help thinking him a necromancer in the midst of his enchantments." Messiah was also rehearsed there; the lead violinist Abraham Wilson recounted to the musicologist Charles Burney "how civilly he had been attended by him [Handel] to the door, and how carefully cautioned, after being heated by a crowded room and hard labour, at the rehearsal in Brook-street, not to stir without a [Sedan] chair." The adjacent room at the rear of the house was Handel's composing room and probably contained Handel's clavichord, an instrument Handel used when composing, portable enough to be taken on journeys and which, according to an anecdote oft-repeated by his biographers, he secretly played as a child in the garret of his house, in defiance of his father. Handel's clavichord was built in 1726 by the Italian instrument maker Annibale Traeri from Modena; it is now in the Maidstone Museum & Art Gallery in Kent. The remaining rooms on the second floor comprised a main bedroom containing a full tester bed dressed in crimson harateen, connected to a dressing room and closet in the back. The servants, three or more in number, occupied the garret rooms on the floor above. Handel used his house not only for entertainment, composition and rehearsal, but also for business: in the late 1730s the scores of Alexander's Feast and other works could be purchased directly there. His home also contained an extensive art collection, and by the end of his life Handel possessed over 80 paintings and prints, including works by Watteau, Teniers and Poussin. After Handel's death in 1759, his musical instruments passed to John Christopher Smith and his son of the same name: the father had been summoned from the continent by Handel to act as his copyist when Handel first arrived in London; and his son had acted as amanuensis and assistant when Handel's blindness prevented him from writing and conducting in his later years. The tenancy of the house and Handel's clothing passed to his servant John Du Burk. The detailed inventory, a transcript of which is now stored in the British Library, gives a clear guide as to how the house was decorated and used. Apart from the conversion of the garrets into a fourth storey in the 1830s, the house remained largely unchanged until 1905, when C. J. Charles converted the house into a shop, removing the original façade and the internal dividing