Handel, of course, is Madame Patey. Give Madame Patey Handel's wig
and clothes, and there would be no telling her from Handel. It is
not only that the features and the shape of the head are the same,
but there is a certain imperiousness of expression and attitude
about Handel which he hardly attempts to conceal in Madame Patey.
It is a curious coincidence that he should continue to be such an
incomparable renderer of his own music. Pope Julius II. was the
late Mr. Darwin. Rameses II. is a blind woman now, and stands in
Holborn, holding a tin mug. I never could understand why I always
found myself humming "They oppressed them with burthens" when I
passed her, till one day I was looking in Mr. Spooner's window in
the Strand, and saw a photograph of Rameses II. Mary Queen of Scots
wears surgical boots and is subject to fits, near the Horse Shoe in
Tottenham Court Road.
Michael Angelo is a commissionaire; I saw him on board the Glen
Rosa, which used to run every day from London to Clacton-on-Sea and
back. It gave me quite a turn when I saw him coming down the stairs
from the upper deck, with his bronzed face, flattened nose, and with
the familiar bar upon his forehead. I never liked Michael Angelo,
and never shall, but I am afraid of him, and was near trying to hide
when I saw him coming towards me. He had not got his
commissionaire's uniform on, and I did not know he was one till I
met him a month or so later in the Strand.
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