There is no need to go so far as to suggest that Handel suffered from moral insanity and was incapable of distinguishing between right and wrong; but it is quite conceivable that his paralytic stroke affected his brain in such a way that he may sometimes have had a difficulty in starting a composition. Biographers of Handel have more than once drawn attention to phases in which he seems to have suffered from the inability to make a definite decision. Indecision is a common symptom of overstrained nerves, and anyone who has attempted musical composition or taught it to students will understand the hesitation and uncertainty which often attends the first writing down of a musical theme, although, once the initial idea has been settled, the continuation and development of it may proceed without difficulty. Any musician who studies the examples printed by Sedley Taylor will at once exclaim that for a man of Handel's experience, to say nothing of his fertility or indeed of his genius, it would have been far less trouble to compose an original setting of given words than to adapt them so laboriously to music written by someone else for a totally different purpose. But after his attack of paralysis there may well have been occasional moments when Handel could not make up his mind to write down an idea of his own, but may very likely have found that when once he had an idea ready on paper before him, whether that of another composer or an old one of his own, he could then continue to compose, and often make alterations in the music under his eyes which transformed it from a commonplace into a masterpiece.
In the autumn of 1739 Handel transferred his concerts to the smaller theatre in Lincoln's Inn Fields, where at first there seemed some hope of success. On November 17 he produced his setting of Dryden's Ode for St. Cecilia's Day; it was repeated several times, Alexander's Feast and Acis and Galatea being added to the programmes. But a month later an exceptionally severe frost set in; the Thames was frozen over, and for two months it was useless to open the theatre, owing to the impossibility of warming it adequately. In February he produced L'Allegro, adapted by Charles Jennens from Milton's L'Allegro and Il Penseroso, to which Jennens had added a third part of his own, Il Moderato; but the public, whether from indifference to the work or from fear of the cold, refused to come to it. Handel was once more on the verge of ruin, but that did not prevent him from giving a performance of his two most popular works, Acis and Alexander's Feast, for the benefit of a new musical charity.
The charity in which Handel was so keenly interested had been founded in 1738 to assist impoverished musicians and their families; it still carries on its honourable work under the title of the Royal Society of Musicians of Great Britain.
The same year saw the inauguration of another charitable institution which owed much to the continued generosity of Handel, the Foundling Hospital. Like Hogarth, who was also a benefactor, Handel did not confine his support to an occasional gift, but took the warmest personal interest in the place, and eventually both he and Hogarth were made governors of it.
The managers of the Opera had found themselves quite unable to continue productions on the grand scale of former years. In the winter of 1739-40 there had been an insignificant season at Covent Garden; it seems to have been directed by the Italian composer Pescetti, who, in the following winter, started concerts at the Little Theatre in the Haymarket. Mrs. Pendarves, who during the last few years had not lived much in London, and had thus dropped out of Handel's life, wrote in November: "The concerts begin next Saturday at the Haymarket. Carestini sings, Pescetti composes; the house is made up into little boxes, like the playhouses abroad." Dr. Burney gives a comic account of the undertaking. "The opera, a tawdry, expensive and meretricious lady, who had been accustomed to high keeping, was now reduced to a very humble state. Her establishment was not only diminished, but her servants reduced to half-pay. Pescetti seems to have been her prime minister, Carestini her head man, the Muscovita her favourite woman, and Andreoni a servant for all work." Concerts and pasticcios formed the main repertory, and Burney ascribes such success as they enjoyed to the fact that the Little Theatre was a "snug retreat" in which those who had the courage to quit their firesides during the great frost might keep reasonably warm.
Handel had nothing to do with this theatre, but in 1740 again rented the theatre in Lincoln's Inn Fields, where on November 8 he revived Parnaso in Festa "in its original oratorio manner, with the addition of scenes, dresses and concertos on the organ and several other instruments." It had but one performance; on the 22nd, Handel produced a new opera, or, as Burney calls it, an operetta, which had no more than two performances. This was Imeneo. On January 10, 1741, he brought out another new opera, Deidamia, which ran for three nights. Imeneo is a work of little importance; Deidamia, on the other hand, contains several very beautiful songs. But Dr. Burney, notwithstanding his admiration of it, has to admit that much of it was old-fashioned, in the style of Handel's youth, and sometimes "languid and antique." To Handel's admirers to-day such criticism may seem ridiculous, but to his audiences of 1741 these reversions to an earlier style would certainly have been most unwelcome.
Deidamia was Handel's last work for the stage; the glorious achievements of his youth and maturity had come to a hopeless end. His own public had unjustly neglected him, posterity consigned his operas to oblivion.
At some period during the summer of 1741 Handel received an invitation from the fourth Duke of Devonshire, then Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, to go over to Dublin and give concerts there for the benefit of the local hospitals. It is very probable that Mrs. Pendarves may have helped to secure this engagement for Handel. She had spent a year and a half in Ireland in 1731-32, and her letters give a lively account of society in Dublin. Matthew Dubourg, an excellent violinist, was at the head of the Viceroy's band, and musical entertainments were frequent, for to judge from Mrs. Pendarves' descriptions the Irish bishops and deans lived almost as magnificently as the cardinals in Rome. Mrs. Pendarves was naturally a very popular guest in Dublin society; she was a remarkably fine harpsichord player for an amateur, and was constantly in demand as a performer at private parties. There was no one in London or Dublin who had a more intelligent understanding of Handel's music, and her enthusiasm for his works was unbounded. She kept constantly in touch with Dublin life when in England, for she corresponded with Dean Swift, and, what was more important still, she had in 1730 made the acquaintance of Dr. Delany, an Irish clergyman, whom she was to marry in 1743.
Handel did not leave London until the first week of November. During the summer he had been occupied with the composition of a new oratorio, Messiah, the words for which had been chosen and arranged by Jennens, apparently with a good deal of assistance from his chaplain, the Rev. Mr. Pooley. Whether Messiah was composed with a view to production in Dublin is not known; it was begun on August 22 and finished on September 14. A fortnight later he had completed the first act of Samson. On the way to Holyhead he stopped at Chester, where he was obliged to stay several days on account of contrary winds which prevented his embarking. He seized the opportunity to try over some of the choruses of Messiah with local church-singers, and Burney, who was at school at Chester, gives an amusing account of the little rehearsal, at which Handel was roused to grotesque fury by the inability of the bass, a printer by trade, to read "And with His stripes" at sight. On November 18 he arrived in Dublin, and opened his season at Neal's new music-hall in Fishamble Street on December 23 with a performance of L'Allegro, interspersed with concertos. A few days later he wrote a long letter to Jennens describing the unprecedented success which he had enjoyed. Dublin received him with open arms, and he thoroughly enjoyed his triumph, the more so as he felt himself to be in unusually good health.
A series of concerts followed, at which various oratorios and other works were performed. On April 8, 1742, there was a rehearsal of Messiah, open to those who had taken tickets for the first performance, which took place on Tuesday, April 13. The choir was provided by the singers from the two cathedrals, some of whom took the male solo parts as well; the female soloists were Mrs. Cibber and Signora Avolio. Over seven hundred persons were present, and about £400 was divided between the three charities, the Relief of Prisoners, Mercer's Hospital, and the Charitable Infirmary.