that he professed no love for poetry or painting. This king has been
pilloried and pelted, so to speak, with the public contempt for having
an independent, and not unjustifiable, opinion of the celebrated
picture, the ‘March to Finchley.’ Hogarth had the impertinence to ask
permission that he might dedicate the work to the King, and the latter
observed, with some reason, that the fellow deserved to be picketed
for his insolence. When this picture was presented as worthy of royal
patronage, rebellion was afoot and active in the north (1745). The
Guards were sent thither, and Hogarth’s work describes them setting
out on their first stage to Finchley. The whole description or
representation is a gross caricature of the brave men (though they
may have sworn as terribly then as they did in Flanders) whose task
was to save the kingdom from a great impending calamity. All that is
noble is kept out of sight, all that is degrading to the subject,
with some slight exceptions, is forced on the view and memory of the
spectator. It has been urged by way of apology for this clever but
censurable work, that it was not painted at the moment of great popular
excitement, but subsequently. This is nothing to the purpose. What
is to the purpose is, that Hogarth represented British soldiers as a
drunken, skulking, thieving, cowardly horde of ruffians, who must be,
to employ an oft-used phrase, more terrible to their friends than their
enemies. The painter may have been as good a Whig as the King himself,
but he manifested bad taste in asking George II. to show favour to such
a subject; and he exhibited worse taste still in dedicating it to the
king of Prussia, as a patron of the arts. Hogarth was not disloyal,
perhaps, as Wilkes charged him with being, for issuing the print of
this picture, but it is a work that, however far removed from the
political element now, could not have afforded much gratification to
the loyal when it was first exhibited.
Hogarth died in Leicester Square in 1764, and was buried at Chiswick.
There was an artist on the opposite side of the square who saw the
funeral from his window, and who had higher views of art than Hogarth.
Towards the close of Hogarth’s career Joshua Reynolds took possession
of a house on the west side of Leicester Square. In the year in which
George III. ascended the throne (1760) Reynolds set up his famous chair
of state for his patrons in this historical square.
It has been said that Reynolds, in the days of his progressive triumphs
in Leicester Square, thought continually of the glory of his being one
day placed by the side of Vandyck and Rubens, and that he entertained
no envious idea of being better than Hogarth, Gainsborough, and his old
master, Hudson. Reynolds, nevertheless, served all three in much the
same way that Dryden served Shakespeare; namely, he disparaged quite as
extensively as he praised them. Hogarth, on the east side of Leicester
Square, felt no local accession of honour when Reynolds set up his
easel on the western side. The new comer was social; the old settler
‘kept himself to himself,’ as the wise saw has it. ‘Study the works of
the great masters for ever,’ was, we are told, the utterance of Sir
Oracle on the west side. From the east came Hogarth’s utterance, in the
assertion, ‘There is only one school, and Nature is the mistress of
it.’ For Reynolds’s judgment Hogarth had a certain contempt. ‘The most
ignorant people about painting,’ he said to Walpole, ‘are the painters
themselves. There’s Reynolds, who certainly has genius; why, but
t’other day, he offered a hundred pounds for a picture that I would not
hang in my cellar.’ Hogarth undoubtedly qualified his sense with some
nonsense: ‘Talk of sense, and study, and all that; why, it is owing to
the good sense of the English that they have not painted better.’
It was at one of Reynolds’s suppers in the square that an incident took
place which aroused the wit-power of Johnson. The rather plain sister
of the artist had been called upon by the company, after supper, as
the custom was, to give a toast. She hesitated, and was accordingly
required, again according to custom, to give the ugliest man she knew.
In a moment the name of Oliver Goldsmith dropped from her lips, and
immediately a sympathising lady on the opposite side of the table rose
and shook hands with Miss Reynolds across the table. Johnson had heard
the expression, and had also marked the pantomimic performance of
sympathy, and he capped both by a remark which set the table in a roar,
and which was to an effect which cut smartly in three ways. ‘Thus,’
said he, ‘the ancients, on the commencements of their friendships,
used to sacrifice a beast betwixt them.’ The affair ends prettily. A
few days after the ‘Traveller’ was published Johnson read it aloud
from beginning to end to delighted hearers, of whom Miss Reynolds was
one. As Johnson closed the book she emphatically remarked, ‘Well, I
never more shall think Dr. Goldsmith ugly.’ Miss Reynolds, however,
did not get over her idea. Her brother painted the portrait of the
new poet, in the Octagon Room in the Square; the mezzotinto engraving
of it was speedily all over the town. Miss Reynolds (who, it has been
said, used herself to paint portraits with such exact imitation of her
brother’s defects and avoidance of his beauties, that everybody but
himself laughed at them) thought it marvellous that so much dignity
could have been given to the poet’s face and yet so strong a likeness
be conveyed; for ‘Dr. Goldsmith’s cast of countenance,’ she proceeds to
inform us, ‘and indeed his whole figure from head to foot, impressed
every one at first sight with the idea of his being a low mechanic;
particularly, I believe, a journeyman tailor.’ This belief was
founded on what Goldsmith had himself once said. Coming ruffled into
Reynolds’s drawing-room, Goldsmith angrily referred to an insult which
his sensitive nature fancied had been put upon him at a neighbouring
coffee-house, by ‘a fellow who,’ said Goldsmith, ‘took me, I believe,
for a tailor.’ The company laughed more or less demonstratively, and
rather confirmed than dispelled the supposition.
Poor Goldsmith’s weaknesses were a good deal played upon by that not
too polite company. One afternoon, Burke and a young Irish officer,
O’Moore, were crossing the square to Reynolds’s house to dinner. They
passed a group who were gaping at, and making admiring remarks upon,
some samples of beautiful foreign husseydom, who were looking out of
the windows of one of the hotels. Goldsmith was at the skirt of the
group, looking on. Burke said to O’Moore, as they passed him unseen,
‘Look at Goldsmith; by-and-by, at Reynolds’s you will see what I make
of this.’ At the dinner, Burke treated Goldsmith with such coolness,
that Oliver at last asked for an explanation. Burke readily replied
that his manner was owing to the monstrous indiscretion on Goldsmith’s
part, in the square, of which Burke and Mr. O’Moore had been the
witnesses. Poor Goldsmith asked in what way he had been so indiscreet?
‘Why,’ answered Burke, ‘did you not exclaim, on looking up at those
women, what stupid beasts the crowd must be for staring with such
admiration at those _painted Jezebels_, while a man of your talent
passed by unnoticed?’--‘Surely, my dear friend,’ cried Goldsmith,
horror-struck, ‘I did not say so!’--‘If you had not said so,’ retorted
Burke, ‘how should I have known it?’--‘That’s true,’ answered
Goldsmith, with great humility; ‘I am very sorry; it was very foolish!
I do recollect that something of the kind passed through my mind, but
I did not think I had uttered it.’
It is a pity that Sir Joshua never records the names of his own guests;
but his parties were so much swelled by invitations given on the spur
of the moment, that it would have been impossible for him to set down
beforehand more than the nucleus of his scrambling and unceremonious,
but most enjoyable, dinners. Whether the famous Leicester Square
dinners deserved to be called enjoyable, is a question which anyone
may decide for himself, after reading the accounts given of them at
a period when the supervision of Reynolds’s sister, Frances, could
no longer be given to them. The table, made to hold seven or eight,
was often made to hold twice the number. When the guests were at last
packed, the deficiency of knives, forks, plates, and glasses made
itself felt. Everyone called, as he wanted, for bread, wine, or beer,
and lustily, or there was little chance of being served.
There had once, Courtenay says, been sets of decanters and glasses
provided to furnish the table and enable the guests to help themselves.
These had gone the way of all glass, and had not been replaced; but
though the dinner might be careless and inelegant, and the servants
awkward and too few, Courtenay admits that their shortcomings only
enhanced the singular pleasure of the entertainment. The wine, cookery,
and dishes were but little attended to; nor was the fish or venison
ever talked of or recommended. Amidst the convivial, animated bustle
of his guests, Sir Joshua sat perfectly composed; protected partly by
his deafness, partly by his equanimity; always attentive, by help of
his trumpet, to what was said, never minding what was eaten or drunk,
but leaving everyone to scramble for himself. Peers, temporal and
spiritual, statesmen, physicians, lawyers, actors, men of letters,
painters, musicians, made up the motley group, ‘and played their
parts,’ says Courtenay, ‘without dissonance or discord.’ Dinner was
served precisely at five, whether all the company had arrived or
not. Sir Joshua never kept many guests waiting for one, whatever
his rank or consequence. ‘His friends and intimate acquaintance,’
concludes Courtenay, ‘will ever love his memory, and will ever regret
those social hours and the cheerfulness of that irregular, convivial
table, which no one has attempted to revive or imitate, or was indeed
qualified to supply.’
Reynolds had a room in which his copyists, his pupils, and his
drapery-men worked. Among them was one of the cleverest and most
unfortunate of artists. Seldom is the name of Peter Toms now heard, but
he once sat in Hudson’s studio with young Reynolds, and in the studio
of Sir Joshua, as the better artist’s obedient humble servant; that
is to say, he painted his employer’s draperies, and probably a good
deal more, for Toms was a very fair portrait-painter. Peter worked
too for various other great artists, and a purchaser of any picture
of that time cannot be certain whether much of it is not from Toms’s
imitative hand. Peter’s lack of original power did not keep him out of
the Royal Academy, though in his day he was but a second-class artist.
He belonged, too, to the Herald’s Office, as the painters of the Tudor
period often did, and after filling in the canvasses of his masters in
England, he went to Ireland on his own account and in reliance on the
patronage of the Lord-Lieutenant, the Duke of Northumberland. Toms,
however, found that the Irish refused to submit their physiognomies to
his limning, and he waited for them to change their opinion of him in
vain. Finally, he lost heart and hope. His vocation was gone; but in
the London garret within which he took refuge he seems to have given
himself a chance for life or death. Pencil in one hand and razor in
the other, he made an effort to paint a picture, and apparently failed
in accomplishing it, for he swept the razor across his throat, and was
found the next morning stark dead by the side of the work which seems
to have smitten him with despair.
Reynolds saw the ceremony of proclaiming George III. king in front of
Savile House, where the monarch had resided while he was Prince of
Wales. Into his own house came and went, for years, all the lofty
virtues, vices, and rich nothingnesses of Reynolds’s time, to be
painted. From his window he looked with pride on his gaudy carriage
(the Seasons, limned on the panels, were by his own drapery man,
Catton), in which he used to send his sister out for a daily drive.
From the same window he saw Savile House gutted by the ‘No Popery’
rioters of 1780; fire has since swept all that was left of Page’s
house on the north side of the Square; and in 1787 Reynolds looked
on a newcomer to the Fields, Lawrence, afterwards Sir Thomas, who
set up his easel against Sir Joshua’s, but who was not then strong
enough to make such pretence. Some of the most characteristic groups
of those days were to be seen clustered round the itinerant quack
doctors--fellows who lied with a power that Orton, Luie, and even the
‘coachers’ of Luie, might envy. Leicester Square, in Reynolds’s days
alone, would furnish matter for two or three volumes. We have only
space to say further of Sir Joshua, that he died here in 1792, lay in
state in Somerset House, and that as the funeral procession was on its
way to St. Paul’s (with its first part in the Cathedral before the last
part was clear of Somerset House) one of the occupants in one of the
many mourning coaches said to a companion, ‘There is now, sir, a fine
opening for a portrait-painter.’
While Reynolds was ‘glorifying’ the Fields, that is to say, about
the year 1783, John Hunter, the great anatomist, enthroned science in
Leicester Square. His house, nearly opposite Reynolds’s, was next door
to that once occupied by Hogarth, on the east side, but north of the
painter’s dwelling. Hunter was then fifty-five years old. Like his
eminent brother, William, John Hunter had a very respectable amount of
self-appreciation, quite justifiably.
The governing body of St. Bartholomew’s Hospital had failed, through
ignorance or favouritism, to recognise his ability and to reward his
assiduity. But John Hunter was of too noble a spirit to be daunted or
even depressed; and St. George’s Hospital honoured itself by bestowing
on him the modest office of house-surgeon. It was thirty years after
this that John Hunter settled himself in Leicester Square. There he
spent three thousand pounds in the erection of a building in the
rear of his house for the reception of a collection in comparative
anatomy. Before this was completed he spent upon it many thousands
of pounds,--it is said ninety thousand guineas! With him to work was
to live. Dr. Garthshore entered the museum in the Square early one
morning, and found Hunter already busily occupied. ‘Why, John,’ said
the physician, ‘you are always at work!’ ‘I am,’ replied the surgeon;
‘and when I am dead you will not meet very soon with another John
Hunter!’ He accused his great brother William of claiming the merit of
surgical discoveries which John had made; and when a friend, talking
to him, at his door in the Square, on his ‘Treatise on the Teeth,’
remarked that it would be answered by medical men simply to make their
names known, Hunter rather unhandsomely observed: ‘Aye, we have all
of us vermin that live upon us.’ Lavater took correct measure of the
famous surgeon when he remarked, on seeing the portrait of Hunter:
‘That is the portrait of a man who thinks for himself!’
After John Hunter’s death his collection was purchased by Government
for fifteen thousand pounds. It was removed from Leicester Square
to Lincoln’s Inn Fields, to the College of Surgeons, where it still
forms a chief portion of the anatomical and pathological museum in
that institution. The site of the Hunterian Museum in Leicester Square
has been swallowed up by the Alhambra, where less profitable study of
comparative anatomy may now be made by all who are interested in such
pursuit. A similar destiny followed the other Hunterian Museum--that
established by William Hunter, in Great Windmill Street, at the top
of the Haymarket, where he built an amphitheatre and museum, with
a spacious dwelling-house attached. In the dwelling-house Joanna
Baillie passed some of her holiday and early days in London. She came
from her native Scottish heath, and the only open moor like unto it
where she could snatch a semblance of fresh air was the neighbouring
inclosure of Leicester Square! William Hunter left his gigantic and
valuable collection to his nephew, Dr. Baillie, for thirty years, to
pass then to the University of Glasgow, where William himself had
studied divinity, before the results of freedom of thought (both the
Hunters _would_ think for themselves) induced him to turn to the study
of medicine. The Hunterian Museum in Windmill Street, after serving
various purposes, became known as the Argyll Rooms, where human anatomy
(it is believed) was liberally exhibited under magisterial license and
the supervision of a severely moral police.
Leicester Square has been remarkable for its exhibitions. Richardson,
the fire-eater, exhibited privately at Leicester House in 1672. A
century later there was a public exhibition on that spot of quite
another quality. The proprietor was Sir Ashton Lever, a Lancashire
gentleman, educated at Oxford. As a country squire he formed and
possessed the most extensive and beautiful aviary in the kingdom.
Therewith, Sir Ashton collected animals and curiosities from
all quarters of the world. This was the nucleus of the ‘museum’
subsequently brought to Leicester Fields. Among the curiosities was a
striking likeness of George III. ‘cut in cannel coal;’ also Indian-ink
drawings and portraits; baskets of flowers cut in paper, and wonderful
for their accuracy; costumes of all ages and nations, and a collection
of warlike weapons which disgusted a timid beholder, who describes them
in the ‘Gentleman’s Magazine’ (May 1773) as ‘desperate, diabolical
instruments of destruction, invented, no doubt, by the devil himself.’
Soon after this, this wonderful collection was exhibited in Leicester
House. There was a burst of wonder, as Pennant calls it, for a little
while after the opening; but the ill-cultivated world soon grew
indifferent to being instructed; and Sir Ashton got permission, with
some difficulty, from Parliament, to dispose of the whole collection by
lottery. Sir William Hamilton, Baron Dimsdale, and Mr. Pennant stated
to the Committee of the House of Commons that they had never seen a
collection of such inestimable value. ‘Sir Ashton Lever’s lottery
tickets,’ says an advertisement of January 28, 1785, ‘are now on sale
at Leicester House every day (Sundays excepted), from Nine in the
morning till Six in the evening, at One Guinea each; and as each ticket
will admit four persons, either together or separately, to view the
Museum, no one will hereafter be admitted but by the Lottery Tickets,
excepting those who have already annual admission.’ It is added that
the whole was to be disposed of owing ‘to the very large sum expended
in making it, and not from the deficiency of the daily receipts (as is
generally imagined), which have annually increased; the average amount
for the last three years being 1833_l._ per annum.’ It sounds odd that
a ‘concern’ is got rid of because it was yearly growing more profitable!
Thirty-six thousand guinea-tickets were offered for sale. Only eight
thousand were sold. Of these Mr. Parkinson purchased two, and with
one of those two acquired the whole collection, against the other
purchasers and the twenty-two thousand chances held by Sir Ashton.
Mr. Parkinson built an edifice for his valuable prize in Blackfriars
Road, and for years, one of the things to be done was ‘to go to the
Rotunda.’ In 1806, the famous museum was dispersed by auction. The
Surrey Institution next occupied the premises, which subsequently
became public drinking-rooms and meeting place for tippling patriots,
who would fain destroy the Constitution of England as well as their own.
But ‘man or woman, good my lord,’ let whosoever may be named in
connection with Leicester Square, there is one who must not be omitted,
namely, Miss Linwood. Penelope worked at her needle to no valuable
purpose. Miss Linwood was more like Arachne in her work, and something
better in her fortune. The dyer’s daughter of Colophon chose for her
subjects the various loves of Jupiter with various ladies whom poets
and painters have immortalised; and grew so proud of her work that,
for challenging Minerva to do better, the goddess changed her into a
spider. The Birmingham lady plied her needle from the time she could
hold one till the time her ancient hand lost its cunning. At thirteen
she worked pictures in worsted better than some artists could paint
them. No needlework, ancient or modern, ever equalled (if experts
may be trusted) the work of this lady, who found time to do as much
as if she had not to fulfil, as she did faithfully, the duties of a
boarding-school mistress. King, Queen, Court, and ‘Quality’ generally
visited Savile House, Leicester Fields, where Miss Linwood’s works were
exhibited, and were profitable to the exhibitor to the very last. They
were, for the most part, copies of great pictures by great masters,
modern as well as ancient. Among them was a Carlo Dolci, valued at
three thousand guineas. Miss Linwood, in her later days, retired
to Leicester, but she used to come up annually to look at her own
Exhibition. It had been open about half a century when the lady, in her
ninetieth year, caught cold on her journey, and died of it at Leicester
in 1844. She left her Carlo Dolci to Queen Victoria. Her other works,
sold by auction, barely realised a thousand pounds; but the art of
selling art by auction was not then discovered.
In 1788, a middle-aged Irishman from county Meath, named Robert
Barker, got admission to Reynolds, to show him a half-circle view
from the Calton Hill, near Edinburgh, which Barker had painted in
water-colours on the spot. The poor but accomplished artist had been
unsuccessful as a portrait-painter in Dublin and Edinburgh. But he
had studied perspective closely, an idea had struck him, and he came
with it to Reynolds. The latter admired, but thought it impracticable.
The Irishman thought otherwise. Barker exhibited circular views
from nature, in London and also in the provinces, with indifferent
success. At last, in 1793, on part of the old site of Leicester House,
a building arose which was called the Panorama, and in which was
exhibited a view of the Russian fleet at Spithead. The spectator was
on board a ship in the midst of the scene and the view was all around
him. King George and Queen Charlotte led the fashionable world to
this most original exhibition. For many years there was a succession
of magnificent views of foreign capitals, tracts of country, ancient
cities, polar regions, battles, &c., exhibited; and ‘Have you been to
the new panorama?’ was as naturally a spring question as ‘Have you been
to the Academy?’ or the Opera? The exhibition of the ‘Stern Realities
of Waterloo’ alone realised a little fortune, and ‘Pandemonium,’
painted by Mr. Henry Selous, was one of the latest of the great
successes.
At the north-east corner of Leicester Square, the Barkers, father and
son, achieved what is called ‘a handsome competency.’ At the death of
the latter, Robert Burford succeeded him, and, for a time, did well;
but ‘Fashion’ wanted a new sensation. The panoramas in Leicester Square
and the Strand, admirable as they were, ceased to draw the public;
and courteous, lady-like, little Miss Burford, the proprietress, was
compelled to withdraw, utterly shipwrecked. She used to receive her
visitors like a true lady welcoming thorough ladies and gentlemen. The
end was sad indeed, for the last heard of this aged gentlewoman was
that she was enduring life by needle-work, rarely got and scantily
paid, in a lodging, the modest rent of which, duly paid, kept her short
of necessary food. An attempt was made to obtain her election to the
‘United Kingdom Beneficent Association,’ but with what result we are
unable to record.
Shadows of old Leicester Square figures come up in crowds, demanding
recognition. They must be allowed to pass--to make a ‘march past,’ as
it were; as they glide by we take note of Mirabeau and Marat, Holcroft,
Opie, Edmund Kean, and Mulready, with countless others, to indite the
roll of whose names only would alone require a volume.
_A HUNDRED YEARS AGO._
Perusing records that are a century old is something better than
listening to a centenarian, even if his memory could go back so far.
The records are as fresh as first impressions, and they bring before us
men and things as they were, not as after-historians supposed them to
be.