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reason to lift up Iris voice . This was the union ftf Lady Elizabeth Bertie , daughter of the Earl of Abingdon , with Gallini , thfc dancer , afterwards " Sir John / ' as he called himself ; though it does not appear that his poor papal title of " Knight of the Golden Spur" ( however fit for his heel ) was ever warranted to assume the English form of address . Gallini , though a good dancer , or a teacher of dancing , and a
prosperous letter of the Hanover square Rooms ( of which he was proprietor ) was nothing else . He was honest in his money dealings , and that appears to have been the amount of his virtue . He was a shrewd
man of the world , parsimonious , with nothing but a leg to go upon in matters of love ; and that ( as old Puller would have said ) never turns out to be sufficient " in the long run . " The lady and he lived
asunder many years , and died asunder ; he in 1805 , aged seventy-one , and she in 1804 at eighty : so that , besides other unsuitableness , she was eight years his senior . He had been her dancing-master .
Many ridiculous stories , it is said , " were in circulation at the time , of Signor Gallini ' s expectations of the honours which would accrue to him by his marriage with a noble family , which he imagined would confer on him the title of lord . But he was soon convinced of his mistake , and content with
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an inferior title . When the marriage became a subject of conversation , Dr Burney happened to hear in the gangway of the Opera pit the following conversation . One of two ladies going into the front boxes , says to the other , ' It is reported that one of the dancers is married to a lady of quality ;' when Gallini , who happened to be in the passage n ear the lady
who spoke , says , Lustrissima , son 10 / ( I am he , my lady . ) — ' And who are you V demanded the lady . — < Eecellenza , mi chiamo Signor Gallini , esquoire . ' * ( Your excellency , they call me Signor Gallini , esquoire . ) "
This was a bad business . Not such , though Horace Walpole was in despair about it , appears to have been the marriage of William O'Brien , comedian ( styled in the
Peerages , William O'Brien , Esq ., of Stinsford , Dorsetshire ) with Lady Susan Strangeways ( Fox ) , daughter of the Earl of Ilchester , in the year 1773 . The outset of the affair , however , looked ill . The following is Walpole ' s account of it : —
" You will have heard of the sad misfortune that has happened to Lord Ilchester , b y his daughter ' s marriage with O'Brien , the actor . But , perhaps , you do not know the circumstances , and how much his grief must be aggravated by reflection on his own credulity and negligence . The affair has been in train for eighteen
? « General Biographical Dictionary / vol . xiv , p . 247 .
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168 Duchess of St Allans ; and
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Sept. 1, 1837, page 168, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1835/page/24/
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