(Vol. vii., pp. 339. 412.)
In reply to AMATEUR, I can inform him that at the sale of the Marlborough
effects at Marlborough House about thirty years ago, there were sold four
or five small whole-lengths in oil of members of that family. They were
hardly clever enough for what Hogarth's after-style would lead us to
expect, but there were many reasons for thinking they were by him. They
came into the possession of Mr. Croker, who presented them, as family
curiosities, to the second Earl Spencer, and they are now, I presume, in
the gallery at Althorpe. One of them was peculiarly curious as connected
with a remarkable anecdote of the great Duchess. Horace Walpole tells us in
the _Reminiscences_, her granddaughter, Lady Bateman, having persuaded her
brother, the young Duke of Marlborough, to marry a Miss Trevor without the
Duchess's consent:
"The grandam's rage exceeded all bounds. Having a portrait of Lady
Bateman, she blackened the face, and then wrote on it, '_Now her
outside's as black as her inside._'"
One of the portraits I speak of was of Lady Bateman, and bore on its face
evidence of having incurred some damage, for the coat of arms with which
(like all the others, and as was Hogarth's fashion) it was ornamented in
one corner, were angrily scratched out, as with a knife. Whether this
defacement gave rise to Walpole's story, or whether the face had been also
blackened with some stuff that was afterwards removed, seems doubtful; the
picture itself, according to my recollection, showed no mark but the
armorial defacement.
I much wonder this style of small whole-lengths has not been more
prevalent; they give the general air and manner of the personage so much
better than the bust size can do, and they are so much more suited to the
size of our ordinary apartments.