Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 14.djvu/138

 voice at this time was not very strong, but sound, clear, and harmonious; her compass was extensive and her execution very finished. Burney, who heard her at this time, says that her bravura was excellent, but that she wanted colour and passion, and adds: ‘If I had had as many hands as Briareus, they would have been all employed in her applause.’ She sang at the three choirs festival at Hereford in 1774, but seems soon afterwards to have returned to Italy, where (in 1784–5) Lord Mount Edgcumbe found her with her sister at Florence, unengaged and poor. The resident English got up a concert for their benefit, and the sisters returned to England. Cecilia Davies sang at the professional concert on 3 Feb. 1787, and in 1791 made her first appearance in oratorio at Drury Lane, but she must at this time have been past her prime, for she seems soon afterwards to have given up singing in public and to have fallen into great poverty and neglect. About 1817 she published a collection of songs by Hasse and other masters, but during the last years of her life she subsisted on a pension of 25l. from the National Benevolent Fund, with a donation from the Royal Society of Musicians, and occasional help from the few friends she had. For many years she was bedridden. She died, forgotten and deserted, at 58 Great Portland Street, on 3 July 1836. The funeral of this fine singer, who had taught the queens of France, Spain, and Naples, was followed only by an old nurse and a faithful servant, and no notice of her death was taken by the daily newspapers. No portrait of Cecilia Davies is known to exist, but in 1773 she is described as being of a low but extremely pleasing figure. She was a good actress, but seems to have been thoroughly italianised by her foreign education.

[Authorities quoted above; Parke's Musical Memoirs, i. 90; Pohl's Haydn in London, 17, 28, 349.] 

DAVIES, CHRISTIAN, alias (1667–1739), female soldier, was born in Dublin in 1667. Her father was a brewer and maltster named Cavenaugh, who rented a large farm at Leixlip and raised a troop of horse which went by his name in support of James II. He was present at the battles of the Boyne and Aughrim, and shortly afterwards died of fever contracted during the campaign. At the age of seventeen Christian was seduced by her cousin, Thomas Howell (who became a clergyman, and twenty-five years afterwards committed suicide on being confronted by his victim, according to the story which the latter relates with not a little satisfaction), and in consequence was sent to live with an aunt who kept an inn in Dublin. After four years the aunt died, leaving all her property to Christian, who continued to carry on the business and married Richard Welsh, a waiter in her employment. Four years later Welsh mysteriously disappeared, and twelve months later wrote that he had been forced to join the army in Flanders. Christian set out in search of her husband, and, entrusting her business and children to the care of friends, enlisted in Captain Tichborne's company of foot under the name of Christopher Welsh. In a skirmish before the battle of Landen Christian received her first wound, and in the following summer (1694) she was taken prisoner by the French, but exchanged. At her own request she was now allowed to join the 2nd dragoons (Scots greys) under Lord John Hay, with which she remained till the disbanding of the army after the peace of Ryswick. She then returned to Dublin, but preserved her incognito. On the renewal of the war in 1701 she went back to Holland and re-enlisted with Lord John Hay. She fought at Nimwegen, Venloo, Bonn, and in most of the engagements of the campaign till at the battle of Donauwerth she received a ball in the hip which necessitated a temporary retirement into hospital. The ball was never extracted, but Christian was again under arms in time to share in the spoil after Blenheim. While forming one of a guard to some prisoners taken in that battle she again saw her husband, after a separation of thirteen years. She lost no time in revealing her identity to him, but so enamoured was she of camp life that she extracted a promise from Welsh that he would pass himself off as her brother. Her secret, however, was discovered after the battle of Ramillies, when her skull was fractured by a shell, and on an operation being performed her sex was discovered by the surgeons. Dismissal from the service naturally followed, but Christian still continued to live in camp, resuming her woman's dress and accompanying her husband as his acknowledged wife. Three years later Richard Welsh was killed at Malplaquet. Christian herself found his body, and her lamentations at the discovery were so extravagant as to excite the open commiseration of a captain Ross, whence, it is said, she gained the sobriquet of Mother Ross, by which she was known for the rest of her life. Although her grief was such that she was unable to touch food for a week, she married Hugh Jones, a grenadier, in less than three months. In the following year (1710) Jones received his death wound at the siege of St. Venant. In 1712 Christian finally parted