‘There might have been more,’ said Bubb, ‘but half the Court is at the Haymarket.’
‘Oh, Handel! ‘ cried Anne. ‘That is the Princess. She says he is the finest musician in the world. But some seem to like the Italian. I myself for one.’
‘Buononcini is a fine musician,’ said Bubb. ‘How does he compare with Handel? His Highness will tell us, doubtless.’
‘They are different,’ said Frederick. ‘Handel is so German and Buononcini typically Italian.’
‘I suppose I am very stupid with no taste,’ sighed Anne. ‘Am I, my love? I find Handel a bore.’
‘You could never be stupid,’ said Frederick, kissing her hand.
‘No,’ pouted Anne. ‘Look how I produced my adorable FitzFrederick.’
‘And,’ whispered some malicious voice, ‘deluded Fred into thinking he was his.’
But no one heard or even cared to listen, for so many of those present believed it would be profitable to support the Prince’s party, as no one had a chance of breaking into Walpole’s.
‘Buononcini is a fine musician,’ said the Prince.
Then everyone began comparing him with Handel and declaring that Handel was heavy, obsessed with religious subjects, and above all dull. Buononcini’s was gay, as music should be. It was a mistake to delude oneself into thinking that because music was dull it was good.
And the King and the Queen and Princess Anne doted on Handel.
‘Buononcini should set up in opposition,’ said Bubb. ‘I’d wager Handel would still command the bigger audience.’ ‘What will you wager?’ asked Frederick.
Two thousand.’
‘Make it five and I’ll take you on.’
Dodington agreed and the bet was made. When the Prince betted others must too and that evening nothing else was talked of but Italian and the German musicians—not so much their merits but who could draw the bigger crowds, for that was to be the test.
Buononcini must have his rival theatre, but it was not difficult to obtain backers for a proposition so favoured by the Prince.
Soon at the theatre in Lincoln’s Inn Fields Buononcini’s operas were being performed in rivalry with Handel’s at the Haymarket.
The Princess Royal was furious, seeing in this her brother’s hatred of herself and his parents; and that he should direct this against her beloved music master was more than she could bear.
‘It will be useless,’ she stormed to Amelia and Caroline.
‘Lincoln’s Inn will never rival the Haymarket. And how can anyone in his senses compare the Italian with great Handel?’
But music had little to do with the affair. The King’s Court was dull; the Prince’s was becoming more lively. To it went all the rebels, all the young who wanted a change; and the way in which they could show their willingness to follow the Prince was to go to the theatre in Lincoln’s Inn Fields.
Anne was desperate; she implored her parents to come with her to the opera.
‘Frederick is deliberately flouting us all,’ she declared; and the Queen agreed with her.
As for the King, he had hated his son from the first and he was ready to make a state occasion of a visit to the Haymarket.
And each week it became more and more obvious that the audience at the Haymarket was growing less and less and that at Lincoln’s Inn Fields greater.
There came a night when the King, the Queen, with the Princesses and young William, all seated in the royal box, were the only audience for the Handel opera.
To make this more humiliating the roads were jammed on the way to Lincoln’s Inn Fields, and as the theatre was filled to its capacity, people stood outside to wait for the Prince and his friends to leave that they might give them a cheer and shout ‘Long Live the Prince of Wales ... and Buononcini.’
The Prince had won his wager. The King was mightily discomfited; Handel and the Haymarket were in financial difficulties; and Walpole and the Queen were worried.
This was the full cycle.
The Prince of Wales had now come into the open as the enemy of the King and Queen.
Sarah Churchill’s Bargain
THERE was a woman who watched the antics of the Court with malicious pleasure. She was one of the richest women in England and had at one time been the most powerful. This was Sarah, the widowed Duchess of Marlborough.
Her husband had died in 1722 and since then she had lost the zest for life except when she was quarrelling. Consequently she gave herself up to this, which was to her an exciting pastime.
She had had a glorious quarrel with John Vanbrugh over the building of Blenheim; she had others with all the members of her family in turn and especially her only two living daughters. She had turned her attention to her grandchildren and the story was current that she had blacked the face on a painting of Anne Egerton, her granddaughter, and scrawled beneath it: ‘She is blacker within.’ She had quarrelled with Lord Sunderland, her son-in-law, because he had remarried; she had indulged in several lawsuits, but these were minor matters and Sarah could not forget the days when as chief adviser to Queen Anne she had been at the centre of the nation’s affairs. That was where she longed to be and only that could give her something to live for now that her husband, her dear Marl, was no more.
Therefore she must quarrel with the most important man in the country; and no quarrel meant quite so much to Sarah as her quarrel with Sir Robert Walpole.
It was galling for her, who had been the wife of the greatest General of his age, who had ruled him and ruled Queen Anne, to find that Walpole dismissed her as a silly old woman of no importance to him. Gone were the days when she could have marched into action against him, could have undermined his power, could have set her own men around him to pull him down. Now she was just a feeble old woman, or so they thought.
Marlborough was dead and she had to be doing something all the time to forget that depressing fact. The only time when her face softened, when she felt lonely and defenceless was when she thought of him in the days of his prime—the handsomest man alive she had thought, and a genius among his fellows—and remembered then that he was gone for ever.
But she never allowed such moods to continue. She would stamp through her house—either at Windsor or Marlborough House next to St James’s—harry her servants, summon whatever members of her family were at hand, berate them, scorn them, and tell them they were unworthy to be the offspring of the great Duke.
Only when she was angry could she find a reason for living.
There were a few people who did not irritate her. Of her grandchildren, most of whom she had quarrelled with, as they grew older, she cared most for Diana Spencer, her dear Lady Di as she called her. Lady Di was young, handsome, and intelligent. Her family thought her extremely clever to be able to keep on good terms with the old lady, but Di seemed to manage it without much effort. She had always seemed to be able to please her grandmother, even from the days when as a child she had been so much in her household, for Diana’s mother, Anne Churchill, had died at the age of twenty-eight and had left her children to her mother’s care.
Di was spirited and yet tactful; she was beautiful, and Sarah was reminded of her own youth through the charms of this lovely young girl.
Sarah liked a woman to have spirit as long as it did not dash with her own; this of course rarely happened, but she had managed to keep on good terms with Lady Mary Wortley Montague, as much a character in her way as Sarah was in hers.
Lady Mary had almost as many enemies as Sarah had, for while Sarah blundered through with her frankness Lady Mary could not resist displaying her satirical wit. Lady Mary was a traveller and an eccentric and like Sarah cared little for opinion and went her own way.