upon the Right Honourable Lady Marchioness of Winchester." Four years
later, he became the chief of the prince's music, with the splendid
salary of L40 a year.

Sir William Sterndale loved a Mary Wood, and wrote an overture called
"Marie des Bois," and after this atrocious pun, married the poor girl
in 1844, and they lived happily ever after, or at least for thirty
years after.

Those other oldsters, Blow, Byrd, and Playford, were married men; and
Arne, the composer of "Rule Britannia," married, at the age of
twenty-six, Cecilia Young, an eminent singer in Haendel's company, and
the daughter of an organist. She continued to sing, and he to write
music for her. At the age of sixty-eight he died, singing a hallelujah.
Whether she echoed his sentiments we are not told, but she lived
seventeen years longer.

Balfe married a German singer, Rosen, who afterward sang in some of his
operas.

One of the few other British composers who attained distinction was
John Field, who, like Balfe, was Dublin-born. He was the inventor of
Chopin's Nocturne. The story is told that he had a pupil from whom he
could not collect his bills. Finally in sheer despair he proposed, and,
when she accepted him, found his only revenge in telling everybody he
met that he had only married her to escape the necessity of giving her
further lessons, which she would never pay for. The story seems to be,
however, neither true nor well-found, for in spite of his awkwardness
and the hard life he led at the hands of his teacher Clementi, who made
him serve as a combined salesman of pianos and a concert virtuoso, he
was said to have married a Russian lady of rank and wealth. She was
really a Frenchwoman named Charpentier whom he had met in Moscow. She
was a professional pianist, and bore him a son; then she left him, and
changed her name, as did even the son. He was one of the many composers
who should have been kept in a cage.

CLEMENTI, HUMMEL, STEIBELT

As for Clementi, he was chiefly notable for his miserly qualities, by
which he rendered miserable three successive wives.

The pianist Hummel, whom I always place with Clementi in a sort of
musical Dunciad, is credited with having won a courtship duel against
Beethoven, in which Clementi as the winner--or was it the
loser?--married the woman.

Another rival of Beethoven's in public esteem was Daniel Steibelt,
forgotten as a virtuoso, but not to be forgotten for his splendid vices
which range from kl