beautiful in the King’s dominions. Nor will she bear to hear encomiums of herself, it being a greater affront to praise her before her face, and she resents it more, than if she was to be publicly called jilt or “coquet,” or even by coarser terms of abuse in vogue at our biographer’s period.
We regret to have to state, however, that the proofs of Polly’s “ingenuity, wit, and smart repartees” adduced in the biography are less convincing than the title-page had led us to believe they would be. The sayings attributed to her are not brilliant, nor are they refined, even after due allowance has been made for the freedom of her time. Her verses halt a good deal; and their intellectual qualities do not redeem their mechanical deficiencies. The “remarkable instances of her humanity to the distressed” are comprised in three items: she maintained, it seems, her reputed father, Fenton; she stood godmother to the daughter of a poor tailor’s wife, the child being christened “Polly Peachum;” and in the third case a poor milk-woman married to a black husband, having given birth to twin tawny children, and being too poor to be “provided with gossips at their being baptised,” Polly, who had heard of the business, despatched her maid “to stand godmother for her by proxy, and gave the woman half-a-guinea for an immediate supply, and after the ceremony herself relieved the woman and ordered her to send to her house for such necessaries as she should have occasion for.”
But we stated at the outset that the book we have been quoting was not deserving of high praise; it is indeed more curious than commendable; by no means exhaustive, meriting admiration neither in regard to its conception nor its execution. It is remarkable only as a piece of evidence. That such a work could find a public, could result as the supply answering to a certain sort of demand, testifies curiously to the fact that the town has gone mad about a singer long before our own day, and that the state of feeling of an audience of a past generation assimilates very closely to the excitement of a present public upon a corresponding occasion.
One or two notes, however, we may be permitted to add relative to the play in which Miss Fenton won her fame.
The music of the “Beggars’ Opera” was selected and arranged by John Christopher Pepusch, who was born at Berlin in 1667, the son of a dissenting minister. At the age of fourteen he had been employed to teach the harpsichord to the Prince of Prussia. He came to England soon after the Revolution, and was engaged in the band at Drury Lane Theatre, employing his leisure in pursuing his musical studies and in composing and arranging music for dramatic purposes. In 1713 he obtained the degree of Doctor of Music from the University of Oxford, and was appointed Chapel-master to the Duke of Chandos, at Canons. In 1722 he married an Italian actress, with a fortune of 10,000l., but he still continued his professional occupations. With some other performers he assisted in the plan of the Academy of Ancient Music; and when, in 1724, Bishop Berkeley started the notion of a college at the Bermudas, Pepusch set sail as one of the Professors, but returned to England in consequence of the vessel being wrecked. When public taste pronounced itself unmistakably in favour of what was then considered the “new style” of music of Handel and Bononcini, Pepusch, who had attached himself to more antiquated forms, relinquished composition. In 1737 he was appointed organist to the Charter House, and soon after was made a Fellow of the Royal Society, to whose Transactions he contributed an Account of the Ancient Genera of Music. He lost his wife in 1740, and died in 1752, leaving his manuscripts to the Academy of Ancient Music. He told Dr. Burney that when he was a young man he determined never to go to bed at night till he knew something he did not know in the morning. His most valuable publications were considered to be his edition of Corelli’s sonatas and concertos in score, and a short treatise of his own on harmony, first published by the Earl of Abercorn, one of his pupils, in 1731.
During the season after Miss Fenton’s retirement the “Beggars’ Opera” was performed by a company of children, called the Lilliputians, when we read that, in order “that the childish exhibition might be supported in all its branches, the managers contrived to send a book of the songs across the stage by a flying Cupid to Frederick, Prince of Wales.” The children gave their performance sixteen times; but, in addition, the regular comedians of the theatre seem to have represented the opera forty-three times, Miss Fenton’s character being sustained now by a Miss Warren, now by a Miss Cantrell, neither of whom, however, gained any great fame by her assumption of Polly. For many years the play was repeated regularly, more or less often, according as performers were found competent to undertake the characters. In 1745, three performances of the “Beggars’ Opera” were given by Rich at Covent Garden for the benefit of the soldiers engaged in the suppression of the rebellion. Every comedian gave his services gratis, and the tallow-chandlers presented the candles. Rich stated in the “General Advertiser” that he had paid into the fund of the Veteran Scheme at Guildhall the sum of 602l. 7s, being the profits of the three nights. In 1759, when Mr. Beard played Captain Macheath, and Miss Brent, afterwards Mrs. Pinto, a pupil of Dr. Arne, played Polly, the opera was given for thirty-seven nights successively, and altogether fifty-two nights during the season. The profits were very large, and seriously affected the interests of the rival theatre. “In vain did Garrick,” says Davies, his biographer, “oppose his Ranger and Benedick, his Hamlet and Lear, to Polly Peachum: the public was this season allured by nothing but the power of song and sing-song; Shakespeare and Garrick were obliged to quit the field to Beard and Brent.” A Miss Vincent, two years later, pleased very highly in Polly. Churchill honours both ladies with favourable mention in the “Rosciad.”
Lo! Vincent comes—with simple grace arrayed;
She laughs at paltry arts and scorns parade;
Nature through her is by reflection shown,
Whilst Gay, once more, knows Polly for his own.
****
Let Tommy Arne, with usual pomp of style,
