Dear Abbé

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DEAR ABBÉ:

I was recently working at the Boston Public Library and spotted fifteen familiar names hewn in the stone of the Central Library Building. But who are Reynolds and Turner? Not musicologists, I hope.




                                                                 BEFUDDLED IN BOSTON

Reynolds: Charles Burney (1781)

SIR or MADAM:

According to this 1939 Index to the Persons Commemorated by Inscriptions . . . [at] the Boston Public Library, the celebrities in question are the famous English painters Joshua Reynolds (1723–1792) and J. M. W. Turner (1775–1851).

Curiously Reynolds and Turner are buried next to one another at St. Paul’s Cathedral. Reynolds, moreover, did paint a fine portrait of . . . a musicologist: Charles Burney.

                             ABBÉ