ABSTRACT
The most audacious piece of mythistorical Handeliana is of course the supposed account of Zachary Hardcastle's notorious musical breakfast party, at which we discover not only Mr Handel himself, but also Doctors Arne and Pepusch and even Colley Cibber, the dramatist. Mr Handel, having invited himself out to breakfast chez Cibber, bullies everyone unmercifully, in a near-Johnsonian manner and with a really shocking German accent. This is direct reporting not only the great man's voice, but his German accent, too, closely reported. There is a third tale, perhaps linked with Chester in which the protagonist is neither cabinet-maker nor printer, but 'an old man behind a violoncello' who assured Handel that everything would be allright, 'as he played in church'. It was reprinted in Victor Schoelcher's Life of Handel, and again, in a rather garbled form by F. J. Crowest, in the work cited.
