Thomas Britton's Concerts Meanwhile, Handel went the rounds. Any person who loved sound music was good enough for his friendship. He wandered about London, spluttering his few words of English, trying every organ worth while, regaling Society's drawingrooms with his performances on the harpsichord, attending concerts held in concert-rooms or in the back parlours of taverns, or anywhere else if the musical fare were good. One of his first friends in Society was the Duke of Burlington who had a wonderful mansion in Piccadilly. The Burlington House concerts were extravagant in the hospitality of the Duke to his guests. In fact, Burlington House was more or less open at all times to the best musicians. The talk of musical London at this period were the coalhouse concerts of Thomas Britton. There has never been anyone like Britton before or since. He started life carrying a basket of coal on his back round the poorer districts, and selling it in small portions. Then he bought a handcart and in this fashion continued peddling. He saved money and spent his savings in old music, until he had amassed a collection of extraordinary interest and value. All this music he kept in a loft over a stable in a back street near Clerkenwell Green. Down in the stable he piled his coal. To get up to the loft, which he had made into a concert-room, one had to climb up a precipitous flight of steps fixed outside the building -steps which "could scarce be ascended without crawling." 1 How Thomas Britton organised his extraordinary clientèle is a mystery. Society and the artistic professions flocked to the loft over the coal cellar, and were seen clawing their way crazily up the rough steps. They filled the room for the concerts Britton held there every Thursday night. Not that they can have been particular as to their comfort, for the room was so low that a tall man could not stand upright, and the atmosphere of beer and tobacco during the progress of the evening deterred them not at all. Pepusch was invariably there playing the harpsichord, and it was probably here that Handel first met him, for throughout the spring of 1711 Handel was one of Thomas Britton's regular patrons. Woolaston, the painter, was an enthusiast, so also were Hughes, the poet, 1 Hawkins. 1 Obadiah Shuttleworth, who became organist of St Michael's, Cornhill; Banister and H. Needler were first violinists at the concerts. Sir Roger l'Estrange, the best amateur Viol. daGambist in town, came regularly with the Duke of Burlington and the Duchess of Queensberry. To this assorted gathering Handel used to play on a little chamber organ, with five stops, whilst Thomas Britton himself performed upon the viola da gamba. So popular indeed did Britton and his concerts become that a song was composed in his honour, the chorus of which ran : "Altho' disguis'd with smutty Looks, Come hear me Fiddle, read my Books, With the coming of June and the close of the opera season, Handel left London. To remain longer would be to incur displeasure at the Hanoverian Court. Indeed, there was some risk of this having taken place already. He stayed a few days en route, with the Elector Palatine at Düsseldorf, in order to advise him about some instruments, and the letter of excuse which the Elector gave him to take on to Hanover suggests that Handel was cognisant of possible trouble for his tardiness when he reached his destination. "Your Ld's capellmeister Handel," the Elector wrote from Düsseldorf to the Elector George Ludwig at Hanover, "who will have the grace to hand you this, I have kept here with me for a few days, to show him some instruments and other things, and to obtain his opinion about them. Therefore I beg of your Ld. in cousinly friendship, most urgently, you will not put to account and express your disfavour at this delay which has occurred against his will, but to retain him in your grace and protection as hitherto so also in the future." " Still there was some doubt as to the nature of the reception Handel would receive at Hanover, for a few days later the Elector Palatine wrote a second letter setting out more copi " 1 Rockstro, Life of Handel,” p. 74. 2 Edward Ward, Clubs and Societies (London, 1745). 8 Dr Alfred Einstein. Letter discovered by him in the Secret State Archives of Bavaria. Handel at Hanover ously his excuses for the musician. Armed with these two letters Handel started for Hanover. If there was any remonstrance it must have been trivial, for it is unrecorded. Probably they were fully aware of his London triumph, and knew that to call him to task might, and doubtless would, have caused him to leave Hanover for ever. The incident passed. Handel settled down to an active period of chamber-music at the Court. He wrote duets for the Princess Caroline, the stepdaughter of the Elector, who was destined to be the first Hanoverian consort on the English throne. He produced songs. Sheaves of them, and most of them had a tenderness distinctly their own. To England he wrote regularly. Strange indeed were the desires and ambitions stirring within him. His country was ceasing to call to him. There was something solid in the London triumph; something that appealed to him in the English people. Addison and Steele were mere fussers on a flood of popular approval. Handel never remembered his enemies for long-his life was too full to bother with them. Had Mattheson been subjected to half the bitterness and concerted attack that Handel was to know, his heart would have broken. It was never so with Handel. His enemies did more than the applause of a nation to make him. He answered them back, not in words, but in music. In November he was granted further leave to proceed to Halle. Here he was present at the baptism of his niece, Johanna Frederica Michaelsen, the daughter of his only surviving sister. The Michaelsens were flourishing, they were at the moment the only branch of the family making good money. This, their first child, was named Frederica after Handel, for his growing fame was knowledge to them, even if they scarcely understood it. It is doubtful if they had even heard him play. There had been practically no opportunity, and it is tolerably certain that they had never listened to a note of his composing. In an age when reputations travelled slowly, the genius of the brother who had left the Schlamm when little more than a child must have been very vague and misunderstood. Maybe they appraised him chiefly for his royal associations. His income was not extraordinary although Rinaldo had paid him well-so that they did not know him on that account. His brother-in-law Michaelsen was certainly making more. He was the rich relation. Like his visit of the year before, this one was brief. Handel returned to Hanover to his chamber-music, his royal pupils, his Lieder, growing restless the while, with a goading desire to break out again. He did not wait long. In the following autumn (1712) he obtained permission to return to London. He wanted the opera, and there was no opera at Hanover. That he intended to go back to London had been obvious for a long time, for he had been studying English,1 and corresponding regularly with Hughes and other of the friends he had met in England. He had in truth become the complete cosmopolitan. Any country was his that held the best chance for his genius, and wisely he chose England, and chose it at the very time when the poverty of English music made a setting for his own genius. England was ripe for him, and he was ripe for England. It was the chance that comes in every lifetime and he took it. At the beginning of November he stepped off the coach in London. He had come back for all time. 1 Letter, July 1712, to his friend Andreas Rosner. CHAPTER VI THE LAST DAYS OF ANNE IF English music had been lifeless when Handel first came to London, it was certainly barren of all melody when he returned in November. No production after his Rinaldo had found success. Meanwhile, Aaron Hill had left the Queen's Theatre, and its management had been taken over by an adventurer named MacSwiney, who knew little about music, but was a producer of some skill. Following his sudden decision to return to London, Handel had prepared the outline of a new opera on a poor libretto by Rossi entitled Il Pastor Fido. A foolish diversion on the part of Handel, for the work showed traces of haste, and was from the start a failure. Immediately on his arrival in London he went to stay at the town house of an English admirer, a Mr Andrews, but it is clear that he must have brought the greater portion of the opera with him, since it was ready to go into rehearsal on 4th November. Il Pastor Fido was produced on 26th November and failed. It was given at six performances. Nor did the success he had with his singers in Rinaldo follow him with the new work. Nicolini had returned to Italy, so the principal part was given to a singer newly arrived from that country, Cavaliere Valeriano Pellegrini, an artificial soprano of poor execution. Valentini was the only outstanding singer of those who had been heard in Rinaldo they were a poor lot. Not that they can be held responsible for the failure of Rossi's atrocious words, and Handel's hastily-written music, with its rare moments of beauty. Long before Christmas, Handel was aware that his first opera after his return, was laughed at by the English as being scarcely better than the poor stuff to which lately they had |