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came in every day to do the rooms and the cooking. He had found the
place on his first visit to Capri, and taking it on his return for good
had been there ever since. Seeing the piano and music open on it, I
asked him if he would play.
"I'm no good, you know, but I've always been fond of music
and I get a lot of fun out of strumming."
He sat down at the piano and played one of the movements
from a Beethoven sonata. He did not play very well. I looked at his
music, Schumann and Schubert, Beethoven, Bach and Chopin. On the
table on which he had his meals was a greasy pack of cards. I asked
him if he played patience.
"A lot."
From what I saw of him then and from what I heard from other
people I made for myself what I think must have been a fairly
accurate picture of the life he had led for the last fifteen years. It was
certainly a very harmless one. He bathed; he walked a great deal, and
he seemed never to lose his sense of the beauty of the island, which
he knew so intimately; he played the piano and he played patience; he
read. When he was asked to a party he went and, though a trifle dull,
was agreeable. He was not affronted if he was neglected. He liked
people, but with an aloofness that prevented intimacy. He lived
thriftily, but with sufficient comfort. He never owed a penny. I
imagine he had never been a man whom sex had greatly troubled, and
if in his younger days he had had now and then a passing affair with a
visitor to the island whose head was turned by the atmosphere, his
emotion, while it lasted, remained, I am pretty sure, well under his
control. I think he was determined that nothing should interfere with
his independence of spirit. His only passion was for the beauty of
nature, and he sought felicity in the simple and natural things that life
offers to everyone. You may say that it was a grossly selfish
existence. It was. He was of no use to anybody, but on the other hand
he did nobody any harm. His only object was his own happiness, and
it looked as though he had attained it. Very few people know where
to look for happiness; fewer still find it. I don't know whether he was
a fool or a wise man. He was certainly a man who knew his own
mind. The odd thing about him to me was that he was so immensely
commonplace. I should never have given him a second thought but
for what I knew, that on a certain day, ten years from then, unless a
chance illness cut the thread before, he must deliberately take leave of