"Play Something Simple, You Will Only Embarrass Us" - The Duke Asked Who Had Written the Piece

Regency historical romance, narrated in full. In October 1814 a music seller from Shrewsbury drove out to Cleeve Marney in Shropshire on the wrong Tuesday, and asked for Lady Wexford instead of for her stepdaughter. A lady of large fortune wanted a set of variations written on an air. Quietly, in the country, for private use. No name on the work and nothing published. She was offering 40 guineas. Cordelia Wexford was 27. Her father had left her 200 pounds in the funds, which paid her 8 pounds a year, and she wrote music in a room over a stable because there was nowhere else in that house she was allowed to be noisy. She was never told there was a figure in it. She was told an old woman in the county wanted a tune written out, that it was a civility the family owed, and that it would cost nothing. She was given 3 bars of melody on a half sheet in a shaky hand, and no key, no title and no date. She spent a week playing those 3 bars. Then she wrote 7 variations in 5 weeks and part of most nights, and on the first page, above the first bar, she wrote a dedication to a man she had never met, and signed it with 2 letters because a copyist does not sign her name. 40 guineas went out from Amberley in 2 payments. 14 letters were exchanged over the next year and a half, and not one of them reached the person it was addressed to. On the 11th of March 1816 the Duke of Amberley opened the county for the first time in 3 years, and both households were asked. Lydia was to sing after supper. That was the whole reason they went. Then somebody asked the elder Miss Wexford to play, to fill 20 minutes before the dowager went up. And her stepmother said, in front of 11 guests, before she had touched a key, that she should play something simple because she would only embarrass them if she reached. So she played the plainest thing she knew. At the 4th bar an old woman's stick came off her lap and onto the floor. Don't forget to subscribe so you won't miss new stories, and take the bell as well. Tell us what you made of Cordelia Wexford and the Duke of Amberley in the comments, and where you are watching from and what time you saw this video. This is a work of fiction. All characters and events are imaginary, and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental. Chapters: 0:00 The Candles at That End 1:55 A Deed Box in Ludlow 3:37 Ruled Paper at 3 Pence a Quire 7:17 A Boy Who Could Not Say His Own Name 9:24 The Wrong Tuesday 12:13 3 Bars on a Half Sheet 14:59 What the Parcel Was For 16:03 The Letters and the Guineas 21:25 An Instruction Given in Company 23:02 The Plainest Thing She Knew 30:34 What Was Written on the First Page #RegencyRomance #HistoricalRomance #RegencyStories #AudioStory #TheRegencyCanvas