October 6 Saturday – Isabel Lyon’s journal:

All day, wind & rain.

With the afternoon mail came a letter from AB to the King—a love letter & the most beautiful love letter ever written. The King was deeply moved as he read it & when he called me in from my study his voice was shaking as he said, “Superb, superb! and worth waiting 70 years for.” He gave me the letter to read & it made me weep, even as he had wept. I didn’t know A.B. could write so exquisitely.

We had a beautiful afternoon, until the King went to his room, for I played the Chopin Nocturne, opus 37. Schubert’s Impromptu, opus 142, no. 2, the “König Stutil” as he calls the Erl König, & some Scotch music and my reward was his deep sigh of contentment [MTP TS 128].