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NINETEENTH-CENTURY BALLADS 73
engaged by the Chevalier Anati, then living at Winchester, to teach his daughter music. Apparently Wade induced his patron to join him in his drinking-bouts, and the story goes that one night when they were toping together Wade, more than three-parts drunk, proposed that he should marry Anati's daughter. This was too much for the Chevalier's pride, which, intoxicated as he was, rose up in arms at this suggestion, and he promptly kicked Wade out of the house there and then. Wade died in London a few years later.
In 1829 appeared the highly popular ballad "Love's Ritornella," or "Gentle Zitella," composed by Tom Cooke. It was first produced by a Mr. Wallack, an actor, who appears to have spoken it rather than sung it. Cooke was a noted tenor singer who appeared at Drury Lane and Covent Garden, being later engaged as musical director at both places. Among the pupils to whom he taught singing were Maria Tree and Sims Reeves. He was also the composer of the famous duet " Love and War."
Tom Cooke was an actor as well as musician, and a very amusing man. Mr. F. L. Wellman, in his Day in Court, tells the following amusing anecdote of Cooke's appearance as a witness in a copyright case, which had to do with the alleged piracy of a popular song :—
"On his cross-examination by Sir James Scar- |
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