was stooping over his task, and Bussière bent nearer with the candle when, in doing so, he set his wig on fire. The incident was a little alarming. Now to show her contempt of the pain the Queen told Ranby to stop awhile, as he must let her laugh! 1

Nothing could save the tormented woman. Imagine the scene of that Sunday night, 20th November. The King weeping furiously, and kissing the lips he had so often left for others. The Queen opening her eyes awhile and urging him to marry again, and then his historic reply: "Non, non, j'aurai des maîtresses." The King choking out sobs in the hot heaviness of the room. Presently the Queen seemed to sleep a little, and the King, worn out with his grief, crept on to a bed on the floor and, for all his sorrow, fell asleep. Princess Emily was on the couch-bed in the corner. Then, rousing herself and all those in the room, the Queen suddenly exclaimed Pray!" In a few minutes she who had borne so much from the puckered up figure by the bedside, and never revealed her burning hurt to another, slipped quietly out. In vain did Princess Caroline hold a looking-glass to her mother's lips in search of some tiny breath of mist on its surface that would still betoken life. Her little startled cry came too soon for the waiting King. ""Tis over!"

66

What a panic seized the miserable man! So affrighted was he lest the spirit that had just passed should return, that he ordered a menial to stay in his bedroom for the rest of the night.

Yet the King's grief was no more than a surface storm that never reached the depths. He became wildly demonstrative in his sorrow. He gave funeral orders; he countermanded them. He ordered mourning, but, strive as they might, they could not find mourning deep enough for his display. In his perturbation he snubbed Walpole. He wanted an imposing funeral, so the Queen should not be buried till such time as was necessary to prepare her obsequies in all their magnificence. He wanted great music; he wanted Handel. He then ordered a new vault in Westminster Abbey to be

The Royal Funeral

made just big enough to contain the Queen's coffin. Then he ordered it to be made twice as large as was necessary, because he said he would be put in the same vault when he died, and they were to see to it that his dust mingled with that of his Queen.

Therefore, in the process of time, they did see to it. He was buried in the same vault, and the side of his coffin and the adjoining side of the Queen's coffin were withdrawn before the vault was filled in. For years the withdrawn sides of the two coffins stood on end in Westminster Abbey, leaning against the wall. But long before George II went there he had forgotten all about this odd freak of fancy that had given such an order.

He soon brought Madame Walmoden to England and made her Lady Yarmouth. How easily she made him forget. He had grown too puffy and fat and gouty, and ever pursuant of bright eyes, to care very much where they left him when that ignoble nuisance, Death, put an end to what had been a caper better pursued than attentions to the State. Perhaps he did not care what the People thought. There was still the prerogative of Kings. But the People did think, and immediately after the Queen died someone printed an epitaph and pasted it up on the Royal Exchange. It ran thus :

"O Death, where is thy sting

To take the Queen and leave the King!"1

The calamity at the Court-and it was recognised as a dire calamity, since the Queen had always maintained the dignity of the sovereignty, which George profligated so insistentlystirred the town. It stirred Handel. The Queen had always been his friend. George, on the other hand, had supported him in a vagrant fashion, in such spasmodic moods of energy as one not truly inured to the Arts could bestow. Handel realised at once that the Royal funeral, which was fixed for 17th December, made certain demands upon him which could not be ignored.

He immediately threw aside his opera, and set some words from the Bible, which were selected for the purpose by the

1 "Earl of Egmont MSS.," vol. ii. p. 458.

Sub-Dean of Westminster. With these words in front of him he composed the greatest Anthem that has ever been put to paper for the passing of a soul.

All the pomp and majesty of sovereignty was in that service. The King was there, heavy, prominent in his grief; the Princesses, softly crying in the Royal pew with the grief of those who had lost a real mother, and possessed a father whom they never respected. Let one who was there describe the ceremony. The Bishop of Chichester wrote to his son: "I came to attend the funeral which was performed last night in great order, and was over two or three hours' earlier than I thought. The procession went into Henry VII's chapel. Princess Amelia was the chief mourner. Before seven the service in the Abbey was actually begun, and the whole was finished before nine. The funeral service was performed by the Bishop of Rochester, as Dean of Westminster. After the service there was a long anthem, the words by the Sub-Dean, the music set by Mr Handel, and it is reckoned to be as good a piece as he ever made; it was about fifty minutes in singing."1 Handel must have been conscious on that December evening of the great power and grandeur of the chords which his brain had produced. There must have been a sense of pride, achievement, in this his first public performance after the great break. One can see him, searching this face, and that, dreaming and wondering if into those crude souls the melancholy, the mourning, had been borne by his music.

"She that was great among the nations, and princess of the
provinces ! . .

Their bodies are buried in peace, but their name liveth
evermore." ..

The great uprising chords seemed to expel Death and the swirl of Death's wings. Many of those who had reviled this woman, laughed at her, gibed at her tame, German Hausfrau simplicity, at her questing, sensual husband, at her little reverences and morning prayers, which the whole life of the Court made a mockery; who reviled her for her heartlessness in keeping the Prince of Wales from her death-chamber, 1 "Hare MSS.," vol. 91. Appendix IX.

The Funeral Anthem

when he was no worse than a gay dog, and a merry fellow; who were genuinely amused by her quaint habit of having fresh-plucked flowers put up beside her bed, as if to remind her of a summer she had lost-many of these people were moved to tears. Handel brought those sycophants closer to this ill-fortuned woman than they had ever been.

For the grandeur of his Anthem had in it all sympathy, all understanding. The crash of chords seemed to draw back the curtains that revealed a soul. This Queen, this misunderstood person! She who had tried to carry through a difficult part, and in spite of all her wounds had played the game to the end.

She played it so well that her husband with his crocodile tears was afraid lest her ghost should come back.

CHAPTER XVIII

"AS SOME LONE SHIP"

THERE were times when Handel stood exalted in the favour of the town; others when the town seemed to lose interest in his work, and remember only that he had been born a German. Not that his qualities were at any period challenged, save by active enemies who had axes of their own to grind. The real thinkers of the day, Pope, Steele, Hogarth, Fielding and their cult declared unceasingly that Handel was the greatest genius in music that had ever trodden the soil of England. Only Swift stood aloof in a splendid isolation of spleen.

The Royal obsequies over, Handel returned at once to his work, and produced his new opera Faramondo, the composition of which he completed on Christmas Eve, and produced on 3rd January 1738.1 The town acclaimed him as a giant returned. The "Funeral Anthem " had impressed the public with the amazing versatility of this man who, after being broken on the wheels of chance, his health smashed, had jumped from light opera to a masterpiece of sorrow, which held in its majesty all the mourning of a nation.

Nor had his great fight against the overwhelming forces at the King's Theatre been forgotten. These forces had been dissipated, but Handel had come back, and, if his health were insecure, he had at least the courage to seek the old battleground. A third factor in Handel's favour was that the Prince had withdrawn his hostility. The Prince-the town said

Streatfeild, Rockstro and others give 7th January as the date of production, but the Augustus Harris cuttings, which are invaluable and very reliable in their information, give 3rd January, and the fact that the notice of the publication of Faramondo by subscription appeared 7th January, points to the earlier date being correct as regards the première. The date is only important as showing with what alacrity Handel completed the opera and produced it after the funeral ceremonies of 20th December, on the music for which his whole energies had been expended.