
A simple chord of Beethoven,
Or a small semiquaver
From one of Mendelssohn's Songs without Words."