MADAME LE MAUPIN.
This celebrated lady seems to have been the most extraordinary personage of all the siren troup, instructed by Lulli. She was equally fond of both sexes, fought and loved like a man, and resisted and fell like a woman. Her adventures are of a very romantic kind. Married to a young husband, who was soon obliged to absent himself from her, to enter on an office he had obtained in Provence, she ran away with a fencing-master, of whom she learned the small sword, and became an excellent fencer, which was afterwards a useful qualification to her, on several occasions. The lovers first retreated, from persecution, to Marseilles; but necessity soon obliged them to solicit employment there, at the Opera; and as both had, by nature, good voices, they were received without difficulty. But soon after this, she was seized with a passion for a young person of her own sex, whom she seduced, but the object of her whimsical affection, being pursued by her friends and taken, was thrown into a convent at Avignon, where Maupin soon followed her; and having presented herself as a novice, obtained admission. Some time after, she set fire to the convent, and, availing herself of the confusion she had occasioned, carried off her favourite. But, being pursued and taken, she was condemned to the flames for contumacy: a sentence, however, which was not executed, as the young Marseillaise was found, and restored to her friends. She then went to Paris, and made her first appearance on the Opera stage in 1695, when she performed the part of Pallas, in Cadmus, with the greatest success. The applause was so violent, that she was obliged, in her car, to take off her casque to salute and thank the public, which redoubled their marks of approbation. From that time, her success was uninterrupted. Dumeni, the singer, having affronted her, she put on men’s clothes, watched for him in the Place des Victoires, and insisted on his drawing his sword, and fighting her, which he refusing, she caned him, and took from him his watch and snuff-box. Next day, Dumeni having boasted at the Opera-house, that he had defended himself against three men, who attempted to rob him, she related the whole story, and produced his watch and snuff-box, in proof of her having caned him for his cowardice. Thevenard was nearly treated in the same manner, and had no other way of escaping her chastisement, than by publicly asking her pardon, after hiding himself at the Palais Royal, during three weeks. At a ball, given by Monsieur, the brother of Louis XIV. she again put on man’s clothes, and having behaved impertinently to a lady, three of her friends, supposing her to be a man, called her out. She might easily have avoided the combat, by discovering her sex, but she instantly drew, and killed them all three. Afterwards, returning very coolly to the ball, she told the story to Monsieur, who obtained her pardon. After other adventures, she went to Brussels, and there became the mistress of the Elector of Bavaria. This prince, quitting her for the Countess of Arcos, sent her by the count, the husband of that lady, a purse of 40,000 livres, with an order to quit Brussels. This extraordinary heroine threw the purse at the count’s head, telling him it was a recompense worthy of such a scoundrel and—— as himself. After this, she returned to the Opera stage, which she quitted in 1705. Being at length seized with a fit of devotion, she recalled her husband, who had remained in Provence, and passed with him the last years of her life, in a very pious manner, dying in 1707, at the age of thirty-four.
ARCHANGELO CORELLI.
That this celebrated composer was a man of humour and pleasantry may be inferred from the following story, related by Walther, in his account of Nicholas Adam Strunck, violinist to Ernestus Augustus, Elector of Hanover. This person being at Rome, upon his arrival, made it his business to see Corelli: upon their first interview, Strunck gave him to understand that he was a musician. “What is your instrument?” asked Corelli. “I can play,” answered Strunck, “upon the harpsichord, and a little on the violin; and should esteem myself extremely happy, might I hear your performance on this latter instrument, on which, I am informed, you excel,” Corelli very politely condescended to this request of a stranger. He played a solo, Strunck accompanied him on the harpsichord, and afterwards played a foccata, with which Corelli was so much taken, that he laid down his instrument to admire him. When Strunck had done at the harpsichord, he took up the violin, and began to touch it in a very careless manner; upon which Corelli remarked, that he had a good bow-hand, and wanted nothing but practice to become a master of the instrument. At this instant, Strunck put the violin out of tune; and, applying it to its place, played on it with such dexterity, attempering the dissonances occasioned by the mistuning of the instrument with such amazing skill and dexterity, that Corelli cried out, in broken German, “I am called Arcangelo, a name that, in the language of my country, signifies an Archangel; but let me tell you, that you, Sir, are an arch-devil.”
Sir John Hawkins’s History of Music.
HENRY PURCELL, ESQ.
Mr. Purcell received his professional education in the school of a choir; it is therefore not very surprising, that the bent of his studies was towards church music. Services he seemed to neglect, and to addict himself to the composition of anthems, a kind of music which, in his time, the church stood greatly in need of.
The anthem, “They that go down to the sea in ships,” was composed by him, on the following extraordinary occasion.
“King Charles II. had given orders for building a yatch, which, as soon as it was finished, he named the Fubbs, in honour of the Duchess of Portsmouth; who, we may suppose, was, in her person, rather full and plump. Soon after the vessel was launched, the king made a party, to sail in his yatch down the river, and round the Kentish coast: and, to keep up the mirth and good humour of the company, Mr. Gostling, was requested to be of the number. They had got as far as the North Foreland, when a violent storm arose, in which the King and the Duke of York were necessitated, in order to preserve the vessel, to hand the sails, and work like common seamen; by good providence, however, they escaped to land: but the distress they had been in, made such an impression on the mind of Mr. Gostling as could never be effaced. Struck with a just sense of the deliverance, and the horror of the scene which he had lately viewed, upon his return to London, he selected from the Psalms those passages which declare the wonders and terrors of the deep, and gave them to Mr. Purcell, to compose as an anthem, which he did; adapting it so peculiarly to the compass of Mr. Gostling’s voice, which was a deep bass, that hardly any person but himself was then, or has since, been able to sing it: but the king did not live to hear it performed. This Anthem is taken from the 107th Psalm, the first two verses of the Anthem are the 23d and 24th of the Psalm. “They that go down to the sea in ships, and occupy business in great waters. These men see the works of the Lord, and his wonders in the deep.”
Among the Letters of Tom Brown, from the Dead to the Living, is one from Dr. Blow, to Mr. Purcell, in which it is humourously observed, that persons of their profession are subject to an equal attraction of the church and the play-house; and are, therefore, in a situation resembling that of Mahomet, which is said to be suspended between heaven and earth. This remark of Brown was truly applicable to Purcell; and it is more than probable, his particular situation gave occasion to it, for he was scarcely known to the world, before he became, in the exercise of his profession, so equally divided between both, the church and the theatre, that neither the church, the tragic, nor the comic Muse, could call him her own.