Anne Ford, later Mrs Philip Thicknesse, painted by her friend Thomas Gainsborough. Anne is holding an English guitar, an instrument of ten strings which enjoyed a vogue throughout northern Europe from 1750 to 1850. In the background is a viola da gamba, a forerunner of the ’cello.
Part 1 of 2
ANNE Ford was a pretty, gifted musician who sang and played both the English guitar and the viola da gamba (not then considered a very ladylike instrument) to the delight of London’s fashionable society, including Thomas Arne, gathered in her father Charles’s home on Sundays.
Anne dreamt of a professional career, but Charles thought that unseemly, and once engaged a magistrate to march his daughter home from a friend’s house, fearing a plot to escape for a life on the stage; but he was unable to stop her giving five public subscription concerts, beginning on March 18th, 1760, performing music by Handel and various Italian composers, supported by such eminent London figures as the virtuoso violinist Thomas Pinto.
Soon Anne was being showered with praise, though one eager suitor, William Villiers, Earl of Jersey, shared her father’s opinion of public performances, and begged his fashionable friends not to subscribe. Happily, they did not listen, which by a strange tissue of events may have saved Anne’s life.
Précis
Anne Ford was a gifted young musician of the later eighteenth century. She wanted to make a career on the stage as a performer, but though her father encouraged her music at home, he refused to let her turn professional. However, Anne arranged her own subscription concerts in London, supported by some of London’s most distinguished musicians. (57 / 60 words)
Part Two
The North Sea and the beach at Felixstowe in Suffolk, viewed from the gardens beside Undercliffe Road. Captain Thicknesse kept a house here as Lieutenant Governor of Landguard Fort.
IN 1762, Anne married Captain Philip Thicknesse, Lieutenant-Governor of Landguard Fort in Suffolk, whose wife Elizabeth she had attended in her last illness. Anne bore admirably the responsibilities of a baby stepson, a teenage stepdaughter, and a decidedly eccentric husband, and later the couple travelled France and Spain together – fortunately, Anne spoke five languages. A fashionable circle gathered around their residences in Felixstowe and Bath, where Anne also took to writing.
However, on a trip to Italy in 1792 Philip died suddenly in Boulogne, leaving his widow to travel home alone, during revolutionary France’s Reign of Terror. Anne was arrested and confined in a convent, but milder policy after Robespierre’s death saw her released along with all who could prove that they could earn their own living. Anne’s stubborn determination to fulfil her dream of being a professional musician on the English stage could not have been more richly or deservedly rewarded.
Précis
Anne married Captain Philip Thicknesse in 1762, and her attention turned to family, writing, and travelling the Continent. After Philip died unexpectedly while the couple were visiting Boulogne, Anne was interned by the French Revolutionaries, and released only when she proved she could earn her own living, a rich reward for proving herself as a professional all those years before. (59 / 60 words)
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