[309] From _The Wife’s Trial_, Lamb’s dramatic version of Crabbe’s
_Confidant_. See Mr. Lucas’s _Works of Charles and Mary Lamb_, vol.
v. p. 257.
[310] All previous relic-selling at Newgate was, however, eclipsed
by the sale held in the partly demolished prison on Wednesday, 4th
February 1903. The following account appeared in the _City Press_
of 7th February:--
“In its way, probably, the sale which Messrs. Douglas Young & Co.
conducted in the middle of the week, within the gloomy precincts
of crime-stricken Newgate, was the most unique and memorable of
its kind ever held. Crowds of the curious and speculative were
naturally attracted to the fortress prison site.
“Interest more particularly hovered around the old toll bell, with
its famous loyal inscription, and solid ton of metal. The hour was
late when the lot (No. 188 in the catalogue) was reached, but that
circumstance did not in any way detract from the briskness of the
bidding. Starting at £30, the offers rapidly mounted; and, finally,
the prized souvenir of many a tragic decade passed into the hands
of Mr. Richardson (acting as agent for Madame Tussaud’s) for the
exact sum of £100. The old flagstaff, whence the black flag was
hoisted immediately after an execution had taken place, fell to
the enterprise of Mr. Fox, a Cape gentleman, who, for 11½ guineas,
has ensured that in future the Union Jack shall flutter in South
African breezes from its fateful masthead.
“The famous oak and iron-cased half-latticed door associated with
memories of Mrs. Elizabeth Fry, of philanthropic fame, went for
£20; while Sir George Chubb secured for £30, amidst some cheering,
the wonderful old massive oak and iron-bound half-latticed main
entrance door that was fixed up when the prison was rebuilt after
the Great Fire of 1666. A warder’s key-cupboard, fitted with shelf
and iron hooks--identical with the one referred to in _Barnaby
Rudge_--extracted £12, 10s. from the pockets of the bidder; while
the appointments of the condemned cells, both male and female,
realised fairly good prices--the former in particular.
“The chapel pulpit, at £8, 10s., was a distinctly disappointing
figure; while it cannot be said that £5, 15s. was an extravagant
sum to pay for the complete equipment of the execution shed. The
taste for criminology, in the shape of the plaster casts of the
heads of nine victims of the gallows, worked out at five guineas.
“Some of the liveliest bidding of the day took place over the
numerous lots of copper washing bowls, in which the inmates of
Newgate testified that cleanliness was next to godliness. The
lowest price realised was £2, 12s. 6d. for a set of three bowls;
while sets of four realised, on several occasions, as much as £5.
Altogether it was a sale in which monotony and curiosity singularly
intermingled, and, withal, one ever to be remembered by those who
happened to be present.”
[311] The flying physician of the Chapter Coffee House was Dr.
William Buchan, who, in the last half of the eighteenth century,
was regularly consulted at this coffee-house in St. Paul’s Alley
by ailing bookmen. His advice frequently took this form: “Now,
let me prescribe for you. Here, John, bring a glass of punch for
Mr.----, unless he likes brandy and water better. Take that, sir,
and I’ll warrant you’ll soon be well. You’re a peg too low, you
want stimulus, and if one glass won’t do, call for a second.” His
place was in a box in the north-east corner of the room, known as
the “Wittenagemot,” where he not only prescribed, but acted as an
arbiter of debate. James Montgomery, in his _Memoirs_, describes
him as “of venerable aspect, neat in his dress, his hair tied
behind with a large ribbon, and a gold-headed cane in his hand,
quite realising my idea of an Esculapian dignitary.”
Buchan was, indeed, a physician of repute, and his _Domestic
Medicine, or the Family Physician_, was not only the first English
work of its kind, but ran into nineteen large editions. It was said
that the publishers gave him £700 down for it, and reaped £700 a
year. In Russia and in America and the West Indies the book was
welcomed. The Empress Catherine sent the author a gold medallion
and a complimentary letter.
To members of the Society of Friends the career of this genial
doctor is of some interest, inasmuch as at one time he was
physician to the Yorkshire branch of the Foundling Hospital at
Ackworth, an unfortunate institution which in 1779 was taken over
by this Society, to become the flourishing and historic school of
to-day. Buchan lived many years with his son at No. 6 Percy Street,
Rathbone Place, and died there February 25, 1806, aged seventy-six.
He was buried in the west cloister of Westminster Abbey, near Dr.
Richard Jebb, and Wollett, the engraver.
[312] Flockton was for nearly half a century a showman at St.
Bartholomew’s and Sturbridge Fairs. These lines appeared on some of
his bills:--
“To raise the soul by means of wood and wire,
To Screw the fancy up a few pegs higher;
In miniature to show the world at large,
As folks conceive a ship who’ve seen a barge,
This is the scope of all our actors’ play,
Who hope their _wooden_ aims will not be thrown away!”
He died at Camberwell, April 12, 1794, leaving £5000, most of which
he bequeathed to his company. An engraving of his show bears the
almost Yankee inscription, “The Only Booth in the Fair;” and on the
balustrade of the stairs to its entrance is inscribed the curiously
modern injunction, “Tumble up! tumble up!”
[313] Honey Lane Market, famous in the eighteenth century for
its provisions, keeps its name close to Cheapside. In 1835, the
pillared and belfried market-house gave place to the City of London
School, since removed to the Thames Embankment. The “Market” is
still an odd oasis of domestic shopping in the City’s larger
operations.
[314] This was Belzoni’s “Narrative of the Operations and Recent
Discoveries within the Pyramids, Temples, Tombs, and Excavations,
in Egypt and Nubia;--and of a--Journey to the Coast of the Red Sea,
in search of--the Ancient Berenice;--and another to--the Oasis
of Jupiter Ammon. By G. Belzoni. London:--John Murray, Albemarle
Street.--1820.” At the end of the book comes “Mrs. Belzoni’s
Trifling Account--of the--Women of Egypt, Nubia, and Syria.”
That Belzoni, turned author, retained the physical strength of
his showman days, is shown in a story told by Dr. Smiles in his
_Memoirs of John Murray_. “Like many other men of Herculean power,
he was not eager to exhibit his strength, but on one occasion he
gave proof of it. Mr. Murray had asked him to accompany him to
the Coronation of George IV. They had tickets of admittance to
Westminster Hall, but on arriving there they found that the sudden
advent of Queen Caroline, attended by a mob claiming admission
to the Abbey, had alarmed the authorities, and who had caused
all doors to be shut. That by which they should have entered was
held close and guarded by several stalwart janitors. Belzoni
thereupon advanced to the door, and, in spite of the efforts of
these guardians, including Tom Crib and others of the pugilistic
corps who had been engaged as constables, opened it with ease, and
admitted himself and Mr. Murray.”
[315] Dr. Robert Richardson (1779-1847) went to Egypt and Palestine
with the Earl of Belmore in 1816, and published his _Travels_ in
1822. Lady Blessington lent the book to Byron, who said: “The
author is just the sort of man I should like to have with me
for Greece--clever both as a man and a physician.” Richardson
afterwards settled in Rathbone Place. He died in Gordon Street,
Gordon Square, Nov. 5, 1847.
[316] The creator of the Leverian Museum was the eldest son of
Sir Darcey Lever, of Alkrington, near Manchester. As a young man
he had delighted in horses and birds. His treasures had grown in
interest and numbers, until he was persuaded to turn a private
hobby into a public speculation. He hired Leicester House in 1771,
and for thirteen years maintained and increased it, at a cost of
£50,000, against which he could set only £13,000 in receipts. In
1784 he was authorised to issue 36,000 guinea tickets, of which
one was to entitle the holder to the entire museum. A proposal
for the purchase of the museum by the nation, which Dr. Johnson
favoured, came to nothing. Only 8000 tickets had been sold when
the drawing took place. The one prize, the museum, was drawn by a
Mr. Parkinson, who thus acquired for a guinea the largest general
collection in Europe, including the curiosities collected by
Captain Cook in his South Sea voyages.
Sir Ashton Lever died suddenly in 1788, at Manchester. Meanwhile
Mr. Parkinson had built the Rotunda in Albion Place, at the
south end of Blackfriars Bridge, for the display of the “Museum
Leverianum.” The scheme failed, and in 1806 the museum was sold by
auction at King & Lochee’s rooms in King Street, Covent Garden,
the sale lasting sixty-five days. The catalogue filled 410
octavo pages, and there were 7879 lots. The deserted “Rotunda”
at Blackfriars deteriorated until it was known to Tom Taylor as
“something very much like a penny gaff.” Taylor, by the way, tells
us that Sir Ashton Lever conceived the idea of sending a ship-load
of potatoes to the defenders of Gibraltar, and this was done.
[317] By “this year” Smith means 1784. His note is little more
than a copy of the following newspaper paragraph of May 29, 1784,
quoted by Lewis in his _History of Islington_: “Thursday a grand
cricket-match was played in the White Conduit Fields. Among the
players were the Duke of Dorset, Lord Winchilsea, Lord Talbot,
Colonel Tarleton, Mr. Howe, Mr. Damer, Hon. Mr. Lennox, and the
Rev. Mr. Williams. A pavilion was erected for refreshments, and a
number of ladies attended.”
John Frederick Sackville, third Duke of Dorset (1745-99), was a
member of the Hambledon Club, and of the committee which drew up
the original laws of the M.C.C. He employed several of the best
cricketers of his day, and presented Sevenoaks with a cricket
ground. As our Ambassador to France he arranged for a British
cricket eleven to play in Paris, but the Revolution disturbances
prevented the match.
The Earl of Winchilsea (1752-1826) was also a member of the
Hambledon. He introduced four wickets, two inches higher than the
standard. “The game is then rendered shorter by easier bowling
out,” said the _Hampshire Chronicle_, but the Earl’s plan is still
a dream and a controversy.
The Hon. Mr. Lennox is referred to in a newspaper of the period as
“nephew to his grace of Richmond,” and he and Lord Winchilsea are
described as the chief performers at White Conduit House.
Colonel Sir Banastre Tarleton went through the War of Independence
with distinction, and lived with “Perdita” (Mary Robinson) for some
years, receiving from her much devotion. He represented Liverpool
in Parliament for twenty-two years, and attained the rank of
General.
The White Conduit Club, of which these gentlemen were members,
has a high importance in the history of cricket, for out of it
sprang, in 1787, the Marylebone Cricket Club. “The M.C.C. Club,”
says Mr. Andrew Lang in a sketch of cricket history, “may be said
to have sprung from the ashes of the White Conduit Club, dissolved
in 1787. One Thomas Lord, by the aid of some members of the older
association, made a ground in the space which is now Dorset Square.
This was the first ‘Lord’s’.” Two removals brought the ground to
its present location in St. John’s Wood, where the first recorded
match was played, June 22, 1814.
[318] Du Val’s Lane is now represented by Hornsey Road. It seems
to have been originally “Devil’s Lane,” but to have been popularly
re-named from Claude Duval (1643-70), the highwayman, who, like
Dick Turpin, favoured this district. Born at Domfront in Normandy,
Du Val came to England in the train of the Duke of Richmond,
and took to the road. He was famous for his gallantries to his
victims. He was captured on January 17, 1669 or 1670, in the
Hole-in-the-Wall Tavern, Chandos Street, and although intercession
was made for him by ladies of rank, he was hanged at Tyburn within
four days. The exhibition of his body at the Tangier Tavern, St.
Giles’s, drew such crowds that it had to be stopped. It is hard to
believe that Du Val was accorded a grave in the centre aisle of
Covent Garden Church, and that his epitaph began--
Here lies Du Vall: Reader, if male thou art,
Look to thy purse; if female, to thy heart;
but it is so stated in the _Memoirs of Monsieur Du Val_, 1670. His
funeral, we read, “was attended with many flambeaux, and a numerous
train of mourners, whereof most were of the beautiful sex.”
[319] Nathaniel Hillier, of Pancras Lane, merchant, died March 1,
1783, aged 76 (_Gentleman’s Magazine_).
[320] This tea-pot passed into the possession of that eccentric
virtuoso, Henry Constantine Noel, of whom Smith gives an account
under 1818. Noel had the following extraordinary inscription
engraved on it:--
“We are told by Lucian, that the earthen lamp, which had
administered to the lucubrations of Epictetus, was at his death
purchased for the enormous sum of three thousand drachmas: why,
then, may not imagination equally amplify the value of this
unadorned vessel, long employed for the infusion of that favourite
herb, whose enlivening virtues are said to have so often protracted
the elegant and edifying lucubrations of Samuel Johnson; the
zealous advocate of that innocent beverage, against its declared
enemy, Jonas Hanway. It was weighed out for sale under the
inspection of Sir John Hawkins, at the very minute when they were
in the next room closing the incision through which Mr. Cruickshank
had explored the ruinated machinery of its dead master’s thorax; so
Bray the silversmith, conveyed there in Sir John’s carriage, thus
hastily to buy the plate, informed its present possessor, Henry
Constantine Noel, by whom it was, for its celebrated services,
on the 1st of November 1788, rescued from the undiscriminating
obliterations of the furnace.”
[321] In this letter, Charles Townley, the collector of the Townley
marbles, probably refers to William Lock (1732-1810), the wealthy
connoisseur, and a friend of Madame d’Arblay. He lived at Norbury
Park, where he was hospitable to Madame de Staël. He was described
as the “arbiter, advocate, and common friend of all lovers of art.”
[322] The “Triumph of Bacchus” was one of eight great pictures
which Rubens painted for the palace at Madrid.
[323] Annibale Caracci was employed by Cardinal Farnese to decorate
the famous gallery that bears his name. He produced a masterly
series of frescoes.
[324] Welbore Ellis, first Baron Mendip, was the third owner of
Pope’s Villa at Twickenham, after the poet.
[325] “1811, Feb. 3.--In Great Ormond Street, Atkinson Bush, Esq.,
in the 76th year of his age” (_European Magazine_, February 1811).
[326] Parton’s book, _Some Account of the Hospital and Parish of
St. Giles’ in the Fields, Middlesex_ (1822), by “the late” Mr.
John Parton, gives the plan in question, but does not touch on the
matter of its authenticity. It is clear, however, that his plans
and maps are largely conjectural.
[327] A distinction she shared with Miss Mary Moser. These are
the only women who have been members of the Royal Academy, but it
cannot be said that their talent was very exceptional. Peter Pindar
irreverently said that Mary Moser was made an R.A. for “a sublime
Picture of a Plate of Gooseberries.”
[328] The annals of British art do not contain a more tragic story
than that of “the late” William Wynn Ryland. A man of great talent,
he was engraver to George III., and an exhibitor at the Royal
Academy; but it was his fate to be hanged at Tyburn for forging a
bond of several thousand pounds. How he presented this document in
person at the India House, is narrated by Henry Angelo as a proof
of his extraordinary self-command.
“The cashier, on receiving the document, examined it carefully, and
referred to the ledger; then, comparing the date, observed, ‘Here
is a mistake, Sir; the bond, as entered, does not become due until
to-morrow.’
“Ryland, begging permission to look at the book, on its being
handed to him, observed: ‘So I perceive--there must be an error
in your entry of one day;’ and offered to leave the bond, not
betraying the least disappointment or surprise. The mistake
appearing to the cashier to be obviously an error in his office,
the bond was paid to Ryland, who departed with the money. The next
day the true bond was presented, when the forgery was discovered,
of course; and, within a few hours after, the fraud was made
public, and steps were taken for the recovery of the perpetrator.
“This document, lately in the possession of a gentleman now
deceased, I have often seen. It is, perhaps, the most extraordinary
piece of deceptive art, in the shape of imitation, that was ever
produced.”
A reprieve for Ryland was sought on the ground of his extraordinary
abilities, but, as was usual in cases of forgery, without success.
George III. is said to have replied: “No; a man with such ample
means of providing for his wants could not reasonably plead
necessity as an excuse for his crime.” But the artist’s petition
for a respite was both granted and renewed. He explained that he
desired no extension of life except as the means of completing
his last engraving, and so adding to his wife’s stock of plates.
The subject was Queen Eleanor sucking the poison from the arm of
her husband, Edward I., from a painting by Angelica Kauffmann. He
laboured hard on this work, and when he received the first proof
from his printer, said, “Mr. Haddril, I thank you; my task is now
accomplished.” He was hanged within a week, and his was the last
execution at Tyburn. Henry Angelo says that, like Dr. Dodd, Ryland
was allowed to proceed to Tyburn in a mourning coach.
The story of William Blake’s prophecy of Ryland’s end is well
known. His father had intended to apprentice him to Ryland, but was
frustrated by the unaccountable attitude of the boy, who, after
they had called on the engraver at his studio, said, “Father, I do
not like the man’s face; it looks as if he will live to be hanged.”
Twelve years later came the fulfilment. Col. W. F. Prideaux
recently mentioned in _Notes and Queries_ that he possesses a
curious collection concerning Ryland’s case which was formed by the
Rev. H. Cotton, the ordinary of Newgate. It includes the original
handbill offering a reward for Ryland’s apprehension, and a drawing
of the engraver’s mother by John Thomas Smith.
[329] In the _Dictionary of National Biography_, Miss E. T. Bradley
sums up the impressions Angelica Kauffmann made: “Goldsmith
wrote some lines to her; Garrick, whom she painted, was much
fascinated by her, and Fuseli paid addresses to her. Her most
serious flirtation, however, was with Sir Joshua Reynolds, whose
acquaintance she made directly she arrived in London. He painted
her portrait twice. She frequently visited his studio, and painted
a weak and uncharacteristic portrait of the painter, which
Bartolozzi engraved. Nathaniel Dance, whom she had met in Italy, is
also said to have been hopelessly in love with her.”
[330] Sir Nathaniel Dance-Holland, first baronet (1734-1811), met
Angelica Kauffmann in Italy, and was said to have been hopelessly
in love with her. He was an original member of the Royal Academy,
but resigned his diploma in 1790 on his marriage to Mrs. Drummer,
known facetiously as “The Yorkshire Fortune,” from her possession
of £18,000 a year. He assumed the additional name of Holland, and
sat in Parliament for Grinstead. In his time he was a capable but
stiff portrait painter, and painted full-length portraits of George
III. and his Queen.
[331] A deed of separation was obtained from Pope Pius VI. After
the “Count’s” death, Angelica Kauffmann married in London, July
14, 1781, Antonio Pietro Zucchi, a Venetian painter who had long
lived in England, and had been employed by Adam, the architect. He
decorated Garrick’s house in the Adelphi. He died in 1795.
[332] Thomas Pitt, first Baron Camelford, was a prominent
politician and an opponent of Lord North. At Twickenham, where he
settled in 1762, he and Horace Walpole exchanged ideas on Gothic
architecture.
[333] Probably the well-known Dr. Bates, M.D., of Missenden, Bucks.
[334] Willey Reveley, architect, and editor of vol. iii. of
Stuart’s _Antiquities of Athens_.
[335] Smith’s task had been protracted by his tiresome quarrel
with his collaborator, John Sidney Hawkins. They pamphletted and
“vindicated” to their hearts’ content, but the dispute is not worth
unravelling.
[336] Henry White, then Sacrist of Lichfield Cathedral.
[337] George Dance, who died in 1825, was the architect of the
recently demolished Newgate Prison, also of St. Luke’s Hospital
and the Guildhall entrance façade. He was the last survivor of the
foundation members of the Royal Academy, and was buried in St.
Paul’s Cathedral. William Daniell, R.A., was well known for his
Indian and Oriental illustrations. He painted a panorama of Madras,
and another of “The City of Lucknow and the mode of Taming Wild
Elephants.” His painting, “A View of the Long Walk, Windsor,” is in
the royal collection.
[338] Fuseli’s quaint violences of speech were many, and gained
in effect from his Swiss accent. He swore roundly, a habit which
Haydon says he caught from his friend Dr. Armstrong, the poet. He
said a subject should interest, astonish, or move; if it did none
of these, it was worth “noding by Gode.” A visitor to his imposing,
but unsuccessful, Milton Gallery of forty paintings, said to him,
“Pray, sir, what is that picture?” “It is the bridging of Chaos;
the subject from Milton.” “No wonder,” said the inquirer, “I did
not know it, for I never read Milton, but I will.” “I advise you
not, sir, for you will find it a d----d tough job.” He said, on
looking at Northcote’s painting of the angel meeting Balaam and
his ass: “Northcote, you are an angel at an ass, but an ass at an
angel.” Once, at the table of Mr. Coutts, the banker, Mrs. Coutts,
dressed like Morgiana, came dancing in, presenting her dagger at
every breast. As she confronted Nollekens, Fuseli called out,
“Strike--strike--there’s no fear; Nolly was never known to bleed.”
He recommended a sculptor to find some newer emblem of eternity
than a serpent with a tail in its mouth. The _something newer_
(says Cunningham) startled a man whose imagination was none of the
brightest, and he said, “How shall I find something new?” “Oh,
nothing so easy,” said Fuseli; “I’ll help you to it. When I went
away to Rome I left two fat men cutting fat bacon in St. Martin’s
Lane; in ten years’ time I returned, and found the two fat men
cutting fat bacon still; twenty years more have passed, and there
the two fat fellows cut the fat flitches the same as ever. Carve
them--if they do not look like an image of eternity, I wot not what
does.”
[339] In the last ten years of his stage career Bannister travelled
with his “Budget” of songs, anecdotes, and imitations, through
England, Scotland, and Ireland.
[340] The Rev. Stephen Weston, F.R.S. (1747-1830), a well-known
antiquary and classical scholar, held the Devonshire livings of
Mainhead and Little Hempston, Devon, but left that county after
the death of his wife. He engaged in some spirited attempts to
translate Gray’s _Elegy_ into Greek, and published his _Elegia
Grayiana, Græce_, in 1794. He was fond of the French capital,
and published _The Praise of Paris_ in 1803. An old friend of
Nollekens, he was present at the funeral so airily described by
Smith in his life of the sculptor.
[341] Swan _upping_ (or marking) is still carried out yearly on the
Thames by the representatives of the Crown and by the Dyers’ and
Vintners’ Companies, who have the privilege of keeping swans on the
river. Formerly the state barges of the City went up to Staines,
and ceremonies were performed. Even to-day the expedition of the
swan-markers is picturesque; the skiffs bear the flags of the
several authorities, the markers wear flannels and distinguishing
jerseys, and the overseers don special tunics and peaked caps. The
birds are caught by means of long hooked poles.
[342] Tooke did not, therefore, “try the question” of his silver
caddy; but had it not been returned he would have done so in his
character of the inimitable litigant. “A court of law,” says
Hazlitt, in his masterly portrait of Tooke in _The Spirit of
the Age_, “was the place where Mr. Tooke made the best figure
in public. He might assuredly be said to be ‘native and endued
unto that element.’ He had here to stand merely on the defensive:
not to advance himself, but to block up the way: not to impress
others, but to be himself impenetrable. All he wanted was _negative
success_; and to this no one was better qualified to aspire. Cross
purposes, _moot-points_, pleas, demurrers, flaws in the indictment,
double meanings, cases, inconsequentialities, these were the
playthings, the darlings of Mr. Tooke’s mind; and with these he
baffled the Judge, dumbfounded the Counsel, and outwitted the Jury.
The report of his trial before Lord Kenyon is a masterpiece of
acuteness, dexterity, modest assurance, and legal effect. It is
much like his examination before the Commissioners of the Income
Tax--nothing could be got out of him in either case!”
[343] He had, indeed, prepared a tomb for himself in his garden
at Wimbledon, and the funeral invitations, as first sent out,
contemplated his burial here. He was buried in a family vault at
Ealing, to which the following inscription was added: “JOHN HORNE
TOOKE, late of Wimbledon, Author of the _Diversions of Purley_: was
born June 1736, and died March 18, 1812, contented and happy.”
[344] The Rev. William Huntington obtained influence over
multitudes by a grotesque piety and a compelling pulpit manner. He
appended the initials S.S. to his name, signifying “Sinner Saved.”
His true name was Hunt, and he himself tells how he added two
syllables to it as a disguise after being called upon to support
an illegitimate child. The son of a Kentish day labourer, he had
been errand boy, gardener, cobbler, and coal-heaver. At last he
turned wholly preacher, and in that character came up to London
from Thames Ditton, “bringing two large carts, with furniture and
other necessaries, besides a post-chaise well filled with children
and cats,” as he relates. He became minister of Margaret Street
Chapel, where he urged the power of prayer, telling his hearers
that whenever he wanted a thing--a horse, a pair of breeches, or a
pound of tea--he prayed for it and it came. In 1788 his admirers
built him a chapel in the Gray’s Inn Road at a cost of £9000. He
called it Providence Chapel, and was shrewd enough to obtain the
personal freehold. He carried pulpit brusqueness to the extreme.
“Wake that snoring sinner!” and “Silence that noisy numskull!”
were his frequent observations. By his marriage with the widow of
Sir James Sanderson, who had been Lord Mayor of London, he gained
wealth, and in 1811 he became the tenant of Dr. Valangin’s mansion
on Hermes Hill, Pentonville. This eminent Swiss physician had named
his estate Hermes Hill in honour of Hermes Trismegithus, the fabled
discoverer of chemistry. Huntington’s health failed him, and he
exchanged the air of Pentonville for Tunbridge Wells, where he
died July 1, 1813. Smith’s story of the disciple who purchased a
barrel of beer at the sale of Huntington’s effects is apparently
true. Extravagant prices were paid for less perishable souvenirs.
An arm-chair worth fifty shillings fetched sixty guineas, and an
ordinary pair of spectacles seven guineas. The Pentonville mansion
has long disappeared, but Hermes Street dingily perpetuates its
curious history.
[345] Smith’s Beef Steak friend, John Nixon, was an Irish factor,
who, with his brother Richard, lived over his warehouses in
Basinghall Street. He was wealthy and convivial, a bachelor, a good
business man, an admirable host, an amateur actor, and a comic
artist. His drawing of “The Jolly Undertakers” regaling themselves
at the Falcon Tavern, near Clapham Junction, is well known; the
landlord’s name was Robert Death, and the undertakers are seen
regaling themselves “at Death’s door.” Nixon’s original picture
long remained at the Falcon (now rebuilt), and was considered a
fixture.
The history of the Sublime Society of Beef Steaks was mournfully
recalled two years ago by the closing and subsequent sale of its
last home, the Lyceum Theatre. John Rich, the patentee of Covent
Garden Theatre, is usually named as its founder, but the germ of
the Society (its members loathed the name of Club) lay in the
creature needs of his scene painter, George Lambert, of whom
Edwards relates in his _Anecdotes of Painting_--
“As it frequently happened that he was too much hurried to leave
his engagements for his regular dinner, he contented himself with
a beefsteak broiled upon the fire in the painting-room. In this
hasty meal he was sometimes joined by his visitors, who were
pleased to participate in the humble repast of the artist. The
savour of the dish and the conviviality of the accidental meeting
inspired the party with a resolution to establish a club, which was
accordingly done under the title of the ‘Beefsteak Club’; and the
party assembled in the painting-room. The members were afterwards
accommodated with a room in the playhouse, where the meetings were
held for many years.”
Among the earlier members were Hogarth, Theophilus Cibber, George
IV., when Prince of Wales, the Earl of Sandwich, George Colman,
Wilkes. Charles Morris, the Laureate of the Beefsteaks, was
admitted in 1785, and remained a member till his death in 1838,
after being for more than fifty years the life and soul of the
Society. “Die when you will, Charles, you’ll die in your youth,”
were Curran’s words, and Morris died young at ninety-three. His
“Sweet shady side of Pall Mall” is the best London song of its kind.
The Society dined and wined itself into the nineteenth century
without a thought of change, but when Covent Garden Theatre was
burnt down in 1808, the Beefsteakers, who had taken shelter at the
Bedford Coffee House, went to the Lyceum Theatre at the invitation
of Samuel James Arnold. There, for sixty years, they met in a
banquet room behind the stage. In 1867 the number of members had
fallen to eighteen, and in that year the famous coterie closed its
doors and sent its Lares and Penates to Christie’s, that mart of
abandoned playthings. “Brother” Walter Arnold’s _Life and Death of
the Sublime Society of Beef Steaks_ (1871) is a singularly complete
and interesting memorial of the “jolly old Steakers of England.”
The “Ad Libitum” Society, of which Nixon was also a member, and
which was quite distinct from the Beefsteaks, held its meetings
successively at the Shakespeare Tavern, the Piazza Coffee House,
Robins’s Rooms, and the Bedford Coffee House. Thomas Dibdin gives a
list of its members in his _Reminiscences_.
[346] Mrs. Abington died on the 4th.
[347] Garrick’s troubles with this actress were such that he wrote
to her in reply to one of her complaints: “Let me be permitted to
say, that I never yet saw Mrs. Abington theatrically happy for a
week together.” During his later managership Garrick had ceaseless
struggles with his actresses, by which he was greatly wearied. “The
lively ‘Pivy’ Clive, the stately Mrs. Barry, Pope, the established
Hoyden of the theatre, Miss Younge, Mrs. Yates, Mrs. Abington, all
tried the effect of a modified revolt” (Percy Fitzgerald: _Life of
Garrick_).
[348] Stafford Row was near Stafford Gate, St. James’s Park. Mrs.
Yates died here in 1787, and Mrs. Radcliffe, the author of the
_Mysteries of Udolpho_, in 1823.
[349] These lines occur in the epilogue to General Burgoyne’s
comedy, _The Maid of the Oaks_, written by him expressly for Mrs.
Abington, who performed the part of Lady Bab Lardoon in the season
1773-74. Garrick wrote the epilogue in question to be spoken by
Mrs. Abington.
[350] These lines do not belong to _The Maid of the Oaks_, the
subject of Garrick’s letter of 9th November. I have not been able
to trace them.
[351] See Wilmot’s Letters, British Museum.--S.
[352] John Thane (1748-1818) was a well-known printseller in Soho,
and the editor of _British Autography: a Collection of Facsimiles
of the Handwriting of Royal and Illustrious Personages, with their
Authentic Portraits_ (1793).
[353] John Blaquière (1732-1812) sat in both Irish and United
Kingdom Parliaments. At this time (1771) he was Secretary of
Legation in Paris.
[354] This letter is the earliest from Walpole to Mrs. Abington
in Peter Cunningham’s collection, where it bears the more precise
date, September 1, 1771. At that time Walpole had no private
acquaintance with Mrs. Abington. Eight years later, Mrs. Abington
is still seeking his acquaintance, for he writes in April 1779 to
excuse himself from an invitation she had sent him. But on May 22,
1779, Walpole says at the end of a letter to the Honourable H. S.
Conway: “I am going to sup with Mrs. Abington, and hope Mrs. Clive
will not hear of it.” No doubt he did so, and it was after this
stage in their acquaintance that he wrote the letter of June 11,
1780 (see opposite page).
[355] Sir Walter James James, first Baronet (1759-1829), married
Jane, sister of John Jeffreys, second Earl, and first Marquis,
Camden.
[356] At this time Mrs. Jordan was absent from the stage, in
obedience to her lover, the Duke of Clarence, afterwards William
IV. By him she had ten children. She had also four children by Sir
Richard Ford, and a daughter by her Cork manager, Richard Daly.
But, says Leigh Hunt, she “made even Methodists love her.” In 1811
the Duke of Clarence made an arrangement by which she received
£4400 a year for the maintenance of herself and all her children,
on condition that if she returned to the stage the Duke’s daughters
and £1500 a year were to revert to him. All these daughters married
well. Mrs. Jordan died embarrassed and unhappy at St. Cloud, a good
deal of mystery shrouding her end. Tate Wilkinson tells how she
finally exchanged her maiden name of Bland for Jordan. “You have
crossed the water, my dear,” he said to her once, “so I’ll call you
Jordan.” “And by the memory of Sam! if she didn’t take my joke in
earnest, and call herself Mrs. Jordan ever since.”
[357] In a letter dated January 24, 1816, in my possession, which
was evidently intended to be sent as a circular to some of his
stauncher patrons, Smith states that he had found the previous
year very “unprofitable to the Arts,” and that owing to the great
number of families who left England for France “last season”
(_i.e._ after Waterloo), his income had been small. He has applied
himself closely to his etching table, and is now able to lay before
his correspondent the first three numbers of a small work at a
remarkably cheap rate. This was his _Vagabondiana, or Anecdotes of
Mendicant Wanderers through the Streets of London, with Portraits
of the Most Remarkable drawn from Life_. The increase of beggars
in London had engaged serious attention, and legislation was in
the air. The Society for the Suppression of Mendicity was founded
in 1818. Smith’s work is the artistic forerunner of Charles Lamb’s
_Complaint of the Decay of Beggars in the Metropolis_, written
in 1822, when “the all-sweeping besom of sectarian reform” had
done its work. The Herculean legless beggar whose portrait Lamb
draws with so much gusto, appears in Smith’s gallery of etchings.
But whereas Mr. E. V. Lucas identifies him as Samuel Horsey, I
venture to think he was the beggar named John MacNally. Smith’s
figure of Horsey hardly suggests a Hercules, nor does another
portrait of him from Kirby’s “Wonderful and Scientific Museum.” I
suggest that the beggar of whom Lamb wrote, in 1822, “He seemed
earth-born, an Antæus, and to suck in fresh vigour from the soil
which he neighboured; he was a grand fragment; as good as an Elgin
marble; the nature, which should have recruited his left leg and
thighs, was not lost, but only retired into his upper parts, and
he was half a Hercules,” was identical with the beggar whom John
Thomas Smith describes as an “extraordinary torso”: “His head,
shoulders, and chest, which are exactly those of Hercules, would
prove valuable models for the artist.” This Hercules is John
MacNally. Were there two London legless beggars who could suggest
to two minds such images of antique magnificence of physique? It is
possible, but unlikely.
[358] First cousin, once removed, of the poet.
[359] Charles Manners-Sutton, Archbishop of Canterbury 1805-28.
[360] Thomas Gilliland, whose _Dramatic Mirror_ is still consulted,
was not too popular with the actors and actresses whose lives he
compiled. He was practically warned off the Green-room of Drury
Lane Theatre by Charles Mathews, the elder.
[361] Smith is mistaken as to the date of the first race. This
was rowed on August 1, 1716. A portrait of a waterman in his
boat, still preserved in the Watermen’s Hall, St. Mary’s Hill, is
supposed to represent the first wearer of the coat and badge, a
white horse being painted on the back-board of the boat. It is said
that John Broughton, afterwards the prize-fighter, and the founder
of boxing, was this winner. Under Doggett’s will, only one prize,
the coat and badge, was given, but additional prizes have been
added under the will of Sir William Jolliff, in 1820, and by the
Fishmongers’ Company. These prizes are generous. Even the last of
the six young watermen to reach the winning-post is sure of £2; the
other unsuccessful candidates receive sums from £3 to £6 each. The
winner of the race is £10 in pocket, his name is added to the long
roll of previous winners, and he wears Doggett’s coat (made to fit
him) among the coated élite of Watermen’s Hall.
A clever and genial man, Doggett was known everywhere by his
immense wig, on the top of which, not without the aid of pins,
rested a small cocked hat. He carried a rapier, and took snuff
incessantly. Only two portraits of him are known: one represents
him dancing the Cheshire Round with the motto, “Ne sutor
ultra crepidam,” and the Garrick Club has a portrait, but its
authenticity is questioned.
[362] _The Waterman_ was, indeed, announced as the after-piece to
_The Wonder_, but Garrick had no part in it, and his great farewell
scene rendered its performance impossible alike to actors and
audience.
[363] Sarah Sophia Banks (1744-1818) was a virtuoso, and collector
of natural history specimens. She kept house for her brother, Sir
Joseph Banks, at 32 Soho Square, at the corner of Frith Street.
Here Sir Joseph, who is mentioned by Smith elsewhere, gave his
Sunday evening conversaziones, at which Cavendish and Wollaston
were the prominent guests. Sir Henry Holland describes these
evenings in his _Recollections_. Gifford of the _Quarterly_
remarked to Moore, that the Banks’ mansion was to science what
Holland House was to literature. Horace Walpole poked incessant fun
at Sir Joseph’s curiosity about remote Atlantic islands, and Peter
Pindar scribbled verses like this:--
“To give a breakfast in Soho,
Sir Joseph’s bitterest foe
Must certainly allow him peerless merit:
Where on a wagtail and tom-tit
He shines, and sometimes on a nit:
Displaying powers few gentlemen inherit.”
The house was afterwards the home of the Linnæan Society, and is
now the Hospital for Diseases of the Heart.
[364] Knick-knacks.
[365] Elizabeth Carter (1717-1806), of “Epictetus” fame, was the
daughter of a Kent parson. She enjoyed the friendship of Dr.
Johnson, to whom she was introduced by Cave. Mrs. Carter wrote
Nos. 44 and 100 of the _Rambler_, essays which Johnson esteemed
highly. Her resolution in acquiring a knowledge of Greek and Latin
was extraordinary: she placed a bell at the head of her bed, and
arranged that the sexton, who rose between four and five o’clock,
should ring it by means of a cord which descended into the garden
below. Her translation of Epictetus appeared in 1758; it was
published by subscription at one guinea, and she made £1000 by it.
Her attainments brought her many distinguished friends, and it
was thought that Dr. Secker, afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury,
wished to marry her. Mrs. Carter was one of the little company
who dined with Johnson at Mrs. Garrick’s house, May 3, 1783, when
Hannah More, looking at Johnson, “was struck with the mild radiance
of the setting sun.”
[366] Mrs. Dards’ exhibition was at No. 1 Suffolk Street, Cockspur
Street. The British Museum has one of her catalogues, dated 1800.
[367] This singular character, whose real name was Henry
Constantine Jennings (1731-1819), died within the Rules of the
King’s Bench, after spending one fortune on works of art and
losing another on the turf. About 1778 he brought to England
the antique sculpture known as Alcibiades’ Dog (now at Duncombe
Park, Yorkshire), whence he had his nickname, “Dog Jennings.” His
purchase of this work for a thousand guineas was the subject of one
of Dr. Johnson’s conversations, recorded by Boswell. Jennings lived
in the most easterly of the five houses into which Lindsey House,
Chelsea, was divided in 1760. In Smith’s _Nollekens_ he appears as
a little man in a brown coat walking in Marylebone Fields, where
Nollekens was for giving him twopence, mistaking him for a pauper.
Jennings was twice married, and at one time laid claim to a lapsed
peerage. At Chelsea, where he maintained his house and grounds in
a state of luxurious neglect, it was his custom twice a day to
exercise himself with a ponderous lead-tipped broadsword: then (to
use his own words), “mount my chaise horse, composed of leather and
inflated with wind like a pair of bellows, on which I take exactly
one thousand gallops.” Among his treasures was a statue of Venus,
which he prized so highly, that for the first six months after
acquiring it he had it placed during dinner at the head of his
table, with two footmen in laced liveries in attendance on it--a
situation that to-day would be worthy of Mr. Anstey’s humour.
[368] Sir Thomas Stepney, ninth and last baronet of Prendergast,
Pembroke, died September 12, 1825, aged 65. He was long a member
of White’s Club, and wore blue and white striped stockings, a
peculiarity he shared with Nollekens, the sculptor. A worthier
distinction was his descent from Sir Anthony Vandyke. Sir John
Stepney, the third baronet, had married the daughter and heiress of
the painter.
[369] Of John Burges, M.D. (1745-1807), there is a manuscript
memoir in the library of the Royal College of Physicians. He made
a fine collection of the _materia medica_, which ultimately passed
to the college, where it is still preserved. Gillray’s legend “From
Warwick Lane” refers, of course, to the earlier location of the
college in the city.
[370] At the Royal Academy dinner of 1789 the health of Alderman
Boydell as “the Commercial Mæcenas of England” was proposed by
Edmund Burke. It was in this year that the Alderman began to
exhibit in Pall Mall the works which he had commissioned for his
Shakespeare Gallery. Next year he became Lord Mayor. Unfortunately,
he miscalculated his financial powers, and the outbreak of the
French Revolution entailed on him such loss of foreign custom
that his death in 1804 was clouded by misfortune. He had employed
nearly all the best artists and engravers of his day, and had spent
£350,000 in his business. His Shakespeare Gallery, consisting of
170 pictures, was disposed of by lottery; the winner being Tassie,
the gem-modeller, who sold them at Christie’s for £6157.
[371] First fashionable in 1745, and named after William, Duke of
Cumberland. Smith might have seen it in his boyhood. It was smartly
cocked in front.
[372] George Frederick Beltz (1777-1841), Lancaster Herald, and
author of _Memorials of the Order of the Garter_, was one of
Mrs. Garrick’s executors, and wrote the memoir of her in the
_Gentleman’s Magazine_ of November 1822.
[373] “Mr. Dance, in this picture of Garrick, has been guilty of an
egregious anachronism. He has actually given Richard the Third the
_star_ of the Order of the Garter, when he ought to have known that
it was not introduced before the reign of King Charles I.” (Smith:
_Nollekens_).
[374] Sir Watkin Williams Wynn, fifth baronet (1772-1840), a
generous patron of artists. His town house in St. James’s Square
had fine pictures. He died after a fall from his horse in the
hunting-field.
[375] The Dowager Lady Amherst would appear to be Elizabeth,
daughter and co-heir of Lieutenant-General Honourable George Cary,
who married, 1767, Jeffrey, first Lord Amherst, Field-Marshal, who
died in 1797, aged 80. Lady Amherst died in 1830.--William George
Maton, M.D., dated his fortune from the day when he was approached
by an equerry at Weymouth as a person who might be able to name a
plant (_arundo epigejos_) which one of the royal princesses had
found. He was thus brought into the presence of Queen Charlotte,
and later became her physician extraordinary. Maton died on March
30, 1835, and was buried at St. Martin’s-in-the-Fields. There is a
tablet to him in Salisbury Cathedral.--Mr. Carr was Mrs. Garrick’s
solicitor, and was to be the next occupant of the famous Garrick
Villa at Hampton.
[376] Elizabeth Wright Macauley, novelist, actress, and preacher of
the gospel, died at York, March 1837, aged 52, in rather straitened
circumstances. Her London home was at 52 Clarendon Square, St.
Pancras. She published, in 1812, _Effusions of Fancy_, a collection
of poems consisting of the “Birth of Friendship,” the “Birth of
Affection,” and the “Birth of Sensibility.” In the last year of
her life she had travelled the country lecturing on “Domestic
Philosophy,” and giving recitations.
[377] At an earlier time the Abbey had been free to sight-seers,
but a wanton injury to the figure of George Washington in Major
André’s monument had led to the imposition of admission fees.
Not long after Smith’s encounter, Charles Lamb wrote his protest
against these fees, of which he says: “In no part of our beloved
Abbey now can a person find entrance (out of service time) under
the sum of _two shillings_.” Lamb’s complaint may have been rather
overstrained by reason of its incorporation in his bitter letter to
Southey in the _London Magazine_ for October 1823.
Free admission was given to the larger part of the Abbey under Dean
Ireland. Authorised guides were first appointed in 1826, and the
nave and transepts were opened, and the fees lowered in 1841 at the
suggestion of Lord John Thynne (Dean Stanley: _Historical Memorials
of Westminster Abbey_).
[378] The Rev. Thomas Rackett (1757-1841), Rector of Spetisbury
with Charlton-Marshall, Dorset. He was a musician, a naturalist, an
antiquary, and a friend of Garrick. He had been guided as a youth
by Dr. John Hunter. His daughter Dorothea married Mr. S. Solly of
Heathside, near Poole. She is mentioned on p. 290.
[379] Dr. Francklin was probably the “Thomas Franklin” who signed
the round-robin to Dr. Johnson asking him to re-write Goldsmith’s
epitaph in English. Here the absence of the _c_ from the name
causes Croker to doubt the identity, and Dr. Birkbeck Hill to
reject it. It is curious that Smith, with Garrick’s marriage
certificate before him, makes the name agree with the questioned
signature in the memorial to Johnson. Francklin knew Johnson and
dedicated to him a translation of Lucian. “BOSWELL. I think Dr.
Franklin’s definition of _Man_ a good one--A tool-making animal.
JOHNSON. But many a man never made a tool; and suppose a man
without arms, he could not make a tool.” Francklin founded the
_Centinel_, a paper of the _Tatler_ variety, and published many
translations. He was the first Chaplain to the Royal Academy, and
composed a song, “The Patrons,” that was sung at the inaugural
dinner.
[380] This certificate does not answer Smith’s inquiry: the place
of the marriage. As a matter of fact, Dr. Francklin’s chapel, where
the ceremony was performed, was not in Great Queen Street, but in
Queen Street, near Russell Street, now Museum Street. The Charity
School opposite the side entrance of Mudie’s Library marks the site
of the chapel in which the knot was tied between David Garrick and
Eva Maria Violetti. The facts are given correctly by a writer in
_Notes and Queries_ (March 31, 1877), who puts in the following
documents:--
“On the 22nd June, 1749, Garrick was married to Eva Maria Violetti
by M. Francklin, at his chapel near Russell Street, Bloomsbury; and
afterwards, according to the rites of the Roman Catholic Church, by
the Rev. M. Blyth, at the chapel of the Portuguese Embassy in South
Audley Street” (Garrick’s _Correspondence_, 1831).
“Yesterday was married, by the Rev. Mr. Francklin, at his chapel,
Russell Street, Bloomsbury, David Garrick, Esq., to Eva Maria
Violetti” (_General Advertiser_, June 23, 1749).
[381] No picture in the National Gallery is better known and
admired than Rubens’s “Chapeau de Paille.” It is a portrait of
Mdlle. Lunden, with whom Rubens was in love. He is said to have
painted her portrait without her knowledge while she sat in her
garden, and to have obtained her acceptance of the picture. On her
untimely death Rubens begged back this portrait, which her family
had christened “Le Chapeau de Paille,” promising a replica in
exchange. This is the National Gallery picture. In it, instead of a
straw hat (chapeau de paille), Rubens has introduced a beaver hat
(chapeau de poil), but the original name is still in vogue, though
the name “Chapeau de Poil” appears on the frame of the picture in
Room xii. of the National Gallery. In 1822 the picture passed from
the Lunden family to M. Van Niewenhuysen for 89,000 florins, and
from him it was acquired, through Smith the printseller, by the
British Government.
[382] Edward Knight, known as LITTLE KNIGHT, is universally stated
to have been born in Birmingham in 1774; “Bristol” and “1778” are
probably misprints.
[383] _Flora, or Hob in the Well_, a farce by Cibber, adapted from
Thomas Doggett’s _Country Wake_.
[384] _The Soldier’s Daughter_ is a comedy by Cherry, Timothy
Quaint being a minor character.--_Fortune’s Frolic_ is a farce by
Allingham. Robin Roughhead, a labourer, succeeds to the title and
wealth; then he marries his humble sweetheart, Dolly, and makes the
best of landlords.
[385] Of Knight as an actor we read: “There was an odd quickness,
and a certain droll play about every muscle of his face, that fully
prepared the audience for the jest that was to follow. His Sim, in
_Wild Oats_, may be termed the most chaste and natural performance
on the stage.” It was remarked of Knight, however, that he was too
fond of laughter and tears, “squeezing his eyelids, and fidgetting
and pelting about, till he got the necessary moisture.”
[386] A bronze statue in the garden of Burton Crescent shows
Cartwright as a small, excessively bald man, seated with what might
be a blue-book in his hand. A luxuriant fig tree was threatening
to engulf him in its foliage in September 1905. The inscription
states that he was “The First Consistent and Persevering Advocate
of Universal Suffrage, Equal Representation, Vote by Ballot, and
Annual Parliaments.” For every evil, even for cold weather or bad
plays, he prescribed “Annual Parliaments and Universal Suffrage.”
The Reverend J. Richardson, in his _Recollections_, says that for
many years the Lords of the Admiralty gave Cartwright half-pay,
without suspecting that the “John Cartwright” on their books
was their arch-critic, “Major” Cartwright, whose commission in
the Nottinghamshire Militia had put this handle to his name and
disguised his identity.
[387] It may be hoped that, had Smith lived to prepare his BOOK FOR
A RAINY DAY for the press, he would have expunged these embittered
references to the wealth of Nollekens and legateeship of Francis
Douce.
[388] Elizabeth Ogilvy Benger (1778-1827) was an amiable woman and
a popular writer of history and biography. She was a friend of the
Lambs, Mrs. Barbauld, Mrs. Aikin, Campbell, and others. Among her
works are _Memoirs of Mary Queen of Scots and Anne Boleyn_, and a
poem on the slave-trade.
[389] From Mr. W. Roberts’ “_Memorials of Christie’s_, it appears
that the original cup from Shakespeare’s mulberry tree, which was
presented to David Garrick by the Mayor and Corporation, at the
time of the Jubilee at Stratford, realised 121 guineas on April
30, 1825.” Smith mis-states the date. On May 30, 1903, a figure of
Shakespeare carved from the tree was sold at Sotheby’s for £13, 5s.
[390] See note, p. 273.
[391] This derivation has been questioned by others. The _New
English Dictionary_ leaves the point doubtful, but quotes the
_Globe_ of July 24, 1882: “The ‘Busby,’ so often used colloquially
when a large bushy wig is meant, most probably took its origin …
not from Dr. Busby, the famous headmaster of Westminster School,
but from the wig denominated a ‘Buzz,’ from being frizzled and
bushy.” May it not be that the word sprang from “buzz,” in
association with the name of the famous headmaster?--the one
originating and the other confirming its use.
[392] Nevertheless periwigs were known in England considerably
earlier. Fairholt mentions one that was ordered “for Sexton, the
king’s fool,” in the reign of Henry VIII. In Hall’s _Satires_
(1598) a courtier is made to lose his periwig while trying to bow
on a windy day. Other instances are quoted by Fairholt in _Costume
in England_.
[393] The Duke of Wellington once entertained a dinner-table with
an account of Louis XIV.’s wig. His remarks were thus reported, at
first hand, in _Notes and Queries_ of Nov. 25, 1871, by Mr. Herbert
Randolph:--
“I was in the year 1834 or 1835 dining in company with the Duke
of Wellington at Betshanger in Kent, then the seat of Frederick
Morice, Esq., now of Sir Walter James. It was about the time when
the Bishop of London (Dr. Blomfield) had first appeared in the
House of Lords without his wig, and a smart controversy arising
out of the fact was going on. Opposite to the Duke at table hung
a portrait of an admiral of Queen Anne’s time, an ancestor of
Mr. Morice, and the finely painted ‘Ramillies wig’ upon his head
caught the Duke’s attention. He took occasion from this to give, in
his terse and decided manner, a complete history of wigs, having
evidently mastered the subject in reference to the question of the
day. He concluded, to the point, by saying: ‘Louis the Fourteenth
had a hump, and no man, not even his valet, ever saw him without
his wig. It hung down his back, like the judges’ wigs, to hide
the hump. But the Dauphin, who hadn’t a hump, couldn’t bear the
heat, so he cut it round close to the poll; and the episcopal wig
that you are all making such a fuss about is the wig of the most
profligate days of the French court.’”
[394] It was Woollett’s pleasing custom to celebrate the completion
of a plate by firing a cannon from the roof of his house, No. 36
Charlotte Street, Fitzroy Square. On this occasion he doubtless
used an extra charge of powder.
[395] No allusion to Sir Cloudesley Shovel was intended by Pope.
The line occurs in the _Moral Essays_, Epistle iii.--
“When Hopkins dies, a thousand lights attend
The wretch, who living saved a candle’s end;
Shouldering God’s altar a vile image stands,
Belies his features, nay extends his hands;
That live-long wig which Gorgon’s self might own,
Eternal buckle takes in Parian stone.”
Pope’s own note to the last line reads: “Ridicule the wretched
taste of carving large periwigs on bustos, of which there
are several vile examples among the tombs of Westminster and
elsewhere.” Pope’s real victim, Hopkins, was “Vulture” Hopkins, who
died in his house in Broad Street in 1732, leaving a fortune of
£300,000 with peculiar conditions attached. Several thousand pounds
were expended on his funeral.
[396] Thomas Dawson, Viscount--not Earl--of Cremorne, died 1813.
[397] The full-dress wigs of English judges are the nearest
survival of the great Queen Anne wigs familiar in the portraits of
these men. They are made of white horse hair, elaborately treated.
[398] Combing the wig in the theatre and the drawing-room was a
habit, like twirling the moustache. Dryden pictures the wits rising
as one man in the pit of the theatre and beginning to comb their
wigs while they stared at a new masked beauty. “It became the mark
of a young man of _ton_ to be seen combing his periwig in the Mall,
or at the theatre” (Fairholt: _Costume in England_). Hats were not
worn on perukes that cost forty or fifty pounds. In Wycherley’s
_Love in a Wood_ (1672) we read: “A lodging is as unnecessary a
thing to a widow that has a coach, as a hat to a man that has a
good peruke.”
[399] It is said that, as a rule, Lely’s male portraits of the
Charles II. period can be distinguished at once from Kneller’s
portraits of the Court of William III., by observing that in the
former the ends of the wig descend on the chest, in the latter they
fall behind the shoulders.
[400] The distinction is particularly important in the case of
Cibber, whose wig in the part of Sir Fopling Flutter was so
admired that he regularly had it brought in a sedan-chair to the
footlights, where he publicly donned it with great applause.
Cibber’s modest private wig can be studied in Roubiliac’s coloured
bust in the National Portrait Gallery.
[401] John Wallis, D.D. (1616-1703), a distinguished mathematician
as well as theologian.
[402] Several particulars of Johnson’s wigs are given by Boswell.
The improvements he made in his dress through the influence of Mrs.
Thrale included “a Paris-made wig of handsome construction.” “In
general,” says Croker, “his wigs were very shabby, and their fore
parts were burned away by the near approach of the candle, which
his short-sightedness rendered necessary in reading. At Streatham
Mrs. Thrale’s butler always kept a better wig in his own hands,
with which he met Johnson at the parlour door, when the bell
had called him down to dinner; and this ludicrous ceremony was
performed every day.”
[403] “Mr. Hillier, I believe, was of the same family as the late
Nathaniel Hillier of Stoke, near Guildford, one of whose daughters
married Colonel Onslow. He was a most extensive collector of
engravings, and his cabinets contained numerous rarities, but he
spoiled all his prints by staining them with coffee, to produce,
as he thought, a mellow tint, but by which process he not only
deprived most of them of their pristine brilliancy, but rendered
their sale considerably less productive” (Smith). The trick of
staining prints with coffee was once fairly common among collectors.
[404] Probably the pendent bobs or “dildos” on the “campaign” wig
introduced in the reign of Charles II. were the origin of the
pigtail. The “Ramillies” wig, named after the battle of 1706, had a
long plaited tail, and immediately became the fashion. By 1731 the
pigtail wig had reached its height of popularity and absurdity.
“But pray, what’s that much like a whip,
Which with the air does wav’ring skip
From side to side, and hip to hip?”
asks a country visitor in _The Metamorphosis of the Town_, and is
answered--
“Sir, do not look so fierce and big,
It is a modish pigtail wig.”
[405] Horwood’s map of London (1799) shows the river walk from
Abingdon Street almost to Chelsea Bridge between willows, along
the water-edge, and nursery gardens. A good idea of Millbank as it
was at this period may be obtained from the Earl of Albemarle’s
_Fifty Years of my Life_ (vol. i. cap. vi.), where we see the boys
of Westminster School roaming these spaces, hiring guns from Mother
Hubbard, and obtaining dogs and badgers from their obliging friend,
William Heberfield, “Slender Billy,” who was mercilessly hanged in
1812 for passing forged notes. See a curious account of Palmer’s
village in Charles Manby Smith’s _Curiosities of London Life_
(1853). Smith has an etching of the Willow Walk in his _Remarks on
Rural Scenery_ (1797).
[406] William Collins, a modeller of mantelpieces and friezes, was
an intimate friend of Nathaniel Smith (J. T. S.’s father), and is
described by Smith, in his _Antient Topography of London_, as a
fascinating modeller in clay and wax, and carver in wood. He took
many of his subjects from Æsop’s Fables, and was much employed by
Sir Henry Cheere, the statuary, who then had workshops near the
south-east corner of Henry the Seventh’s Chapel. Roubillac worked
here when he first came to England. Collins died in Tothill Fields,
May 31, 1793. His mantelpiece in Ancaster House remains.
[407] Belgrave House stood at the west end of Millbank Row, the
continuation of Abingdon Street. The Millbank of Gainsborough’s
days extended from this point southward and westward (as it rounded
the obtuse promontory) as far as the White Lead Mills, whence
Turpentine Lane led north to the Jenny’s Whim Tavern and bridge.
This picturesque wooden bridge spanned a reservoir of the Chelsea
water-works.
[408] Albert van Everdingen (1621-1725), a Dutch painter of
landscapes and sea-pieces.
[409] Jan van Goyen (1596-1656) was born at Leyden. His favourite
subjects were river banks with peasants. Three of his pictures are
in the National Gallery.
[410] Jacob van Ruysdael (1628-82), the greatest of Dutch landscape
painters.
[411] Cornelius Gerritz Dekker (died 1678) painted at Haarlem; one
of his landscapes is in the National Gallery.
[412] The Neat House Gardens added much to the pleasantness of the
river walk at Millbank. They were held by gardeners who grew fruit
and vegetables here for the London markets. About 1831 the soil
taken to form St. Katherine’s Docks was brought up the river and
laid upon them; after which Lupus Street and many other Pimlico
streets were built on their site. It is a pity that no local
name-relic exists of gardens which Massinger knew as a place for
musk-melons (_City Madam_, Act iii. sc. 1), which Pepys visited
with his wife, and which “would have pleased Ruysdael.”
[413] On August 3, 1802, Garnerin, or Garnerini, ascended in a
balloon from Vauxhall Gardens with his wife and Mr. Glasford. A
cat, which they dropped in a parachute, fell safely in a garden at
Hampstead, and the balloon itself, after passing over the Green
Park, Paddington, etc., descended in a paddock at Lord Rosslyn’s,
at the top of Hampstead Hill. Mrs. Garnerin afterwards lost her
life through ascending from Paris with fireworks.
[414] I conjecture that this is a misprint, and that Smith’s
correspondent was St. Schültze, an artist and writer of ability, of
whom Eckermann, in his _Conversations with Goethe_, writes, May 15,
1826: “I talked with Goethe to-day about St. Schültze, of whom he
spoke very kindly. ‘When I was ill a few weeks since,’ said he, ‘I
read his _Heitere Stunden_’ (Cheerful Hours) ‘with great pleasure.’
If Schültze had lived in England, he would have made an epoch; for,
with his gift of observing and depicting, nothing was wanting but
the sight of life on a large scale.”
[415] Friederich Campe compiled for the occasion a little book
called _Reliquien von Albrecht Dürer_.
[416] Peter von Cornelius. Born at Düsseldorf in 1783, he achieved
his great reputation at Munich, where he directed the Academy and
embellished many public buildings. He died so late as 1867.
[417] Johann Gottlieb Schneider (1789-1864), of Dresden, one of the
first organists of his day.
[418] After Dürer’s death from a decline, his close friend,
Porkheimer, wrote to Johann Tscherte, of Vienna: “Nothing grieves
me deeper than that he should have died so painful a death, which,
under God’s providence, I can ascribe to nobody but his huswife,
who gnawed into his very heart, and so tormented him, that he
departed hence the sooner; for he was dried up to a faggot, and
might nowhere seek a jovial humour, or go to his friends.… She and
her sister are not queans; they are, I doubt not, in the number of
honest, devout, and altogether God-fearing women; but a man might
better have a quean, who was otherwise kindly, than such a gnawing,
suspicious, quarrelsome, good woman, with whom he can have no peace
or quiet, neither by day nor by night.”
[419] The architect, and author of a fine work on _Ancient and
Ornamental Architecture at Rome and in Italy_, the materials for
which he collected in the tour he mentions to Smith. He married
the daughter of Smith’s acquaintance, Williams, a well-known
button-maker in St. Martin’s Lane. William Blake found in him a
good friend, and was worshipped by his son, Frederick Tatham,
who said that a stroll with Blake was “as if he were walking
with the Prophet Isaiah.” Late in life Charles Tatham fell into
money difficulties, but obtained the post of warden of Greenwich
Hospital, where he died in 1842.
[420] Stephen Porter of the Middle Temple, and of Trinity College,
Cambridge, translated from the German a play called _Lovers’ Vows_,
by Augustus von Kotzebue, 1798.
[421] Copper Holmes had constructed a floating home out of a West
Country vessel, which cost him £150. He appears to have had his
name “Copper” from the metal he acquired with this hulk. His ark
was considered a nuisance, and the City authorities brought an
action to compel him to remove it. He died in 1821.
[422] “The flat pavement on the southern side of the church, facing
the “Golden Cross,” is called “the Watermen’s Burying-ground,”
from the number of old Thames watermen who were brought thither to
their last long rest from Hungerford, York, and Whitehall Stairs”
(Walford: _Old and New London_).
[423] The reference is to an impersonation of Joe Hatch,
the waterman, which Charles Mathews included in one of the
single-handed “At Home” entertainments which he started in 1818.
“One of the best occasional delineations of character, is that of
Joe Hatch, a waterman, who is also termed the Thames Chancellor and
Boat Barrister, a fellow (we presume a real portrait, though we
have not the good fortune to know the original) who lays down the
law of his craft, promotes and allays quarrels, and gratifies his
fare with a ‘long, tough yarn’ of his own adventures” (_Memoirs of
Charles Mathews_).
[424] “Curtis’s Halfpenny Hatch was a passage across St. George’s
Fields from Narrow Wall, opposite Somerset House. It was a
halfpenny toll-way through extensive nursery grounds” (_Wine and
Walnuts_). It is now commemorated in the name Hatch Row, Roupell
Street, Lambeth, and I have found that Palmer Street is still
called, locally, “up the Hatch,” though, of course, nothing in
the shape of a Hatch has existed within living memory. “Hatches,”
or gates, at which halfpennies were levied, were common on the
outskirts of London. Nollekens told Smith that he remembered one in
Charlotte Street, kept by a miller, and another between the Oxford
Road (Oxford Street) and Grosvenor Square.
[425] Philip Astley, the great equestrian, was inspired by the
feats of Johnson and others at the Three Hats Tavern, Islington,
to give his exhibitions in an open field near the Waterloo Road.
The price of admission was sixpence. Astley started with only
one horse, given him by General Elliott, in whose regiment he
had served. A clown named Porter supplied the comic relief. In
1770 he moved to the foot of Westminster Bridge, where his famous
Amphitheatre took shape. He is said rarely to have given more
than five pounds for a horse, troubling “little for shape, make,
or colour; temper was the only consideration.” His circus was
repeatedly burnt down, but it became one of the recognised sights
of London. On September 12, 1783, Horace Walpole writes: “I could
find nothing at all to do, and so went to Astley’s, which indeed
was much beyond my expectation. I do not wonder any longer that
Darius was chosen king by the instructions he gave to his horse;
nor that Caligula made his a consul.”
After Astley’s death in 1814, his manager, the great Ducrow, became
the head of the circus business. The Ducrow family monument is a
striking object in Kensal Green cemetery, where also is seen the
monument of the Cooke family, whose head, Thomas Cooke, owned a
circus in Astley’s time, and took it to Mauchline in 1784, where it
was visited by Burns. The writer of an interesting article on the
Cookes in the _Tatler_ of July 29, 1903, says: “The aristocrats of
the sawdust, they have been entertaining for at least 120 years,
and to-day wherever there is a circus there is a Cooke.”
[426] This “dell” is still apparent in Salutation Court, in which
is Hatch Row.
[427] William Curtis (1746-99) had this botanical garden in Lambeth
Marsh, and there collected some of the material for his _Flora
Londinensis_. Later, he opened his large establishment at Brompton.
In 1782, he rendered a curious service to the suburbs by writing
_A Short History of the Brown-Tail Moth_, to allay “the alarm
which had been excited in the country round the Metropolis by an
extraordinary abundance of the caterpillars of this moth, and which
was so great, that the parish officers … attended in form to see
them burnt by bushels at a time” (Nichol’s _Literary Anecdotes_).
Curtis was buried in Battersea parish church.
[428] Richard Palmer Roupell, a wealthy lead-smelter in Gravel
Lane, Southwark, owned much property in Southwark, Lambeth, and
elsewhere. He lived at Aspen House, Brixton. There is a Roupell
Road at Streatham and a Roupell Street in Lambeth. The name
of Curtis, the botanist, deserves, but has not found, similar
perpetuation in the neighbourhood.
[429] Strand Lane Stairs was the river outlet of Strand Lane, a
narrow street which ran down from the Strand east of Somerset
House. As Mr. Wheatley points out, it was originally the channel
of the rivulet which crossed the Strand under Strand Bridge. The
landing-place is now lost under the Embankment, but the upper
portion of the lane still exists, and leads to the famous Roman
Bath, which every Londoner intends to, but does not, visit.
[430] This restoration of the Chapel (the Banqueting House) was
carried out by Sir John Soane, 1829-30.
[431] Henry Smedley, of Westminster, gave up the profession of the
law for the study of the arts. He died in his house in the Broad
Sanctuary, March 14, 1832.
[432] Richard Parkes Bonnington had not been dead a year when this
talk was proceeding. His success had outrun his strength, and a
most promising career was closed by consumption, September 23,
1828. He lies in St. James’s Church in Pentonville. Bonnington’s
work is much appreciated in France. In the Louvre, where he studied
as a boy, there are one or two fine examples of his work. The
National Gallery has his “Venice: the Pillars of Piazzetta.” That
the British Museum Print-Room has a fine collection of his sketches
is largely due to the fact that he died during a visit to England,
and that his drawings went to Christie’s, where they fetched £1200.
[433] This elaborate and beautiful work stands in the centre
of St. Andrew’s Chapel. Beneath a canopy supported on columns
lie the effigies of Lord and Lady Norris, and round them kneel
their six soldier sons, four of whom died on the field. In his
_Antient Topography_ Smith tells how Roubiliac admired this
stately cenotaph. “When my father had occasion to go to his master
(Roubiliac) during the time he was putting up Sir Peter Warren’s
monument in the Abbey, he was generally found standing by the
monument of Norris, or by that of Vere. On one of these attendances
he was observed with his arms folded before the north-west corner
figure of one of the six knights (the sons) who support the
cenotaph of Lord Norris, and appeared as if rivetted to the spot.
My father, who had thrice delivered his message, without being once
noticed, was at last smartly pinched on the elbow by Roubiliac, who
at the same time said, but in a soft and smothered tone of voice,
‘Hush! Hush! He’ll _speak_ presently.’”
[434] William Esdaile (1758-1837) was a partner in the banking
house of Esdaile, Hammet, & Co., 21 Lombard Street. He took up
print-collecting and bought lavishly. Falling into ill health, he
spent the last five years of his life in poring over his prints,
and died in his Clapham house, October 2, 1837. The disposal of his
remarkable collection at Christie’s occupied sixteen days, and was
attended by buyers from the Continent.
[435] The Clapham visited by Smith was that of Lord Macaulay’s
young manhood and of Ruskin’s boyhood, and was rural and open
beyond the belief of the present generation. In his recently
published _Life and Letters of Sir George Grove_, Mr. Charles L.
Graves says: “All the way from Wandsworth Road to Clapham Junction
the neighbourhood was a favourite resort for solid City people, the
wealthiest living on Clapham Common. But Clapham was thoroughly
rural and not even semi-suburban in the ‘twenties’ and ‘thirties.’
Mr. Edmund Grove distinctly recollects seeing a man in the stocks
at Clapham, then a most picturesque village with a watch-house for
the ‘Charlies,’ and old inns with timbered fronts and spacious
courtyards.”
[436] Charles Alexandre de Calonne succeeded Necker as
comptroller-general of finance in 1783. He was unable to reduce
French finance to order, and in 1787 found it advisable to retire
to England. In Sir Nathaniel Wraxhall’s _Memoirs_ I find the
following:--
“The tester of Calonne’s bed having fallen upon him during the
night, together with a portion of the ceiling of the room, he
narrowly escaped suffocation. All Paris, when the fact became
known, exclaimed, ‘Juste ciel!’ The tester of a bed is denominated
in French ‘le ciel du lit.’… With him may be said to have commenced
the emigration (to England) which soon became so general.”
[437] Henry Peter Standly, of St. Neot’s, an active magistrate,
possessed an unrivalled collection of Hogarth’s prints and
drawings, which was dispersed at Christie’s in 1845. He purchased
drawings of landscapes from Smith.
[438] See note, p. 4.
[439] John Inigo Richards, R.A., was one of the original members
of the Royal Academy, and its secretary from 1788. He was for many
years principal scene-painter at Covent Garden. He died in his
Academy apartments, Dec. 18, 1810.
[440] Edwards’s _Anecdotes of Painters_.--S.
[441] Probably Dr. Robert Richardson, M.D., who had been travelling
physician to Lord Mountjoy. He died in Gordon Street, Bloomsbury,
November 5, 1847.
[442] Enthusiasm for art and carelessness of money went to the
forming of Sir Thomas Lawrence’s unrivalled collection. Cunningham
says: “Of every eminent artist he had such specimens as no other
person possessed; not huddled into heaps, or scattered like the
leaves of the Sibyl, but arranged in fine large portfolios properly
labelled and enshrined.”
[443] Smith could not have seen the whole of Sir Peter Lely’s
collection of prints and drawings. These were sold by auction in
1687, the sale lasting more than a month.--Thomas Hudson (1701-79)
painted the portraits of members of the Dilettanti Society, and,
being wealthy, collected many fine prints and drawings.--Archibald
Campbell, third Duke, formed a very fine library.
[444] This name is given as Serre in the three old editions of the
_Rainy Day_--a very misleading erratum. William Score was born in
Devonshire about 1778. He became a pupil of Joshua Reynolds, and
regularly exhibited portraits at the Royal Academy.
[445] “Sir Joshua Reynolds commenced two of his finest historical
pictures without settling in what way the compositions were to be
completed, or, indeed, without even thinking of their subjects.
The head of Count Ugolino at Knowle, and the Infant Christ in
Macklin’s picture, were painted on the canvases long before the
artist considered subjects or combinations” (S.).--This historical
painting, says Northcote, existed simply as a head of the Count
until Burke and Goldsmith praised it, whereupon Sir Joshua had his
canvas enlarged in order that he might add the other figures. When
finished, the picture was bought by the Duke of Dorset for 400
guineas. It is not Reynolds at his best, and Charles Lamb, who saw
it at the Reynolds exhibition held in 1813 in Pall Mall, criticised
it rather severely.
[446] Charles Howard, Earl of Nottingham, Lord High Admiral at
the defeat of the Armada, best known to history as Lord Howard
of Effingham. The portrait Smith missed was painted by Frederigo
Zucchero, whose (attributed) portraits of Queen Elizabeth,
Leicester, Raleigh, and James I. are in the National Portrait
Gallery. His Howard is now in the Painted Hall at Greenwich. The
portraits of the Admirals were presented to Greenwich Hospital
by George IV. (not William IV.) in 1823. William IV. added five
naval pictures in 1835. As will be seen on a later page, Smith’s
curiosity about the hanging of these pictures led him to visit
Greenwich next day.
[447] Francis Legat, a Scotch engraver, came to London about 1780,
and lived at 22 Charles Street, Westminster. Here he engraved “Mary
Queen of Scots resigning her Crown” after Hamilton in 1786, and
later Northcote’s painting. He died in 1809.
[448] Chantrey’s group, “The Sleeping Children,” in Lichfield
Cathedral.
[449] This statue is now in the British Museum.
[450] The Chelsea porcelain manufacture was founded about 1745,
and was at the height of its fame from 1750 to 1764 under Mr.
Sprimont. The works finally closed in 1784. The Chelsea potters
went forthwith to Derby, where they founded the Chelsea-Derby
pottery. Remains of the old Chelsea furnaces, in which Dr. Johnson
was allowed to test his compositions, are still to be seen in the
cellars of the Prince of Wales Tavern, at the corner of Justice
Walk and Lawrence Street, Chelsea.
[451] The case of Chelsea china in the British Museum contains
similar figures of the Earl of Chatham, George III., a Thames
waterman wearing Doggett’s Coat and Badge, etc.
[452] Johan Zoffany, R.A., born at Frankfort about 1735, painted
portraits of Garrick, one of the best representing the actor as
Abel Drugger.
[453] Thomas Davies, the actor and bookseller, more famous as the
introducer to Dr. Johnson of Boswell. Johnson wrote the first
sentence of his _Memoirs of David Garrick_.
[454] These pictures were the “Canvass,” the “Poll,” the
“Chairing,” and the “Election Feast.” They are said to have been
painted by Hogarth for about forty-five guineas apiece. At the sale
of Garrick’s pictures at Christie’s in June 1823 they were bought
by Sir John Soane, and are in the Soane Museum.
[455] In 1829 the surprising period of seventy-three years had
elapsed since Garrick became the tenant of his famous villa. He had
enlarged and improved the house, planted many trees in the grounds,
and erected on his lawn a “Grecian Temple” to receive the statue of
Shakespeare by Roubiliac which now stands in the entrance hall of
the British Museum. Here also stood his famous Shakespeare chair,
designed by Hogarth: it is now in the possession of the Baroness
Burdett-Coutts. At Hampton Garrick received his friends with great
hospitality, and occasionally gave _fêtes champêtres_ with the
accompaniments of fireworks and illuminations. Horace Walpole,
finding himself a fellow-visitor with the Duke of Grafton, Lord and
Lady Rochford, the Spanish Minister, and other great people, wrote
to Bentley: “This is being _sur un assez bon ton_ for a player.”
Garrick gave treats to the children of Hampton in his grounds.
After his death, Hampton House and the house in Adelphi Terrace
were occupied for forty-three years by Mrs. Garrick. She preserved
the Hampton furniture exactly as her husband left it.
[456] The mystery of Mrs. Garrick’s origin has never been cleared
up. Some authorities say that she was the daughter of a respectable
Vienna citizen named John Veigel. According to the story told
by Charles Lee Lewis (see his _Memoirs_, 1805), and denied by
Mrs. Garrick, she was the fruit of a liaison which the Earl of
Burlington formed with a young lady of family on the Continent.
At the time of her birth the Earl was back in England, whence he
remitted funds for his daughter’s support. The money is said to
have been dishonestly retained by the person in whose charge she
was placed, and the child herself to have been forced to earn a
living as a dancer. The Earl, hearing of this, arranged that she
should come to England and dance for a higher salary. Later he
took her into his house as companion and teacher to his legitimate
daughter. Then Garrick appeared on the scene, and the benevolent
Earl said to him: “Do you think you could satisfactorily receive
her from my hands with a portion of ten thousand pounds?--and here
let me inform you that she is my daughter.”
The above story is told by Lee Lewis on the authority of “an aged
domestic who lived at the time it happened at Burlington House,
Piccadilly.” Apparently the same gossiping lady is referred to in
the following note in Mr. Percy Fitzgerald’s _Life of Garrick_: “A
curious little story comes to me, told originally by a housekeeper
in the Burlington family, and, though based on such a loose
foundation, may be worth repeating. On this authority, the story
ran that Lord Burlington, coming to see her, was struck by a
picture, and, on inquiry, found she was actually the daughter of a
lady whom he had known abroad. The result was the discovery that
the Violette was actually his daughter. The authority of the old
housekeeper seems below the dignity of biography, but her testimony
comes to us very circumstantially.”
The story of Violette’s relationship to the Earl of Burlington
was supported by the covert kindness which she received from that
nobleman. But it has to be remembered that she was the “rage” of
the whole town, “the finest and most admired dancer in the world,”
according to Walpole, and that Lady Burlington, not less than her
lord, was so fond of her, that she would accompany her to the
theatre, and wait in the wings with a pelisse to throw over her
when she came off the stage. Mr. Fitzgerald’s conclusion on the
whole matter is that “her father was someone of rank at Vienna,
possibly one of the Starenberg family, from whom it is said she
brought letters of introduction to England.”
[457] Lancelot Brown (1715-83) is generally considered the founder
of modern “natural” as distinct from “formal” landscape-gardening.
He laid out Kew, the grounds of Blenheim, and parts of St. James’s
Park and Kensington Gardens. His conversational abilities, extolled
by Hannah More, contributed to his fame. John Taylor relates that
he once assisted the gouty Lord Chatham into his carriage. “Now,
sir, go and adorn your country,” said the grateful statesman. To
which Brown aptly replied: “Go you, my lord, and save it.”
[458] Pain’s Hill, at Cobham, Surrey, was considered a triumph of
landscape gardening by Horace Walpole and other connoisseurs. Its
owner, the Hon. Charles Hamilton, not content with artificial ruins
and temples disposed after the pictures of Poussin and Claude,
added a hermitage and engaged a hermit at £700 a year. But as the
hermit had all the hardship, and Hamilton all the sentiment, the
arrangement broke down.
[459] Mr. Carr’s mention of Johnson’s frequent visits recalls the
answer he made to Garrick when asked how he liked the spot: “Ah,
David! it is the leaving of such places that makes a death-bed
terrible.” Some interesting matter relating to the Garricks at
Hampton will be found in Mr. Henry Ripley’s _History and Topography
of Hampton-on-Thames_. The existence of the villa has recently been
threatened by the westward extension of London’s electric tramways,
but, happily, the danger of its removal has been averted.
[460] George Garrard, A.R.A. (1760-1826), animal painter and
sculptor, led a successful movement to obtain copyright protection
for works of plastic art. He died at Queen’s Buildings, Brompton.
[461] Michael Dahl (1656-1743) was born in Stockholm. He settled in
London, and became the rival of Kneller. “If he excelled, it was
only in the mediocrity by which he was surrounded” (Redgrave). He
was buried in St. James’s Church, Piccadilly.
[462] “I have not heard that song better performed since Mr.
Incledon sung it. He was a great singer, sir, and I may say, in
the words of our immortal Shakespeare, that, take him for all
in all, we shall not look upon his like again.” In these words
Hoskins of the _Cave of Harmony_ complimented Colonel Newcome on
his rendering of “Wapping Old Stairs.” Incledon began life in the
navy, where he sang himself into the good graces of his Admiral.
Coming to London in 1783, he became a public singer; but it was not
until 1790 that his success was established by his performance in
_The Poor Soldier_ at Covent Garden. In his later years he relied
mainly on the provinces, in which he travelled under the style of
“The Wandering Melodist.” Though exquisite in song he was clumsy
in appearance. Leslie, the painter, describes him as having “the
face and figure of a low sailor,” yet with these “the most manly
and at the same time the most agreeable voice I ever heard.”
Another good authority records that his voice “was of extraordinary
power, both in the natural and the falsetto. The former, from A to
G, a compass of about fourteen notes, was full and open, neither
partaking of the reed nor the string, and sent forth without the
smallest artifice; and such was its ductility, that when he sang
_pianissimo_, it retained its original ductility. His falsetto,
which he could use from D to E or F, or about ten notes, was rich,
sweet, and brilliant.”
[463] Funny-movers attended to the boats. A funny was a narrow,
clinker-built pleasure boat for a pair of sculls. “A most
melancholy accident happened one evening this week in the river off
Fulham. A young couple, on the point of marriage, took a sail in a
funny, which unfortunately upset, and the two lovers were drowned”
(_Annual Register_, 1808).
[464] The Battersea market-gardeners were famous. A rhyme of 1802
says--
“Gardeners in shoals from Battersea shall run,
To raise their kindlier hot-beds in the sun.”
The first asparagus raised in England is said to have come from
Battersea; and such was the extent of the market-gardens, that
large numbers of Welshwomen tramped thither every spring for
employment in the summer months.
[465] Not Shakespeare.
[466] In _A Sentimental Journey_. See “The Passport,” “The
Captive,” and “The Starling.”
[467] “Old Granby” was doubtless intended as a jesting compliment
to the pensioner, in allusion to the bluff Lord Manners, Marquess
of Granby, renowned for his toughness and gallantry.
[468] Hugh Hewson died in 1809, and it appears from a newspaper
of that year, quoted by Robert Chambers (_Favourite Authors_:
Smollett), that he was proud of being the prototype of Strap. “His
shop was hung round with Latin quotations, and he would frequently
point out to his acquaintance the several scenes in _Roderick
Random_ pertaining to himself, which had their foundation, not
in the Doctor’s inventive fancy, but in truth and reality. The
Doctor’s meeting him at a barber’s shop at Newcastle-upon-Tyne,
and the subsequent mistake at the inn; their arrival together in
London, and the assistance they experienced from Strap’s friend,
were all of that description.”
But there are four Straps in the field. Faulkner, in his _Chelsea_,
finds the “real” Strap in one William Lewis, a book-binder, who
died in 1785. Smollett, he says, induced Lewis to set up business
in Chelsea, and procured him customers. “I resided seven years in
the same house with his widow, and had frequent opportunities of
hearing a confirmation of the anecdotes of her husband, as related
by the celebrated novelist.”
Another claimant was one Duncan Niven, a Glasgow wig-maker,
referred to in the _Gentleman’s Magazine_ as “the person, it
is said, from whom Dr. Smollett took his character of Strap in
_Roderick Random_.”
Lastly, one Hutchinson, a Dunbar barber, had some pretensions to be
Strap.
[469] Of these taverns the most famous are the Old Swans at London
Bridge and Chelsea. The former stood for centuries beside Swan
Stairs (now represented by the Old Swan Pier), and was well known
to all passengers on the river who elected to avoid the dangerous
“shooting” of London Bridge. On July 30, 1763, Dr. Johnson and
Boswell landed for this reason at the Old Swan on their way down to
Greenwich, re-embarking at Billingsgate.
The name of the Old Swan of Chelsea, an inn known to Pepys, is
perpetuated in Old Swan House, a modern residence built from the
designs of Mr. Norman Shaw. The “New Swan,” which, however, was
really a second “Old Swan,” has also disappeared, but, according
to Mr. R. Blunt’s excellent _Historical Handbook to Chelsea_, its
quaint garden, entered by steps from the river, under the long
signboard, is within the memory of many residents.
[470] “The bells of this church were recast by Ruddle, and tuned
by Mr. Harrison, the inventor of the Timekeeper; they are esteemed
equal to any peal of bells in this Kingdom, and have nearly the
same sound as those of Magdalen College, Oxford” (Faulkner:
_Historical Account of Fulham_, 1813).
[471] In _Magna Britannia_ it is not only stated that this street
was originally called Hartshorn Lane, but that Ben Jonson once
lived in it (S.). The belief that Ben Jonson lived here as a boy
rests on the statement of Fuller, who, in his _Worthies_, says:
“Though I cannot with all my industrious inquiry find him in his
cradle, I can fetch him from his long coats. When a little child
he lived in Hartshorn Lane, near Charing Cross, where his mother
married a bricklayer for her second husband.”
[472] The circumstances of this crime have remained an unsolved
mystery. Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey was found in a ditch near
Primrose Hill on the evening of October 17, five days after his
disappearance from his house in Green Lane, Strand, and five weeks
after hearing Titus Oates swear to the existence of a Popish plot.
Smith’s statement that he was murdered in Somerset House rests on
the utterly corrupt and contradictory testimony of Miles Prance,
the Roman Catholic silversmith. His evidence, however, sent three
men to the gallows, who protested their innocence to the last.
The whole subject is re-examined by Mr. Andrew Lang in _Longman’s
Magazine_ of August 1903.
Four different medals were struck to commemorate and characterise
the murder. In one of these Godfrey is represented walking with a
sword through his body, while on the reverse St. Denis is shown
carrying his head in his hand, with the inscription--
“Godfrey walks uphill after he is dead;
Dennis walks downhill carrying his head.”
The design of another medal illustrates Prance’s statement that
Godfrey’s body was first moved from Somerset House in a sedan
chair, and then on a horse to Primrose Hill.
The burial of the murdered Justice in St. Martin’s Church was
attended by more than a thousand people of distinction, and his
portrait was placed in the vestry-room, where it hangs to this day.
[473] William Lloyd (1627-1717), successively Bishop of St.
Asaph, Lichfield-and-Coventry, and Worcester, was Vicar of St.
Martin’s-in-the-Fields 1677-80.
[474] “The two grand Ingrossers of Coles: viz. The Woodmonger, and
the Chandler. In a dialogue, expressing their unjust and cruell
raising the price of Coales, when, and how they please, to the
generall oppression of the Poore. Penn’d on Purpose to lay open
their subtile practices, and for the reliefe of many thousands of
poore people, in, and about the Cities of London, and Westminster.
By a Well-willer to the prosperity of this famous Common-wealth.
London, Printed for John Harrison at the Holy-Lamb at the East end
of S. Pauls, 1653.”
[475] It has been demonstrated by Mr. Sidney Young in his learned
work, _The Annals of the Barber Surgeons_ (1890), that this
painting cannot represent the granting of the Charter by Henry
VIII. This event occurred in 1512, when the King was but twenty-one
years of age; Holbein makes him a man of fifty. Mr. Young believes
Holbein’s subject to be the Union of the Barbers Company with the
Guild of Surgeons, accomplished by Act of Parliament in 1540.
[476] Of this picture, which narrowly escaped the Fire of London,
Pepys thus speaks in his Memoirs:--August 28, 1688. “And at noon
comes by appointment Harris to dine with me: and after dinner he
and I to Chyrurgeons’-hall, where they are building it new,--very
fine; and there to see their theatre, which stood all the fire, and
(which was our business) their great picture of Holbein’s, thinking
to have bought it, by the help of Mr. Pierce, for a little money: I
did think to give £200 for it, it being said to be worth £1000; but
it is so spoiled that I have no mind to it, and is not a pleasant,
though a good picture.”--S.
[477] This painting represents Edward VI. presenting the Royal
Charter of Endowment to the Lord Mayor in 1552; it cannot,
therefore, be by Holbein, who died in 1543. Walpole attributes the
painting to Holbein, but says the picture was not completed by him.
He states that Holbein introduced his own head into one corner.
Wornum thinks that there is not a trace of this master’s hand in
the picture.
[478] Her portrait has not been identified with certainty. An old
Windsor catalogue, however, contains her name.
[479] Richard Dalton was keeper of pictures and antiquary to George
III., and one of the artists who presented to George III. the
petition for the foundation of the Royal Academy. In 1774, Dalton
published about ten etchings from Holbein’s drawings. Perhaps his
greatest service to British art was his bringing Bartolozzi to
England.
[480] John Chamberlaine (1745-1812), antiquary, succeeded Dalton
in 1791, and published “_Imitations of Original Drawings_, by
Hans Holbein, in the Collection of His Majesty, for the Portraits
of Illustrious Persons at the Court of Henry VIII.” He died at
Paddington Green.
[481] Conrad Martin Metz (1755-1827) studied engraving in London
under Bartolozzi; he engraved and imitated many drawings by the old
masters.
[482] Edmund Lodge (1756-1839), Clarenceux Herald in 1838. His
book, known briefly as _Lodge’s Portraits_, was originally issued
in forty folio parts.
[483] Of Sandby’s “View of Westminster from the garden of old
Somerset House” there is an engraving by Rawle in Smith’s
_Westminster Antiquities_.
[484] Charles Long, Baron Farnborough (1761-1838), was Secretary
of State for Ireland, and held other important posts. Thomas Moore
calls him “the most determined placeman in England” (Memoirs, iv.
28). His advice was sought on the decoration of the royal palaces
and on London street improvements. He gave many fine pictures to
the National Gallery.
[485] These views may still be seen in Crowle’s “Pennant,” in the
Print Room. The first represents London from Somerset House about
1795, and the second Somerset House from the east showing the
Lambeth site of Westminster Bridge, etc. In addition, there are in
the Crace collection two London views by Thomas Sandby, and seven
by Paul. See note on Crowle, p. 86.
[486] In Smith’s day the river washed the base of the Water Gate,
covering at high tide the gardens in which the London County
Council’s band now plays in summer in London now possesses an
approximation to an out-of-door Parisian café. Samuel Scott’s “View
of Westminster from the Thames,” National Gallery, Room xix., shows
the old state of things.
[487] Etty removed to Buckingham Street in the summer of 1824, from
Stangate Walk, Lambeth. At first he took the “lower floor,” but,
says Gilchrist, “the top floor was the watch-tower for which our
artist sighed,” and he soon obtained it. Here, “having above him,”
as he said, “none but the Angels, and the Catholics who had gone
before him,” he lived for twenty-three years, finding an excellent
housekeeper in his niece. The house stands unaltered, presenting
five storeys to the river just behind the Water Gate. Etty’s last
years (he died in 1849) were given to his birth-place, York, where
his tomb is an object of interest in the grounds of St. Mary’s
Abbey.
[488] Clarkson Stanfield (1793-1867), the marine and landscape
painter, was scene-painter at three London theatres, including
Drury Lane. “Incomparably the noblest master of cloud-form of all
our artists,” was Ruskin’s praise of this artist; “the soul of
frankness, generosity, and simplicity,” was Dickens’s praise of the
man.
[489] Roubiliac’s statue of Newton, made for Trinity College, was
pronounced by Chantrey “the noblest, I think, of all our English
statues.” Similarly Roubiliac’s figure of Eloquence was considered
by Canova “one of the noblest statues he had seen in England”: it
occurs in the monument to John, Duke of Argyll and Greenwich, in
Poets’ Corner.
John Bacon, R.A. (1740-99), established his reputation by his
figure of Mars, which won him the good word of West, the patronage
of the Archbishop of York, and his election as A.R.A. See note on
p. 33.
John Charles Felix Rossi, R.A. (1762-1839), was born at Nottingham.
He executed statues of Lord Cornwallis, Lord Heathfield, and
others in St. Paul’s Cathedral, and decorated Buckingham Palace.
His “Celadon and Amelia” was executed in Rome. His is the colossal
figure of Britannia in Liverpool Exchange. He was buried in St.
James’s churchyard, Hampstead Road.
Flaxman’s “Michael vanquishing Satan” was commissioned by Lord
Egremont, and is now at Petworth.
Of busts, alone, Nollekens executed at least two hundred.
Chantrey’s genius was fully acknowledged by Nollekens, who would
say when asked to model a bust: “Go to Chantrey; he’s the man for
a bust! he’ll make a good bust for you! I always recommend him”
(Smith: _Nollekens_).
Londoners see Sir Richard Westmacott’s statues every day without
knowing it. His is the Achilles statue to Wellington in Hyde Park,
the Duke of York on the York Column, and the statue of Fox in
Bloomsbury Square. His statues in St. Paul’s and the Abbey are
numerous; the Abbey has his beautiful monument to Mrs. Warren, a
mother and child.
Edward Hodges Baily, R.A. (1788-1867), studied under Flaxman.
The bas-relief on the Marble Arch is his, several statues in St.
Paul’s, and the figure of Nelson in Trafalgar Square.
[490] William Young Ottley (1771-1836), author of _The Origin and
Early History of Engraving_. His knowledge of painting is described
as “astonishing” by Samuel Rogers. On Smith’s death Ottley became
Keeper of the Prints.
[491] Maso Finiguerra, a skilful Florentine goldsmith, engraved
in 1452 a silver plate to be used as a pax in the church of San
Giovanni, and in order to judge of the effect of his design,
the lines of which he intended to fill with enamel, he poured
some liquid sulphur upon the plate. He then succeeded in taking
impressions of the design on paper. These impressions were once
thought to be the earliest known engravings. It is now proved that
they were not, and that Finiguerra may have had direct instruction
from an early German engraver.
[492] The site of Mr. Atkinson’s villa and grounds is indicated by
Grove End Road, west of Lord’s Cricket Ground.
[493] Smith misquotes Ramsay, who wrote--
“How halesome ’tis to snuff the cawler air,
And all the sweets it bears, when void of care.”
_Gentle Shepherd_, 1st ed., Act i. Sc. i. 5, 6.
[494] William West, actor and composer, lived to a great age, and
was known as the “Father of the Stage.” Some of his songs, such as
“When Love was fresh from her Cradle Bed,” were popular. He died in
1888.
[495] The Rev. Thomas Hartwell Horne, Rector of St. Edmund the
King and St. Nicholas Acon, was a valuable servant of the British
Museum, to which he came as cataloguer in 1824. He died at his
house in Bloomsbury Square, January 27, 1862. Watt was Robert Watt,
the bibliographer, compiler of _Bibliotheca Britannica_, etc.; he
died in 1819.
[496] The Post Angel, of which the British Museum has a copy,
was one of the enterprises of John Dunton. His rigmarole preface
sets forth that “by Post-Angels I mean all the invisible Host of
the Middle Region, that are employed about us either as Friends
or Enemies”; his design is “to shew how we should enquire after
News, not as Athenians but as Christians, or (in other words) a
Divine Employment of every Remarkable Occurrence.” Features of this
periodical were “The Lives and Deaths of the most Eminent Persons
that Died in that Month,” and recurrent pious reflections under the
head of “The Spiritual Observator.”
[497] John Taylor, who was Smith’s life-long friend and the most
genial and patriarchal of artists, died at his house in Cirencester
Place, November 21, 1838, in his ninety-ninth year. Smith mentions
under the year 1779, that he had been the pupil of Frank Hayman,
after which he took up the drawing of portraits in pencil, for
which he received seven-and-sixpence to a guinea each. It is said
that, in Oxford alone, in six or eight years, Taylor drew, or
painted, more than three thousand heads. Finding this employment
poorly paid, he took the advice of his fellow-artist “Jack” Gresse
and set up as drawing-master, investing his savings in annuities
which were to expire in 1840. He died just in time to escape want.
See the early reference to Taylor, p. 80.
[498] This caricature was brought out on September 7, 1762, and
was entitled “The Bruiser, C. Churchill (once the Reverend!)
in the Character of a Russian Hercules, regaling himself after
having kill’d the Monster CARICATURA that so sorely galled his
virtuous friend, the Heaven-born Wilkes.” Mr. Austin Dobson says:
“Churchill, who had been ordained a priest and abandoned that
calling, appears as a bear, grasping a club, which is inscribed
‘Lye 1, Lye 2,’ etc., and regaling himself with a quart pot of
‘British Burgundy.’”
[499] Hayman died in 1776, so that this statement has a bearing
on the vexed question of the date of the “Blue Boy,” which some
writers put as late as 1779. Sir Walter Armstrong is convinced
that 1770 is the correct date. If so, Gainsborough could not have
painted the picture, as he is said to have done, to confute a
passage in Sir Joshua Reynolds’s eighth Discourse, which was not
delivered until December 1778. The Blue Boy was Master Jonathan
Buttall, the ironmonger’s son. The subject, history, and ownership
of this famous picture have been the subjects of a controversy
second only, in lengthy inconclusiveness, to that on the Letters of
Junius. In all probability the original picture is the one in the
possession of the Duke of Westminster.
[500] When advanced in life, and unfitted for sprightly parts,
Mrs. Abington determined to appear as Scrub, the man-of-all-work
to Lady Bountiful in Farquhar’s comedy, _The Beaux’ Stratagem_.
“I was present,” says John Taylor, in his _Records of My Life_,
“and remember nothing in her performance that might not have been
expected from an actor of much inferior abilities. As a proof, too,
that, like many of her profession, she thought herself capable of
characters not within the scope of her powers, I once saw her play
Ophelia to Mr. Garrick’s Hamlet; and, to use a simile of my old
friend Dr. Monsey, she appeared _like a mackerel on a gravel walk_.”
[501] Hitherto, in the RAINY DAY, _William_ Chambers has appeared,
another misleading slip. Sir Robert was the Indian judge, and is
referred to by Johnson in a letter to Boswell, dated March 5, 1774:
“Chambers is married, or almost married, to Miss Wilton, a girl
of sixteen, exquisitely beautiful, whom he has, with his lawyer’s
tongue, persuaded to take her chance with him in the East.” Miss
Wilton was the daughter of Joseph Wilton, R.A., the sculptor.
[502] Mr. Taylor’s father was not only highly respected, but for
many years held a principal situation in the Custom House (S.).
[503] They were cleaned and “restored” by John Francis Rigaud, R.A.
[504] Doubtless the letter from Mrs. Abington to Mrs. Jordan,
printed under the year 1815.
[505] John Bannister (Honest Jack) left the stage on the night of
June 1, 1815, when he played in Kenney’s comedy _The World_, and
_The Children in the Wood_. “Your whole conscience stirred with
Bannister’s performance of Walter in the _Children in the Wood_,”
says Lamb; and Haydon, who in 1826 met Bannister by accident in
Chenies Street, Bedford Square, writes: “He held out his hand just
as he used to do on the stage, with the same frank native truth.
As he spoke, the tones of his favourite ‘Walter’ pierced my heart.
It was extraordinary, the effect. ‘Bannister,’ said I, ‘your voice
recalls my early days.’--‘Ah,’ said he, ‘I had some touches, had I
not?’”
[506] John Pritt Harley (1786-1858) distinguished himself as
singer and actor. He appeared at Drury Lane in 1815, the year of
Bannister’s retirement, and succeeded to many of that comedian’s
parts. He was known as Fat Jack--from his thinness. “I have an
exposition of sleep upon me,” were his last words, spoken on the
stage of the Princess’s Theatre on August 20, 1858. He had hardly
made his exit when he was seized with paralysis, and he died at
14 Upper Gower Street two days later. Harley was an excellent
Shakespearean clown, and an ardent collector of walking-sticks.
[507] Porridge Island and another rookery called The Bermudas
disappeared about 1829. These were cant names.