I hinted to him, that I had formerly heard, that a certain great Personage, tàm Marti quàm Mercurio, equally illustrious for his martial and his musical talents, had adopted the practice; but as the Doctor had not recorded it in his tour to Potzdam, I imagined the report was without foundation.
“Ah!” said he, “depend upon it, tho’ the Doctor has indeed omitted this circumstance in the admirable description he gives of that hero, and Dilettante practising his solfeggi at Potzdam, yet he would never have been either the monarch, or the flutist he is without it. Do you think, added he, that illustrious philosopher could amuse himself so calmly in his closet with fugus and adagios, while ten thousand Polish widows, and orphans, were imprecating curses upon the head of their unfeeling destroyer, unless he had totally disengaged himself from every incumbrance of his sex and species?”
Here the entrance of the young ladies interrupted any further conversation on the subject. The eldest, his niece, who was called Gluckinella Inglesina, desired me to sing, which I did in the softest and most unmanly tone I could exert, that I might not again offend. I asked her what her real opinion of my voice was? she answered me with the most perfect affability, that I acquitted myself tolerably well considering; tho’ “she thought me too ambitious of displaying my talent of working parts and subjects, and added that my cantilena was often rude.”
I took an opportunity when I was alone with this young lady, to enquire if the castrati were much in vogue at Bristol, and if that operation could be so safely attempted on elderly gentlemen; this young lady smiled at my simplicity, and assured me that the operation was safe and easy, and not so painful as to acquire any degree of resolution, and that the castrati were the favourites of the ladies, both of the married and unmarried. She advised me by all means to undergo the operation as the Doctor had done in Italy, tho’ his excess of modesty prevented him from boasting of it in his excellent treatise. She added, that she could not with safety love me, unless I would submit to this for her sake.
This declaration from a young lady for whom I now perceived I had imbibed the most ardent affection, gave me great uneasiness; that affection however was purely platonic and spiritual, for personal charms she had no more to boast of, that ever I discovered, than Mingotti herself. Besides the disadvantage of a contortion in the ogle, vulgarly called a squint of the eye, and a very long red nose, she had a mouth, which tho’ it opened from ear to ear, discovered to the eye nothing but the sad remains of a set of ebony teeth, which more resembled the ruins of an old cathedral, than the polished ivory which adorns the comic mouth of the celebrated Mrs. Ab-ngt-n. There was yet another circumstance to disgust the sensualist, and deter him from approaching this Syren with an improper familiarity; and that was the great offensiveness of her breath, which was so violent, that any person not “determined” like me “to hear, see,” and smell “nothing but music,” might have thought it hardly atoned for by the sweetness of her voice. Yet none of these circumstances damped the ardor of my spiritual attachment, founded, as it was, upon a solid basis, the love of song;—it was embodied harmony, the tuneful soul which I adored. The reader who is unacquainted with the difference between a gross sensual passion, and a sublime, harmonic sympathy, may perhaps be surprized when I tell him, that while I was thus devoted to the divine Gluckinella, I was at the same time personally captivated by the corporeal attractions of a little black-ey’d Gypsy, the wife of a barber in the town, who often shaved me for a tune; yet did not these grosser feelings the least impair or abate my musical platonic love. I might perhaps be excused, were I to conceal the progress and issue of these different amours; but they are so intimately blended with the scientific part of my work, and were attended with such important consequences to myself in my professional capacity, that I doubt not the narration will prove of great utility to my brethren. For it was no common temptation that deluded me; tho’ Mrs. Sharpset was abundantly handsome, I could have resisted “the blandishments of beauty,” if a desire of making dangerous experiments upon the power and effects of music upon female passion had not seized my brain. For I had taken notice, that the imagination of this young woman was exceedingly lively and far out-stripped her husband’s, who was a plain dull man with little fire or enthusiasm in his composition. I plainly perceived this in all her gestures and movements, but when I sung some tender sentimental air, her involuntary sighs, blushes, and languid attitude, betrayed too plainly the irritability of her nervs, and that fine susceptibility of soft emotions with which nature has endowed the sex. No wonder that in a rude, uncultivated state of nature as I then was, I caught the subtle fire from her contagious eyes. Ah! how often did I sing the sweet passion of Love without once thinking of my dear Gluckinella; how often did she encore my O how pleasing ’tis to please, without the slightest recollection of her absent barber! Madly determined to pursue the fatal experiment, and observe the full effects of my art; I next sung “Haste, let us rove, to the Island of Love”, at which Mrs. Sharpset was greatly agitated and danced about the room. Then I played a rapturous voluntary “produced in the happy moments of effervescence when my reason was less powerful than my feeling;” and at length I proceeded to such excess of temerity, as to tune up Geho Dobbin, Murdoch O’Blaney, and several other inflammatory compositions; and finding my mistress “attentive, and in a disposition to be pleased, I became animated to that true pitch of enthusiasm, which from the ardor of the fire within, is communicated to others and sets all around in a blaze, so that the contention between the performer and the hearer was only who should please or who should applaud the most, till at length, not contented with shewing her approbation by coughing, hemming, and blowing the nose” she “expressed rapture in a manner peculiar to herself, and seemed to agonize with pleasure too great for the aching sense!” for at length, overpowered by my quirking and quavering, and transported beyond all the bounds of prudence, Mrs. Sharpset on a sudden leaped into my arms, hung round my neck, and devoured me with eager kisses, such as I never tasted before or since. What man, what unemasculated god could have withstood such potent snares? Ah! my serene Gluckinella had’st thou been there, these tumults had all subsided, the devil had not got intire possession of my mind, voice and instrument, nor had I needed the painful operation of the barber’s avenging steel to bring my wandering spirits back to reason:—for soon, and in the midst of our illicit joys, the door of the chamber was forced open, and in rushed Mr. Sharpset.—Discordant oaths and curses, and the look and voice of a Fury making an incantation to awake the dead, bespoke the injured husband, and scared us from the bed. He retired a moment to fetch the instrument of his revenge. Mrs. Sharpset escaped, but in an instant I saw him return whetting his keenest razor; and concluding, that he meant to cut my throat upon the spot, I fell down at his feet and in an agony of fear and penitence, roared out such a Miserere, as was never heard at the Pope’s chapel in Passion-week. Alas! how did I wish for the genius of a Gluck, “to paint my difficult situation occasioned by complicated misery, and the tempestuous fury of unbridled passions!” But Allegri himself, had he chanted his own Miserere, could not have moved the shaver’s unrelenting soul, or soothed his injured honour up in arms, and demanding its victim! I tried a softer strain, and sang in melting mood, “Let not rage thy Bosom firing, pity’s softer claim remove,” &c. but it was all one: still strapped he his inexorable razor, humming out a song of Bravura, the subject of which was the castration of the devil by a baker; (which, by the bye, is a very curious story, whose authenticity I must enquire into farther at my leisure.) I immediately augured my approaching destiny from the burden of this song; and the Cornuto presently gave me to understand that my conjecture was well founded. Having been till now in a cold-sweat, and corporal fear of my life, I congratulated myself on this exchange of punishment, as a sort of reprieve, and considering that I had some time since resolved, like another Grassetto, to undergo the operation whenever I found myself bold enough for such a voluntary sacrifice; I plucked up courage, and with great composure told the barber, that a guilty conscience was a greater torment to me than any he could devise; but that to expiate the crime I had committed, and appease the anger of heaven, and the honest man whom I had so deeply offended, I would patiently submit to suffer the righteous sentence which his vengeance meditated on the peccant part. The enraged tonsor took me at my word.
The first thing that came into my thoughts after I awoke from the fainting fit, into which the paroxism of pain had thrown me, was to try my voice in its improved state. I accordingly sung A Dawn of Hope my Soul revives, and found my powers wonderfully improved, and my execution delicate, interesting, and full of effects. “Ho, ho,” cries the barber, “I am glad to find you are so merry,” and resumed his old tune of the baker and the devil. I told him I thought it unkind in him to insult me, and intreated him to convey me home, which he very readily consented to do, and soon afterwards began to apologize for the effects of his rage, hoping I would consider the nature of the provocation, and not attempt to take the law of him. I answered, that upon condition he would freely pardon his wife, whose fault was venial, as her virtue had fallen a sacrifice to the power of harmony, I would decline any hostile proceedings against him on my own account, with which condition he appeared satisfied, and we parted.—I was brought home on a mule, on which I rode sideways; and as soon as I alighted at Signor Manselli’s I sent for him into my chamber, and accosted him as he approached with the following air, in singing which I exerted all my newly-acquired powers.
Bear, O bear me on a sudden,
Some kind stroke of smiling chance!
From this land of beef and pudding,