A Georgian Pageant

by Frank Frankfort Moore

These are but, a few names out of the many on the Burneys' visiting list. Of course, as regards musical artists, the house was the rendezvous of the greatest in London. While the opera-house in the Haymarket was open there was a constant flow of brilliant vocalists to these shores, and the young people had many opportunities of becoming acquainted with the ignorance, the capriciousness, the affectations, and the abilities which were to be found associated with the lyric stage in the eighteenth century, as they are in the twentieth. Among the prime donne who sang for the Burneys were the Agujari—a marvellous performer, who got fifty pounds for every song she sang at the Pantheon—and her great but uncertain rival, Gabrielli. The former, according to Mozart, who may possibly be allowed to be something of a judge, had a vocal range which was certainly never equalled by any singer before or after his time. She won all hearts and a great deal of money during her visit to London, and she left with the reputation of being the most marvellous and most rapacious of Italians. Gabrielli seems to have tried to make up by capriciousness what she lacked in expression. Her voice was, so far as can be gathered from contemporary accounts, small and thin. But by judiciously disappointing the public she became the most widely talked of vocalist in the country. Then among the men were the simple and gracious Pacchierotti—who undoubtedly became attached to Fanny Burney—Rauzzini, and Piozzi.

The Burneys' house was for years the centre of the highest intellectual entertainment to be found in London, and the tact of the head of the household, and the simple, natural manners of his daughters, usually succeeded in preventing the intrusion of a single inharmonious note, in spite of the fact that a Welsh harpist named Jones had once been among the visitors.

But upon the occasion of this “command” party, when Greville was to meet Johnson, and the latter had dressed himself with that extreme care which we suspect meant that he tied up his hose, and put on a wig the front of which had not yet been burnt away by coming in contact with his lighted candle, Burney's tact overreached itself. Mr. Greville may have felt that the Thrales had no business to be of the party, or Johnson may have gained the impression that Burney's old patron was anxious to play the same part, in an honorary sort of way, in regard to himself. At any rate, he refused to be drawn out to exhibit his conversational powers to a supercilious visitor; and after a brief space of time he turned his back upon every one and his face to the fire, and there he sat, greatly to the discomfiture, no doubt, of his host. In a very short time a gloom settled down upon the whole party. Mr. Thrale, stiff and reserved, was not the man to pull things together. He sat mute on his chair, making no advance toward Mr. Greville, and Mr. Greville had probably his chin in the air, having come to the conclusion that Dr. Johnson's powers as a conversationalist had been greatly overrated by rumour.

It was when all hope of sociability had vanished that Dr. Burney, who, when a church organist, may have had occasion to cover up the shortcomings of the clergyman by a timely voluntary, begged Signor Piozzi to oblige the company with a song. But Piozzi was a forlorn hope. He was the last man in the world to save the situation. Had he been a vocalist of the calibre of Pacchierotti he could have made no headway against the funereal gloom that had settled down upon the party.

Piozzi had a sweet and highly trained voice, though some years earlier he had lost its best notes, and he sang with exquisite expression; but when playing his own accompaniment, with his back turned to his audience, he was prone to exaggerate the sentiment of the music until sentiment became lost in an exuberance of sentimentality.

This style of singing is not that to which any one would resort in order to dissipate a sudden social gloom. As the singer went on the gloom deepened.

It was just at this moment that one of those ironic little imps that lurk in wainscot nooks looking out for an opportunity to influence an unconscious human being to an act which the little demon, seeing the end of a scene of which mortals only see the beginning, regards with sardonic glee, whispered something in the ear of Mrs. Thrale, and in an instant, in obedience to its prompting, she had left her chair and stolen behind the singer at the piano. Raising her hands and turning up her eyes in imitation of Piozzi, she indulged in a piece of mimicry which must have shocked every one in the room except the singer, who had his back to her, and Dr. Johnson, who, besides being too short-sighted to be able to see her, was gazing into the grate.