Doctor Coxe indignantly denies Hawkins’ statement that Haendel lacked social affection; he says that two rich pupils loved him.  The first would have married him, but her mother said she should never marry a fiddler.  After the mother’s death, the father implied that all obstacles were now removed, but too late.  He never saw the girl again, and she fell into a decline, which soon terminated her existence.  The second woman was a personage of high estate, and offered to marry Haendel if he would give up his career.  But when he declined, she also declined, and died after the fashion of the eighteenth century.

In his will Haendel left money to two cousins, also to two widows, and one other woman.

He brought many singers to London for his operas, and their romances would fill ten volumes.  There is the famous tenor, Beard, for instance, the creator of “Samson.”  He created Samsonian scandal by marrying Lady Henrietta Herbert, the only daughter of the Earl of Waldegrave; she died fourteen years later, and he built her a fine monument.  Six years later he married the daughter of a harlequin.

Then there was the singer Senesino, and Farinelli, whose heart and brain were real though his voice was artificial.  He became finally a sort of vocal prime minister to Spain.  To start one of these romances of singers would be like throwing a match in a fireworks factory.

CHAPTER XI.

GLUCK THE DOMESTIC, ROUSSEAU THE CONFESSOR, AND THE AMIABLE PICCINNI

While Haendel was in London at the height of his autocracy, he was visited by a composer named Gluck, whom we think of to-day as a revolutionist in music, and a man of the utmost historical importance.  To the lordly Haendel, however, he was more or less contemptible, and people who know nothing else of either genius, know that Haendel said, “Gluck understood about as much counterpoint as my cook.”

Gluck did not make a success on his London visit, and began to criticise both his own work and contemporary schools of opera, with a thoroughness that resulted in a determination to “reform it altogether.”  From London he went to Vienna in 1748, and there he was soon a figure of importance, moving in the best families, and entertained at the best homes.  Among the homes in which he was most cordially received, was that of the rich banker and wholesale merchant, Joseph Pergin, who had a large business with Holland.  Both daughters of the house were, according to Reissman’s not particularly novel expression, “passionately fond of music.”  Gluck was soon made thoroughly at home there.

“Soon also he was bound in most intimate affection to the elder daughter, Maria Anne.  She reciprocated the feelings, and the mother gave her consent to the betrothal.  Gluck dared to deem the year 1749, in which this change took place, the happiest of his life; but it also turned out to be his saddest, for the father refused his consent.  This man, haughty with his wealth, rejected the honoured artist, since he was only a musician, and since, besides, his art offered no sufficient promise or surety for the proper support of a young woman.  The lovers accepted the separation thus enforced, with patience, promising themselves that it should not be for long, and that they would preserve unbroken fidelity.”