In Spectator 443 is a letter, supposed to be written by her, from Venice.
Her mental malady, however, again seized her, and she lived in retirement, in a remote part of her own house, occasionally roaming about her garden, singing. She is supposed to have died about 1760.
She and her rival are thus celebrated in a song by Hughes (author of the 'Siege of Damascus'), called 'Tofts and Margaretta.'
Music has learn'd the discords of the State,
And concerts jar with Whig and Tory Hate.
Here Somerset and Devonshire attend
The British Tofts, and every note commend;
To native merit just, and pleas'd to see
We've Roman arts, from Roman bondage free:
There fam'd l'Epine does equal skill employ,
Whilst listening peers crow'd to th' ecstatic joy:
Bedford, to hear her song, his dice forsakes,
And Nottingham is raptur'd when she shakes:
Lull'd statesmen melt away their drowsy cares
Of England's safety, in Italian Airs.
Who would not send each year blank passes o'er,
Rather than keep such strangers from our shore?
Francesca Margherita de l'Epine came over here with a German musician named Greber, and was sometimes irreverently called 'Greber's Peg.' There is no doubt but that she sang very beautifully, and was without a rival on the stage, or in the concert room, after the retirement of Mrs. Tofts. She herself retired in 1718, and married Dr. Pepusch, the celebrated musician, who gave her another nickname, that of 'Hecate,' because of her swarthy complexion and unprepossessing countenance. However, she came well dowered, for she brought him a fortune of £10,000, a very large sum in those days. Swift, who evidently had a John Bull's dislike for everything foreign, writes from Windsor to Stella,[478] 'We have a music meeting in our town to-night. I went to a rehearsal of it, and there was Margarita, and her sister, with another drab, and a parcel of fiddlers; I was weary, and would not go to the meeting, which I am sorry for, because I heard it was a great assembly.' She died about the year 1740.
The Cavaliere Nicolino Grimaldi,[479] commonly called Nicolini, was a Neapolitan, and came over to England in 1708, entirely on his own responsibility, hearing we were passionately fond of foreign operas. He had achieved a high reputation in Italy, and sustained it here, although foreigners were only tolerated, not liked. He first played in 'Pyrrhus and Demetrius,' and he left England June 14, 1712. His departure is thus chronicled by Addison[480]: 'I am very sorry to find, by the Opera Bills for this Day, that we are likely to lose the greatest Performer in Dramatick Musick that is now living, or that perhaps ever appeared upon a Stage. I need not acquaint my Reader, that I am speaking of Signior Nicolini.'
Of Isabella Girardeau we know little, save that her maiden name was Calliari, that she married a Frenchman, and sang from 1700 to 1720.
Of the musical composers living in Anne's reign, perhaps the oldest was Dr. Blow, who died in 1708. Then there was Tudway, who composed an anthem[481] on the occasion of Queen Anne visiting the University of Cambridge, in 1705, which gained him his doctor's degree, and he was afterwards made public Professor of Music to that university, where he was longer remembered for his punning proclivities than for his musical talents.
Jeremiah Clarke, who was coadjutor with Dr. Blow as organist at the King's Chapel, composed the beautiful anthem 'Praise the Lord, O Jerusalem.' He shot himself in 1707 when about forty years of age. There is a curious story told about his suicidal mania. Some weeks before he finally committed the rash act, he was riding to town, accompanied by a servant, returning from a visit to a friend in the country, when the fit seized him, and, dismounting by a field in which was a pond surrounded by trees, he tossed up whether he should hang or drown. The coin fell on its edge in the clay, and saved his life for that time.
Dean Aldrich was then alive (he did not die till 1710), and he will be long remembered, not only for his 'Artis Logicæ Rudimenta,' but for his skill as a musical composer[482]; whilst no one at all conversant with Church music will forget the names of Drs. Crofts and Greene.