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ments, so were Faustina and Cuzzoni directly opposed in their matrimonial ventures. Never did Faustina swerve in her unfailing fidelity to Hasse, for she lived with him without a break for upwards of sixty years. Rich and titled philanderers, fascinated by her voice and attractive personality, Kings and peers endeavoured to intrigue her into dishonour. Their blandishments did not even disturb the surface of her deep and settled affection. She moved among great men, she was fêted at every Court. But the greatest man of them all, as she judged greatness, was Hasse. In a personality that was impulsive and often difficult to understand and as easily wounded, there remained an unbroken and unbreakable fidelity to her husband. Not so with Cuzzoni. Her lovers openly entered her house, while Sardoni could do no more than hang about like a kept dog. In the end she poisoned him, and was condemned to death in consequence, yet so marvellously did they contrive these things, that she slipped out of the sentence somehow and charmed audiences with her singing for years afterwards.

But the adventure of these two women tried the patience of Handel, and well-nigh drove him to distraction. When it was ended he laughed about it. He called them a pair of hussies. Cuzzoni he declared to be a she-devil, and Faustina Beelzebub's spoiled child. Nevertheless he had a profound respect for them to the end of his days, a quite impersonal regard.

They had never been to him any more than rather perfect instruments in his orchestra.

CHAPTER XII

THE FALL OF THE ACADEMY

ONLY eight days after the battle royal between Faustina and Cuzzoni at the opera, Sir Robert Walpole, sitting at dinner at his house at Chelsea, received the news that the King had died at Osnaburg. The monarch who had changed the whole life of London—and not for the worse, if little for the better— had perished miserably on the highway like some humble wayfarer on his last journey. An end not bereft of pathos, without the trappings of ceremonial which he loved, and without a woman near him-he who had always loved women.

What a wretched and humble death! What a picture it weaves of the simple process of dying! The King, talking in the coach to the Private Secretary and Privy Councillor who alone accompany him, when a stroke paralyses his right side. He falls forward, his mouth agape, they clutch him, hold him up. "Drive on! drive on!" moans the crumpled up figure, as heavy and inert as a sack of corn. They stop the coach, try to pull him out to the road. Then, as they bend over this unregal figure, his wig awry, his eyes wide-staring and frightened, his mouth twisted with pain, the cry, like a little muffled scream, is repeated: "Drive on! drive on! "

So they drive at a mad rate, over ruts in the road, over cobbles and obstacles, bumping and shaking out the pitiful flickering flame of his life, till they clatter into the Bishop's courtyard at Osnaburg, and hammer with frenzied impatience at the doors closed against the night. And all to no purpose. The hunched up figure in the chaise is a corpse by the time they make some one understand that they have a King there. The Secretary and Privy Councillor crouch over him, peer into his face, lift the dead hands-scared out of their wits, both of them, and wondering what they are to do with a King's body thrust on their responsibility in a foreign land.

Death of George I

The news when it reached London town was as staggering as it was unexpected. No one had believed that he would die, not yet at any rate. He was so happy with his mistresses, his beer, his little funny Court. And he had gone out stupidly in a strange country without the hand of his last favourite to even straighten his pillow. Walpole leaps from the table as the news is borne to him, shouts for a horse, dashes into the saddle, clad in the easy vêtements of the evening as he is, and rides hell for leather to Richmond, where the Prince of Wales is living in sensual luxury. Such is the pace he makes that he kills a couple of horses on the journey, short as it is.1 The following day the Prince is proclaimed King of England in London. He is assumed, as his father was assumed before him, with no particular welcome, yet no positive antagonism. His chief virtue is that he is a change.

Whatever plans Handel had for the immediate future were upset by the Osnaburg tragedy. His relations with the Prince had not been so cordial as they had been with his father. Certainly there was no open dislike, but their intimacies had been seldom and a little forced. Anything might happen now.

Handel took the step that healed any breach there might have been. He set to work and composed the four beautiful Coronation anthems which were performed at Westminster Abbey on 11th October 1727, when the crown was placed on the brow of the second George. Indeed, he not only composed the music but selected from the Bible the words which he set.

Apropos of Handel's achievements with these anthems, it may be remarked in passing that there has recently been brought to light in the British Museum a copy of Mainwaring's life of the composer which came from the Royal library, and is covered with notes made in ink in a handwriting which is very like that of George III. If it was indeed the King-whose love for Handel's work extended throughout his life, till, in his childish senility, he used to wander aimlessly round the bedroom droning Handel-who made these notes, then they are of peculiar interest. In 1 " Walpoliana," p. 104.

writing of Dr Maurice Greene, organist and composer to the Chapel Royal, he says: "That wretched little crooked illnatured insignificant writer Player and Musician, the late Dr Green, organist and composer to King George II who forbad his composing the Anthems of his Coronation Oct. 22nd 1727, and ordered that G. F. Handel should not only have that great honour, but, except the 1st choose his own words. He had but four weeks for doing this wonderful work which seems scarcely credible; as to the first (anthem) it is probably the most perfect if possible of all His superb compositions."

The Coronation was a scene of magnificence, the like of which had never previously been witnessed at the Abbey. The richness, the display of wealth inseparable from the Georges, was manifest to the fullest degree. The dress of Queen Caroline was as fine as the accumulated riches of the city and suburbs could make it; for besides her own jewels (which were a great number and very valuable) she had on her head and on her shoulders all the pearls she could borrow of the ladies of quality at one end of the town, and on her petticoat. all the diamonds she could hire of the Jews and jewellers at the other.1

The glory of the Handel anthems, wonderfully performed as they were by Handel's own selected choir of nearly fifty singers, gave the new King an opportunity to show the public that his neglect of the musician in the past, and, in some respects, his mild animosity towards him, was a phase that had gone for ever. He promptly decided not only to continue the pensions which his predecessors had settled upon Handel, but to make him an additional grant of £200 a year for his services as musick-master to the Princesses Amelia and Caroline. It was the pledge of peace. George II had many a battle to fight on Handel's behalf, during the coming years, but from the day of his Coronation he remained as faithful to Handel as Handel was faithful to his Court. The hot-head Prince of Wales, with his hectoring and bluster, only made George II more stubborn in the cause of Handel. George had a poor sense of music, but he realised that to throw over Handel 1 Mrs Delany, “Life and Correspondence," vol. i. p. 140.

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perhaps it is too little to say, that the work was anfwerable to them. But let the grand TE DEUM AND JUBILATE fpeak for themselves! Our business is not to play the panegyrift, but the hiftorian.

The great character of the Operas which HANDEL had made in Italy and Germany, and the remembrance of RINALDO joined with the poor proceedings at the Haymarket, made the nobility very defirous that he might again be employed in compofing for that theatre. To their applications her Majefty was pleased to add the weight of her own authority; and, as a teftimony of her regard to his merit, fettled upon him a a penfion for life of 200l. per Anmum.

• Gurgell. agrees with Hendel that the This Dettingen Te Deum is for superios; it has more offeet from the subject being treated with @dyne of force axeproaching to Inspiration, and wond win the Hallelujah Chorus in the Messiah wond, is of which worthy the damb, and the unexpat aman at the close.

A PAGE OF MAINWARING'S LIFE OF HANDEL. From the Royal Library. Having the footnote criticisms of Handel and his associates, believed to be in the handwriting of George III.

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