Part 3

This declaration from a young lady for whom I now perceived I had imbibed the most ardent affection, gave me great uneasiness; that affection however was purely platonic and spiritual, for personal charms she had no more to boast of, that ever I discovered, than _Mingotti_ herself. Besides the disadvantage of a contortion in the ogle, vulgarly called a squint of the eye, and a very long red nose, she had a mouth, which tho’ it opened from ear to ear, discovered to the eye nothing but the sad remains of a set of ebony teeth, which more resembled the ruins of an old cathedral, than the polished ivory which adorns the comic mouth of the celebrated Mrs. _Ab-ngt-n_. There was yet another circumstance to disgust the sensualist, and deter him from approaching this Syren with an improper familiarity; and that was the great offensiveness of her breath, which was so violent, that any person not “determined” like me “to hear, see,” and smell “nothing but music,” might have thought it hardly atoned for by the sweetness of her voice. Yet none of these circumstances damped the ardor of my spiritual attachment, founded, as it was, upon a solid basis, the love of song;—it was embodied harmony, the tuneful soul which I adored. The reader who is unacquainted with the difference between a gross sensual passion, and a sublime, harmonic sympathy, may perhaps be surprized when I tell him, that while I was thus devoted to the divine _Gluckinella_, I was at the same time personally captivated by the corporeal attractions of a little black-ey’d Gypsy, the wife of a barber in the town, who often shaved me for a tune; yet did not these grosser feelings the least impair or abate my musical platonic love. I might perhaps be excused, were I to conceal the progress and issue of these different amours; but they are so intimately blended with the scientific part of my work, and were attended with such important consequences to myself in my professional capacity, that I doubt not the narration will prove of great utility to my brethren. For it was no common temptation that deluded me; tho’ Mrs. _Sharpset_ was abundantly handsome, I could have resisted “the blandishments of beauty,” if a desire of making dangerous experiments upon the power and effects of music upon female passion had not seized my brain. For I had taken notice, that the imagination of this young woman was exceedingly lively and far out-stripped her husband’s, who was a plain dull man with little fire or enthusiasm in his composition. I plainly perceived this in all her gestures and movements, but when I sung some tender sentimental air, her involuntary sighs, blushes, and languid attitude, betrayed too plainly the irritability of her nervs, and that fine susceptibility of soft emotions with which nature has endowed the sex. No wonder that in a rude, uncultivated state of nature as I then was, I caught the subtle fire from her contagious eyes. Ah! how often did I sing the _sweet passion of Love_ without once thinking of my dear _Gluckinella_; how often did she encore my _O how pleasing ’tis to please_, without the slightest recollection of her absent barber! Madly determined to pursue the fatal experiment, and observe the full effects of my art; I next sung “_Haste, let us rove, to the Island of Love”_, at which Mrs. _Sharpset_ was greatly agitated and danced about the room. Then I played a rapturous voluntary “produced in the happy moments of effervescence when my reason was less powerful than my feeling;” and at length I proceeded to such excess of temerity, as to tune up _Geho Dobbin_, _Murdoch O’Blaney_, and several other inflammatory compositions; and finding my mistress “attentive, and in a disposition to be pleased, I became animated to that true pitch of enthusiasm, which from the ardor of the fire within, is communicated to others and sets all around in a blaze, so that the contention between the performer and the hearer was only who should please or who should applaud the most, till at length, not contented with shewing her approbation by coughing, hemming, and blowing the nose” she “expressed rapture in a manner peculiar to herself, and seemed to agonize with pleasure too great for the aching sense!” for at length, overpowered by my quirking and quavering, and transported beyond all the bounds of prudence, Mrs. _Sharpset_ on a sudden leaped into my arms, hung round my neck, and devoured me with eager kisses, such as I never tasted before or since. What man, what unemasculated god could have withstood such potent snares? Ah! my serene _Gluckinella_ had’st thou been there, these tumults had all subsided, the devil had not got intire possession of my mind, voice and instrument, nor had I needed the painful operation of the barber’s avenging steel to bring my wandering spirits back to reason:—for soon, and in the midst of our illicit joys, the door of the chamber was forced open, and in rushed Mr. _Sharpset_.—Discordant oaths and curses, and the look and voice of a Fury making an incantation to awake the dead, bespoke the injured husband, and scared us from the bed. He retired a moment to fetch the instrument of his revenge. Mrs. _Sharpset_ escaped, but in an instant I saw him return whetting his keenest razor; and concluding, that he meant to cut my throat upon the spot, I fell down at his feet and in an agony of fear and penitence, roared out such a MISERERE, as was never heard at the Pope’s chapel in _Passion-week_. Alas! how did I wish for the genius of a _Gluck_, “to paint _my_ difficult situation occasioned by complicated misery, and the tempestuous fury of unbridled passions!” But _Allegri_ himself, had he chanted his own MISERERE, could not have moved the shaver’s unrelenting soul, or soothed his injured honour up in arms, and demanding its victim! I tried a softer strain, and sang in melting mood, “_Let not rage thy Bosom firing, pity’s softer claim remove_,” &c. but it was all one: still strapped he his inexorable razor, humming out a song of _Bravura_, the subject of which was the castration of the devil by a baker; (which, by the bye, is a very curious story, whose authenticity I must enquire into farther at my leisure.) I immediately augured my approaching destiny from the burden of this song; and the _Cornuto_ presently gave me to understand that my conjecture was well founded. Having been till now in a cold-sweat, and corporal fear of my life, I congratulated myself on this exchange of punishment, as a sort of reprieve, and considering that I had some time since resolved, like another _Grassetto_, to undergo the operation whenever I found myself bold enough for such a voluntary sacrifice; I plucked up courage, and with great composure told the barber, that a guilty conscience was a greater torment to me than any he could devise; but that to expiate the crime I had committed, and appease the anger of heaven, and the honest man whom I had so deeply offended, I would patiently submit to suffer the righteous sentence which his vengeance meditated on the peccant part. The enraged tonsor took me at my word.

* * * * *

The first thing that came into my thoughts after I awoke from the fainting fit, into which the paroxism of pain had thrown me, was to try my voice in its improved state. I accordingly sung _A Dawn of Hope my Soul revives_, and found my powers wonderfully improved, and my execution delicate, interesting, and full of effects. “Ho, ho,” cries the barber, “I am glad to find you are so merry,” and resumed his old tune of the baker and the devil. I told him I thought it unkind in him to insult me, and intreated him to convey me home, which he very readily consented to do, and soon afterwards began to apologize for the effects of his rage, hoping I would consider the nature of the provocation, and not attempt to take the law of him. I answered, that upon condition he would freely pardon his wife, whose fault was venial, as her virtue had fallen a sacrifice to the power of harmony, I would decline any hostile proceedings against him on my own account, with which condition he appeared satisfied, and we parted.—I was brought home on a mule, on which I rode sideways; and as soon as I alighted at Signor _Manselli_’s I sent for him into my chamber, and accosted him as he approached with the following air, in singing which I exerted all my newly-acquired powers.

_Bear, O bear me on a sudden, Some kind stroke of smiling chance! From this land of beef and pudding, To dear_ Italy _or_ France!

_I am sick to the soul, Politics and sea coal, So give one the vapours, Their cursed news-papers, Their mobbing, Stock-jobbing Are horrors to me; I wish the whole island were sunk in the sea._

During my performance, the Signor appeared perfectly astonished, and at length seizing my hand with rapture, “welcome,” he cried, “O son of harmony! it cannot be longer disguised, you are a brother—you are one of us”—then expatiating on the dignity and importance of the order of _castrati_, he desired me, if not too much exhausted, to sing again his favourite air, which when I had done he cried out with transport;—“_nec vox hominem sonat!_ I can hardly believe it is the same pipe! such a volume of voice, such an open and perfect shake! such light and shade! never was voice less _cloudy_! such clearness, brilliancy, neatness, expression, embellishment, intonation, firmness, modulation, smoothness and elegance! and then your _portamento_ is as round and tight as a portmanteau, and you take _appogiatura_, as easily as a body would take a pinch of snuff!”—

I was greatly flattered by these encomiums, but begged he would forbear and suffer me to retire to my chamber, for the sake of necessary refreshment and rest. He immediately complied, and sent up to me Signor _Sougelder_, an eminent surgeon in the neighbourhood, and an agreeable performer on the _English_ horn; who having applied an excellent dressing to my wound left me to sleep, and “thus ended this busy and important day, in which so much was said, and done; that it seemed to contain the events of a much longer period; and I could hardly persuade myself, upon recollecting the several incidents, that they had all happened in about the space of twelve hours.” By the kind and skilful offices of Signor _Sougelder_, I was soon restored to my health and spirits; and my adorable Signora _Gluckinelli_ in a few days paid me a visit of congratulation, which she repeated every day during my recovery. It was in some of these delightful interviews I discovered how deep a theorist she was, and how learned in the science of sound. Among other discoveries and observations which she communicated to me, and which I treasure up, and mean to preserve for the benefit of future ages, she assured me that it was “practicable with time and patience to give a shake where nature has denied it; that she thought, the shake ruined ninety-nine times out of a hundred by too much impatience and precipitation, both in the master and scholar, and that many who can execute passages which require the same motion of the _larynx_ as the shake, have notwithstanding never acquired one”—“There is no accounting for this,” added that illustrious young lady, with a sigh, “but from the neglect of the master to study nature, and avail himself of these passages, which by continuity would become real shakes.”

During my confinement to my chamber, I have had leisure to extract the foregoing observations, anecdotes, and adventures from my journal, and which I present to the world as the first hints of my undertaking. If they tend in any shape to promote the study and practice of music in this country, and by that means lessen our national reproach of being _The Savages of Europe_, immersed in politics, philosophy, metaphysics, mathematics, and other sour and abstruse speculations, I shall have gained my end, and shall congratulate myself on having in some humble degree assisted the generous efforts of the great musical Doctor, and the governors of the _Foundling Hospital_, to polish and _Italianize_ the genius, taste, and manners of the _English_ nation.

I shall trespass on the reader’s patience but one moment longer, to inform him that as soon as I had perfectly recovered my health, Signor _Manselli_ instituted a grand _Fête Cbampêtre_ to celebrate what he was pleased to call my victory over the flesh and the devil; and to crown the whole, the idol of my soul, the fair _Gluckinella_, was that day pleased to condescend publicly to avow her platonic harmonic passion for me; and to promise me in the most endearing manner, that if ever she entered into the holy slate of matrimony, I should be her CECISBEO.

THE END.

_Speedily will be published_,

An ENQUIRY into the PRESENT STATE

OF THE

MUSIC OF THE SPHERES.

To which will be prefixed,

The OVERTURE to the last ECLIPSE of the MOON;

And, a Dissertation on the Structure and Use

OF THE

CELESTIAL BOW, commonly called the RAIN-BOW.

By JOEL COLLIER, Organist.

_Avia Pieridum perago loca nullius antè Trita solo._ LUCR.

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