The marriage was not at first an unhappy one. There were several children, but difficulties also increased much faster than the family. Not pecuniary difficulties, for Gallini was a prudent man, but class difficulties. The signor found himself without a properly-defined position, or what is quite as uneasy probably in itself, he was above his proper position, without being able to exact the homage that he thought was due to him. The brother-in-law of the earl was in the eyes of his own wife, only the dancing-master of their children. Considering that the lady had condescended to be their mother, she might have carried the condescension a little farther, and paid more respect to the father. Dissension arose, and in a tour de mains family interferences rendered it incurable. The quarrel was embittered, a separation ensued, and after a tranquil union of a few years, there were separate households, with common ill-will in both.
He felt himself no longer a “lord,” even by courtesy, but he resolved to be what many lords have tried to be, in vain, or who ruined themselves by being, namely, proprietor and manager of the opera-house. This was in 1786, by which time he had realized a fortune by means of much industry, active heels, good looks, capital benefits, monopoly of teaching, prudence, temperance, and that economy, which extravagant people call parsimony. This fortune, or rather a portion of it, he risked in the opera-house—and lost it all, of course. He commenced his career with as much spirit as if he had only been the steward of another man’s property; and he made engagements in Italy with such generosity and patriotism, that the Pope having leisure for a while to turn his thoughts from divinity to dancing, became as delighted with Gallini as Pio Nono was with Fanny Cerito. We are bound to believe that his holiness was in a fit of infallible enthusiasm, when he dubbed Gallini, Knight of the Golden Spur. The latter returned to London and wrote himself down “Sir John.” Cards were just come into fashion, to enable people to pay what were called “visites en blanc,” and “Sir John Gallini,” was to be seen in every house where the latter had friend or acquaintance. His portrait was in all the shops, with this chivalric legend beneath it, and there are yet to be seen old opera libretti with a frontispiece exhibiting to an admiring public the effigies of “Sir John Gallini.”
The public liked the sound, liked the man, and sanctioned the title, by constantly applying it to the individual, without any mental reserve. They had seen so many fools made knights that they were glad to see a spirited man make one of himself, by application of “Sir” to a papally-conferred title. The law, however, no more allowed it than it did that of the Romanist official who got presented at court as “Monsignore something,” and whose presentation was cancelled as soon as the pleasant trick was discovered. Gallini, however, continued in the uninterrupted title until circumstances brought him, as a witness, into the presence of Lord Kenyon. When the Italian opera-dancer announced himself in the hearing of that judge as Sir John Gallini, the sight of the judge was what Americans call “a caution.” His lordship looked as disgusted as Lord Eldon used to do, when he heard an Irish Romanist Bishop called by a territorial title. As far as the wrath of Lord Kenyon could do it, metaphorically, the great judge un-sir-John’d Sir John and chopped off his golden spurs in open court. Gallini was so good-natured and popular, that the public opinion would not confirm the opinion of the judge, and Sir John remained Sir John, in the popular mouth, throughout the kingdom.
He was growing rich enough to buy up half the knights in the country. He built the music-rooms in Hanover Square, for Bach and Abel’s subscription concerts. That is, he built the house; and let it out to any who required any portion of it, for any purpose of music, dancing, exhibiting, lecturing, or any other object having profit in view. He lodged rather than lived in it himself, for he had reserved only a small cabinet for his own use, magnificently sacrificing the rest of the mansion for the use of others, who paid him liberally for such use. Therewith, Sir John continued his old profession as teacher as well as performer, manager at home as well as at the theatre; wary speculator, saving—avaricious, as they said who failed to cheat him of his money on faith of illusory promises, with an admirable eye for a bargain, and admirable care for the result of the bargain after he had concluded it.
Everything went as merrily with him as it did with Polycrates, and ill-fortune and he seemed never to be acquainted, till one fatal night in 1789, the Opera House was burned to the ground, and the tide that had been so long flowing was now thought to be on the ebb. Sir John was too heroic to be downcast, and he did what many a hero would never even have thought of doing, nor, indeed, any wise man either. He put down thirty thousand pounds in hard cash toward the rebuilding of the opera-house, sent to Italy for the best architectural plans, left no means unemployed to erect a first rate theatre, and worked for that object with as much integrity as if the safety of the universe depended on the building of an opera-house in the Haymarket. What the public lost in one night was thus being made good to them by another.
Meanwhile fashion was in a deplorable state of musical destitution. What was to become of London without an opera? How could the world, the infinitesimal London world, exist without its usual allowance of roulades and rigadoons? Our knight was just the champion to come in beneficially at such an extremity. He opened the little theatre in the Haymarket, and nobody went to it. Fashion turned up its nose in scorn, and kept away; nay, it did worse, it acted ungratefully, and when some speculators established an opera at the Pantheon, Fashion led the way from the Haymarket, and a host of followers went in her train to Oxford street. “I will victoriously bring her back to her old house,” said Sir John. The knight was gallant-hearted, but he did not know that he had other foes besides Fashion.
Sir John got into difficulties through law, lawyers, and false friends. He ruled as monarch at the opera-house, only to fall, with ruin. But he was not a man to be dismayed. His courage, zeal, and industry, were unbounded. He applied all these to good purpose, and his life was not only a useful but an honorable and a prosperous one. It ended, after extending beyond the ordinary allotted time of man, calmly, yet somewhat suddenly; and “Sir John” Gallini died in his house in Hanover Square, leaving a large fortune, the memory of some eccentricities, and a good name and example, to his children. For my part, I can never enter the ancient concert-rooms in Hanover Square, without wishing a “Requiescat!” to the knight of the Golden Spur, by whom the edifice was constructed.
If Sir John Gallini, the dancer, could boast of having been knighted by a pope, Crescentini, the singer, could boast of having been knighted by an emperor. He received this honor at the hands of Napoleon I. He had previously been accustomed to compliments from, or in presence of, emperors. Thus, in 1804, at Vienna, he sang the Ombra adorata in the character of Romeo, with such exquisite grace and tenderness, that, on one occasion, when he had just finished this admirable lyric piece, the whole court forming part of his audience, two doves descended from the clouds, bearing him a crown of laurels, while on every side, garlands and flowers were flung upon the enchanted and enchanting warbler. The Austrian Emperor paid him more honor than his predecessor had ever paid to the Polish king who saved the empire from the Turks. The reputation of Crescentini gained for him an invitation, in 1809, to the imperial court of France. He played in company with Grassini, the two representing Romeo and Juliet. The characters had never been better represented, and Talma, who was present, is said to have wept—an on dit which I do not credit, for there is not only nothing to cry at in the Italian characters, but Talma himself was in no wise addicted to indulgence in the melting mood, nor had he even common courtesy for his own actual Juliet. But the great actor was pleased, and the great emperor was delighted; so much so, that he conferred an honor on Crescentini which he would never grant to Talma—made a chevalier of him. It is true that Talma desired to be made a knight of the Legion of Honor; but the emperor would not place on the breast of a tragedian that cross which was the reward, then, only of men who had played their parts well, in real and bloody tragedies. The French tragedian declined the honor that was now accorded to Crescentini, whom the emperor summoned to his box, and decorated him with the insignia of the knight of the Iron Crown. The singing chevalier was in ecstacies. But the Juliet of the night had more cause to be so, for to her, Napoleon presented a draft on the Treasury, for 20,000 francs. “It will be a nice little dower for one of my nieces,” said the ever-generous Grassini to one of her friends, on the following day. Several years after this, a little niece, for whom she had hitherto done little, came to her, with a contralto voice, and a request for assistance. After hearing her sing, Grassini exclaimed, “You have no contralto voice, and need small help. You will have, with care, one of the finest mezzo-sopranos in the world. Your throat will be to you a mine of gold, and you may be both rich and renowned, my dear Giulietta Grisi.” The niece has excelled the aunt.
Knights of the shire are but sham knights now, and they originally sprung from a revolutionary movement. Previous to the reign of Henry III. the people had no voice in the selection of their legislators. In that king’s reign, however, the legislators were at loggerheads. Simon de Montfort, the aristocratic head of a popular party, was opposed to the king; and the great earl and his friends being fearful of being outvoted in the next parliament, succeeded in procuring the issue of a writ in the name of the king, who was then their prisoner, directing the sheriffs of each county to send two knights, and the authorities in cities and boroughs to send citizens and burgesses, to represent them in parliament. This was a fundamental change of a long-established usage. It was, in fact, a revolution; and the foundation at least of that form of a constitution on which our present constitutional substantiality has been erected.
When the king became emancipated, however, although he continued to summon “barons and great men,” he never during his reign issued a writ for the election of knights of the shire. His son, Edward I., summoned the greater and lesser barons, or his tenants in chief, according to the old usage. This he did during, at least, seven years of his reign. The last were not barons, but they were summoned as “barons’ peers, and all these attended in their own persons,” and not as representatives of the people. In the reign of John, indeed, the people’s voice had been heard, but it may be stated generally, that until the forty-ninth of Henry III., the constituent parts of the great council of the nation was composed solely of the archbishops and bishops, the earls, barons, and tenants in capite.