University of Virginia Library

More on Dr. Hoadly's 'Poems Set to Music by Dr. Greene'
by
H. Diack Johnstone

Florimel, or Love's Revenge, a Dramatic Pastoral in two interludes, was the first of six large-scale musical works by Maurice Greene for which the words were written by John Hoadly, sometime Chaplain to the Prince of Wales and youngest son of Bishop Benjamin Hoadly, one of the most celebrated of eighteenth-century Anglican divines. The Bishop is said to have had a particular liking for music and the theatre which, in his calling, he found it impossible to gratify without impropriety; thus it was probably in the drawing room at Farnham Castle, the episcopal seat, that the piece was first performed in 1734. Though it was never done in any of the London theatres, it does seem to have been quite widely performed (in 'still life' as Burney might have said), and no fewer than six manuscript sources survive--which is at least double the number for any other English 'opera' of the period. A facsimile of the earliest and most important of these has recently been issued by Stainer & Bell in their prestigious Music for London Entertainment series.[1] No sooner had it appeared than my attention was drawn to Keith Maslen's article on 'Dr. Hoadly's "Poems Set to Music by Dr. Greene"' in the 1995 issue of this journal (vol. 48, pp. 85-94). By printing cast lists not only for Florimel (or Love's Revenge as Hoadly himself preferred to call it), but also for the various other musico-dramatic pieces in which they collaborated, the article provides valuable new evidence on the performance history of these works. Viewed from the musicological side of the fence, however, there is still a good deal more to be said of some of the personalities involved, and also of Hoadly's other poetic contributions to the English vocal repertoire of the period.

Hoadly came down from Cambridge with an LL.B. in the summer of 1735 and immediately decided to become a clergyman in order that, as the D.N.B. puts it, 'he might avail himself of the rich patronage at his father's disposal'. Five years earlier, Greene had taken a Cambridge doctorate of music and, 'in compliment to his performance' there, had been elected to a purely titular professorship in the subject. It must therefore have been while John Hoadly was still a student at the university that Love's Revenge was written and first performed. Quite how Greene came to be so intimate with

the family--and Benjamin Hoadly, the elder brother (1706-57), was later to serve as an executor of Greene's estate--we do not know, but it was almost certainly through the Bishop, who seems to have been a friend of the composer's father during his own early days as a City parson and Minor Canon of St Paul's.[2] Greene was no doubt a frequent visitor to Farnham Castle, and it was there in May 1737 that he began work on his Service in C. Among other visitors to Farnham during this same period was another friend of the family, William Hogarth, who, commenting on the Hoadlys' passion for amateur theatricals (and John's in particular), says that 'few visitors were ever long in [the] house before they were solicited to accept a part in some interlude or other'.[3]

Exactly who was involved in the 1734 premiere of Love's Revenge we do not know, but I suspect it was an essentially domestic affair in which the parts of Florimel, Myrtillo and Cupid (all trebles) were sung by three of the more accomplished boy choristers from St Paul's Cathedral or the Chapel Royal, and that of the Satyr (a bass) quite possibly by the composer himself, especially since he is known to have sung the part at a later performance of the work given at his own house in Beaufort Buildings just off the Strand. But the cast list of this later performance and also the one which took place at the Apollo Academy are to be found not only in the Otago copy of the 1737 Winchester libretto cited by Maslen: they are also written by hand in another copy of the same edition which is now in the Royal College of Music, London (press-mark XXI.C.IV), the only difference being that there is no mention of 'Mr. Abbott' whose name, in the Otago copy, is scored through and replaced by 'Mr. Mence'. The Rev. John Abbott (bass) died on 18 February 1744 and his place in the Chapel Royal choir was taken by the Rev. Anselm Bayly. The fact that 'Mr. Bailley' figures in this particular cast list along with Benjamin Mence and William Savage, all of whom gained their Chapel Royal appointments in the spring of that same year (1744), suggests that the Apollo Academy performance--in which the Rev. Edward Lloyd evidently sang the part of Cupid--was almost certainly the one referred to in The Daily Advertiser of 11 January 1745 as having taken place the night before.[4]

As for the singers who were involved in the performance at Greene's house, 'Miss Gilbert, afterwards Mrs. Bowes' can be identified as the wife (from 1743?) of George Bowes, a wealthy Whig landowner and popular member of Parliament for Co. Durham (1727-60). The family were generous patrons of the arts, and especially of music, and Greene visited them at their North Country home, Gibside, superbly situated on the heights overlooking the Derwent, near Gateshead, in June 1750.[5] Of 'Miss Ayliffe' and 'Mr Hastings' nothing whatever is known, but since the latter evidently sang the part of Myrtillo, it must almost certainly have been the later version of the work in which all the music for this character was assigned to a countertenor which was done on this particular occasion.

From the engraving of Apollo and his lyre on the title-page of the earliest printed libretto (London, 1734), we may safely infer that the work was taken up by the Academy very shortly after its first performance. Rather surprisingly perhaps--or was it simply that the text was too long?--the words were not included in A Miscellany of Lyric Poems, The Greatest Part written for, And performed in The Academy of Music, Held in the Apollo published in London in 1740; this does, however, contain the text of another joint Greene-Hoadly production, the undated masque 'The Judgment [sic] of Hercules' whose score was last heard of in 1832 (when it was listed in the library sale catalogue of Thomas Greatorex, recently deceased). It is interesting that Hoadly himself calls it 'The Choice of Hercules', whereas Robert Lowth in his versified treatment of the same subject later adapted for setting by Handel in 1751 originally opted for 'Judgment'.[6] The other 'Choice of Hercules' referred to by Maslen (whose remarks are based on the somewhat confused account given by Roger Fiske in his English Theatre Music in the Eighteenth Century) is by Greene's pupil, John Stanley (1712-86), and is actually earlier. The librettist in this case is unknown, but the music was evidently composed somewhere round about 1730,[7] and there is absolutely no reason to suppose it was never performed (or that it was unknown to Greene and Hoadly either for that matter). Though Fiske does not fail to mention 'The Judgment of Hercules' by Shenstone (1741), he appears not to have noticed that there were yet two more poems with the same title, one by Joseph Mitchell published in 1727, the other by Peter Layng in 1748.[8]

Of the two 1745 editions of Love's Revenge, the one printed in London most probably relates to the performance at Greene's Apollo Academy referred to above, the other (with no specified place of publication) to a performance by various members of the Chapel Royal, Westminster Abbey and St Paul's Cathedral choirs under the direction of the composer at Gloucester on 4 September 1745 as part of that year's Three Choirs Festival programme. The work was also done at the Winchester Festival in 1768 and at the Hampshire Music Meeting in 1781, but the only other edition of the libretto was apparently printed for a London performance given by the Castle Society at Haberdashers' Hall on 21 March 1757.

The Greene-Hoadly oratorio Jephtha (1737), likewise survives, musically speaking, in two versions. In one, Jephtha's daughter (unnamed) is cast as a soprano ( or boy treble more likely), and in the other as a countertenor. It is interesting that, in the cast list quoted by Maslen, the part was taken by 'Mrs. Lampe', and that Hoadly himself says the performance took place 'at ye. Academy in the Apollo' since all the evidence hitherto available has suggested that, as with the 1745 performance of Love's Revenge referred to above, the Academy's concerts seem normally to have been all-male affairs. In his Handel: A Documentary Biography (1954), Otto Erich Deutsch refers to a production of the work at the King's Theater in the Haymarket in Lent 1737, but he does not state his source, and no evidence in support of this assertion has yet come to light. 'Mr. Abbott' (who sang the part of Jephtha) was, as has already been noted, one of Greene's colleagues at St Paul's and the Chapel Royal. So too were the two Elders, Messrs. 'Whaley' (Samuel Weely, d. 1743) and (David) 'Cheriton' (d. 1758). In his libretto, Hoadly lays a good deal of emphasis on the notion of Jephtha as Patriot King, in doing so, he no doubt sought to interest and impress his employer, the Prince of Wales (whose Chaplain he became almost immediately after his ordination in December 1735).[9]

As with the masque, The Choice of Hercules, the words only of the oratorio The Force of Truth now survive. According to the Gentleman's Magazine in its 'Memoirs of the Life of the late Dr. John Hoadly' (April 1776, p.165) and repeated verbatim in the Annual Register (xix), the piece was written 'for his friend Dr. Green's academy at the Apollo'. A score and parts, apparently autograph, is listed in the sale catalogue of the library of Greene's pupil, William Boyce, in April 1779, and was last heard of in 1822. Both soloists named by Hoadly in the Otago copy of the libretto have already been identified in connection with the 1745 Academy performance of Love's Revenge. Without the music it is difficult to be certain, but the 'Miss Young' who sang Pleasure in The Choice of Hercules is most likely perhaps to have been Esther, the younger sister of Mrs. Lampe (née Young) who was Virtue on the same occasion. Cecilia Young (1711-89), another member of the same

family, is the only other possible candidate, but she was, by this date, normally singing under her married name as Mrs Arne.

The three-act pastoral opera Phoebe (1747), though musically (and dramatically) a better work than Love's Revenge, was nothing like so successful, and only one public performance is recorded: at a benefit for John Robinson, the organist of Westminster Abbey, in Mr Ogle's Great Room, Dean Street, Soho, on 16 January 1755. That it was also done by the Apollo Academy has hitherto been a matter of conjecture, and Keith Maslen is quite right in assuming 'Mr. Beard' to have been John Beard, the celebrated tenor. Of the other singers named, only Messrs. 'Wasse' and 'Jones' (who evidently took on both female roles) have yet to be identified. Robert Wass is no problem, for he too was a member of the St Paul's, Westminster Abbey and Chapel Royal choirs from 1743-45 until his death in 1764. Who Jones was is more difficult to say, but probably the singer concerned is the little-known David Jones who was appointed a Lay Vicar at the Abbey in May 1743 and died in January 1751.[10]

Two other works by Hoadly, Love's Artifice and The Song of Moses, are also mentioned by Maslen who wonders apropos of the first whether 'it was ever set to music, but only intended to be, and never performed?'. The same question also applies to The Song of Moses. The answer is to be found in a letter from Hoadly to David Garrick dated 27 August 1775 in which he lists his various dramatic works as

• "Love's Revenge" (a printed book) where Florimel is introduced . . .
• " Phoebe," a whole Pastoral Opera of three acts, . . .
• "Love's Artifice," a Mask, from "Don Quixote."
• "The Choice of Hercules," A Mask, set by Dr.G.
• "The Song of Moses," paraphrased for music.
• [and] "The Beggar's Garland," a ballad scene, which I imagine . . . would be a fine thing for Sadler's Wells.[11]

It seems that, a month or so earlier, Hoadly had sent copies of most of these pieces to Garrick,[12] and that Garrick, unaware of the fact that the music took three quarters of an hour to perform, evidently had some idea of including The Choice of Hercules as part of a rather longer entertainment which he was then planning to stage. Also in Garrick's hands were the words of 'my two (unset) pieces' which Hoadly asks him to send on to 'Mr. Linley' in Bath

as soon as may be convenient. These were 'Love's Artifice' and 'The Song of Moses'. The Mr. Linley' referred to is Thomas Linley (1733-95), composer, harpsichordist, concert manager and distinguished teacher of singing, who was then still based in Bath but was shortly to become joint manager of Drury Lane with his son-in-law, Richard Brinsley Sheridan. In a letter to Hoadly dated 22 September 1775, Linley announced his intention of setting both.[13] Though he evidently thought the latter rather better than the former, in the event he never got round to either. He did , however, pass the libretto of 'The Song of Moses' on to his son, Thomas (1756-78), much the most promising young English composer of the age, whose oratorio of the same title was first performed at Drury Lane on 12 March 1777.[14]

By that time, however, Hoadly was dead and Garrick had retired. Towards the end of his Drury Lane career, Garrick was, as Dougald MacMillan points out, 'forced, by the policy of Covent Garden and by the vogue of comic opera, to rely more and more upon musical pieces'.[15] This no doubt explains why he was actively considering The Choice of Hercules. Writing to Garrick again on 10 September 1775, Hoadly also tried to interest him in Love's Revenge, a copy of which, 'hashed and slashed', he enclosed with his letter:

As things turned out, this idea too was destined never to get off the ground.

In the same letter, Hoadly claims to have written the words of the enormously popular song 'The Early Horn' composed, he says, 'for Rich, in the Cambridge stage-coach, [in] 1731' and shortly afterwards set to music by J. E. Galliard whom Hoadly describes as 'a most genteel and knowing composer'.[17]

But this piece (beginning 'With early horn salute the morn that gilds this charming place') was only one of several youthful poetic jeux d'esprit intended for musical setting. The Hoadly obituary memoir in the Gentleman's Magazine also mentions 'the famous ballad Fair Sally lov'd a bonny seaman' set by Greene in 1736,[18] and 'several other pieces printed in Dodsley's poems, vol. v. p. 258, &c.'.

The reference here is to volume five of A Collection of Poems . . . By Several Hands published by Robert Dodsley in 1758 where, on pp. 258-268, is to be found 'Kambromyomaxia: or the Mouse-Trap; Being a Translation of Mr. Holdsworth's Muscipula, 1737. By ****.' Though anonymous on the page, the author is identified in a list of 'Names . . . not [otherwise] mentioned in the Six Volumes of Miscellanies', and prefixed to volume one, as 'Dr. Hoadley' [sic]. In the 1782 edition (with notes by Isaac Reed),[19] the words are actually ascribed to 'Dr. John Hoadly', while the next several poems in both--pp. 269-288 in the 1758 edition--are 'By the Same'. First come the 'Verses under the Prints of Mr. Hogarth's Rake's Progress, 1735'--one for each of the eight plates--then three poems headed 'On the Friendship of two young Ladies, 1730', 'Chloe's unknown Likeness, 1738,' and 'The Bird of Passage, 1749'. These are followed by six lines of French verse 'said to be fixed on the Gate at the Louvre at Paris. 1751' (with translations into both English and Latin), and then (on pp. 280-281) 'Chloe resolved. A Ballad. Set to Music by Dr. Green. 1743'.[20] Next we have an 'Epilogue to Shakespear's first Part of King Henry IV, acted by Young Gentlemen at Mr. Newcome's School at Hackney,

1748',[21] a 'Prologue to Comus. Performed at the Benefit of the General Hospital at Bath, 1756; And spoken by Miss Morrison, in the Character of a Lady of Fashion', and then, finally, eleven 'Epigrams from Martial' dedicated, like the lines quoted by Maslen in n.8, to James ('Hermes') Harris of Salisbury. Also identified as John Hoadly in the 1782 edition is the 'J.H.' who, on p. 248, is said to have written the lines headed 'To the Rev. Mr. J.S. 1731'.[22]

According to Bishop Percy in his MS list of 'Concealed Names &c.' appended to each volume of his copy of the 1758 edition, there are also two items by 'Chancellor [i.e., John] Hoadley' in volume six. One is the poem on p. 229 headed 'To Chloe, written on the Author's Birth Day', the other the piece entitled 'The Indolent' on pp. 294-295. While most of Percy's Hoadly attributions are confirmed by the editor of the 1782 edition, this latter one, curiously, is not. 'To Chloe', on the other hand, was also printed in volume three, and there appears as the last but one of another group of verses which Thomas Percy likewise maintained was the work of Chancellor Hoadly. [23] In this he was evidently supported by Walpole,[24] although the first of these poems (and by implication all the others in the same group) was quite unambiguously assigned to brother Benjamin in 1782. Which of the two was actually responsible is anyone's guess, but, in view of John Hoadly's longstanding association with the composer (who also set some of these lines as well), the chances are that Percy and Walpole together are more likely to have been right than Reed.[25]

Much the most important of these are six cantatas (pp. 255-265 in the 1758 edition) entitled 'The Trophy' and dedicated, in the wake of Culloden, 'To the Honour of his Royal Highness William, Duke of Cumberland; Expressing the just Sense of a grateful Nation, in the several Characters of The Volunteer, The Poet, The Painter, The Musician, The Shepherd, [and] The Religious'. Greene's music is said to have been written in 1746, but if so, it too has long since disappeared. Also set by Greene is the song (on pp. 271-273) beginning 'To silent groves, where weeping yew With sadly mournful cypress join'd'.[26] This is the last of the Hoadly group of poems in Dodsley's original

third volume. Between this and 'The Trophy' lies the afore-mentioned 'To Chloe', here said (p. 270) to have been 'Written on my Birth-Day, 1734', and two further items. One, 'On a Bay-Leaf, pluck'd from Virgil's Tomb, near Naples', is dated 1736, the other, 'The Marriage of the Myrtle and the Yew. A Fable. To Delia, about to marry beneath herself', 1744. The overall sequence therefore is chronological, from the most recent (1746) to the earliest [1731]. By no means all these poems were intended for music, but some were, and those eight in Dodsley's volumes three and five which were set by Greene, together with 'Fair Sally,' must surely have been among the missing leaves of the Otago Hoadly volume which Dr. Maslen describes.

Postscript

Since this volume went to press, I have learned that the huge collection of papers belonging to James ('Hermes') Harris (1709-80)--formerly in the private library of the Earl of Malmesbury, and briefly mentioned by Clive Probyn in the Bibliography to his Harris biography of 1991 (The Sociable Humanist, p. 355)--has now been placed in the Hampshire County Record Office in Winchester, and will shortly become available to scholars wishing to explore the wealth of new material it contains. Included in the collection are no fewer than 32 letters from John Hoadly to Harris. Most have nothing to do with music, but there are two which are directly relevant to three works (The Choice of Hercules, The Force of Truth, and The Song of Moses) discussed above; a third relates to the availability of performing parts of Florimel which Harris was, it appears, planning to perform in Salisbury sometime in the winter season of 1743-44, while a fourth not quoted here (Malmesbury Collection, 9M73/G485/9) would seem to confirm Hoadly's authorship of the set of six cantatas ('The Trophy') mentioned above (and sent to Greene for setting sometime prior to 28 October 1746). The Harris papers also contain a great many references to Handel, music and theatrical performances generally; an edition of these (scheduled for publication by the Oxford University Press) is being prepared by the County Archivist, Miss Rosemary Dunhill, and Professor Donald Burrows, who very kindly drew the correspondence to my attention. I am also greatly indebted to the Earl of Malmesbury for permission to reproduce the substance of these three letters here. In the transcriptions which follow, standard eighteenth-century contractions like 'ye.', 'yt.', 'wch.', and 'wd.' have been silently expanded into 'the', 'that', 'which'- and 'would' respectively.

The first letter (Malmesbury Collection, 9M73/G485/2) is dated Wolvesey House, Winchester, 17 December 1739, and is addressed, some what teasingly, to 'My dear Lord Harris' (in Salisbury). It reads:

The second (9M73/G906) was written on 5 November 1743 and sent to Harris from Hoadly's fashionable London residence in Grosvenor Street. As is apparent from the letter, Greene was at that very moment involved in the composition of The Force of Truth. The work referred to in the first paragraph, however, is the libretto of The Song of Moses, an autograph copy of which Hoadly includes with the letter. The postscript is followed by the same 'Sonnet in the Manner of Milton' as also appears in the Otago manuscript and is quoted by Keith Maslen in his article in vol. 48, p. 90 (n. 10); but for a couple of very minor changes in the text and the usual differences of spelling, punctuation and capitalization, the two are virtually identical.

The third letter (9M73/G485/4) was sent from Winchester just a month earlier (8 October 1743) to inform Harris that he [Hoadly] had