HENRY AND FRANCES PURCELL
If Lassus deserved the name of the Netherlandish Orpheus, Henry Purcell
deserved the name his "loveing wife Frances Purcell" gave him when she
published after his death a collection of his songs under the name of
"Orpheus Britannicus." The analogy holds good also in the devotion of
these married couples, for Henry willed to Frances the whole of his
property absolutely.
Yet the legend of the cause of his death would verify the old theory
about the joltiness of the course of true love. For Sir John Hawkins
passes along the gossip that Purcell met his death by "a cold which he
caught in the night waiting for admittance into his own house. It is
said that he used to keep late hours, and that his wife had given orders
to his servants not to let him in after midnight; unfortunately he came
home heated with wine from the tavern at an hour later than that
prescribed him, and, through the inclemency of the weather, contracted
a disorder of which he died. If this be true, it reflects but little
honour on Madam Purcell, for so she is styled in the advertisements of
his works; and but ill agrees with those expressions of grief for her
dear lamented husband which she makes use of to Lady Elizabeth Howard in
the dedication of the "Orpheus Britannicus". It seems probable that the
disease of which he died was rather a lingering than an acute one,
perhaps a consumption; and that, for some time at least, it had no way
affected the powers of his mind, since one of the most celebrated of his
compositions, the song 'From Rosy Bowers,' is in the printed book said
to have been the last of his works, and to have been set during that
sickness which put a period to his days."
Hawkins guesses that Purcell was married young, because at the age of
twenty-five he was advertising the sale of his first sonatas at his own
house; also that, musician-like, he left his family dependent upon the
favour of his benefactors, particularly upon the graciousness of his
pupil and patroness, Lady Elizabeth Howard, who placed on his tomb in
Westminster Abbey the famous inscription often credited to Dryden: "Here
lyes Henry Purcell, Esq.; who left this life, and is gone to that
blessed place, where only his harmony can be exceeded."
We now know that Purcell's marriage was either in 1680 or 1681, when he
was twenty-two or twenty-three years old. August 2d, 1682, Purcell's
father, a venerable and distinguished musician and a friend of Pepys,
the diarist, was buried in Westminster Abbey, where later his more
distinguished son was laid. A few days after the elder Purcell's burial,
Henry and his wife came to Westminster Abbey again, for the baptism of a
son new-born. He died in a few months and a third time they came to the
sad old abbey to lay their child in the cloisters there.
The next year, 1683, a second son died, and in 1687 a third boy two
months old was buried in the cloisters of the abbey. This monotonous
return of the hand of death must have embittered the life of these two,
who seem to have remained lovers always. But in May, 1688, a daughter
was born, named Frances after her mother; and she outlived both parents.
She married a poet, when she and her lover were each nineteen, and named
a child Frances after the grandmother. On Sept. 6th, 1689, Henry
Purcell's son Edward was baptised, and he also lived to attain some
distinction as an organist. In 1693 a daughter, Mary Peters, was born.
Two years later, on May 21st, 1695, the young father died--on the eve of
St. Cecilia's Day. At his bedside were his old mother, his young wife,
and the two little children. Purcell was buried under the organ of
Westminster Abbey and the anthems he had composed for the funeral of
Queen Mary were sung at his own. And there he rests near his fellow
musician, Pelham Humphries, who lies, as Runciman says, "by the side of
his younger wife in the Thames-sodden vaults of Westminster Abbey."
Purcell's will, made the very day of his death, was as follows:
"In the name of God, Amen. I, Henry Purcell, of the Citty of Manchester,
gent., being dangerously ill as to the constitution of my body, but in
good and perfect mind and memory (thanks be to God), doe by these
presents publish and declare this to be my last Will and Testament.
"And I do hereby give and bequeath unto my loving Wife, Frances Purcell,
all my Estate both reall and personall of what nature and kind soever,
to her and to her assigns for ever. And I doe hereby constitute and
appoint my said loveing Wife my sole Executrix of this my last Will and
Testament, revokeing all my former Will or Wills. Witnesse my hand and
scale this twentieth first day of November, Annoq. Dni. One thousand six
hundred ninety-five, and in the seventh yeare of the Raigne of King
William the Third, &c.
H. PURCELL."
As to Hawkins's theory that Purcell left his wife in needy
circumstances, Cummings, his biographer, believes the thought refuted by
the will left by the widow herself, who outlived her husband by eleven
years, and on St. Valentine's Day, 1706, was buried at his side. In her
will she says that: "According to her husband's desire she had given
her deare son (Edward) a good education, and she alsoe did give him all
the Bookes of Musicke in generall, the Organ, the double spinett, the
single spinett, a silver tankard, a silver watch, two pair of gold
buttons, a hair ring, a mourning ring of Dr. Busby's, a Larum clock, Mr.
Edward Purcell's picture, handsome furniture for a room, and he was to
be maintained until provided for. All the residue of her property she
gave to her said daughter Frances."
Cummings also assails Hawkins's story that Purcell was dissipated and
caught his death from being locked out. But Runciman objects that if
Purcell had not been dissipated in those days, he would have been called
a Puritan, and says: "I picture him as a sturdy, beef-eating Englishman,
a puissant, masterful, as well as lovable personality, a born king of
men, ambitious of greatness, determined, as Tudway says, to excel every
one of his time."
The love Frances Purcell bore her husband was kept green by her anxiety
for his fame. She was, in her littler way, a Cosima Wagner. In 1696 she
published a collection of harpsichord lessons by her husband; three
editions being sold quickly. The next year she issued ten sonatas and a
"Collection of Ayres." In 1698 she issued (or reissued) the "Orpheus
Britannicus." In all of these she wrote dedications breathing devotion
to her husband. In an ode printed in the second volume of the "Orpheus,"
in 1704, Purcell's personality is thus limned:
"Nor were his Beauties to his Art confin'd
So justly were his Soul and Body join'd
You'd think his Form the Product of his Mind.
A conquering sweetness in his Visage dwelt,
His Eyes would warm, his Wit like lightning melt.
But those must no more be seen, and that no more be felt.
Pride was the sole aversion of his Eye,
Himself as Humble as his Art was High."
Purcell died at the age of thirty-seven--being granted only two years
more of life than Mozart and only six years more than Schubert. He is
the moon of English music and his melodies are as exquisite and as
silvery and as full of enamoured radiance as the tintinnabulations of
the moonbeams themselves. But unfortunately for English music this
beautiful moon, who is the most nearly great of all the composers
England has furnished the world, was speedily obscured in the blinding
glare of the sun of English music which came shouldering up from the
east, and which has not yet sunk far enough in the west to cease from
dazzling the eyes of English music-makers. But of Händel as a lover, we
must postpone the gossip till we have mouthed one of the most delicious
morsels in musical scandal, a choice romance that is said to have
affected Purcell very deeply.
The story concerns the strenuous career of Alessandro Stradella, and
when you read it you will not wonder that it should have made a great
success as an opera, or that it gave Flotow his greatest popularity next
to "Martha," even though its conclusion was made tamely theatrical.