John Thomas, or “Rainy Day,” Smith was born in a London hackney coach, on
the evening of the 23rd of June 1766. His mother had spent the evening
at the house of her brother, Mr. Edward Tarr, a convivial glass-grinder
of Earl Street, Seven Dials, and the coach was conveying her back with
necessary haste to her home at No. 7 Great Portland Street. Sixty-seven
years later, the man who had entered thus hurriedly into the world left
it with almost equal unexpectedness in his house, No. 22 University
Street, after holding for seventeen years the post of Keeper of the
Prints at the British Museum.
As a writer John Thomas Smith takes no high rank; but he is a delightful
gossip, full of his two subjects: London and Art. We know him when he
exclaims to a visitor in the Print Room, “What I tell you is the fact,
and sit down, and I’ll tell ye the whole story.” Smith’s narrative manner
is always that: “Sit down, and I’ll tell ye the whole story.” Such
historians are often found in life, mighty recollectors before the Lord,
who talk books which no one can inspire them to write. And it is well
that when Smith did write he took small pains to be fine or literary.
Writing as a man, and not as the scribes, he produced in his _Nollekens
and his Times_ one of the most entertaining harum-scarum biographies ever
seen, and in his _Book for a Rainy Day, or Recollections of the Events of
the Years 1766-1833_, a budget of memories which has perhaps been less
read and more quoted than any book of its kind.
Smith’s valuable quality is his interest in the life he lived and saw
lived. He was zealous to record those trivial facts of to-day which
become piquant to-morrow, a habit that reveals itself in the way he
mentions his birth as happening “whilst Maddox was balancing a straw at
the Little Theatre in the Haymarket, and Marylebone Gardens re-echoed the
melodious notes of Tommy Lowe.” In a friend’s album he wrote--
“I can boast of seven events, some of which great men would be proud of:
“I received a kiss when a boy from the beautiful Mrs. Robinson;
“Was patted on the head by Dr. Johnson;
“Have frequently held Sir Joshua Reynolds’s spectacles;
“Partook of a pint of porter with an elephant;
“Saved Lady Hamilton from falling when the melancholy news arrived of
Lord Nelson’s death;
“Three times conversed with King George the Third;
“And was shut up in a room with Mr. Kean’s lion.”
These events are more curious than fateful, and, indeed, Smith’s career
is little more than a record of plates etched and books published. He is
entertaining because he was out and about in London for sixty years, and
looked upon anecdotes as “debts due to the public.”
Almost as soon as Mrs. Smith’s hackney coach had brought her to No. 7
Great Portland Street--a house whose site is now covered, as I reckon,
by No. 38--Dr. William Hunter, brother of the great John Hunter,
arrived from Jermyn Street, and performed his duties with the skill
of a Physician-Extraordinary to the Queen. The attendance of such a
man proves the material comfort of the Smith family. Nathaniel Smith,
the flustered father, was principal assistant to Joseph Nollekens, the
sculptor, and he had worked for Joseph Wilton and the great Roubiliac.
For Wilton he carved three of the nine masks, representing Ocean and
eight British rivers, now seen on the Strand front of Somerset House. He
had taken to wife a Miss Tarr, a Quakeress. Their boy’s christening was
dictated by family history. He was named John after his grandfather, a
Shropshire clothier, whose bust, modelled by Nathaniel Smith, was the
first publicly exhibited by the Associated Artists at Spring Gardens; and
Thomas after his great-uncle, Admiral Thomas Smith, who had earned in
Portsmouth Harbour (more cheaply, perhaps, than Smith would have allowed)
the name of “Tom of Ten Thousand.”
Smith early went into training to be a gossiping topographer. Old
Nollekens, already a Royal Academician, and the most sought-after
sculptor of portrait busts (“Well, sir, I think my friend Joe Nollekens
can chop out a head with any of them,” was Dr. Johnson’s tribute to
his genius), often took his assistant’s little son for a ramble round
the streets. One day he led Thomas to the Oxford Road to see Jack Rann
go by on the cart to Tyburn, where he was to be hanged for robbing Dr.
William Bell of his watch and eighteenpence. The boy remembered all
his life the criminal’s pea-green coat, his nankin small-clothes, and
the immense nosegay that had been presented to him at St. Sepulchre’s
steps. In another walk, Mr. Nollekens showed him the ruins of the Duke of
Monmouth’s house in Soho Square. In a Sunday morning ramble they watched
the boys bathing in Marylebone Basin, on the site of Portland Place. And,
again, they stood at the top of Rathbone Place, while Nollekens recalled
the mill from which Windmill Street was named, and the halfpenny hatch
which had admitted people to the miller’s grounds.
In the sculptor’s studio, at No. 9 Mortimer Street, where at the age of
twelve he began to help his father, Smith met sundry great people. One
day, Mr. Charles Townley, the collector of the Townley marbles, noticed
him, and “pouched” him half a guinea to purchase paper and chalk. Dr.
Johnson, who was sitting for his bust, once looked at the boy’s drawings,
and, laying his hand heavily on his head, croaked, “Very well, very
well.” On a February day in 1779, that wag Johnny Taylor, who was to
be Smith’s life-long friend, put his head in at the studio door and
shouted the news that Garrick’s funeral had just left Adelphi Terrace for
Westminster Abbey. Away flew Smith to see the procession, and to record
it, in his old age, in the _Rainy Day_.
As a youth, Smith wished to learn engraving under Bartolozzi, but the
great Italian declined a pupil, and it was through the influence of Dr.
Hinchliffe, Bishop of Peterborough, one of his father’s patrons, that he
entered the studio of John Keyse Sherwin, the engraver. Here he received
his kiss from the beautiful “Perdita” Robinson; and when Mrs. Siddons
sat to Sherwin for her portrait as the Grecian Daughter, he raised and
lowered the window curtains to obtain the effect of light desired by his
master.
Three years later Smith launched out as young drawing-master,
pencil-portrait draughtsman, and topographical engraver. He found
a patron in Mr. Richard Wyatt, of Milton Place, Egham. Through this
gentleman he obtained commissions as a topographical artist from
influential collectors like the Duke of Roxburgh, Lord Leicester, and
Horace Walpole. Moreover, Sir Joshua Reynolds and Benjamin West sometimes
engaged him to bid for them at print auctions. At this time he was a
frequent visitor to the drawing-room of Mrs. Mathew, in Rathbone Place,
where Flaxman was often found, and where William Blake read aloud his
early poems.
The small artist, and particularly the topographical artist, had his
chance in the second half of the eighteenth century. The productions
of Wilson, Reynolds, Romney, and Gainsborough had stirred up the arts
of engraving, which allied themselves closely to literature and life.
It was the age of portly topographies and county histories, with their
ceremonious array of plates; of itinerant portrait and view painting;
and of night-sales of books and prints at which sociable collectors sat
under eccentric auctioneers, and at which noblemen were as commonly seen
as they were at boxing and trotting matches fifty years later. Shops
abounded for the sale of new prints, and auctions were frequent for the
distribution of old. Human types were produced of which we know little
to-day. Smith has drawn some of them with easy and natural touches in
his chapter on the print-buyers who attended Langford’s and Hutchins’
sale rooms, in Covent Garden, in 1783. There he was in his element. Not
much passed in the art world in the fifty years following that date that
Smith did not know.
When twenty-two, he married. The girl of his choice was Anne Maria
Pickett, who belonged to a respectable family at Streatham, and who,
after forty-five years of married life, was left his widow. They had
one son and two daughters. The son died at the Cape in the same year as
his father, 1833. One daughter was married to Mr. Smith, a sculptor,
and the other to Mr. Paul Fischer, a miniature painter. Soon after
his marriage he was invited by Sir James Winter Lake to take up his
residence at Edmonton, where he taught drawing to their daughter, and
doubtless had other pupils. When he applied (unsuccessfully) for the
post of drawing-master to Christ’s Hospital, Sir James and Lady Lake’s
testimonial made a point of the fact that he had never touched up their
daughter’s work, “a practice too often followed by drawing-masters
in general.” At this period Smith practised as an itinerant portrait
painter, a branch of art which then had its vogue, and was to number
William Hazlitt among its professors. At Edmonton it was that he
“_profiled, three-quartered, full-faced_, and _buttoned up_ the retired
embroidered weavers, their crummy wives and tight-laced daughters.” At
Edmonton, too, he watched the reception of his first book, the
_Antiquities of London and its Environs_. Smith’s career for the next
thirty years may be conveniently sketched in a list of his residences
and the work he accomplished in each.
In 1797 he was at No. 40 Frith Street, Soho, a house which still
exists, with its ground floor converted into a French wine shop. There
he published his _Remarks on Rural Scenery_, consisting of etching
of cottage and village scenes in the neighbourhood of London, with a
preliminary essay on drawing.
In 1800 he was living with his father at 18 May’s Buildings, or the
“Rembrandt Head,” as it was styled, in St. Martin’s Lane. In this
year the discovery of curious paintings during the alterations to St.
Stephen’s Chapel for the enlargement of the House of Commons, attracted
Smith’s attention, and, after making careful copies of these relics, he
projected his _Antiquities of Westminster_.
In February 1806, Smith published an etching of the scene on the Thames
when Nelson’s remains were brought from Greenwich to Whitehall. He tells
us that on showing it to Lady Hamilton she swooned in his arms. The plate
is inscribed: “Published February 15, 1806, by John Thomas Smith, at No.
36 Newman Street.” This house remains unaltered.
In 1807 he issued his _Antiquities of Westminster_, his address appearing
in the imprint as 31 Castle Street East, Oxford Street.
In 1810, May’s Buildings reappears in the imprint of his _Antient
Topography of London_, but it may be that this address was not
residential. The site of this house is merged in Messrs. Harrison’s
printing works.
In 1815-17, Smith lived at No. 4 Chandos Street, Covent Garden, whence he
issued his _Vagabondiana, or Anecdotes of Mendicant Wanderers through the
Streets of London_.
In 1816 he succeeded William Alexander as Keeper of the Prints, and it
is probable that he soon afterwards took up his residence at No. 22
University Street.[1] He was living here in 1828, when he published,
through Henry Colburn, of New Burlington Street, “_Nollekens and his
Times_: comprehending a Life of that celebrated Sculptor; and Memoirs
of Several Contemporary Artists, from the time of Roubiliac, Hogarth,
and Reynolds, to that of Fuseli, Flaxman, and Blake.” This, his most
ambitious work, must be noticed more particularly because of its
bearing on Smith’s life and character. Mr. Gosse, who has edited it,
with the addition of a graceful essay on Georgian Sculpture, describes
it as “perhaps the most candid biography ever published in the English
language.” In its pages Smith exposes the domestic privacies and miserly
habits of the sculptor and his wife. There are pages of sordid gossip
which a dismissed charwoman might probably have found unacceptable to her
cronies and supporters. Yet the book cannot be described as venomous. It
is cheerily and unscrupulously candid, and this even in the matter of
the author’s own disappointment. Nollekens, he assures us, had again and
again given him reason to believe that he would be handsomely remembered
in his will. “That you may depend upon, Tom,” were his words. It is easy
to see that Smith may have come to expect this as the bright event of
his later years. His Museum appointment had lifted him out of drudgery,
and the promised legacy may have presented itself to him as the final
deliverance from care. Nollekens had been kind to him as a boy, and
had remained his friend through life. He was a widower, childless, and
enormously rich. No artist had known better how to make art profitable.
His purchases of antiques in Rome had been most prudent; so, also, his
investments. As a sculptor of portrait busts he stood alone, and in his
long working life he had “chopped out” the heads of many hundreds of
wealthy and illustrious persons. When he died in April 1823, no one was
surprised that his estate was declared to be of the value of £300,000.
But very little of it went to “Tom,” who, to his intense chagrin,
received a bare hundred pounds as one of the three executors.
Five years later, Smith brought out his hit-back biography. Its general
veracity cannot be doubted. It is a veracity sharpened, not deflected, by
malice. But it is clear that Smith found other satisfactions in writing
the book than that of exposing the weaknesses of his old friend. He
enjoyed the long and minute chronicle of life in Mortimer Street and in
the studios and galleries he had frequented. Nollekens comes and goes in
a world of gossip about London, art, and people. True, at any moment a
mischievous gust may blow aside the veils to show us Mrs. Nollekens, in
second-hand finery, beating down the price of a new broom or a chicken
with cunning affability, or the sculptor pocketing nutmegs at the Royal
Academy dinners to be added to the Mortimer Street larder. If you protest
against these and worse freedoms, you are grateful for the hundred little
touches of locality and custom that accompany them. The daily life of the
eighteenth century is before you: the parlour, the street, the print shop.
Of Smith’s reign in the Print Room not much can be gathered. He was
much liked and respected by those who consulted him in his department.
We are told that he was kind to young artists of promise, and gently
candid to those of no promise. His recollections and anecdotes were the
delight of his visitors, one of whom has left us a racy specimen of his
flow of humour and gossip. I refer to the following passage of Boswellian
reminiscence, appended to the second and third edition, of the RAINY DAY.
“His two old friends, Mr. Packer, who had been a partner in
Combe’s brewery, and Colonel Phillips, who had accompanied
Captain Cooke in one of his voyages round the world, were
constant attendants in the Print Room, and contributed towards
the general amusement. Of the former of these gentlemen, who
died in 1828, at the advanced age of ninety, Mr. Smith used
to tell a remarkable story, which we are rather surprised not
to find recorded in his Reminiscences. It was our fortune to
be the first to communicate to Mr. Smith the fact of his old
friend’s decease, and that he had bequeathed to him a legacy
of £100. ‘Ah, Sir!’ he said, in a very solemn manner, after a
long pause, ‘poor fellow, he pined to death on account of a
rash promise of marriage he had made.’ We humbly ventured to
express our doubts, having seen him not long before looking
not only very un-Romeo like, but very hale and hearty; and
besides, we begged to suggest that other reasons might be given
for the decease of a respectable gentleman of ninety. ‘No,
Sir,’ said Mr. Smith; ‘what I tell you is the fact, and _sit
ye down, and I’ll tell ye the whole story_. Many years ago,
when Mr. Packer was a young man employed in the brew-house in
which he afterwards became a partner, he courted, and promised
marriage to, a worthy young woman in his own sphere of life.
But, as his circumstances improved, he raised his ideas, and,
not to make a long story of it, married another woman with a
good deal of money. The injured fair one was indignant, but,
as she had no written promise to show, was, after some violent
scenes, obliged to put up with a verbal assurance that she
should be the next Mrs. Packer. After a few years the first
Mrs. P. died, and she then claimed the fulfilment of his
promise, but was again deceived in the same way, and obliged
to put up with a similar pledge. A _second_ time he became a
widower, and a _third_ time he deceived his unfortunate _first_
love, who, indignant and furious beyond measure, threatened all
sorts of violent proceedings. To pacify her, Mr. P. gave her
a written promise that, if a widower, he would marry her when
he attained the age of one hundred years! Now he had lost his
last wife some time since, and every time he came to see me at
the Museum, he fretted and fumed because he should be obliged
to marry that awful woman at last. This could not go on long,
and, as you tell me, he has just dropped off. If it hadn’t been
for this, he would have lived as long as Old Parr. And now,’
finished Mr. Smith, with the utmost solemnity, ‘let this be a
warning to you. Don’t make rash promises to women; but if you
will do so, _don’t make them in writing_.’”
Had John Thomas Smith been granted the scriptural span of life, he might
have read the _Pickwick Papers_. But the implacable call came in March
1833, and he left various enterprises unfinished. He had collected the
materials for a gossipping history of Covent Garden; these have never
been edited. The well-known _Antiquarian Rambles in the Streets of
London_, published in 1846, originated in Smith’s notes, but four-fifths
of the book was certainly written by its editor, Dr. Charles Mackay.
The book from which Smith has his sobriquet was published in 1845. _A
Book for a Rainy Day_ places its author in that line of London’s watchful
lovers which began with John Stow and has not ended with Sir Walter
Besant. Now, when London’s streets are changing as they have not changed
since the Great Fire, he lies in that bare field of the dead behind the
Bayswater Road, where, on the grave of a greater writer, you read the
words, “Alas! poor Yorick.”