POSTSCRIPT
Letter to Rob. D. from Henry Peacham, Dublin, February, 1626.
You will set eyes on this missive only when you have obeyed your father's last behest, passed to you by Mistress Sims, to travel to Dublin to the house of John Forster, whose name Doctor Dowland would not commit to paper in a message for fear of placing his friend in jeopardy.
Mine has been the task, gladly undertaken, of bringing the rest of your inheritance to your father's old friend for safe keeping. You do not know me except perhaps by sight and we shall have no opportunity to meet in the future for, truth to tell, I have no wish to better our acquaintance and shall make it my business to avoid your company.
Though my dear friend, Doctor Dowland, has not once complained to me of your behaviour, from what I know of you as his son (and good Master Forster has told me much) your father had little comfort from you in his lifetime.
I speak as a schoolmaster and, as if you were my pupil, let me hold up a mirror in which you may see your true self.
From birth, you had the opportunity of the best musical education possible (save that of receiving it from your father's hands) and it bore no fruit. Next, you were enabled to live in the rich household of your true mother, whose happiness was blighted when your thoughtless behaviour took you from her. You wasted your time when you were given places at school and University, which cost your father dear, and, later, you fell into a profligate way of life, sinking so low as to steal from your parents, as I learned from your father's faithful servant, who also told me how he had to buy your freedom from arrest, giving up a prized possession to do so. He sacrificed his career for you and, at a time when he was sick with worry, you took yourself abroad, not answering one of his many letters over the years. There you traded on his name and fame and wrought much harm.
Yet your father still longed to see you and to share with you the divine experience to fulfil which had been his life's ambition. It was a bitter disappointment to him when he realised that his strength would not hold out until your coming and he then did me the great honour of inviting me to be with him when he looked at last on the picture of Orpheus and, through his magic, heard the true music of his revered hero. To the end, he thought of you and was prepared to spend his last strength for his son in committing to tablature the music he heard, though his poor fingers were so weak he had to entrust his lute to me for the opening ceremony.
I helped him from his bed to the great chair where I had seen him ensconced so often, the writing board I made him bearing music manuscript paper and the precious book, which he has willed to you, open at the picture of great Orpheus himself. Your father pronounced the invocation in an almost inaudible voice, then begged me to play softly the Fantasia of Don Luys Milan, which I had heard from him so often that I had it by heart. Whether through weakness or intent, his head drooped to the page so that his face and that of the pictured Orpheus lay side by side.
Now we prepared ourselves to share the long vigil. By this time, it grew dark and I sat on a stool beside my dear friend, listening to his breathing.....
The next thing I knew, dawn was lightening the sky...... To my shame, I had slept. I listened hard, but the breathing had ceased and I knew I was alone in the room. Gently, I raised your father's head, his eyes closed as they always were when he listened to music. I held a mirror to his lips though I knew well that it was too late for that. Through my weakness, I had betrayed his trust when my task was to be ready with pen and inkhorn as soon as he was wishful to record.
I then leaned back his head against a pillow, surveying his face for the last time. As if by a miracle, all the deep-etched lines had been smoothed from his brow and in every respect he seemed to resemble the pictured Orpheus but that his lips were parted in a smile of ineffable wonder and delight. I knew then that he had fallen asleep hearing the music of the first Orpheus and that his life, so full of disappointments in this world, had come to a peaceful ending with divine strains kept for his ears alone...
I can bring myself to write no more, so end with my signature,
Henry Peacham,
proud to have been a friend to the revered Doctor John Dowland.
