Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Part 17

Young Handel had spent two years in Italy, had visited most of the capitals of Europe, had composed several operas and numerous songs. He was handsome, gracious and talented. Money may use its jimmy to break into the Upper Circles; but to Beauty, Grace and Talent that does not shiver nor shrink, all doors fly open. And now the English n.o.blemen requested--nay, insisted--that Handel should accompany them back to Merry England.

He went, and being introduced as Signore Handello, he was received with salvos of welcome. There is a time to plant, and a time to reap. There is a time for everything--launch your boat only at full of tide. London was ripe for Italian Opera. Discovery had recently been made in England that Art was born in Italy. It had traveled as far as Holland, and so Dutch artists were hard at work in English manor-houses, painting portraits of ancestors, dead and living. Music, one branch of Art, had made its way up to Germany, and here was an Italian who spoke English with a German accent, or a German who spoke Italian--what boots it, he was a great musician!

Handel's Italian opera, "Rinaldo," was given at a theater that stood on the site of the present Haymarket. The production was an immense success. All educated people knew Latin (or were supposed to know it), and Signore Handello announced that his Italian was an improvement on the Latin. And so all the scholars flocked to see the play, and those who were not educated came too, and looked knowing. In order to hold interest, there were English syncopated songs between the acts--ragtime is a new word, but not a new thing.

Handel was very wise in this world's affairs. He a.s.sured England that it was the most artistic country on the globe. He wrote melodies that everybody could whistle. Airs from "Rinaldo" were thrummed on the harpsichord from Land's End to John O'Groat's. The grand march was adopted by the Life Guards, and at least one air from that far-off opera has come down to us--the "Tascie Ch'io Pianga," which is still listened to with emotion unfeigned. The opera being uncopyrighted, was published entire by an enterprising Englishman from Dublin by the name of Walsh.

At two o'clock one morning at the "Turk's Head," he boasted he had cleared over two thousand pounds on the sale of it. Handel was present and responded, "My friend, the next time you will please write the opera and I will sell it." Walsh took the hint, they say, and sent his check on the morrow to the author for five hundred pounds. And the good sense of both parties is shown in the fact that they worked together for many years, and both reaped a yellow harvest of golden guineas.

On the birthday of Queen Anne, Handel inscribed to her an ode, which we are told was played with a full band. The performance brought the diplomatic Handel a pension of two hundred pounds a year.

Next, to celebrate the peace of Utrecht, the famous "Te Deum" and "Jubilate" were produced, with a golden garter as a slight token of recognition.

But Good Queen Anne pa.s.sed away, as even good queens do, and the fuzzy-witted George of Hanover came over to be King of England, and transmit his fuzzy-wuzzy wit to all the Georges. About his first act was to cut off Handel's pension, "Because," he said, "Handel ran away from me at Hanover."

A time of obscurity followed for Handel, but after some months, when the Royal Barge went up the Thames, a band of one hundred pieces boomed alongside, playing a deafening racket, with horse-pistol accompaniments.

The King made inquiries and found it was "Water-Music," composed by Herr Handel, and dedicated in loving homage to King George the First.

When the Royal Barge came back down the river, Herr Handel was aboard, and accompanied by a great popping of corks was proclaimed Court Musician, and his back-pension ordered paid.

The low ebb of art is seen in that, in the various operas given about this time by Handel, great stress is made in the bills about costumes, scenery and gorgeous stage-fittings. When accessories become more than the play--ill.u.s.trations more than the text--millinery more than the mind--it is unfailing proof that the age is frivolous. Art, like commerce and everything else, obeys the law of periodicity. Handel saw the tendency of the times, and advertised, "The fountain to be seen in 'Amadigi' is a genuine one, the pump real and the dog alive." Three hours before the doors opened, the throng stood in line, waiting.

But London is making head. Other good men and true are coming to town.

Handel does not know much about them, or care, perhaps. His wonderful energy is now manifesting itself in the work of managing theaters and concerts, giving lessons and composing songs, arias, operas, and attending receptions where "the ladies refrain from hoops for fear of the crush," to use the language of Samuel Pepys.

In shirt-sleeves, in a cheap seat in the pit, at one of Handel's performances, is a big lout of a fellow, with scars of scrofula on his neck and cheek. Next to him is a little man, and these two, so chummy and confidential, suggest the long and short of it. They are countrymen, recently arrived, empty of pocket, but full of hope. They have a selfish eye on the stage, for the big 'un has written a play and wants to get it produced.

The little man's name is David Garrick; the other is Samuel Johnson.

They listen to the singing, and finally Samuel turns to his friend and says, "I say, Davy, music is nothing but a noise that is less disagreeable than some others." They would go away, would these two, but they have paid good money to get in, and so sit it out disgustedly, watching the audience and the play alternately.

In one of the boxes is a weazened little man, all out of drawing, in a black velvet doublet, satin breeches and silk stockings. At his side is a rudimentary sword. The man's face is sallow, and shrewdness and selfishness are shown in every line. He looks like a baby suddenly grown old. The two friends in the pit have seen this man before, but they have never met him face to face, because they do not belong to his set.

"Do you think G.o.d is proud of a work like that?" at last asked Davy, jerking his thumb toward the bad modeling in courtly black.

"G.o.d never made him." The big man swayed in his seat, and added, "G.o.d had nothing to do with him--he is the child of Beelzebub."

"Think 'ee so?" asks Davy. "Why, Mephisto has some pretty good traits; but Alexander Pope is as crooked as an interrogation-point, inside and out."

"I hear he wears five pairs of stockings to fill out his shanks, and sole-leather stays to keep him from flattening out like a devilfish,"

said Doctor Johnson.

"But he makes a lot o' money!"

"Well, he has to, for he pays an old woman a hundred guineas a year to dress and undress him."

"I know, but she writes his heroic couplets, too!"

"Davy, I fear you are getting cynical--let's change the subject."

It surely is a case of artistic jealousy. Our friends locate the poet Gay, a fat little man, who is with his publisher, Rich.

"They say," says Samuel, again rolling in his seat as if about to have an apoplectic fit, "they say that Gay has become rich, and Rich has become gay since they got out that last book." There comes an interlude in the play, and our friends get up to stretch their legs.

"How now, d.i.c.k Savage?" calls Samuel, as he pushes three men over like ninepins, to seize a shabby fellow whose neckcloth and hair-cut betray him as being a poet. "How now, d.i.c.k, you said that Italian music was d.a.m.nably bad! Why do you come to hear it?"

"I came to find out how bad it is," replied the literary man. "Eh! your reverence?" he adds to his companion, a sharp-nosed man with china-blue eyes, in Church-of-England knee-breeches, high-cut vest, and shovel-hat.

Dean Swift replies with a knowing smirk, which is the nearest approach to a laugh in which he ever indulged. Then he takes out his snuffbox and taps it, which is a sign that he is going to say something worth while.

"Yes, one must go everywhere, and do everything, just to find out how bad things are. By this means we clergymen are able to intelligently warn our flocks. But I came tonight to hear that rogue Bononcini--you know he is from County Down--I used to go to school with him," and the Dean solemnly pa.s.ses the snuffbox.

Garrick here bursts into a laugh, which is broken off short by a reproving look from the Dean, who has gotten the snuffbox back and is meditatively tapping it again. The friends listen and hear from the muttering lips of the Dean, this:

Some say that Signore Bononcini, Compared to Handel is a ninny; Whilst others vow that to him Handel, Is hardly fit to hold a candle.

Strange all this difference should be 'Twixt tweedledum and tweedledee.

The people are tumbling back to their seats as the musicians come stringing in. Soon there is a general tuning up--sc.r.a.pings, toots, snorts, subdued screeches, raspings, and all that busy buzz-fuzz business of getting ready to play.

"The first time we came to the opera Doctor Johnson thought this was all a part of the play, and applauded with unction for an encore," says Garrick.

"And I heard nothing finer the whole evening," answers Doctor Johnson, accepting the defi, and winning by yielding.

"Why don't they tune up at home, or behind the scenes?" asks some one.

"I'll tell you why," says Savage, and he relates this: "Handel is a great man for system--he is a strict disciplinarian, as any man must be to manage musicians, who are neither men nor women, but a third s.e.x.

Often Handel has to knock their heads together, and once he shook the Cuzzoni until her teeth chattered."

"That's the way you have to treat any woman before she will respect you," interrupts the Dean. Nothing else being forthcoming, Savage continues: "Handel is absolute master of everything but Death and Destiny. Now he didn't like all this tuning up before the audience; he said you might as well expect the prima donna to make her toilet in front of the curtain"--

"I like the idea," says Johnson.

Savage praises the interruption and continues: "And so ordered every man to tune up his artillery a half-hour before the performance, and carry his instrument in and lay it on his chair. Then when it came time to commence, every musician would walk in, take up his instrument, and begin. The order was given, and all tuned up. Then the players all adjourned for their refreshments.

"In the interval a wag entered and threw every instrument out of key.

"It came time to begin--the players marched in like soldiers. Handel was in his place. He rapped once--every player seized his instrument as though it were a musket. At the second rap the music began--and such music! Some of the strings were drawn so tight that they snapped at the first touch; others merely flapped; some growled; and others groaned and moaned or squealed. Handel thought the orchestra was just playing him a scurvy trick. He leaped upon the stage, kicked a hole in the ba.s.s-viol, and smashed the kettledrum around the neck of the nearest performer. The players fled before the a.s.sault, and he bombarded them with cornets and French horns as they tumbled down the stairs.

"The audience roared with delight, and not one in forty guessed that it was not a specially arranged Italian feature. But since that evening all tuning-up is done on the stage, and no man lets his instrument get out of his hands after he gets it right."

"It's a moving tale, invented as an excuse for a man who writes music so bad that he gets disgusted with it himself, and flies into wrath when he hears it," says Johnson.

A subdued buzz is heard, and the master comes forth, gorgeous in a suit of purple velvet. His powdered wig and the enormous silver buckles on his shoes set off his figure with the proper accent. His florid face is smiling, and Garrick expresses a regret that there are to be no impromptu tragic events in way of chasing players from the stage.

"Would you like to meet him?" asks the sharp-nosed Dean.

Garrick and Johnson have enough of the rustic in them to be lion-hunters, and they reply to the question as one man, "Yes, indeed!"

"I'll arrange it," was the answer. The leader raps for attention.