[221] Life, 1777–1778, chap. lxi. p. 561, ed. Croker.
[222] In the early days, sometimes one shilling and two shillings, including the breakfast and the morning concert. On special nights when fireworks were displayed, the price was raised to three shillings or more. Tickets costing from half a guinea to two guineas were issued for the masquerades.
[223] Sometimes it was advertised as open “every evening.” People were allowed to walk in the gardens and view the Rotunda during the day-time for one shilling.
[224] “Harlequin in Ranelagh,” London Magazine, May 1774.
[225] Cp. Gent. Mag. 1764, p. 247.
[226] Ranelagh House: a satire, 1747.
[227] London Magazine, 1774.
[228] Other early vocalists were:—Mrs. Storer (1751); Miss Young (1755); Miss Formantel (Ten favourite songs sung by Miss Formantel at Ranelagh, music by Mr. Oswald, published July 1758).
[229] According to a statement of Burney’s (note in Croker’s ed. of Boswell’s Johnson, p. 143, anno “1763”), the salt-box song was sung by Beard accompanied on that instrument by Brent, the fencing master, while Skeggs played on the broomstick as bassoon. Croker assigns the composition, and apparently the first performance, of the Ode to 1769, and states that the first edition (which he himself had seen) of it bears the date 1749, a date which he considered to be a misprint for 1769. But the date 1769 is, as some later writers have seen, clearly erroneous, and the composition—and possibly the first performance at Ranelagh—must be assigned to 1759. The published edition of the Ode, in the British Museum, is dated (May) 1763, and the Ode was undoubtedly performed at Ranelagh on 10 June of that year (1763). (See Annual Register; Lloyd’s Evening Post, 8–16 June, 1763.)
[230] Cp. Six new English songs composed by Ferdinando Tenducci, and to be sung by him at Ranelagh. Sold by the author at his lodging in the Great Piazza, Covent Garden, 1763 (W. Coll.).