was the principal singer; in ‘Thamyris,’ 1707, an opera partly arranged from Scarlatti and Buononcini, by Dr. Pepusch; ‘Camilla,’ where she played Prenesto, 1707; ‘Pyrrhus and Demetrius,’ as Marius, 1709; ‘Almahide,’ the first opera performed here wholly in Italian, 1710; ‘Hydaspes,’ 1710; ‘Calypso and Telemachus,’ 1712 (as Calypso); Handel's ‘Pastor Fido’ (as Antiocchus, the music demanding much executive power), and ‘Rinaldo,’ 1712; ‘Teseo,’ 1713; and the pasticcios ‘Ernelinda’ and ‘Dorinda,’ 1713. Her services were often engaged for the English operas at Lincoln's Inn-Fields, until 1718, when she married Dr. Pepusch and retired from the stage.
According to Downes, Margherita brought her husband at least 10,000 guineas. These ‘costly canary birds,’ as Cibber called the Italians, increased their income (8l. a week was a singer's salary) by performances at private houses and other special engagements. Margherita's singing must have possessed great merit and cleverness, and was said to be superior to anything heard in England at the time. She had been joined in 1703 by her sister Maria Gallia, who, however, did not become equally popular, and her only important rival was Mrs. Tofts, an established favourite at Drury Lane. On the second appearance of ‘the Italian gentlewoman’ upon these boards, early in 1704, a disturbance arose in the theatre. Mrs. Tofts's servant was implicated, and Mrs. Tofts felt it incumbent upon her to write to the manager to deny having had any share in the incident. The jealousy between the two singers, whether real or imagined, now became the talk of the town and the theme of the poetasters. The fashionable world was divided into Italian and English parties. Hughes wrote:—
Music hath learn'd the discords of the state,
And concerts jar with whig and tory hate.
Here Somerset and Devonshire attend
The British Tofts, and ev'ry note commend;
To native merit just, and pleas'd to see
We 'ave Roman arts, from Roman bondage free.
There fam'd L'Épine does equal skill employ
While list'ning peers crowd to th' estatic joy;
Bedford to hear her song his dice forsakes;
And Nottingham is raptured when she shakes;
Lull'd statesmen melt away their drowsy cares
Of England's safety, in Italian airs.
Rowe, and others, wrote less pleasantly of ‘Greber's Peg’ or ‘The Tawny Tuscan,’ and her conquests. Posterity has, notwithstanding, judged her character to be one of guileless good nature. The patience with which she endured the name ‘Hecate,’ bestowed upon her in consideration of her ugliness by her husband, has been recorded by Burney.
Dr. and Mrs. Pepusch lived for some time at Boswell Court, Carey Street, where a singing parrot adorned the window. In 1730 they moved to a house in Fetter Lane. Margherita, advancing in years, ‘retained her hand on the harpsichord, and was in truth a fine performer,’ so much so that amateurs would assemble to hear her play Dr. Bull's difficult lessons out of ‘Queen Elizabeth's Virginal Book.’ It appears from a manuscript diary of S. Cooke, a pupil of Dr. Pepusch, that Mrs. Pepusch fell ill on 19 July 1746, and that on 10 Aug. following, ‘in the afternoon, he went to Vauxhall with the doctor, Madame Pepusch being dead.’ She had been ‘extremely sick’ the day before.
A replica in oils of Sebastian Ricci's picture ‘A Rehearsal at the Opera,’ containing a portrait of Margherita, is in the possession of Messrs. John Broadwood & Sons, the pianoforte-makers. In this group of musicians ‘Margaritta in black with a muff’ (as the title runs) is short, dark-complexioned, but not ill-favoured. The original painting is at Castle Howard, the seat of the Earl of Carlisle in Yorkshire.
[London Gazette, 1692–1711; Daily Courant, 1703–1711; manuscripts and letters in possession of Julian Marshall, Esq.; Hawkins; Burney; Grove; Downes's Roscius Anglicanus; Cibber's Apology; Hughes's Poems, ed. Bell, i. 119; and other works quoted above.]
EPPS, GEORGE NAPOLEON (1815–1874), homœopathic practitioner, was the half-brother of Dr. John Epps [q. v.], and was born on 22 July 1815. After being for some years his brother's pupil and assistant, he became a member of the London College of Surgeons in 1845, and was in the same year appointed surgeon to the Homœopathic Hospital in Hanover Square. His mechanical aptitude led to his being very successful in treating spinal curvatures and deformities. In 1849 he published ‘Spinal Curvature, its Theory and Cure.’ He added a third part to Pulte's ‘Homœopathic Physician,’ brought out by his brother in 1852, on the ‘Treatment of Accidents;’ and published revised editions of W. Williamson's ‘Diseases of Infants and Children,’ and ‘Diseases of Women and their Homœopathic Treatment,’ in 1857. In 1859 he published a work, ‘On Deformities of the Spine and on Club Foot.’ He had a large practice to which he was much devoted, never sleeping out of his house for twenty years. In 1833 he married Miss Charlotte Bacon. He died on 28 May 1874.
[Homœopathic World, 1874, ix. 229; British Journal of Homœopathy, 1874, xxxii. 574.]
