According to early biographers, George Frideric Handel was “in his person a large and portly man. His gait which was ever sauntering, was rather ungraceful as it had in it somewhat of that rocking motion which distinguishes those whose legs are bowed.”

George Frideric Handel

Handel was notorious for his love of food, and one famous anecdote reports that after pleading poverty, Handel served his guests an exceedingly meager meal. Claiming a moment of inspiration that needed to be written down immediately, Handel excused himself from the dinner table. After some time, his dinner companions started to wonder what had happened to their host. So they eventually opened the door to the next room and glimpsed Handel standing in the back parlor stuffing himself with “such delicacies as he had lamented his inability to afford his friends.” This incident resulted in perhaps the most notorious caricature of Handel, entitled “The Charming Brute.” It pictures Handel with a pig’s snout playing the organ while seated on a barrel of wine, surrounded by bottles and fowl for the cooking pot.

George Frideric Handel: Jephta

Recent research has suggested that Handel was a pathological binge eater. He was described as “sporting an extraordinary appetite” and an “inordinate, extravagant hunger.” His hand and fingers, according to a contemporary observer, “looked like feet and toes.” Handel’s appetite for food and drink had some dire consequences, attributed to lead poisoning. The composer drank copious quantities of wine, which Vintners prevented from turning into vinegar by adding lead shot to reduce the action of bacteria. In a different process, wine of poor quality was sweetened by adding grape juice boiled in lead vessels. Experts assert “Lead also contaminated beer, cider, gin, food, water and cosmetics, including the white powder used under wigs.”

The Charming Brute

And Handel reported many of the symptoms of lead poisoning, including stomach colic, pain, creeping paralysis, confusion and eventually blindness. And we do know that Handel suffered the paralysis of his right hand in 1737. He sought treatment in a spa, and after several months of drinking water and avoiding heavy eating and drinking, his hand was fully restored. His recovery did not last, however, and he was forced to make additional visits to the spa.

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