It was a pleasure to hear him recount once again this innocent adventure; for several minutes, it was as if every French soldier was back in France and Vienna unmolested. It lifted both our moods and he found an appetite and ate some bread. He then declared himself fit for work, and we happily spent the best part of an hour reviewing his Missa brevis, trying one thing and another. It is not a new piece at all, not as it is presently known, but Doctor Haydn, on rediscovering it, found a new attraction to its melody and felt it had prospects he had not realised in his youth.

If none of us survives the French, he must be remembered as someone whom the music never left, not until the last. Infirmity encroaches by the day and, in my time here, he has not stepped beyond his house and garden. That is not to say he is without worldly contact; he has kept entertaining visitors of the highest rank, because he is Haydn, and both the music and the man are much loved and admired.

His room abounds with keepsakes brought to him by visitors. There are medals, medallions and certificates on display, as well as shelves of mementoes from emperors and empresses and other tokens of his station. Many of these objects are the subjects of stories Doctor Haydn happily tells. One is a gold watch, and I have heard him recount its tale several times to visitors, beginning each telling by saying, ‘You have heard of the admiral, Nelson?’ The listener knows well of Nelson and his deeds, and very likely is aware that Doctor Haydn’s Missa in Angustiis has also become known fondly as the Lord Nelson Mass. The astute visitor remarks on how it came to have that name, through the joyous coincidence of its premiere performance in Eisenstadt and the arrival that day of news that Nelson had defeated Napoléon’s fleet in the Battle of the Nile. Doctor Haydn allows this observation before passing them his treasure and surprising them by saying, ‘This is the watch he wore that very day.’

It was a gift from one friend to another, exchanged for the composer’s pen that Doctor Haydn had used to write a cantata for Lady Hamilton, when Nelson and the Lady visited Vienna in 1800. The suggestion of the exchange was Nelson’s, and made out of gratitude for the gift of music, and out of regard and friendship. Doctor Haydn and I have talked of Nelson more than once, as my uncle John served with the admiral, then a post-captain, on HMS Boreas in the 1780s.