Porpora's Ariadne

was failing, when the first grey stabs of daylight began to dim his candle, did he creep up that broad staircase (which still exists) to his couch in the front room above. The growing years, the turmoil of increasing combat with enemies and anxiety, were sapping the physique of the giant whose brain still leapt to the pulse of some retarded youth.

For a period the fight between the two Ariadnes was balanced. The competition of the one helped the other. Antagonists of the Court supported the Prince's exploit, only to find themselves left out of the controversy because they were unacquainted with Handel's version. The struggle, bitter as it was, and carried on without quarter on either side, assisted the finances of both parties. But the clamour of politics and political hatreds soon claimed the louder voice.

On the 6th July 1734 Handel and Heidegger separated. The partnership, which had produced some of the best work Handel had composed, failed in the end as dismally as did the Academy. The closing of the theatre was, as one paper declared," a triumph for the debtors of a brace of madmen!" Heidegger had dipped into art and burnt his fingers; Handel, had lost his money, but his prestige remained unhurt.

too,

Then, before he had time to turn round and consider his plans, his enemies stepped in and took the lease of the King's Theatre ere he could protest. Handel was thrown into the street. His money was gone, his partner had left him; Society shed some crocodile tears and exclaimed: "Poor Mr Handel," but rather pleased that the Prince of Wales had been able to score an achievement off that horrible Court.

They said that Handel was finished. The Prince bragged about it; Porpora declared himself to be the music-master of London. But, while they were talking, Handel decided to go into management on his own account.

CHAPTER XVI

THE CRASH

THE disappearance of Handel from the King's Theatre was the beginning of a new and desperate phase in the conflict with the "Opera of the Nobility." His enemies had won the first bout; they had beaten him out of the theatre which had been associated with so many of his productions, and of which he loved every brick and stone.

He was now a solitary figure. Most of his friends had deserted him. Among his singers Strada alone remained. There was nothing left for him to do but to take the theatre in Lincoln's Inn Fields from which his enemies had launched their attack which culminated in the capture of the Haymarket. The lessee at Lincoln's Inn Fields was Rich so, although Handel was his own manager, he had become associated with the very man who had done more than anyone to ruin his operas with The Beggar's Opera.

Rich was a creature of opportunity. His father, a theatrical manager, had built the theatre at Lincoln's Inn Fields, and died in 1714, just before it was finished. On the night the theatre was opened it was therefore draped with crêpe. At his father's death John Rich found himself, at the age of twentytwo, in possession of a respectable fortune and a new theatre. Within six weeks of the descent of the last curtain on old Rich his son had opened the theatre he had inherited as a going concern. There was no art about Rich-he ran his theatre to pay. Although he was popular, he had had very little education, and his language was vulgar and ungrammatical. He was a very good talker, and loved a private party where he could gather his cronies about him and regale them with the latest anecdotes of the town. He had an irritating habit of calling everybody "Mister." It clung to him all his life, and

John Rich at Lincoln's Inn

it was commonly said that he would call the undertaker "Mister" when he came to measure him. This habit drew

66

a sharp rebuke from Foote in later years. Rich had called Foote "Mister," whereupon the actor asked him why he did not call him by his proper name. "Don't be angry," pleaded Rich, "for I sometimes forget my own name." That's extraordinary indeed," Foote retorted. "I knew "I knew you could not write your own name, but I did not suppose you could forget it!" 1

Rich produced masquerades, pantomimes, cheap farces— anything that drew the guineas; he even played harlequin himself. Moreover, he got together as disreputable a set of actors and actresses as ever herded in the green-room of a London playhouse.

To come down to this in the autumn of 1734 must have been, for Handel, the descent to the pit. The gang that clustered about Rich used the theatre as a sort of club whether they were employed or not. Some actually slept on the premises because they could not afford common lodging. The whole neighbourhood stank, the narrow streets that led to it were a drift of mud, garbage and filth that lay rotting for weeks on end. Footpads made play in the alleys. Not infrequently they overturned a chair on its way back from the play and calmly robbed the tenant thereof. Into this wretched atmosphere Handel, ill, overwrought, was pitchforked with the broken remnants of what had once been a great company of singers, his health against him, the town supercilious now that he had fallen from his high estate, and using a theatre which was the home of mediocrity and lewdness and discomfort. But not for long. Rich, with the money made out of his cheap productions, and The Beggar's Opera, had been busy building a new theatre in Covent Garden.

Meanwhile, Handel's last act before joining Rich had been the production of a serenata called Parnasso in Festa, to celebrate the marriage of Anne, the Princess Royal. Not that he had been in any mood to compose music for rejoicing, since the marriage took place in March-only four months before the dissolution of his partnership with Heidegger. But his

1 Thomas Davies, "Life of Garrick."

position at the Court made it necessary that he should compose for the event, though Anne was not his favourite pupil, and she had done a great deal to set the Prince of Wales against him.

It was a peculiar marriage. Her husband, the Prince of Orange, was a good-looking humpback with plenty of audacity and no money. His income was less than £12,000 a year, and his debts would have taken a king's income for years to repay. He was a happy-go-lucky nincompoop. His fiancée despised him before she was married to him. George and his Consort disliked the very sight of him; the Prince of Wales was openly rude to him. The marriage was now persisted in because it would assure the Protestant succession. So the town said. But the true reason for the match was that there was no one else in Europe for the Princess to marry. She had to choose between marrying this piece of deformity in Holland, or dying an old maid immured in her royal convent at St. James's.1

So Handel, tired and buffeted by ill-chance, put Parnasso together. He can scarcely be said to have composed it for the occasion, since so much of the music was taken from the Athalia, which he had produced at Oxford the summer before and never given in London. But Parnasso was deemed of sufficient importance to draw all the Royal Family to the first night, including the Prince of Wales, who could scarcely keep away from what was a state function.

When Handel opened his season at Lincoln's Inn Fields on 5th October he put on Ariadne again. There was still some excitement left in town about the rival Ariadnes, and he was sure of a certain audience. But he soon found that the crowd he could draw at the King's did not want him at Lincoln's Inn. The treasury takings were meagre; at no time was he able to sell more than half his seats. The better places were all but unfilled. He therefore revised Il Pastor Fido, with a few additions, including some dances for a licentious French dancer called Mlle Sallé and her satellites - a disreputable gang of females whom Rich had imported from Paris. 1 Hervey, "Memoirs," vol. i. p. 233.

Handel at Bay

before Handel's arrival. It is indicative of Handel's straits that he condescended to have any dealings with such people, much less permit them to be associated with his work. But the battle was going against him; he knew it. Furthermore, he appreciated very keenly that if he were beaten out of Lincoln's Inn as completely as he had been from the Haymarket, all chances of recovery were lost.

To understand the reckless gambling of Handel at this period, the irresponsible things he did, the manner in which he allowed his art to be profligated and abused for the first and only time in his life, it is necessary to realise what was forming against him. He appears now partly demented, a wild, hunted figure, throwing reason to the winds. For, in addition to capturing his theatre, the "Opera of the Nobility" had the greatest army of talent against him that has ever been engaged for consecutive performances in a London theatre. And they were now negotiating with Hasse-the husband of Faustina and a composer of extraordinary merit, who would have shone as one of the brightest stars in the Georgian firmament had he not been overshadowed by a group of greater men than himself.

The Prince's band of titled marauders began with Porpora, they bought up Hasse. They bought up Senesino, for a while at any rate. They had Cuzzoni, although ere long she disappeared mysteriously one morning without a farewell to any of those who still clung to her wretched personality. They had secured Montagnana. All the people whom Handel made in England. And now they produced their master-stroke in the discovery of Farinelli.

Farinelli, whose real name was Broschi, rushed into fame in London at a wave of Porpora's magic wand. Porpora knew his game, every move of it. He knew where to find the chinks in Handel's armour. He knew the sheer emptiness of the Prince, of Marlborough, of all the titled idlers who had set out to ruin a man who, from his generous soul, had thrown the honours of praise to Porpora in another country. Porpora read the public like a book, but he was mistaken in his reading of Handel. He thought he had broken Handel when he forced him out of the Haymarket.