Despite the hardships of the times, Handel lived his life to the fullest
If you had a time machine and a guaranteed return ticket, into what era would you like to be whisked? Despite the dentistry and the prospect of getting a terribly itchy scalp from wearing those gigantic wigs, I would plump for early 18th-century London – as long as I could summon the creative geniuses of the age to the mother of all dinner parties.
Who would get an invitation? Well, the three great Hs – Handel, Hogarth and Hawksmoor – for a start. Then some of those brilliant women, the likes of Henrietta Howard and Sarah Churchill, who acquired huge influence and considerable fortunes by outwitting the men who were supposedly their ‘masters’. And finally a few waspish wags – Addison, Pope, Swift – to keep the conversation mercurial and the gossip juicy.
And I know where I would hold the dinner party. Exactly 300 years ago Handel moved into what we would now call a ‘new build’ at 25 Brook Street in Mayfair, London. It would be his home until his death 36 years later: the place where he composed his oratorios and most of his operas; rehearsed soloists; entertained friends; and – if legend is to be believed – threatened to throw stroppy prima donnas out of windows.
I recently visited the place when it reopened after an inspired £3m restoration – all the more admirable because the money was raised entirely from private funds. It’s now elegantly furnished with some wonderfully evocative 18th-century paintings – we know Handel owned a Canaletto and a couple of Poussins – musical instruments, wigs and quills (how on earth did the likes of Handel, Bach and Telemann scratch out so many millions of notes with those primitive feathers?).
In other words, it looks exactly as scholars imagine it did in Handel’s day (and with events evoking his music too). Most importantly for imagining our dream dinner party, it has an authentically reconstructed kitchen as well. Down in the basement, it has been equipped with all the mod-cons that any early 18th-century Gordon Ramsay or Nigella Lawson might desire, including a giant spit for roasting hogs or whatever succulent flesh the famously food-loving composer might crave.
Handel’s London home is now a tourist destination for a much wider public than you might expect, thanks to a delightfully serendipitous coincidence. In 1969, 18 months before he died at the age of 27, Jimi Hendrix moved next door, to No. 23, where he lived for three months in a top-floor flat furnished by his English girlfriend Kathy Etchingham. The great rock guitarist was told
