Berenice

although Handel had put up some attraction in Conti, who elected to be known as Conti Gizziello, after D. Gizzi, the maestro who had trained him in Naples. Conti first appeared in a small part in Ariodante, and then again in Arminio and Giustino. The Daily Post said he was one of the best performers in the kingdom, but he certainly could not save Handel.

The desperation of Handel is visible in his actions of the next few months. Arminio failed in January, and he put on Giustino in February. It played to empty houses, yet the King's Theatre in the Haymarket was papered from boxes to the pit. He took off Giustino, since it was a hopeless project from the first night, and completed the opera Berenice, based on some unknown libretto. The days were gone when he could have his libretti prepared for him; he must obtain his words where he can. Berenice, with its divine minuet and the elusive haunting melody of its songs, was produced in May, and taken off the same month. Handel was breaking, but he fought on. He revived his Triumph of Time, one of the first fledglings of his Italian sojourn, and put it on in the early summer. It too failed.

The giant was falling. The singers at the theatre were upset by the constant failures, the continual new parts. They drifted away one by one, the Italians to return to their country in the belief that opera as such was dead in London. Debtors were pressing. The balance of the £10,000 saved, with which Handel had come out of the King's Theatre débâcle, had disappeared. He was piled with debts. Of what use now was the favour of the Prince of Wales, since the Prince and his moneyed friends had destroyed him?

The pain in his arm increased, until his right side was entirely paralysed. In vain did the London Daily Post publish a notice in May that "Mr Handel who has been suffering from rheumatism is recovering." He was not recovering; he was becoming rapidly worse.

He closed the doors of Covent Garden Theatre on 1st June 1737. He was smashed. The debtors then began to assail him in shoals; they threatened to send him to prison. He must have reasoned with them very effectually, for, instead of casting him into the debtors' penitentiary, they all accepted

his bills. With one exception-del Pò, the husband of Strada, refused to accept any settlement but that of cash.

Ten days later the King's Theatre closed down with admitted debts of £12,000, two thousand more than the total claims against Handel. If Handel's fortunes were obscured for the moment, they were not beyond recall, but Porpora, whose music had never been popular in London, was finished. He went back to Venice, composed, sank step by step into extreme poverty, till, when pleurisy killed him, a public subscription had to be organised to pay for his funeral. He went to a pauper's grave as Handel went to the Abbey, which perhaps was one of the comparisons of greatness.

Meanwhile, his mind unhinged, his body tormented by tortures unspeakable, Handel hurried to Aix-la-Chapelle. He was bowed, and walked painfully with a stick, but his eyes, that ever saw beyond to-morrow, perceived with certainty the things that were to come.

CHAPTER XVII

THE DEATH OF THE QUEEN

HANDEL remained at Aix-la-Chapelle until November. He had no plans for the future, and, if he dreamed about further productions, he had no money to carry them out. Only one cantata did he compose, and that for the celebration of the fifth centenary of the town of Elbing, and the manuscript of it is lost.1

But now the road was clear for him in London. Porpora had disappeared. Senesino was in Italy creating a new furore. Farinelli had gone back to Italy with a fortune made out of his three London seasons, and forthwith began the building of a palace which he named "The English Folly as a compliment a rather back-handed one-to those who had filled his pockets and snuff-boxes with guineas. The London operatic world had tumbled to pieces.

Aix, with its quiet, its waters, soon produced something of a cure in Handel. The pain disappeared from his limbs, the curtain of despair from his mind. So complete was his cure before the summer waned, that he is said to have left the baths and gone straight to the Cathedral, where he played upon the organ with all his old fire, whereupon some nuns who chanced to be passing declared that a miracle had been performed. The glamour of those victorious nights in London was a lure with him still, and refused to be shaken off. He returned to London through Flanders, with the opening of a new opera in his pocket.

Back in Brook Street he was idle no longer; he began to work feverishly on the new opera. He discovered, too, that his old partner, Heidegger, had taken the King's Theatre, had

1 R. A. Streatfeild, "Handel," p. 144.

• Mainwaring, p. 123.

opened there at the end of October with a pasticcio, called Arsace, which had not the strength or life in it to keep the theatre open for more than a few nights. He had taken the theatre hurriedly, without properly considering the question of productions, only to find that there was no one to compose for him. Therefore he was about to defy the churches and revert to his old scandalous masquerades, when the blinds were drawn up in Brook Street, and the heavy swaying gait of the musician in Bond Street told London that Handel had returned. Heidegger lost no time. He urged Handel to finish his opera that he might produce it.

But Handel was not yet free from trouble. Directly his return was announced in the Daily Post, Strada's husband, del Pò, pressed for the settlement of his debt, and threatened to put Handel into prison. Only the knowledge that he was composing a new opera for the King's Theatre made him stay. his hand for the moment. Unhappy Handel! In return for what he had given London, he almost received the reward of a debtor's prison!

Affairs at the Court hindered Handel in his project. On 9th November, Queen Caroline, sitting in her new library at St James's Park, was taken suddenly ill. She was hurried home; they dosed her with the prescriptions of this and that quack. Bent with pain, she played her part at the drawingroom that night, only to be reprimanded by the King because she had forgotten to speak to the Duchess of Norfolk. She went to bed, grew rapidly worse as the days passed. Doctors buzzed here and there, surgeons talked, shook their heads, grew hopeful and despondent by turns, and could do nothing. The Queen's increasing agony decided them at last to operate. Once, twice, thrice did they cut this unhappy woman, and all the trouble she gave them was to groan violently during the process, for which she apologised fulsomely to one and all when the operation was over.

The news spread that the Queen was dying. She was dying. The Prince of Wales made vain efforts to see her, but she refused him admission because he still consorted with the King's enemies. With some dormant affection for his mother breaking into life again, he implored the King to permit him

Death of Queen Caroline

to visit the sick chamber. "If the puppy should, in one of his impertinent affected airs of duty and affection, dare to come to St James's, I order you to go to the scoundrel and tell him I wonder at his impudence for daring to come here," the King told Lord Hervey. "His poor mother is not in a condition to see him act his false, whining, cringing tricks

now."

The King was terrified by the Queen's condition. He forgot his kingdom, even his seraglio in his fears. For the truant who philandered and lived for the pleasures of the hour was, after all, a homing creature. He had always leaned on the Queen; although frequently rude to her in public, his rudeness had brought only a weak smile. He told her frankly about his infidelities, wrote to her about them from Hanover, and grumbled because she had written only nineteen pages in reply. Mrs Selwyn, one of the Bedchamber Women, was wise in her generation when she told the King that he was the last man with whom she would have an intrigue, because he always told the Queen! 3

And now the Queen was slipping through his fingers. He passed from violent temper to abject fear. When Dr Hulst told him that she could not live, he promptly boxed his ears.* The Queen had once said that no woman had a right to live after fifty-five, and it was obvious that she would not live. Only her courage made her dying so slow. They dragged in old Paul Bussière, the aged surgeon of ninety, and asked him what could be done.

Again the knife. Again the wretched Queen, distorted in agony, faced the horrible ordeal. Old Bussière held the candle while Ranby performed the operation. For a moment the Queen smiled up at Ranby, when he was about to begin, then, remembering that he had but recently divorced his wife, she said: "What would you give to be using your wife in this manner ! " 5

The flicker of a smile crossed the grim, clean-shaven face of the surgeon, and he went on with his work. Then came a diversion, which shows the strength of this woman. Ranby

1 Hervey, "Memoirs," vol. ii. p. 499. a Walpole, "George II," vol. i. 3 Ibid. 4 "Earl of Egmont MSS.," vol. ii. p. 445 5 Ibid.