Chapter XII: Part THE SECOND (10)

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.