FROM A WATER-COLOUR SKETCH BY J. T. SMITH
“Come,” said Mr. Keyse, putting his hand upon my shoulder, “the bell rings, not for prayers, nor for dinner, but for the song.” As soon as we had reached the orchestra, the singer curtsied to us, for we were the only persons in the gardens. “This is sad work,” said he, “but the woman must sing according to our contract.” I recollect that the singer was handsome, most dashingly dressed, immensely plumed, and villainously rouged; she smiled as she sang, but it was not the bewitching smile of Mrs. Wrighten,[266] then applauded by thousands at Vauxhall Gardens. As soon as the Spa lady had ended her song, Keyse, after joining me in applause, apologised for doing so, by observing that, as he never suffered his servants to applaud, and as the people in the road (whose ears were close to the cracks in the paling to hear the song), would make a bad report if they had not heard more than the clapping of one pair of hands, he had in this instance expressed his reluctant feelings.
As the lady retired from the front of the orchestra, she, to keep herself in practice, curtsied to me with as much respect as she would had Colonel Topham been the patron of a gala night.[267] “This is too bad,” again observed Keyse; “and I am sure you cannot expect fireworks!” However, he politely asked me to partake of a bottle of Lisbon, which upon my refusing, he pressed me to accept of a catalogue of his pictures.
Blewitt[268] (who at that time lived in Bermondsey Square), the scholar of Jonathan Battishill,[269] was the composer for the Spa establishment. The following verse is the first of his most admired composition,—“In lonely cot by Humber’s side.”
My old and worthy friend Joseph Caulfield,[270] Blewitt’s favourite pupil, of whom he learned thorough bass, related to me the following anecdote of a musical composer, as told him by his master:—“When I was going upstairs,” said Blewitt, “to the attics, where one of my instructors lived (for I had many), I hesitated on the second-floor landing-place, upon hearing my master and his wife at high words. ‘Get you gone!’ said the lofty paper-ruffled composer, ‘retire to your apartments!’ This command of her lord she did not immediately obey; however, in a short time after, I heard the clattering of plates against the wall, and upon entering the room, I discovered that the lady had retired, but not before she had covered the whitewashed wall profusely with the unbroiled sprats.”
“I was at a musical party,” continued my friend Joseph, “at Lord Sandwich’s,[271] in Hertford Street, Mayfair, when, among other specimens of the best masters, I heard Battishill’s beautiful composition of
“Amidst the myrtles as I walk,
Love and myself thus entered talk,
‘Tell me,’ said I, in deep distress,
‘Where I may find my Shepherdess.’”[272]