Notes
- On the pastoral environment constructed at Vauxhall Gardens, see B. Joncus, ‘‘His Spirit is in Action Seen’: Milton, Mrs Clive and the Simulacra of the Pastoral in Comus’, Eighteenth-Century Music, II (2005), 7–40.
- In defining the pastoral, Paul Alpers draws attention to the ‘figure of the shepherd’ who ‘is felt to be representative’ and whose themes are ‘sounded on the ‘poor pipe’ of the pastoral’. P. Alpers, What is Pastoral? (Chicago, Ill., 1996), 50–51.
- Pastoral myth and poetry from classical antiquity depicted a time and place in which men and women lived in harmony with nature and natural instincts. This model become central to Italian Renaissance cultural production, particularly in music; a range of vocal genres, from madrigal through to early opera, persistently reformulated the pastoral as a utopian sphere in which protagonists celebrated nature and amorous passions, whose exploration the pastoral realm facilitated. See G. Gerbino, Music and the Myth of Arcadia in Renaissance Italy (New York, 2009). On the transmission of Italian Renaissance pastoral drama to England, see E. Harris, ‘The Pastoral in England’, Handel and the Pastoral Tradition (1980), 94–141. On the pastoral music of London’s commercial theatres — on whose practices pleasure-garden music drew — see T. L. Neufeldt, ‘The Social and Political Aspects of the Pastoral Mode in Musico-Dramatic Works, London, 1695–1728’ (Unpublished PhD thesis, University of Toronto, 2006).
- Poggioli R., The Oaten Flute: Essays on Pastoral Poetry and the Pastoral Ideal (Cambridge, 1975), 14. Poggioli points out that ‘happiness means in pastoral terms always one and the same thing: the fulfilment of the passion of love, the consummation of man’s erotic wishes’. He describes how ‘institutions […] try to confine that winged creature [the lover]’, yet ‘the pastoral protests against this situation’. See ‘Pastoral Love’, in Poggioli, The Oaten Flute, 42–63, esp. 42–43. Gerbino emphasizes how, in Italian Renaissance music, pastoral settings became ‘a symbolic space within which to play oneself’ within court culture, and ‘a drama of human desire’. See Gerbino, Music and the Myth of Arcadia, 4–6.
- Defoe D., A Tour thro’ the Whole Island of Great Britain […] the Fourth Edition (1748), vol. 2, 164.
- Letter to Henry Seymour Conway, 29 June 1744: ‘You must be informed that every night constantly I go to Ranelagh, which has totally beat Vauxhall. Nobody goes anywhere else; everybody goes there’. W. S. Lewis (ed.), The Yale Edition of Horace Walpole’s Correspondence (London and New Haven, Conn., 1974), vol. 37, 164.
- For references, see full quotations below.
- Until the Restoration, English poets emphasized the moral characteristic of Virgil’s Eclogues, which, together with Theocritus’s Idylls, Alpers credits with ‘inventing the formula which established the pastoral as poetic kind’. Alpers, What is Pastoral?, 138. Pastoral dramas set to music failed to take hold, while English pastoral poetry tended to be characterized by indigenous elements. From the end of the seventeenth century, poets engaged anew with the pastoral, responding to the opposing views of the French critics, René Rapin and Bernard la Bovier de Fontanelle. Debate centred on whether contemporary poets should follow the ancients or allow reason to turn Golden Age shepherds into English swains. Contradictory treatments and the pastoral’s codification led to ‘anti-pastorals’ or ‘mock pastorals’, most famously by Jonathan Swift (‘Description of the Morning’, 1709), John Gay (The Shepherd’s Week, 1714), and Lady Mary Wortly Montagu (Town’s Eclogues, 1716). See: James E. Congleton, Theories of Pastoral Poetry in England, 1684–1798 (Gainesville, 1952), 39–71; and D. Fairer, ‘Persistence, Adaptations and Transformation in Pastoral and Georgic poetry’, in J. Richetti (ed.), The Cambridge History of English Literature, 1660–1780 (Cambridge, 2005), 259–77.
- The Ranelean Religion Displayed […] Containing the Reasons assign’d by the Raneleans for abolishing Christianity, together with a true Copy of their New Liturgy (1750), 9.
- To make the Rotunda usable during the Lenten season, a four-faced fireplace was installed in the central pillar.
- The Agreeable Historian; or, The Compleat English Traveller (1746), vol. 2, 617: ‘Near this Hospital is Ranelagh-House formerly the Seat of the Earl of Ranelagh, but now converted into a Rendezvous for the Musical and the Gay; a splendid Ampitheatre [sic] being built in the Gardens, in the Form of the famous Rotunda, once the Pantheon, at Rome, where Concerts of Vocal and Instrumental Music are performed almost every Night in the Summer Season’. See also the announcements of January 1742 comparing Ranelagh’s ‘magnificent Temple’ with the ‘Rotunda at Rome’, and Elizabeth Carter’s letter of 1 June 1742, in which she identifies the Rotunda with ‘all the pomp and splendour of a Roman amphitheatre’. Both sources are cited in M. Sands, Invitation to Ranelagh, 1742–1803 (1946), 17, 42.
- Because building lagged behind schedule, the Rotunda first opened for breakfasting on 5 April 1742, and was opened officially with a visit by King George II at 11 a.m. on 24 May 1742. See Daily Advertiser (25 May 1742); cited in a letter to Horace Mann, 26 May 1742, in W.S. Lewis, W. H. Smith, and G. L. Lam (eds), The Yale Edition of Horace Walpole’s Correspondence (London and New Haven, Conn., 1955), vol. 17, 434, note 2.
- A Description of the Ranelagh Rotundo [sic] and Gardens (1762), 10.
- Ibid., 11–12. This passage describes how ‘above eight triumphal arches was the orchestra […] and several musical instruments are painted round it’.
- Gentleman’s Magazine, XII (August 1742), 419 [reprinted from the Champion (5 August 1742), 424].
- Daily Advertiser (8 Apr 1743).
- A Description, 14–15.
- Daily Post (22 Feb 1743): ‘Ranelagh House. Yesterday there was a great Resort of Nobility and Gentry at the Breakfasting; where every Person seem’d to be delighted with the Alterations in the Gardens and Amphitheatre’. Compare this with the announcement in the Daily Advertiser (8 Apr 1743): ‘We hear the oratorio is […] to be performed […] as soon as the new Orchestra is completed’.
- The Agreeable Historian, 617.
- Converting historical to modern costs is difficult. Calculations vary, because types of cost differed widely; for instance, housing was relatively cheap, but food was expensive. Judith Milhous suggests that a multiplier between 100 and 500 for original into modern prices is the best approximation [J. Milhous, private communication (26 Apr 2008)]. Her suggestion is based on the findings in R. D. Hume, ‘The Economics of Culture in London, 1660–1740’, Huntington Library Quarterly, LXIX (2006), 487–533. Using this measure would mean that a one-shilling entry fee at Ranelagh represents between £5 and £25 in 2010 terms. According to the online resource Measuring Worth, one shilling in 1742 would be worth £72·40 in 2008, based on average earnings — or £7·53, based on the retail price index. Part of the problem would seem to be the divergence of social economies across centuries: ‘value’, being abstract and context-dependent, is not a historical constant. See Measuring Worth: About Us: <http://www.measuringworth.com/aboutus.html> [accessed 26 Sep 2010].
- A Description, 18.
- ‘The Beau Monde at Ranelagh Rehearsal’, British Magazine, II (1747), 198–201, on 199.
- A Description, 18.
- Advertisements for breakfasts at two shillings appeared from February 1743, as quoted above. For an early advertisement of breakfast at 2s. 6d., see Public Advertiser (29 Mar 1756): ‘Ranelagh House will be opened Tomorrow for Breakfasting. Each Person paying Two Shillings and Six-pence. Tea, Coffee & included’.
- See, for instance, Daily Post (22 Feb 1743): ‘On Thursday next, being the 24th Instant, will be a public Rehearsal of the Musick for the ensuing Season, when the Breakfasting will be in the Amphitheatre and the House. Each Person to pay Two Shillings at the Gate. Breakfasting included’.
- Defoe, A Tour, vol. 2, 164: ‘built by the late Earl of Ranelagh […] the Mansion is now turned into a Breakfasting-House’.
- A Description, 20.
- Penny London Post or The Morning Advertiser (17 Jun 1747).
- Universal Chronicle or Weekly Gazette (19 May 1759).
- Unlike the breakfasts, the ‘routs’ of the evening were only briefly interrupted in 1754, when a licence for concerts was withdrawn for one season (Sands, Invitation to Ranelagh, 64). Sands notes that the Act for ‘regulating places of public entertainment and punishing persons keeping disorderly houses took effect December 1st 1752’ but was only enforced at Ranelagh in 1754. According to Sands, by November 1754, Ranelagh had recovered its licence. Notice of the withdrawal of the licence appeared in the spring: ‘Ranelagh House April 8, 1754. The Proprietors of this Place having been refused a Licence for Musical Entertainments, as formerly, humbly beg Leave to offer the Nobility and Gentry a Subscription for six Breakfasts without Musick, at One Guinea each Subscriber for a Ticket, which will admit two Persons’; see newspaper clipping (19) in A Collection of Tickets, Pamphlets, MS. Notes, Engraved Views and Portraits, Music, and Extracts and Cuttings from Books and Periodicals relating to Ranelagh Gardens, originally made by Jacob Henry Burn (1743–1841), British Library, Cup.401.k.8.
- A Description, 15. The formulation ‘best performers’ was used also to puff Ranelagh’s concerts. See, for example: ‘The second Night there will be a Grand Concert of Musick, both Vocal and Instrumental […] The Vocal Part will be perform’d by Miss Isabella Young […] the other Parts by the best Performers’ [London Evening Post (22 Jul 1755)].
- A Description, 15–16.
- General Advertiser (29 May 1744): ‘A Large Number of Silver Tickets for Ranelagh-Gardens are to be Lett every Day, at Forrest’s Coffee-House, near Charing-Cross. Note. Each Ticket carries in Two Persons to every Evening Entertainment during the Summer Season’.
- Daily Advertiser (27 Aug 1744): ‘To the Subscribers of Ranelagh House and Amphitheatre: Whereas by your first Article you are entitled to a Free-Ticket admitting two Persons to every Entertainment, Ridottos excepted, not exceeding six in a Season’.
- Whitehall Evening Post or London Intelligencer (19 May 1750).
- This is the price range in a series of newspaper cuttings — whose sources are not always identified — of benefit advertisements between 1745 and 1770 in A Collection of Tickets, British Library, Cup.401. k.8.
- See the series of announcements for ‘the Benefit of the Marine Society’ of 8 June 1757, in the Public Advertiser (27 May, 7 Jun, 9 Jun, 17 Jun, 18 Jun), and the reports about this benefit in the London Chronicle (9 Jun and 16 Jun 1757). Another account recorded the audience number and box-office receipts: ‘We hear there were 2200 People on Thurs Night last at Ranelagh, and the Receipt of the House amounted to 570 l. and upwards, for the Benefit of the Marine Society’ [London Evening Post (9 Jun 1757)].
- A Description, 34–35:‘Waiters are numerous, alert and obliging; but their recompence [sic] depends on the generosity the company whom they attend; except a distribution of the profits arising from one night’s performance, and this is generally the last of the season, and is commonly called the Waiters Benefit-night; admitance [sic] for that is only one shilling, tea and coffee are not included; but wine, cakes &c. are sold to all who chuse to call for them’.
- A Description, 34: ‘To prevent any offensive admittance of servants, either by mistake or favour, the proprietors have lately been at the expence [sic] of erecting an handsome and convenient amphitheatre, with good seats for their reception only; it is situated in the most proper place, being in the coachway leading up to Ranelagh-House, and at such a distance, that the servants can answer the instant they are called which prevents a great deal of trouble and confusion’.
- Daily Gazetteer (17 Feb 1743).
- Ibid.
- ‘The Beau Monde at Ranelagh Rehearsal’, British Magazine, II (1747), 199.
- Universal Spectator and Weekly Journal (22 May 1742) (emphasis original).
- General Advertiser (30 Apr 1745): ‘At Hussey’s Shop at the Upper End of the Long Walk, leading to Ranelagh House; Gentlemen and Ladies may be furnished with all sorts of Masquerade Habits; likewise all Manner of Venetian and Silk Masques. Mr Hussey has likewise a Shop, joining Ranelagh-House, where Gentlemen and Ladies (who would not be incommoded by coming in their Dresses in Coaches and Chairs) may be accommodated by a Variety of Habits’.
- ‘Song 136: The Masquerade’, in The Bull-Finch. Being a Choice Collection of the Newest and most Favourite English Songs most of which have been sett to music and sung at the Public Theatres & Gardens (1755), 99.
- ‘At the classic eighteenth-century masquerade […] a distinctly ungenteel liberty was the goal: liberty from every social, erotic, and psychological constraint’. T. Castle, Masquerade and Civilisation: The Carnivalesque in Eighteenth-Century English Culture and Fiction (1986), 53. In this evocative study, Castle sifts through a wealth of testimony and evidence to illuminate the imaginative play unleashed by masquerades. See especially the chapters ‘The Masquerade and Eighteenth-Century England’ and ‘Travesty and the Fate of the Carnivalesque’, at 1–51 and 52–109, respectively.
- ‘The Beau Monde at Ranelagh Rehearsal’, British Magazine, II (1747), 200.
- Ranelagh. A Poem (1777), 1, 8.
- ‘The Beau Monde at Ranelagh Rehearsal’, British Magazine, II (1747), 199–201.
- Ranelagh. A Poem, 4. Its two lines quoted above (beginning ‘All ranks’) are also printed on the title page of this publication.
- Letter to Henry Seymour Conway, 29 Jun 1744, in W. S. Lewis (ed.), Yale Edition of Horace Walpole’s Correspondence (1974), vol. 37, 164.
- Defoe, A Tour, vol. 2, 164.
- ‘The Beau Monde at Ranelagh Rehearsal’, British Magazine, II (1747), 199.
- For information on ballad-opera production, see Ballad Operas Online at <http://www.odl.ox.ac. uk/balladoperas/>. Hosted by the Oxford Digital Library and funded by the John Fell OUP Research Fund, this online resource collates data from all known ballad operas either recorded in the Burney Collection of Newspapers or published in editions held in UK libraries.
- ‘To the Reader. / Accept of these ballads, dear Sir, from a Friend’. The Bacchanalian: or, Choice Spirits Feast. Containing all the most Celebrated new Songs, and Favourite Airs, Duetts, Cantatas, &c. sung at the Theatres, Vauxhall, Ranelagh [...] With Directions for Singing (1750), iii.
- Mr Town, Connoisseur, LII (12 June 1755), 427–31 (emphasis original).
- Alpers maintains that, in Virgil’s Eclogues, ‘the herdsman emerged as representative, both of the poet and of all humans’. Alpers, What is Pastoral?, 138.
- Pleasure-garden ballads belong to what William Empson has called the ‘Covert Pastoral’. Rather than making, as in the Renaissance tradition, ‘simple people express strong feelings […] in learned’ verses to combine and to ‘use the best of both parts’, eighteenth-century English writers sometimes mythologized members of lower ranks to represent social ideals to the body politic. W. Empson, Some Versions of Pastoral: A Study of the Pastoral Form of Literature (1995), 13–23 (first published 1935). The ballads of pleasure gardens, with their uniform depiction of nature as a backdrop to amorous sentiments, were probably part of what Samuel Johnston castigated as numberless ‘imitators’ whose verses failed to enlarge the reader’s knowledge ‘with a single view of nature not produced before’. Cited in Congleton, Theories of Pastoral Poetry, 103.
- See D. Heartz, Music in European Capitals: The Galant Style, 1720–1780 (New York and London, 2003), 16–24.
- For a description of galant-style musical schemata that were developed and reworked by composers and performers across Europe, see R. O. Gjerdingen, Music in the Galant Style (New York, 2007).
- Advertisements and iconography, when compared with printed music (in which original scoring was typically omitted), are often more informative about the instruments used at Ranelagh concerts. French horns especially were relied on for outdoor music and indoor concerts. For instance, one could hear ‘French Horns during the Breakfasting’ [Daily Gazetteer (17 Feb 1743)]. A later advertisement that week touted ‘French Horns, and Mr [John] Parry, the famous Harper, to perform during Breakfasting’ [Daily Post (22 Feb 1743)]. According to another report, ‘Their Royal Highnesses were pleased to stay after the Concert was over till 11 o’Clock, to hear several favourite Airs performed by four French Horns’ [Daily Advertiser (25 Jun 1744)]. The Jubilee Ball of 1749 (discussed below) announced that ‘in several of the Avenues of the Garden will be French-Horns, Kettle-Drums, and other Martial Musick, playing the whole Time’ [London Gazetteer (22 May 1749)].
- Greene M., ‘Fair Sally lov’d a Bonny Seaman. The Bonny Seaman’ (1740?), British Library, G.316. d.(147).
- de Fesch W., ‘Mutual Love’ (1750?), British Library, H.1994.c.(24.) Its verses were published earlier as ‘Mutual Love. By Mr Larken’, in Universal Magazine, II (1748), 38.
- Defoe, A Tour, vol. 2, 164.
- ‘The Evening Lessons. Being the First and Second Chapters of the Books of Entertainment’, in The Summer Miscellany: or, A Present for the Country (1742), 44 (italics original).
- ‘A Letter from a Hottentot of Distinction’, in The Ranelean Religion Displayed […] Containing the Reasons assign’d by the Raneleans for abolishing Christianity, together with a true Copy of their New Liturgy (1750), v (italics original) (cited above, note 6).
- Ibid., 9–11, ‘Reasons for Abolishing Christianity’.
- A collection of sermons and public speeches appeared as Jubilee Masquerade Balls, at Ranelagh Gardens, a Bad Return for the Merciful Deliverance from the Late Earthquakes (1750). This was reprinted (as a so-called ‘second edition’) under the title Ranelagh Masquerade Jubilee Balls, A Bad return for Late Deliverances, and an Omen of Greater Impending Judgments (1750).
- Dame Ranelagh’s Remonstrance in Behalf of Herself and her Sisters (1750), 2–3.
- Ibid. 12.
- Public Ledger or the Daily Register of Commerce and Intelligence (1 Feb 1760).
- ‘The School of Impudence: or, An Adventure at Ranelagh Gardens. Oxford, April 25, 1750’, in C. Smart (ed.), Student, or The Oxford Monthly Miscellany, vol. IV (1750), 144–45.
- In ‘To Mr Fitz-Adam. Thursday, March 20, 1755’, a guardian expresses anxiety about his three daughters’ virtue as they prepare for a masquerade; in E. Moore, Lord Chesterfield, R.O. Cambridge, et al. (eds), The World. By Adam Fitz-Adam, vol. III (1755), 695–97 (no. 116). This was followed by L. Sterne, Tristram Shandy at Ranelaugh. Containing some Remarkable Transactions that passed between that Gentleman and Lady (1760).
- Love at First Sight; or, The Gay in a Flutter. Being a Collection of Advertisements, chiefly comic, Directed to and from Vauxhall, Ranelagh, Marybon, [sic] Cuper’s, and other Gardens, both Public and Private, the Opera-House, both the Theatres (1750), 48, 95, 108, 130–31, 205–6.
- King T., Love at First Sight: A Ballad Farce […] As performed at the Theatre-Royal in Drury-Lane (1763).
- Anonymous, Ye Belles and ye Flirts. Address’d to the Ladies, Sung by Mr Beard (c. 1750), British Library, H.1652.vv.(2.). The verses were reprinted in, among others: ‘Poetical Essays in September 1754’, in I. Kimber (ed.), London Magazine; or, Gentleman’s Monthly Intelligencer, VIII (1754), 423; The Bacchanalian: or, Choice Spirits Feast, 93–94; The Bull-Finch. Being a Choice Collection of the Newest and Most favourite English Songs (1755), 29–30; and R. Dodsley (ed.), A Collection of Poems in Four Volumes. By Several Hands (1755), vol. 4, 176–77.
- Advertisements rarely detailed the music programmes at pleasure gardens. Knowledge of what music was heard at Ranelagh must be gleaned from scattered newspaper reports or announcements, titles of airs published (as ‘Sung by Mr Beard at Ranelagh’) — singly, or in collections, periodicals, miscellanies, newspapers, etc. — and announcements of music published but now lost. Beard’s Ranelagh repertory included (all shelfmarks refer to the British Library collection): ‘Oh What had I ado for to Marry. Hooly and Fairly’ (1745?), G.310.(224.); W. Boyce, The Non-Pareil (‘Though Chloe’s out of Fashion’) (1745?), H.1994.c.(14.); M. Festing, Six English Songs and a Dialogue with a Duet sung at Ranelagh House by Mr Beard and Mrs Storer (1749), in A Collection of Tickets, British Library, Cup.401.k.8; ‘Hebe I left with a Cautious Design’ (1750?), G.305.(270.); ‘That Jenny’s my Friend’ (1750?), G.312.(79.); M. Festing, A Collection of English Cantatas and Songs. Sung by Mr Beard at Ranelagh House; R. Davies, Hobbinol, a New Song (‘Young Hobbinol, the blithest Swain’), (1750?), H.1994.c.(19.); and ‘I made Love to Kate’, Universal Magazine, XXV (1759), 374.
- Ye Virgins who do Listen. The Unnatural Parent, or the Virgin’s last Resolve. Sung by Mr Beard at Ranelagh (1750?), British Library, G.314.(26).
- Letter of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu to Lady Pomfret, November 1738: ‘Lady Harriet Herbert [has] furnished the tea-tables here with fresh tattle for this last fortnight. I was one of the first informed of her adventure by Lady Gage, who was told that morning by a priest, that she had desired him to marry her the next day to Beard, who sings in the farces at Drury-lane […] I told her [Lady Gage] honestly, that since the lady was capable of such amours, I did not doubt if this was broke off she would bestow her person and fortune on some hackney-coachman and chairman; and that I really saw no method of saving her from ruin, and her family from dishonour, but by poisoning her’ (italics original). The editor notes that ‘In his Diary Egmont gossiped that Lady Henrietta’s brother […] ‘told her that her lover had the pox, and that she would be disappointed of the only thing, which was her lust […] But there is no prudence below the girdle’ (iii.4)’. R. Halsband (ed.), The Complete Letters of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, vol. 2, 1721–1751 (Oxford, 1966), 127–28.
- Conflicting representations of masculinity were rife on the eighteenth-century London stage. These included the effeminized, yet (hetero)sexually rapacious fop, the rake, and the sentimental hero. While patriotic rhetoric identified the Briton with so-called male virtues — rationality, courage, virility, and independence — those fostering politeness looked to the refined woman to curb male impulses. Homosociability featured heavily in the privileged male’s interactions, and lines blurred between homosocial, homoerotic and homosexual exchanges, as discourses around ‘the molly’ show. See, among others: S. Raven, ‘Eighteenth-Century Masculinity and the Construction of an Ideal’ (Unpublished PhD thesis, University of Sussex, 2000); T. Hitchcock and M. Cohen (eds), English Masculinities, 1660–1800 (1999), which includes an extensive list of further reading on the volume’s topic; and L. Colley, Britons: Forging the Mation, 1707–1837, rev. edn (London and New Haven, Conn., 2009), 242–88.
- Music scholars have identified Beard primarily with Handel. During his lifetime, however, Beard was most celebrated as a performer of British musical theatre works, which today are largely forgotten. See B. Joncus, ‘John Beard’, in D. Vickers (ed.), The Cambridge Handel Encyclopedia (Cambridge, 2009). By the mid-1740s, Beard’s most popular roles were Lord Loverule in The Devil to Pay, Macheath in The Beggar’s Opera, Leander in Henry Fielding’s The Mock Doctor, and the singing Bacchanale in Thomas Arne’s Comus (after John Milton’s libretto). Eighteenth-century theatre historians seldom mention Handel in connection with Beard’s career. For example, according to Thomas Davies, Beard’s most notable triumph was his appearance at Covent Garden — then under Beard’s management — in Thomas Arne’s English opera Artaxerxes (1762). T. Davies, Memoirs of the Life of David Garrick, Esq. Interspersed with Characters and anecdotes of his Theatrical Contemporaries […] Fourth Edition, vol. 2 (1784), 67. On Galliard’s air, composed originally for the pantomime The Royal Chace (1736), Burney observed, ‘‘With early horn’ was long the delight of every play-house and public place in the kingdom. Beard and [Thomas] Lowe hardly ever appeared on the stage, without being called upon to sing it’. C. Burney, A General History of Music, vol. 4 (1776–1789), 639. Ian Bostridge has recorded this song on Beard, Borosini, Fabri: Three Baroque Tenors, EMI Classics 6 26864 2.
- Because of the sketchiness of newspaper announcements, identification of Beard’s singing partners is vague. Notices in the General Advertiser show that Beard sang with Giulia Frasi in three breakfast concert series (unusually, the first series ran from late November to mid-December 1748; the second from February to April 1749; and the third from February to March 1750). Sands’ list of sopranos active at Ranelagh coincides roughly with other occasional advertisements and with dates of published music bearing the performers’ names. Beard sang with Mrs Storer (c. 1752), Miss Stevenson (c. 1755), and Catherine de Fourmantelles (1758), who was Laurence Sterne’s amour propre. Sands, Invitation to Ranelagh, 38–68. Beard also performed with ‘Miss Young’ (presumably Isabella Young) c. 1757, and may have done so with Charlotte Brent (1760).
- Beard J., Tom loves Mary passing well. Cross Purposes. Sung by Mr Beard at Ranelaugh Gardens (1748?), British Library, I.530(157).
- ‘The Beau Monde at Ranelagh Rehearsal’, British Magazine, II (1747), 199.
- Introduction, The Ladies Complete Pocket-Book (1762). Volumes were issued in 1753, 1758, 1760, 1762, 1769, 1770, 1778, 1779, 1780, and 1781.
- The Bull-Finch […] the Newest and most Favourite English songs […] at the Public Theatres & Gardens (1746); The Songster’s Delight […] All the Songs, sung this Season, at Vauxhall, Ranelagh, Sadlers Wells, &c. by Mr Beard […] Miss Young, &c (1750?); The Wreath […] Two Hundred new Songs […] by the most eminent performers, at Vauxhall, Ranelagh […] Publick Places of Diversion (1752); Sappho. A New Collection of Songs […] at the Public Theatres and Gardens. Being a proper supplement to The Bullfinch (Dublin, 1753); The Myrtle […] Two Hundred of the newest and best English and Scotch songs […] sung by Mr Beard […] and others, at the Publick Theatres and Gardens (1755); Anonymous, The Apollo: or, The Muses Choice […] the most celebrated New Songs, Sung at Ranelagh, Vauxhall […] &c (1759); The Warblers Delight: or, English Harmony […] Favourite Songs, Duets, Catches, Airs, and Cantatas […] Sung by Mr Beard, Mr Lowe […] at the Theatres, Ranelagh […] and other Public Places of Entertainment, Private Concerts, &c (1765?).
- ‘Song 136: The Masquerade’, in The Bull-Finch (1755), 99.
- London Gazetteer (25 Apr 1749): ‘Tomorrow, being the 26th Instant, being the day between the Thanks-giving and the Fireworks will be A Jubilee Ball, After the Venetian Manner. The Amphitheatre to be illuminated the whole Time; the Doors opened at Three o’Clock in the Afternoon; the Sideboards at Five, and to be shut up at Nine’. The ball was held to honour the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, celebrated elaborately at Vauxhall Gardens with a public rehearsal of Handel’s Fireworks Music on 21 April, and for the royal family at Green Park on 27 April. [On these events, see D. Hunter, ‘Rode the 12,000? Counting Coaches, People and Errors en route to the Rehearsal of Handel’s Music for the Royal Fireworks at Spring Gardens Vauxhall in 1749’, London Journal, 37:1 (2011), 13–26].
- Letter to Horace Mann, 3 May 1749, in W. S. Lewis, W. H. Smith and G. L. Lam (eds), Horace Walpole’s Correspondence (London and New Haven, Conn., 1960), vol. 20, 46.
- The World in Disguise: or Masks All. A new Ballad, Sung by Mr Beard, at the Ball (after the Venetian Manner) at Ranelagh House. To the Tune of Sing tantarara Fools All (1749). The last stanza runs: ‘Thus Life is no more than a Round of Deceit, / Each Neighbour will find that his next is a Cheat; / But if, oh ye Mortals, these Tricks ye pursue; / You at last cheat yourselves — and the Devil cheats you’.
- Discussed in T. Castle, The Female Thermometer: Eighteenth-Century Culture and the Invention of the Uncanny (New York and Oxford, 1995), 89–91.
- See Hunter, ‘Rode the 12,000’.
- A Poetical Epistle to Miss C — H — Y (1749).
- For instance, the satirical etching, Miss Ch-ly in the Character of Iphegenia [sic] at the Grand Jubilee Ball after the Venetian Manner in the Day Time (1749), British Museum, Department of Prints and Drawings.
- Poetical Epistle, 10.