"Still Waters" Then His life had been like a river, so gusty and noisy and certain in youth Forcing its way. . . . Driving. broadening out in discovery. And now deep and slow moving; hiding all its secrets beneath a placid surface, quiet and imperturbable. Yet passing onward and outward towards the waiting sea. WHEN Handel closed the theatre on Deidamia, his fortunes had reached their lowest ebb. And yet out of this welter of suffering came the glorious Messiah.1 He withdrew entirely from public life between February and November 1741. If he remained in London during that period no one was aware of it, for he shrank into greater seclusion. Again London repeated its old belief that Handel was finished and would be seen no more. He was not missed at Court. All the thought the King gave him he might have been some starveling tradesman who had put up the shutters after a valiant struggle to live. The King hated failures, or anything that suggested lack of comfort, and Handel had failed. It was at this juncture that Charles Jennens came boldly into Handel's orbit by sending him the selected words from the Scriptures which were to be the basis of Messiah. Jennens has come down in fame through the centuries for the compilation of the words; his pride in the achievement was colossal. All the success of the great oratorio was his; he knew it. "I shall show you a collection I gave Handel, call'd Messiah, which I value highly," he wrote to a correspondent at a later stage, "and he has made a fine Entertainment of it, tho' not near so good as he might and ought to have done. I have with great difficulty made him correct some of the grossest faults in the composition, but he retained his overture obstinately, in 1 This oratorio is most frequently called The Messiah. But this is not strictly correct. The autograph is styled Messiah, and both Handel and Jennens referred to it as such in their correspondence. Only twice was Handel known to call it The Messiah; once in a letter written to Jennens from London on 9th September 1742, when he said: I shall send the printed Book of The Messiah to Mr J. Steel for you," and again in a letter dated 19th July 1744, when he wrote: 'Be pleased to point out these passages in The Messiah which you think require altering." " Who Compiled Messiah? which there are some passages far unworthy of Handel, but much more unworthy of Messiah." "Is it not curious," asks David, "that Jennens speaks of gross faults in the composition of Handel? Ah, but who would remember a poem by Jennens to-day if Handel had not immortalised it with his gross faults!" 1 The delightful patronage of Jennens! One can imagine more horses with funeral plumes than ever were required to draw his carriage up Great Ormond Street after Messiah, and two lackeys instead of one being engaged to sweep the oystershells from the street before this Colossus of intellect emerged, haughty and serene, from his carriage. At an earlier stage Jennens wrote of the maggots in Handel's brain, but never a man had a bigger maggot in his brain than Jennens over Messiah. This rich and superior person never compiled the words of Messiah at all! For nearly two centuries he has had all the credit of doing so; he has shared with Handel the glory of the world's greatest oratorio. Moreover, every biographer of Handel has followed after the other fellow and piled the credit high upon him. But a half-starved little clergyman named Pooley, who lived with Jennens as his secretary, did the work, the credit of which his master stole, and he has gone down into an unknown grave unhonoured and unsung." Pooley was a humble little creature. Where Jennens found him no one will ever know, but Pooley's mission in life, whilst in the service of this great man, was to be more humble than ever. He had to apply himself assiduously to a proper appreciation of the greatness of his master. Pooley was a wretched little slave, rather broken by circumstance, who was required to sit each and every day at the feet of Charles Jennens. He was drawn into the ugly battle Jennens had with the Shakespeare commentators, whom Jennens declared to be "twaddling antiquaries without taste or talent." Jennens followed up this attack by rewriting and publishing Hamlet, Lear and Othello and other of Shakespeare's tragedies. Instantly there came down upon his head a storm 1 E. David," G. F. Handel: Sa Vie," p. 278. |