BRISTOL.
Latethe next evening, we arrived atBristol, a large and populous city, more famous for its commerce, manufactures and such trifles, than for its taste in music. They have but lately had a regular theatre established there to civilize and polish the uncouth manners of the dissenters, who would even have succeeded in the savage opposition they made to this salutary measure, if the bishops had not espoused the cause of the fine arts; I have little doubt, therefore, that they will soon find that “music is so combined with things sacred and important, as well as with our pleasures, that it seems necessary to our existence:” they will then quickly become friends to organs, and next to operas. As I approached the city, I was gratified with seeing the battalions of the principalmilitia, who made a most formidable appearance, and marched in exact time to the marrow-bones and cleavers, which had an admirable effect and were extremely animating. I put up at theDog’s Head in the Porridge-Pot, and after powdering my wig with some flour, clipping my beard with a pair of scissars, and turning my shirt, I went to wait on SignorManselli, to whom I had letters of recommendation. When I had knocked at the door, and enquired whether the Signor was within, I was informed that he was, but that I could not see him, as he was then busied in performing his vocalities. This answer, you may be sure, redoubled my curiosity, and I replied, “if a poor, yet I trust, not unknown musician, may be judged worthy of being an unobserved spectator of the Signor’s meditations, I promise not to interrupt his reveries, and perhaps the Signor himself will not be displeased at your introducing to him aCollioni!”
When he learned that I was a musician, he bowed respectfully, and desiring me to pull off my shoes, as he did himself, he led me to the Signor’s apartment. When we came to the door, the servant desired me to pull off my coat, waistcoat, and wig, and creep through a hole, which he shewed me at the bottom of the door, as he assured me the Signor did not suffer even crowned heads to approach him in these moments of enthusiasm, without taking those precautions; “and sir,” said he, “you need not think this an humiliating situation, as I have seen many persons of the first fashion, among whom were several pregnant ladies, submit to the same ceremony.”
I did not hesitate a moment to comply with the customaryetiquette, but stripping myself to the shirt, I crept into the room with the same awful silence with which the antient priests approached the Tripod of their God. Having posted myself behind a large screen, I beheld theSignor extended on his belly, while two young and beautiful ladies were gently stroaking his back with the palms of their hands. He lay for some minutes pensive and silent, as if waiting for the inspirations of the divinity. At length, on a sudden, “his eyes were fixt, his underlip fell, and drops of effervescence distilled from his whole countenance.” Immediately explosions of the most musical intonation I had ever heard, issued from behind, and enraptured the whole company. After this, he successively coughed, sneezed, hiccuped, eructated, squeaked and whistled in the most harmonious manner that can be conceived. “Thank heaven,” cried the Signor, “my powers of harmony are yet undiminished: I shall still live to bless the world, and polish this brutal nation.” Saying this, he took up his fiddle, and played a most divine solo. I heard him for some time in silent ecstacy, ’till at length incapable of suppressing my emotions any longer, I precipitated myselfinto his arms, crying or rather blubbering out in imitation of the greatCassarelli,Bravo! bravissimo! Manselli, è Collioni che ti lo dice. The Signor seemed somewhat surprized at my abrupt introduction, but at length, recollecting himself, he received me with ineffable politeness. The ladies at my appearance, had shrieked, and left the room, which in the first hurry of our embraces we had not perceived. But presently the Signor, glancing his eye downwards, recollected himself, and said with some warmth and emphasis, “O, fye, SignorCollioni, I took it for granted you were one ofUS.” I blushed at the imputation, and said, “I hoped this defect would not lessen me in his esteem, as my country was not yet sufficiently civilized to have adopted the custom; and though some of our prime nobility had the spirit and taste to lead the way, yet in the gross conceptions of theEnglish, there was a certain degree of ridicule annexed to it,which deterred several men otherwise of the most exquisite politeness from submitting to it.” The Signor was kind enough to admit my excuses, but lamented this as the greatest obstacle to the national advancement in the science of music. However, he averred that severalEnglishyoung noblemen of fortune had to his knowledge undergone the operation inItaly, “and though,” added he, “an ordinary proficient may be exempted from the practice, yet it is indispensibly necessary for one who would fathom all the mysteries of the art, and emulate the illustrious names ofSenesino,Farinelli,Tenducci, &c.”
I confess I was much staggered at what he said, more especially as I began to entertain some doubts myself whether the characters of a man and a musician were at all compatible.
I hinted to him, that I had formerly heard, that a certain great Personage,tàm Marti quàm Mercurio, equally illustrious for his martial and his musical talents, had adopted the practice; but as the Doctor had not recorded it in his tour toPotzdam, I imagined the report was without foundation.
“Ah!” said he, “depend upon it, tho’ the Doctor has indeed omitted this circumstance in the admirable description he gives of that hero, and Dilettante practising hissolfeggiatPotzdam, yet he would never have been either the monarch, or the flutist he is without it. Do you think, added he, that illustrious philosopher could amuse himself so calmly in his closet with fugus and adagios, while ten thousandPolishwidows, and orphans, were imprecating curses upon the head of their unfeeling destroyer, unless he had totally disengaged himself from every incumbrance of his sex and species?”
Here the entrance of the young ladies interrupted any further conversation on the subject. The eldest, his niece, who was calledGluckinella Inglesina, desired me to sing, which I did in the softest and most unmanly tone I could exert, that I might not again offend. I asked her what her real opinion of my voice was? she answered me with the most perfect affability, that I acquitted myself tolerably wellconsidering; tho’ “she thought me too ambitious of displaying my talent of working parts and subjects, and added that mycantilenawas often rude.”
I took an opportunity when I was alone with this young lady, to enquire if thecastratiwere much in vogue atBristol, and if that operation could be so safely attempted on elderly gentlemen; this young lady smiled at my simplicity, and assured me that the operation was safe and easy, and not so painful as to acquire any degree of resolution, and that thecastratiwere the favourites of the ladies, both of the married and unmarried. She advised me by all means to undergo the operation as the Doctor had done inItaly, tho’ his excess of modesty prevented him fromboasting of it in his excellent treatise. She added, that she could not with safety love me, unless I would submit to this for her sake.
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, thanMingottiherself. 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 divineGluckinella, 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; butthey 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.Sharpsetwas 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 hasendowed 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 thesweet passion of Lovewithout once thinking of my dearGluckinella; how often did she encore myO 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.Sharpsetwas 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 upGeho Dobbin,Murdoch O’Blaney, and several other inflammatory compositions; and finding my mistress “attentive, and in a disposition to be pleased, I became animated tothat 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.Sharpseton 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 sereneGluckinellahad’st thou been there, these tumults had all subsided, the devil had not got intirepossession 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.Sharpsetescaped, 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 aMiserere, as was never heard at the Pope’s chapel inPassion-week. Alas! how did I wish for the genius of aGluck, “to paintmydifficult situation occasionedby complicated misery, and the tempestuous fury of unbridled passions!” ButAllegrihimself, had he chanted his ownMiserere, 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 ofBravura, 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 theCornutopresently 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 sometime since resolved, like anotherGrassetto, 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 sungA 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, “Iam 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 SignorManselli’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 dearItalyorFrance!I am sick to the soul,Politics and sea coal,So give one the vapours,Their cursed news-papers,Their mobbing,Stock-jobbingAre horrors to me;I wish the whole island were sunk in the sea.
Bear, O bear me on a sudden,Some kind stroke of smiling chance!From this land of beef and pudding,To dearItalyorFrance!I am sick to the soul,Politics and sea coal,So give one the vapours,Their cursed news-papers,Their mobbing,Stock-jobbingAre horrors to me;I wish the whole island were sunk in the sea.
Bear, O bear me on a sudden,Some kind stroke of smiling chance!From this land of beef and pudding,To dearItalyorFrance!
Bear, O bear me on a sudden,
Some kind stroke of smiling chance!
From this land of beef and pudding,
To dearItalyorFrance!
I am sick to the soul,Politics and sea coal,So give one the vapours,Their cursed news-papers,Their mobbing,Stock-jobbingAre horrors to me;I wish the whole island were sunk in the sea.
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 ofcastrati, he desired me, if not too much exhausted, to sing again his favourite air, which when I had donehe 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 lesscloudy! such clearness, brilliancy, neatness, expression, embellishment, intonation, firmness, modulation, smoothness and elegance! and then yourportamentois as round and tight as a portmanteau, and you takeappogiatura, 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 SignorSougelder, an eminent surgeon in the neighbourhood, and an agreeable performer on theEnglishhorn; who having applied an excellent dressing to my wound left me to sleep, and “thus ended this busy and important day, inwhich 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 SignorSougelder, I was soon restored to my health and spirits; and my adorable SignoraGluckinelliin 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 muchimpatience and precipitation, both in the master and scholar, and that many who can execute passages which require the same motion of thelarynxas 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 beingThe Savages of Europe, immersed in politics, philosophy, metaphysics, mathematics, and other sour and abstruse speculations, I shall have gained myend, and shall congratulate myself on having in some humble degree assisted the generous efforts of the great musical Doctor, and the governors of theFoundling Hospital, to polish andItalianizethe genius, taste, and manners of theEnglishnation.
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, SignorManselliinstituted a grandFête Cbampêtreto 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 fairGluckinella, 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 herCecisbeo.
THE END.