Note 478 — Chapter XXVI · OPERA, CONCERTS, MUSIC.

Francesca Margherita de l'Epine came over here with a German musician named Greber, and was sometimes irreverently called 'Greber's Peg.' There is no doubt but that she sang very beautifully, and was without a rival on the stage, or in the concert room, after the retirement of Mrs. Tofts. She herself retired in 1718, and married Dr. Pepusch, the celebrated musician, who gave her another nickname, that of 'Hecate,' because of her swarthy complexion and unprepossessing countenance. However, she came well dowered, for she brought him a fortune of £10,000, a very large sum in those days. Swift, who evidently had a John Bull's dislike for everything foreign, writes from Windsor to Stella,[478] 'We have a music meeting in our town to-night. I went to a rehearsal of it, and there was Margarita, and her sister, with another drab, and a parcel of fiddlers; I was weary, and would not go to the meeting, which I am sorry for, because I heard it was a great assembly.' She died about the year 1740.