“If your Majesty,” answered Händel, “will give a place to the young man who sang the tenor solo part so well, I shall be ever grateful to your Majesty. He is my pupil, Joseph Wach, and he would fain marry his pupil, the fair Ellen, daughter to old John Farren; the old man gives consent, but his dame is opposed, because Joseph has no place as yet. And your Majesty knows full well, that it is hard to carry a cause against the women.”
“You are mistaken, Master Händel,” said the King, with a forced smile; “I know nothing to that effect; but Joseph has from this day a place in our chapel as first tenor.”
“Indeed!” cried Händel, rubbing his hands with joy, “I thank your Majesty from the bottom of my heart!”
George was silent a few moments, expecting the master to ask some other favor. “But, Master Händel,” he said at length, “have you nothing to ask for yourself? I would willingly show my gratitude to you in your own person, for the fair entertainment you have provided us all in your Messiah.”
The flush of anger suddenly mantled on Händel’s cheek, and he answered, in a disappointed tone—“Sire, I have endeavored not to entertain you—but to make you better.”
The whole court was astonished. King George stepped back a pace or two, and looked on the bold master with surprise. Then bursting into a hearty fit of laughter, and walking up to him—“Händel!” he cried—“you are, and will ever be, a rough old fellow, but”—and he slapped him good-naturedly on the shoulder—“a good fellow withal. Go—do what you will, we remain ever the best friends in the world.” He signed in token of dismission; Händel retired respectfully, and thanked Heaven as he turned his back on Carlton House, to hasten to his favorite haunt, the tavern.
We shall not attempt to describe the joy his news brought to the lovers, Joseph and Ellen, nor their unnumbered caresses and protestations of gratitude. John Farren took his good wife in his arms and hugged her, ’spite of her resistance and scolding, crying, “Nonsense, Bett! we must be friends to-day, though all the bells in old England ring a peal for it.”
For ten years more Händel travelled throughout England, and composed new and admirable works. When his sight failed him in the last years of his life, it was Ellen who nursed him as if she had been his child, while her husband Joseph wrote down his last compositions, as he dictated them.
Proud and magnificent is the marble monument erected in Westminster to the memory of Händel. Time may destroy it; but the monument he himself, in his high and holy inspiration, has left us—his Messiah—will last forever.