Giuseppe Tartini - Lettere e documenti / Pisma in dokumenti / Letters and Documents - Volume / Knjiga / Volume II

294 39. Tartini to Ferdinando degli Obizzi Many years ago I received from Signor Cavaliere Edward Walpole the courteous and advantageous invitation to go to London with him. Having decided not to go, I remember that a confidant of the said cavaliere deemed me to be a solemn fool. If I then decide on a similar no to Your Excellency’s invitation, shall I be exempt from being so judged for the second time? But since I care nothing or little about the former judge, but infinitely about the latter one, who is Your Excellency, a judge who chooses to love me and to be my most benevolent patron, I shall tell the latter the reason for my refusal, which I did not feel obliged to tell the former. I have a wife who shares my feelings and I have no children. We are most content in our state, and if there is any desire in us, it is not for anything more. Furthermore, the idea of that wellbeing, which everybody develops in their own way and was already formed in me many years ago, and which has become more than natural for me, is incompatible with any other change in lifestyle. It is therefore impossible for me to change in any other way, as it is impossible to change nature. Moreover, Your Excellency must know that it is extremely difficult, at the present moment, to find another man who has more need than me to be in London now, not for the music nor for my paltry violin, but for another truly important matter concerning the Royal Academy. It is so difficult for any other man to be superior to me in the esteem, veneration, and respect towards English Gentlemen, who I in fact rank above any other nation for judgement, that to them alone I shall submit a discovery of mine. But despite all these truths, and with the most important addition of Your Excellency’s interposition, I am forced to refuse an invitation of honour and usefulness in general, and infinitely to my taste and convenience in particular. Here is my heart, then, completely open to Your Excellency, as is my debt, and a much greater debt on this occasion, in which I see what a most benevolent and cordial patron I have in Your Excellency, to whom I convey my most profound regards and remain, as ever, Your Excellency’s most humble, devoted and obliged servant Giuseppe Tartini Padua, 18 January 1744