Haven’t updated this in a while, sorry. Just got back from Paris. Before that I was in NYC. (Turns out I was managed to get to NYC, London and Paris in the same week.)
Let’s play with some American stereotypes!
“An American girl visited Beethoven’s home, saw the piano at which he wrote the Ninth Symphony, flung herself at it and banged out a few notes. ‘I suppose you get a lot of famous people in here’, she said to the guide. ‘Ja, Fraulein. Paderewski was here a few days ago.’ ‘Say, did he play too?’ `Nein, Faulein. He thought he was not worthy.'”
– Bruce Clavering, Sunday Referee, 9 Aug 1936. (In Frank S. Pepper, Contemporary Biographical Quotations, pp. 223-4.)
(Wasn’t he deaf by this time? Would you still use a piano if you were deaf? Oh, it’s in a book so it must be true.)