A Book for a Rainy Day, or Recollections of the Events of the Years 1766-1833

The highly flattering manner in which my work, entitled Nollekens and his Times, was generally received, induced me to collect numerous scattered biographical papers, which I have considerably augmented with a variety of subjects, arranged chronologically, according to the years of my life.

Some may object to my vanity, in expecting the reader of the following pages to be pleased with so heterogeneous a dish. It is, I own, what ought to be called a salmagundi, or it may be likened to various suits of clothes, made up of remnants of all colours. One promise I can make, that as my pieces are mostly of new cloth, they will last the longer. Dr. Johnson has said:

“All knowledge is of itself of some value. There is nothing so minute or inconsiderable, that I would not rather know, than not.”

Lord Orrery, in a letter to Dr. Birch, dated November, 1741, makes the following observation:

“I look upon anecdotes as debts due to the public, which every man, when he has that kind of cash by him, ought to pay.”

J. T. Smith.

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JOHN THOMAS SMITH	Frontispiece
From an Engraving by William Skelton of the Drawing by John Jackson, R.A.
NANCY DAWSON	Facing page	10
From a Contemporary Print.
ROYAL ACADEMICIANS REFLECTING ON THE TRUE LINE OF BEAUTY AT THE LIFE ACADEMY, SOMERSET HOUSE.	” ”	14
From a Drawing by Robert Cruikshank.
THE DELIGHTS OF ISLINGTON	” ”	17
From the Engraving by Charles Bretherton of the Caricature by Henry William Bunbury.
“SING TANTARARA—VAUXHALL! VAUXHALL!”	” ”	24
From the Drawing by Rowlandson (Microcosm of London).
GEORGE WHITEFIELD	” ”	32
From a Painting by Nathaniel Hone, mezzotinted by Grenwoode.
JOHN RANN	” ”	38
From a Contemporary Print.
LONDON BEGGARS: JOHN MACNALLY	” ”	45
From an Etching by John Thomas Smith.
LONDON BEGGARS: A SILVER-HAIRED MAN	” ”	52
From an Etching by John Thomas Smith.
LONDON MATCH BOYS	” ”	58
From an Etching by John Thomas Smith.
IMAGES	” ”	63
From an Etching by John Thomas Smith.
THE ROYAL COCKPIT	” ”	68
From a Drawing by Pugin and Rowlandson.
DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON	” ”	78
From the Drawing by Thomas Trotter, done from life, and engraved by Priscott.
“PERDITA” ROBINSON	” ”	83
Transcriber’s Note: this picture was omitted from the original book’s list of illustrations, and has here been added.
MRS. SIDDONS	” ”	85
From the Portrait by John Keyse Sherwin, engraved by the painter.
BENJAMIN WEST, P.R.A.	” ”	91
From the Painting by Gilbert Stuart in the National Portrait Gallery.
CAPTAIN FRANCIS GROSE	” ”	105
From the Drawing by Dance, engraved by Ridley.
COVENT GARDEN	” ”	108
From the Print, “Morning,” by Hogarth.
UMBRELLAS TO MEND	” ”	115
From an Etching by John Thomas Smith.
CHRISTIE’S AUCTION ROOM	” ”	120
From the Drawing by Pugin and Rowlandson (Microcosm of London).
AN OLD LONDON WATCH-HOUSE	” ”	126
From the Drawing by Pugin and Rowlandson (Microcosm of London).
SIR HARRY DINSDALE AND SIR JEFFERY DUNSTAN	” ”	129
From Contemporary Prints.
ELIZABETH CANNING’S IMPOSTURE	” ”	135
From a Contemporary Print.
RICHARD BRINSLEY SHERIDAN	” ”	147
From the Painting by John Russell, R.A., in the National Portrait Gallery.
J. W. M. TURNER, R.A.	” ”	152
From a Water-Colour Drawing by John Thomas Smith in the British Museum Print Room.
GEORGE MORLAND	” ”	157
From a Drawing by Rowlandson.
THE REV. ROWLAND HILL	” ”	161
From a Drawing by Thomas Clark, engraved by William Bond.
JAMES BARRY, R.A.	” ”	168
From the Portrait painted by himself, in the National Portrait Gallery.
THE OLD HOUSE OF COMMONS	” ”	173
From the Drawing by Pugin and Rowlandson (Microcosm of London).
NEWGATE CHAPEL ON THE EVE OF SEVERAL EXECUTIONS	” ”	178
From the Drawing by Pugin and Rowlandson (Microcosm of London).
THOMAS AUGUSTINE ARNE	” ”	181
From a Caricature (based upon a Drawing by Bartolozzi) in the National Portrait Gallery.
LADY HAMILTON	” ”	184
After a Painting by Romney.
GIOVANNI BATTISTA BELZONI	” ”	188
From the Painting by William Brockedon in the National Portrait Gallery.
BARTHOLOMEW FAIR	” ”	193
From the Drawing by Pugin and Rowlandson (Microcosm of London).
CHARLES TOWNLEY	” ”	198
From a Painting by Johann Zoffany, R.A., engraved by Worthington.
JAMES NORTHCOTE, R.A.	” ”	205
From a Drawing by James Lonsdale.
WILLIAM HUNTINGTON, “S.S.”	” ”	212
From the Painting by Domenico Pellegrini in the National Portrait Gallery.
MRS. JORDAN IN THE CHARACTER OF THE COUNTRY GIRL	” ”	222
From the Painting by Romney, engraved by John Ogbourne.
HENRY CONSTANTINE JENNINGS (OR NOEL)	” ”	233
From a Contemporary Print.
DAVID GARRICK AND HIS WIFE	” ”	243
From the Painting by Hogarth, engraved by H. Bourne.
DR. OLIVER GOLDSMITH	” ”	257
From the Drawing by Henry William Bunbury, engraved by Bretherton.
THE WIG IN ENGLAND: A MACARONI READY FOR THE PANTHEON	” ”	265
From a Contemporary Print.
MATS TO SELL	” ”	281
From an Etching by John Thomas Smith.
CHARLES DIBDEN	” ”	292
From the Painting by Thomas Phillips, R.A., in the National Portrait Gallery.
A PARTY ON THE RIVER	” ”	298
From a Drawing by Robert Cruikshank.
SIR EDMUND BERRY GODFREY	” ”	303
From an Engraving by P. Vandrebane.
JOHN FLAXMAN, R.A., MODELLING THE BUST OF HAYLEY	” ”	309
From the Painting by Romney in the National Portrait Gallery.
THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH, R.A.	” ”	317
From the Painting by himself in the Royal Academy.

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The first two editions of A Book for a Rainy Day appeared in 1845, twelve years after John Thomas Smith’s death, and a third appeared in 1861. As these editions do not contain half a dozen notes other than Smith’s own, this may claim to be the first annotated edition. It is also the first in which numerous original misprints have been (as I hope) corrected.

The lapse of seventy years has made many notes necessary. I have endeavoured to write these in the spirit of the book, making them something more than brief categorical answers to questions suggested by Smith’s journal. His own notes were interesting after-thoughts, and for this reason, and to avoid confusion, the great majority are now incorporated in his text. Where any are retained as footnotes, Smith’s authorship is indicated. If my additions to the book seem profuse, I can only plead that the Rainy Day offers to the annotator that abundance of material which has long pleased and bewildered its “Grangerisers.” And our climate has not improved.

I wish to acknowledge the use I have made of the Dictionary of National Biography, Notes and Queries, Mr. Wheatley’s London Past and Present, Mr. George Clinch’s Bloomsbury and St. Giles’s, and his Marylebone and St. Pancras, Mr. Warwick Wroth’s London Pleasure Gardens of the Eighteenth Century, Mr. Percy Fitzgerald’s Life of Garrick, Mr. Austin Dobson’s Hogarth, Mr. Laurence Binyon’s Catalogue of Drawings by British Artists in the Print Department, the Gentleman’s Magazine, the works of Cunningham and Redgrave, and such autobiographies as those of Henry Angelo, Thomas Dibdin, John Taylor, W. H. Pyne, Sir Nathaniel Wraxhall, B. R. Haydon, Madam D’Arblay, Dr. Trusler, and Letitia Hawkins. It is remarkable how John Thomas Smith’s own books supplement each other. His Nollekens and his Times is an inexhaustible budget of facts, and its usefulness has been increased by the index provided in Mr. Gosse’s edition of 1895.

It should be remembered that the year-dates which Smith uses as chapter headings do not represent the times at which the respective chapters were written. I judge that Smith was engaged on the Rainy Day only in the last three years of his life. His chronology is rather happy-go-lucky. For example, it must not be supposed that Dr. Burgess, of Mortimer Street, wore his cocked hat and deep ruffles in 1816, or that in that year Alderman Boydell might have been seen putting his head under the pump in Ironmonger Lane. These men died some years earlier. In accordance with the text of the third edition, Smith’s curious mention of the death of Dr. Johnson will be found under the year 1803.

W. W.

June 1905.

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John Thomas, or “Rainy Day,” Smith was born in a London hackney coach, on the evening of the 23rd of June 1766. His mother had spent the evening at the house of her brother, Mr. Edward Tarr, a convivial glass-grinder of Earl Street, Seven Dials, and the coach was conveying her back with necessary haste to her home at No. 7 Great Portland Street. Sixty-seven years later, the man who had entered thus hurriedly into the world left it with almost equal unexpectedness in his house, No. 22 University Street, after holding for seventeen years the post of Keeper of the Prints at the British Museum.

As a writer John Thomas Smith takes no high rank; but he is a delightful gossip, full of his two subjects: London and Art. We know him when he exclaims to a visitor in the Print Room, “What I tell you is the fact, and sit down, and I’ll tell ye the whole story.” Smith’s narrative manner is always that: “Sit down, and I’ll tell ye the whole story.” Such historians are often found in life, mighty recollectors before the Lord, who talk books which no one can inspire them to write. And it is well that when Smith did write he took small pains to be fine or literary. Writing as a man, and not as the scribes, he produced in his Nollekens and his Times one of the most entertaining harum-scarum biographies ever seen, and in his Book for a Rainy Day, or Recollections of the Events of the Years 1766-1833, a budget of memories which has perhaps been less read and more quoted than any book of its kind.

Smith’s valuable quality is his interest in the life he lived and saw lived. He was zealous to record those trivial facts of to-day which become piquant to-morrow, a habit that reveals itself in the way he mentions his birth as happening “whilst Maddox was balancing a straw at the Little Theatre in the Haymarket, and Marylebone Gardens re-echoed the melodious notes of Tommy Lowe.” In a friend’s album he wrote—

“I can boast of seven events, some of which great men would be proud of:

“I received a kiss when a boy from the beautiful Mrs. Robinson;

“Was patted on the head by Dr. Johnson;

“Have frequently held Sir Joshua Reynolds’s spectacles;

“Partook of a pint of porter with an elephant;

“Saved Lady Hamilton from falling when the melancholy news arrived of Lord Nelson’s death;

“Three times conversed with King George the Third;

“And was shut up in a room with Mr. Kean’s lion.”

These events are more curious than fateful, and, indeed, Smith’s career is little more than a record of plates etched and books published. He is entertaining because he was out and about in London for sixty years, and looked upon anecdotes as “debts due to the public.”

Almost as soon as Mrs. Smith’s hackney coach had brought her to No. 7 Great Portland Street—a house whose site is now covered, as I reckon, by No. 38—Dr. William Hunter, brother of the great John Hunter, arrived from Jermyn Street, and performed his duties with the skill of a Physician-Extraordinary to the Queen. The attendance of such a man proves the material comfort of the Smith family. Nathaniel Smith, the flustered father, was principal assistant to Joseph Nollekens, the sculptor, and he had worked for Joseph Wilton and the great Roubiliac. For Wilton he carved three of the nine masks, representing Ocean and eight British rivers, now seen on the Strand front of Somerset House. He had taken to wife a Miss Tarr, a Quakeress. Their boy’s christening was dictated by family history. He was named John after his grandfather, a Shropshire clothier, whose bust, modelled by Nathaniel Smith, was the first publicly exhibited by the Associated Artists at Spring Gardens; and Thomas after his great-uncle, Admiral Thomas Smith, who had earned in Portsmouth Harbour (more cheaply, perhaps, than Smith would have allowed) the name of “Tom of Ten Thousand.”

Smith early went into training to be a gossiping topographer. Old Nollekens, already a Royal Academician, and the most sought-after sculptor of portrait busts (“Well, sir, I think my friend Joe Nollekens can chop out a head with any of them,” was Dr. Johnson’s tribute to his genius), often took his assistant’s little son for a ramble round the streets. One day he led Thomas to the Oxford Road to see Jack Rann go by on the cart to Tyburn, where he was to be hanged for robbing Dr. William Bell of his watch and eighteenpence. The boy remembered all his life the criminal’s pea-green coat, his nankin small-clothes, and the immense nosegay that had been presented to him at St. Sepulchre’s steps. In another walk, Mr. Nollekens showed him the ruins of the Duke of Monmouth’s house in Soho Square. In a Sunday morning ramble they watched the boys bathing in Marylebone Basin, on the site of Portland Place. And, again, they stood at the top of Rathbone Place, while Nollekens recalled the mill from which Windmill Street was named, and the halfpenny hatch which had admitted people to the miller’s grounds.

In the sculptor’s studio, at No. 9 Mortimer Street, where at the age of twelve he began to help his father, Smith met sundry great people. One day, Mr. Charles Townley, the collector of the Townley marbles, noticed him, and “pouched” him half a guinea to purchase paper and chalk. Dr. Johnson, who was sitting for his bust, once looked at the boy’s drawings, and, laying his hand heavily on his head, croaked, “Very well, very well.” On a February day in 1779, that wag Johnny Taylor, who was to be Smith’s life-long friend, put his head in at the studio door and shouted the news that Garrick’s funeral had just left Adelphi Terrace for Westminster Abbey. Away flew Smith to see the procession, and to record it, in his old age, in the Rainy Day.

As a youth, Smith wished to learn engraving under Bartolozzi, but the great Italian declined a pupil, and it was through the influence of Dr. Hinchliffe, Bishop of Peterborough, one of his father’s patrons, that he entered the studio of John Keyse Sherwin, the engraver. Here he received his kiss from the beautiful “Perdita” Robinson; and when Mrs. Siddons sat to Sherwin for her portrait as the Grecian Daughter, he raised and lowered the window curtains to obtain the effect of light desired by his master.

Three years later Smith launched out as young drawing-master, pencil-portrait draughtsman, and topographical engraver. He found a patron in Mr. Richard Wyatt, of Milton Place, Egham. Through this gentleman he obtained commissions as a topographical artist from influential collectors like the Duke of Roxburgh, Lord Leicester, and Horace Walpole. Moreover, Sir Joshua Reynolds and Benjamin West sometimes engaged him to bid for them at print auctions. At this time he was a frequent visitor to the drawing-room of Mrs. Mathew, in Rathbone Place, where Flaxman was often found, and where William Blake read aloud his early poems.

The small artist, and particularly the topographical artist, had his chance in the second half of the eighteenth century. The productions of Wilson, Reynolds, Romney, and Gainsborough had stirred up the arts of engraving, which allied themselves closely to literature and life. It was the age of portly topographies and county histories, with their ceremonious array of plates; of itinerant portrait and view painting; and of night-sales of books and prints at which sociable collectors sat under eccentric auctioneers, and at which noblemen were as commonly seen as they were at boxing and trotting matches fifty years later. Shops abounded for the sale of new prints, and auctions were frequent for the distribution of old. Human types were produced of which we know little to-day. Smith has drawn some of them with easy and natural touches in his chapter on the print-buyers who attended Langford’s and Hutchins’ sale rooms, in Covent Garden, in 1783. There he was in his element. Not much passed in the art world in the fifty years following that date that Smith did not know.

When twenty-two, he married. The girl of his choice was Anne Maria Pickett, who belonged to a respectable family at Streatham, and who, after forty-five years of married life, was left his widow. They had one son and two daughters. The son died at the Cape in the same year as his father, 1833. One daughter was married to Mr. Smith, a sculptor, and the other to Mr. Paul Fischer, a miniature painter. Soon after his marriage he was invited by Sir James Winter Lake to take up his residence at Edmonton, where he taught drawing to their daughter, and doubtless had other pupils. When he applied (unsuccessfully) for the post of drawing-master to Christ’s Hospital, Sir James and Lady Lake’s testimonial made a point of the fact that he had never touched up their daughter’s work, “a practice too often followed by drawing-masters in general.” At this period Smith practised as an itinerant portrait painter, a branch of art which then had its vogue, and was to number William Hazlitt among its professors. At Edmonton it was that he “profiled, three-quartered, full-faced, and buttoned up the retired embroidered weavers, their crummy wives and tight-laced daughters.” At Edmonton, too, he watched the reception of his first book, the Antiquities of London and its Environs. Smith’s career for the next thirty years may be conveniently sketched in a list of his residences and the work he accomplished in each.

In 1797 he was at No. 40 Frith Street, Soho, a house which still exists, with its ground floor converted into a French wine shop. There he published his Remarks on Rural Scenery, consisting of etching of cottage and village scenes in the neighbourhood of London, with a preliminary essay on drawing.

In 1800 he was living with his father at 18 May’s Buildings, or the “Rembrandt Head,” as it was styled, in St. Martin’s Lane. In this year the discovery of curious paintings during the alterations to St. Stephen’s Chapel for the enlargement of the House of Commons, attracted Smith’s attention, and, after making careful copies of these relics, he projected his Antiquities of Westminster.

In February 1806, Smith published an etching of the scene on the Thames when Nelson’s remains were brought from Greenwich to Whitehall. He tells us that on showing it to Lady Hamilton she swooned in his arms. The plate is inscribed: “Published February 15, 1806, by John Thomas Smith, at No. 36 Newman Street.” This house remains unaltered.

In 1807 he issued his Antiquities of Westminster, his address appearing in the imprint as 31 Castle Street East, Oxford Street.

In 1810, May’s Buildings reappears in the imprint of his Antient Topography of London, but it may be that this address was not residential. The site of this house is merged in Messrs. Harrison’s printing works.

In 1815-17, Smith lived at No. 4 Chandos Street, Covent Garden, whence he issued his Vagabondiana, or Anecdotes of Mendicant Wanderers through the Streets of London.

In 1816 he succeeded William Alexander as Keeper of the Prints, and it is probable that he soon afterwards took up his residence at No. 22 University Street.[1] He was living here in 1828, when he published, through Henry Colburn, of New Burlington Street, “Nollekens and his Times: comprehending a Life of that celebrated Sculptor; and Memoirs of Several Contemporary Artists, from the time of Roubiliac, Hogarth, and Reynolds, to that of Fuseli, Flaxman, and Blake.” This, his most ambitious work, must be noticed more particularly because of its bearing on Smith’s life and character. Mr. Gosse, who has edited it, with the addition of a graceful essay on Georgian Sculpture, describes it as “perhaps the most candid biography ever published in the English language.” In its pages Smith exposes the domestic privacies and miserly habits of the sculptor and his wife. There are pages of sordid gossip which a dismissed charwoman might probably have found unacceptable to her cronies and supporters. Yet the book cannot be described as venomous. It is cheerily and unscrupulously candid, and this even in the matter of the author’s own disappointment. Nollekens, he assures us, had again and again given him reason to believe that he would be handsomely remembered in his will. “That you may depend upon, Tom,” were his words. It is easy to see that Smith may have come to expect this as the bright event of his later years. His Museum appointment had lifted him out of drudgery, and the promised legacy may have presented itself to him as the final deliverance from care. Nollekens had been kind to him as a boy, and had remained his friend through life. He was a widower, childless, and enormously rich. No artist had known better how to make art profitable. His purchases of antiques in Rome had been most prudent; so, also, his investments. As a sculptor of portrait busts he stood alone, and in his long working life he had “chopped out” the heads of many hundreds of wealthy and illustrious persons. When he died in April 1823, no one was surprised that his estate was declared to be of the value of £300,000. But very little of it went to “Tom,” who, to his intense chagrin, received a bare hundred pounds as one of the three executors.

Five years later, Smith brought out his hit-back biography. Its general veracity cannot be doubted. It is a veracity sharpened, not deflected, by malice. But it is clear that Smith found other satisfactions in writing the book than that of exposing the weaknesses of his old friend. He enjoyed the long and minute chronicle of life in Mortimer Street and in the studios and galleries he had frequented. Nollekens comes and goes in a world of gossip about London, art, and people. True, at any moment a mischievous gust may blow aside the veils to show us Mrs. Nollekens, in second-hand finery, beating down the price of a new broom or a chicken with cunning affability, or the sculptor pocketing nutmegs at the Royal Academy dinners to be added to the Mortimer Street larder. If you protest against these and worse freedoms, you are grateful for the hundred little touches of locality and custom that accompany them. The daily life of the eighteenth century is before you: the parlour, the street, the print shop.

Of Smith’s reign in the Print Room not much can be gathered. He was much liked and respected by those who consulted him in his department. We are told that he was kind to young artists of promise, and gently candid to those of no promise. His recollections and anecdotes were the delight of his visitors, one of whom has left us a racy specimen of his flow of humour and gossip. I refer to the following passage of Boswellian reminiscence, appended to the second and third edition, of the Rainy Day.

Had John Thomas Smith been granted the scriptural span of life, he might have read the Pickwick Papers. But the implacable call came in March 1833, and he left various enterprises unfinished. He had collected the materials for a gossipping history of Covent Garden; these have never been edited. The well-known Antiquarian Rambles in the Streets of London, published in 1846, originated in Smith’s notes, but four-fifths of the book was certainly written by its editor, Dr. Charles Mackay.

The book from which Smith has his sobriquet was published in 1845. A Book for a Rainy Day places its author in that line of London’s watchful lovers which began with John Stow and has not ended with Sir Walter Besant. Now, when London’s streets are changing as they have not changed since the Great Fire, he lies in that bare field of the dead behind the Bayswater Road, where, on the grave of a greater writer, you read the words, “Alas! poor Yorick.”

W. W.

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The Reader is requested to keep in mind that those events which I relate of myself when “mewling in my nurse’s arms,” and until my fourth year, were communicated to me by my parents, and that my statements from that period are mostly from my own memory;—Miranda proved to Prospero that she recollected an event in her fourth year.

My father informed me, that in the evening of the 23rd of June 1766, which must have been much about the time when Marylebone Gardens echoed the melodious notes of Tommy Lowe,[2] and whilst there was The Devil to Pay at Richmond with Mr. and Mrs. Love,[3] my mother, on returning from a visit to her brother, Mr. Edward Tarr,[4] became so seriously indisposed, that she most strenuously requested him to allow her to return home in a hackney coach, whilst he went to Jermyn Street for Dr. Hunter.[5] Upon that gentleman’s arrival at my father’s door, No. 7, in Great Portland Street,[6] Marylebone, he assisted the nurse in conveying my mother and myself to her chamber. Although I dare not presume to suppose that the vehicle in which I was born had been the equipage of the great John Duke of Marlborough, or Sarah his Duchess, at all events I probably may be correct in the conjecture that the hack was in some degree similar to those introduced by Kip, in his Plates for Strype’s edition of Stowe.[7]

Hackney chairs were then so numerous, that their stands extended round Covent Garden, and often down the adjacent streets;[8] these vehicles frequently enabled physicians to approach their patients in a warm state. The forms of those to which I allude are also given in Kip’s prints above mentioned; and who knows but that they, in their turn, have conveyed Voltaire from the theatre to his lodging in Maiden Lane?[9]

That sedans were of ancient use I make no doubt, as I find one introduced in Sir George Staunton’s Embassy to China.[10] Pliny has stated that his uncle was much accustomed to be carried abroad in a chair.[11] My parents, after a fireside debate, agreed that I should have two Christian names: John, after my grandfather, a Shropshire clothier, whose bust, modelled by my father, was one of the first publicly exhibited by the Associated Artists in 1763, before the establishment of the Royal Academy;[12] and Thomas, to the honour of our family, in remembrance of my great-uncle, Admiral Smith, better known under the appellation of “Tom of Ten Thousand,”[13] of whom I have a spirited half-length portrait, painted by the celebrated Richard Wilson, the landscape painter, previous to his visiting Rome, when he resided in the apartments on the north side of Covent Garden, which had been occupied first by Sir Peter Lely, and afterwards by Sir Godfrey Kneller.[14] From this picture there is an excellent engraving in mezzotinto, by Faber.

I have heard my mother relate, that when at Greenwich this year for the benefit of her health, an aged pie and cheesecake woman lived there, who was accompanied through the town by a goose, who regularly stopped at her customer’s door, and commenced a loud cackling; but that whenever the words “Not to-day” were uttered, off it waddled to the next house, and so on till the business of the day was ended. My mother also remarked, that when ladies walked out, they carried nosegays in their hands, and wore three immense lace ruffle cuffs on each elbow.[15]

In the month of March, this year, died Mary Mogg, at Oakingham, the woman who gave rise to Gay’s celebrated ballad of “Molly Mogg.”[16]

In all ages there has been a fashion in amusements, as well as in dress: grottoes, which were numerous round London, appear by the advertisements to have been places of great resort, but above all Finch’s, in St. George’s Fields, was the favourite. The following is a copy of one of the musical announcements:—

Being frequently thrown into my cradle by the servant, as a cross little brat, the care of my tender mother induced her to purchase one of Mr. Burchell’s anodyne necklaces, so strongly recommended by two eminent physicians, Dr. Tanner, the inventor, and Dr. Chamberlen, to whom he had communicated the prescription; and it was agreed by most of my mother’s gossiping friends, that the effluvia arising from it when warm acted in so friendly a manner, that my fevered gums were considerably relieved.[18]

Go-carts, the old appendages of our nurseries, continuing in use, I was occasionally placed in one; and as its advantages have been noticed in my work entitled Nollekens and his Times, I shall now only refer the reader for its form to Number 186 of “Rembrandt’s Etchings;”[19] that being similar, as my father informed me, to those used in London in my infantine days.[20]

The cradle having of late years been in a great degree superseded by what is called a cot,[21] and its shape not being remarkable, I shall for a moment beg leave to deal in a foreign market, in order to gratify the indefatigable organ of inquisitiveness of some of my readers, who may wish to know in what sort of cradle Stratford’s sweet Willy slumbered. Possibly it might in some respects have accorded with the representation of one in a small plate by Israel Von Meckenen,[22] and this conjecture is not improbable, as that plate was engraved about the sixteenth century; and it is well known that in most articles of furniture, as well as dress, we had long borrowed from our continental neighbours, whether good, bad, or indifferent. It gives me great pleasure to observe that, owing to the vast improvements made by our draughtsmen for English upholsterers, in every article of domestic decorative furniture, England has now little occasion to borrow from other nations.

Nancy Dawson, the famous hornpipe dancer, died this year, May 27th, at Hampstead; she was buried behind the Foundling Hospital, in the ground belonging to St. George the Martyr, where there is a tombstone to her memory, simply stating, “Here lies Nancy Dawson.” Every verse of a song in praise of her, declares the poet to be dying for Nancy Dawson; and its tune, which many of my readers must recollect, is, in my opinion, as lively as that of “Sir Roger de Coverley.” I have been informed that Nancy, when a girl, set up the skittles at a tavern in High Street, Marylebone.[23] Sir William Musgrave, in his Adversaria (No. 5719), in the British Museum, says that “Nancy Dawson was the wife of a publican near Kelso, on the borders of Scotland.”[24]

At the age when most children place things on their heads and cry “Hot pies!” I displayed a black pudding upon mine, which my mother, careful soul, had provided for its protection in case I should fall. This is another article mentioned in Nollekens and his Times; and having there stated that Rubens, in a picture at Blenheim, had painted one on the head of a son of his, walking with his wife Elenor,[25] and as the mothers of future days may wish to know its shape, I beg to inform them that there is an engraving of it by MacArdell. But as the receipt for a pet pudding would be of little use to the maker were one ingredient omitted, it would be equally difficult to produce a similar black pudding to mine, were I not to state that it was made of a long narrow piece of black silk or satin, padded with wadding, and then formed to the head according to the taste of the parent, or similar to that of little Rubens.[26]

In this year the Royal Academy was founded, consisting of members who had agreed to withdraw themselves from various clubs, not only in order to be more select as to talent, but perfectly correct as to gentlemanly conduct. It would have been a valuable acquisition to the History of the Fine Arts in England, had Mr. Howard favoured us with the Rise and Progress of the Royal Academy.[27]

Perhaps no one could have been more talked of than Mr. Wilkes, particularly on May 10th, when a riot took place on account of his imprisonment.[28] His popularity was carried to so great an extent, that his friends in all classes displayed some article on which his effigy was portrayed, such as salad or punch bowls, ale or milk jugs, plate, dishes, and even heads of canes. The squib engravings of him, published from the commencement of his notoriety to his silent state when Chamberlain of London, would extend to several volumes. Hogarth’s portrait of him, which by the collectors was considered a caricature, my father recommended as the best likeness.

The following memoranda respecting Henry Fuseli, R.A., are extracted from the Mitchell Manuscripts in the British Museum. The letter is from Mr. Murdock, of Hampstead, to a friend at Berlin, dated Hampstead, 12th June 1764:—

“I like Fuseli very much; he comes out to see us at times, and is just now gone from this with your letter to A. Ramsay, and another from me. He is of himself disposed to all possible economy; but to be decently lodged and fed, in a decent family, cannot be for less than three shillings a day, which he pays. He might, according to Miller’s wish, live a little cheaper; but then he must have been lodged in some garret, where nobody could have found their way, and must have been thrown into ale-houses and eating-houses, with company every way unsuitable, or, indeed, insupportable to a stranger of any taste; especially as the common people are of late brutalised.

“Some time hence, I hope, he may do something for himself; his talent at grouping figures, and his faculty of execution, being really surprising.”

In the same volume, in a letter dated Hampstead, 12th Jan. 1768, the same writer says to the same friend—

“Fuseli goes to Italy next spring, by the advice of Reynolds (our Apelles), who has a high opinion of his genius, and sees what is wanting to make him a first-rate.”[29]

In another, dated Hampstead, 13th December 1768: “Fuseli is still here; but proposes to set out for Italy as soon as his friends can secure to him fifty pounds yearly, for a few years. Dr. Armstrong,[30] who admires his genius, has taxed himself at ten pounds, and has taken us in for as much more; and indeed it were shameful that such talents should be sunk for want of a little pecuniary aid.”

The ladies this year wore half a flat hat as an eye-shade.

Lord North, in a letter addressed to Sir Eardley Wilmot from Downing Street, bearing date this year, April 1st, says—

The Judge, in his answer, dated on the following day, observed, “It would be highly improper for me to interfere in any shape in that election.” (See the Wilmot Letters, in the British Museum.)[31]

This year ladies continued to walk with fans in their hands.

Most of the citizens who had saved money were very fond of retiring to some country-house, at a short distance from the Metropolis, and more particularly to Islington, that being a selected and favourite spot. Charles Bretherton, Jun., made an etching, from a drawing by Mr. Bunbury,[32] of a Londoner, of the above description, whose waistcoat-pockets were large enough to convey a couple of fowls from a City feast home to his family. The print is entitled, “The Delights of Islington,” and bears the following inscription at the top:—

On a garden notice-board, in another print, also after Bunbury, published at the same time, is inscribed,

For the information of the collectors of Bunbury’s prints, I beg to state that there is in Mrs. Banks’s collection of visiting cards, etc., in the British Museum, a small etching said to have been his very first attempt when at Westminster School. It represents a fellow riding a hog, brandishing a birch-broom by way of a baster, with another at a short distance, hallooing.

As Mr. Walpole is silent as to Jonathan Richardson’s place of interment, the biographical collector will find the following inscription in the burial-ground behind the Foundling Hospital, belonging to the parish of St. George the Martyr:—

Elizabeth Richardson,
Died 24th Dec. 1767,
Aged 74 years.
Jonathan Richardson,
Died 10th June, 1771,
Aged 77; both of this parish.[34]

The gaiety during the merry month of May was to me most delightful; my feet, though I knew nothing of the positions, kept pace with those of the blooming milkmaids, who danced round their garlands of massive plate, hired from the silversmiths to the amount of several hundreds of pounds, for the purpose of placing round an obelisk, covered with silk fixed upon a chairman’s horse. The most showy flowers of the season were arranged so as to fill up the openings between the dishes, plates, butter-boats, cream-jugs, and tankards. This obelisk was carried by two chairmen in gold-laced hats, six or more handsome milkmaids in pink and blue gowns, drawn through the pocket-holes, for they had one on either side: yellow or scarlet petticoats, neatly quilted, high-heeled shoes, mob-caps, with lappets of lace resting on their shoulders; nosegays in their bosoms, and flat Woffington hats, covered with ribbons of every colour. But what crowned the whole of the display was a magnificent silver tea-urn which surmounted the obelisk, the stand of which was profusely decorated with scarlet tulips. A smart, slender fellow of a fiddler, commonly wearing a sky-blue coat, with his hat profusely covered with ribbons, attended; and the master of the group was accompanied by a constable, to protect the plate from too close a pressure of the crowd, when the maids danced before the doors of his customers.[35]

One of the subjects selected by Mr. Jonathan Tyers, for the artists who decorated the boxes for supper-parties in Vauxhall Gardens,[36] was that of Milkmaids on May-day. In that picture (which, with the rest painted by Hayman and his pupils, has lately disappeared) the garland of plate was carried by a man on his head; and the milkmaids, who danced to the music of a wooden-legged fiddler, were extremely elegant. They had ruffled cuffs, and their gowns were not drawn through their pocket-holes as in my time; their hats were flat, and not unlike that worn by Peg Woffington, but bore a nearer shape to those now in use by some of the fish-women at Billingsgate. In Captain M. Laroon’s Cries of London, published by Tempest, there is a female entitled “A Merry Milkmaid.”[37] She is dancing with a small garland of plate upon her head; and from her dress I conclude that the Captain either made his drawing in the latter part of King William III.’s reign, or at the commencement of that of Queen Anne.

My dear mother’s declining state of health urged my father to consult Dr. Armstrong,[38] who recommended her to rise early and take milk at the cowhouse. I was her companion then; and I well remember that, after we had passed Portland Chapel, there were fields all the way on either side. The highway was irregular, with here and there a bank of separation; and that when we had crossed the New Road, there was a turnstile (called in an early plan, which I have seen since, “The White House”), at the entrance of a meadow leading to a little old public-house, the sign of the “Queen’s Head and Artichoke”: it was much weather-beaten, though perhaps once a tolerably good portrait of Queen Elizabeth. The house was reported to have been kept by one of Her Majesty’s gardeners.[39]

A little beyond a nest of small houses contiguous, was another turnstile opening also into fields, over which we walked to the Jew’s Harp House, Tavern and Tea Gardens.[40] It consisted of a large upper room, ascended by an outside staircase, for the accommodation of the company on ball nights; and in this room large parties dined. At the south front of these premises was a large semicircular enclosure with boxes for tea and ale drinkers, guarded by deal-board soldiers between every box, painted in proper colours. In the centre of this opening were tables and seats placed for the smokers. On the eastern side of the house there was a trapball-ground; the western side served for a tennis-hall; there were also public and private skittle-grounds. Behind this tavern were several small tenements, with a pretty good portion of ground to each. On the south of the tea-gardens a number of summer-houses and gardens, fitted up in the truest Cockney taste; for on many of these castellated edifices wooden cannons were placed; and at the entrance of each domain, of about the twentieth part of an acre, the old inscription of “Steel-traps and spring-guns all over these grounds,” with an “N.B. Dogs trespassing will be shot.”

In these rural retreats the tenant was usually seen on Sunday evening in a bright scarlet waistcoat, ruffled shirt, and silver shoe-buckles, comfortably taking his tea with his family, honouring a Seven-Dial friend with a nod on his peregrination to the famed Wells of Kilburn. Willan’s farm,[41] the extent of my mother’s walk, stood at about a quarter of a mile south; and I remember that the room in which she sat to take the milk was called “Queen Elizabeth’s Kitchen,” and that there was some stained glass in the windows.

On our return we crossed the New Road; and, after passing the back of Marylebone Gardens,[42] entered London immediately behind the elegant mansions on the north side of Cavendish Square. This Square was enclosed by a dwarf brick wall, surmounted by heavy wooden railing. Harley Fields had for years been resorted to by thousands of people, to hear the celebrated Mr. George Whitefield, whose wish, like that of Wesley, when preaching on execution days at Kennington Common, was to catch the ears of the idlers. I should have noticed Kendall’s farm,[43] which in 1746 belonged to a farmer of the name of Bilson, a pretty large one, where I have seen eight or ten immense hay-ricks all on a row; it stood on the site of the commencement of the present Osnaburg Street, nearly opposite the “Green Man,” originally called the “Farthing Pie House.”[44]

To the honour of our climate, which is often abused, perhaps no country can produce instances of longevity equal to those of England of this year, viz.:—at 100, 2; 101, 5; 102, 6; 103, 3; 105, 4; 106, 3; 107, 4; 108, 5; 109, 4; 110, 2; 111, 2; 112, 3; 114, 1; 118, 1; 125, Rice, a cooper in Southwark; 133, Mrs. Keithe, at Newnham, in Gloucestershire; 138, the widow Chun, at Ophurst, near Lichfield.[45]

The “Mother Red-cap,” at Kentish Town, was a house of no small terror to travellers in former times. This house was lately taken down, and another inn built on its site; however, the old sign of “Mother Red-cap” is preserved on the new building. It has been stated that Mother Red-cap was the “Mother Damnable” of Kentish Town in early days; and that it was at her house the notorious “Moll Cut-purse,” the highway-woman of the time of Oliver Cromwell, dismounted and frequently lodged.[46]

As few persons possess so retentive a memory as myself, I make no doubt that many will be pleased with my recollections of the state of Tottenham Court Road at this time. I shall commence at St. Giles’s churchyard, in the northern wall of which there was a gateway of red and brown brick. Over this gate, under its pediment, was a carved composition of the Last Judgment, not borrowed from Michael Angelo, but from the workings of the brain of some ship-carver.[47] This was and is still admired by the generality of ignorant observers, as much as Mr. Charles Smith[48] the sculptor’s “Love among the Roses” is by the well-informed; and, perhaps, a more correct assertion was never made than that by the late worthy Rev. James Bean,[49] when speaking of an itinerant musician, “that bad music was as agreeable to a bad ear as that of Corelli or Pergolesi was to persons who understood the science.”

At this gate stood for many years an eccentric but inoffensive old man called “Simon,” some account of whom will be found in a future page. Nearly on the site of the new gate, in which this basso relievo has been most conspicuously placed, stood a very small old house towards Denmark Street, tottering for several years whenever a heavy carriage rolled through the street, to the great terror of those who were at the time passing by.

I must not forget to observe that I recollect the building of most of the houses at the north end of New Compton Street (Dean Street and Compton Street, Soho, were named in compliment to Bishop Compton, Dean of St. Paul’s, who held the living of St. Anne), and I also remember a row of six small almshouses, surrounded by a dwarf brick wall, standing in the middle of High Street.[50]

On the left-hand of High Street, passing on to Tottenham Court Road, there were four handsomely finished brick houses, with grotesque masks on the key-stones above the first-floor windows, probably erected in the reign of Queen Anne. These houses have lately been rebuilt without the masks; fortunately my reader may be gratified with a sight of such ornaments in Queen Square, Westminster.[51] There is a set of engravings of masks, of a small quarto size, considered as the designs of Michael Angelo; and in the sale of Mr. Moser, the first keeper of the Royal Academy, which took place at Hutchinson’s in 1783, were several plaster casts, considered to be taken from models by him. The next object of notoriety is a large circular boundary stone, let into the pavement in the middle of the highway, exactly where Oxford Street and Tottenham Court Road meet in a right angle. When the charity boys of St. Giles’s parish walk the boundaries, those who have deserved flogging are whipped at this stone, in order that, as they grow up, they may remember the place, and be competent to give evidence should any dispute arise with the adjoining parishes. Near this stone stood St. Giles’s Pound.[52] Two old houses stood near this spot on the eastern side of the street, where the entrance gates of Meux’s brewery have been erected: between the second-floor windows of one of them the following inscription was cut in stone: “Opposite this house stood St. Giles’s Pound.” This spot has been rendered popular by a song, attributed to the pen of a Mr. Thompson, an actor of the Drury Lane Company:

The ground behind the north-west end of Russell Street was occupied by a farm occupied by two old maiden sisters of the name of Capper. They wore riding-habits, and men’s hats; one rode an old grey mare, and it was her spiteful delight to ride with a large pair of shears after boys who were flying their kites, purposely to cut their strings; the other sister’s business was to seize the clothes of the lads who trespassed on their premises to bathe.[54]

From Capper’s farm were several straggling houses; but the principal part of the ground to the “King’s Head,” at the end of the road, was unbuilt upon. The “Old King’s Head” forms a side object in Hogarth’s beautiful and celebrated picture of the “March to Finchley,” which may be seen with other fine specimens of art in the Foundling Hospital, for the charitable donation of one shilling.

I shall now recommence on the left-hand side of the road, noticing that on the front of the first house, No. 1, in Oxford Street, near the second-floor windows, is the following inscription cut in stone: Oxford Street, 1725. In Aggas’s plan of London, engraved in the beginning of the reign of Queen Elizabeth, the commencement of this street is designated “The Waye to Uxbridge”; farther on in the same plan the highway is called “Oxford Road.” Hanway Street, better known by the vulgar people under the name of Hanover Yard, was at this time the resort of the highest fashion for mercery and other articles of dress. The public-house, the sign of the “Blue Posts,” at the corner of Hanway Street, in Tottenham Court Road, was once kept by a man of the name of Sturges, deep in the knowledge of chess, upon which game he published a little work, as is acknowledged on his tombstone in St. James’s burial-ground, Hampstead Road.[55] From the “Blue Posts” the houses were irregularly built to a large space called Gresse’s Gardens, thence to Windmill Street, strongly recommended by physicians for the salubrity of the air. The premises occupied by the French charity children were held by the founders of the Middlesex Hospital, which were established in 1755, where the patients remained until the present building was erected in Charles Street. Colvill Court, parallel with Windmill Street northward, was built in 1766; and Goodge Street,[56] farther on, was, I conjecture, erected much about the same time. Mr. Whitefield’s chapel was built in 1754, upon the site of an immense pond, called The Little Sea. This pond, so called, is inserted in Pine and Tinney’s plan of London, published in 1742, and also in the large one issued by the same persons in 1746.[57] Beyond the chapel[58] the four dwellings, then called “Paradise Row,” almost terminated the houses on that side. A turnstile opened into Crab-tree Fields.[59] They extended to the “Adam and Eve” public-house, the original appearance of which Hogarth has also introduced into his picture of the “March to Finchley.” It was at this house that the famous pugilistic skill of Broughton and Slack was publicly exhibited, upon an uncovered stage, in a yard open to the North Road.[60]

The rare and beautiful etching of the before-mentioned picture by Hogarth was the production of Luke Sullivan,[61] a native of Ireland, but how he acquired his knowledge of art I have not been able to learn; most probably he was of Dame Nature’s school, where pupils can be taught gratis the whole twenty-four hours of every day as long as the world lasts. Sullivan’s talents were not confined to the art of engraving; he was, in my humble opinion, the most extraordinary of all miniature painters. I have three or four of his productions, one of which was so particularly fine, that I could almost say I have it on my retina at this moment. It was the portrait of a most lovely woman as to features, flesh, and blood. She was dressed in a pale green silk gown, lapelled with straw-coloured satin; and in order to keep up a sweetness of tone, the artist had placed primroses in her stomacher; the sky was of a warm green, which blended harmoniously with the carnations of her complexion; her hair was jet, and her necklace of pearls.

Lord Orford, whose early attachment to the sleepy-eyed beauties of King Charles II.’s Court, and those with the lascivious leer of that of Louis XIV., as may be inferred by their numerous portraits in the cabinets at Strawberry Hill, would no doubt have preferred his favourites, Cooper and Petitot—names eternally, and many times unjustly, extolled by the admirers of their works to the injury of our artists, whose talents equal, if not surpass, those of every country put together, in, I think I may say, every branch of the fine arts. Upon this too general opinion of the pre-eminence of Petitot, I have now and then had a battle with Mr. Paul Fischer, the miniature painter, who certainly has produced some most highly finished and excellent likenesses of the Royal Family and several persons of fashion, particularly of King George IV. and Sir Wathen Waller, Bart.[62]

Notwithstanding Tottenham Court Road was so infested by the lowest order, who kept what they called a Gooseberry Fair,[63] it was famous at certain times of the year, particularly in summer, for its booths of regular theatrical performers, who deserted the empty benches of Drury Lane Theatre, under the mismanagement of Mr. Fleetwood,[64] and condescended to admit the audience at sixpence each. Mr. Yates, and several other eminent performers, had their names painted on their booths.

The whole of the ground north from Capper’s farm, at the back of the British Museum, so often mentioned as being frequented by duellists, was in irregular patches, many fields with turnstiles. The pipes of the New River Company were propped up in several parts to the height of six and eight feet, so that persons walked under them to gather watercresses, which grew in great abundance and perfection, or to visit the “Brothers’ Steps,” well known to the Londoners. Of these steps there are many traditionary stories; the one generally believed is, that two brothers were in love with a lady, who would not declare a preference for either, but coolly sat upon a bank to witness the termination of a duel, which proved fatal to both. The bank, it is said, on which she sat, and the footmarks of the brothers when pacing the ground, never produced grass again. The fact is that these steps were so often trodden that it was impossible for the grass to grow. I have frequently passed over them; they were in a field on the site of Mr. Martin’s chapel, or very nearly so, and not on the spot as communicated to Miss Porter, who has written an entertaining novel on the subject.[65]

Aubrey, in his Miscellanies, states: “The last summer, on the day of St. John Baptist (1694), I accidentally was walking in the pasture behind Montague House; it was twelve o’clock. I saw there about two or three and twenty young women, most of them well habited, on their knees very busie, as if they had been weeding. I could not presently learn what the matter was; at last a young man told me that they were looking for a coal under the root of a plantain to put under their heads that night, and they should dream who would be their husbands. It was to be found that day and hour.”[66]

I well remember when, in my eighth year, my father’s playfellow, Mr. Joseph Nollekens, leading me by the hand to the end of John Street, to see the notorious terror of the king’s highways, John Rann, commonly called Sixteen-string Jack, on his way to execution at Tyburn, for robbing Dr. Bell, Chaplain to the Princess Amelia, in Gunnesbury Lane. The Doctor died a Prebendary of Westminster. It was pretty generally reported that the sixteen strings worn by this freebooter at his knees were in allusion to the number of times he had been acquitted. Fortunately for the Boswell illustrators, there is an etched portrait of him; for, be it known, thief as he was, he had the honour of being recorded by Dr. Johnson.[67] Rann was a smart fellow, a great favourite with a certain description of ladies, and had been coachman to Lord Sandwich, when his Lordship resided in the south-east corner-house of Bedford Row. The malefactor’s coat was a bright pea-green; he had an immense nosegay, which he had received from the hand of one of the frail sisterhood, whose practice it was in those days to present flowers to their favourites from the steps of St. Sepulchre’s church, as the last token of what they called their attachment to the condemned,[68] whose worldly accounts were generally brought to a close at Tyburn, in consequence of their associating with abandoned characters. On our return home, Mr. Nollekens, stooping close to my ear, assured me that, had his father-in-law, Mr. Justice Welch, been high constable, we could have walked all the way to Tyburn by the side of the cart.[69]

At this time houses in High Street, Marylebone, particularly on the western side, continued to be inhabited by families who kept their coaches, and who considered themselves as living in the country, and perhaps their family affairs were as well known as they could have been had they resided at Kilburn.[70] In Marylebone, great and wealthy people of former days could hardly stir an inch without being noticed; indeed, so lately as the year 1728, the Daily Journal assured the public that “many persons arrived in London from their country-houses in Marylebone”; and the same publication, dated October 15th, conveys the following intelligence:—

“The Right Hon. Sir Robert Walpole comes to town this day from Chelsea.”

The following lines were inserted by the late Sir William Musgrave, in his Adversaria (No. 5721):—

One Sunday morning my mother allowed me, before we entered the little church[71] in High Street, Marylebone, to stand to see the young gentlemen of Mr. Fountayne’s boarding-school cross the road, while the bell was chiming for sacred duties. I remember well a summer’s sun shone with full refulgence at the time, and my youthful eyes were dazzled with the various colours of the dresses of the youths, who walked two and two, some in pea-green, others sky-blue, and several in the brightest scarlet; many of them wore gold-laced hats, while the flowing locks of others, at that time allowed to remain uncut at schools, fell over their shoulders. To the best of my recollection, the scholars amounted to about one hundred. As the pleasurable and often idle scenes of my schoolboy days are pictured upon my retina whenever Crouch End, or the name of my venerable master, Norton,[72] are mentioned, and as others may feel similar delight with respect to the places at which they received their early education, I shall endeavour to gratify a few of my readers by a description of the house and playground of Mr. Fountayne’s academy. For this purpose it may not be irrelevant to notice something of the antiquity of that once splendid mansion, in which so many persons have passed their early and innocent hours.

Topographers who mention Marylebone Park inform us that foreign ambassadors were in the time of Queen Elizabeth and James I. amused there by hunting, and that the oldest parts of this school were the remains of the palace in which they were entertained. The earliest topographical representation which I am enabled to instance, is a drawing made by Joslin, dated 1700, formerly in the possession of his Grace the Duke of Buckingham, of which I published an etching. It comprehends the field-gate and palace, its surrounding walls and adjacent buildings in Marylebone to the south-west, including a large mansion, which in all probability had been Oxford House, the grand receptacle of the Harleian Library. Fortune, I am sorry to say, has not favoured me with the power of continuing the declining history of the palace to the period at which it became an academy, nor can I discover the time in which Monsieur de la Place first occupied it.[73] A daughter of De la Place married the Rev. Mr. Fountayne,[74] whose name the school retained until its final demolition in 1791, at which period I remember seeing the large stone balls taken from the brick piers of the gates.

Of this house, when a school, I recollect a miserably executed plate by Roberts, probably for some magazine; there is also a quarto plate displaying a knowledge in perspective, engraved by G. T. Parkyns, from a drawing by J. C. Barrow;[75] but the most interesting, and I must consider the most correct, are four drawings made by Michael Angelo Rooker,[76] formerly in my possession, but now in the illustrated copy of Pennant’s London in the British Museum.[77] These have enabled me to insert the following description of a few parts of the mansion. The first drawing is a view of the principal and original front of the palace, or manor-house, with other buildings open to the playground; it was immediately within the wall on the east side of the road, then standing upon the site of the present Devonshire Mews. This house consisted of an immense body and two wings, a projecting porch in the front, and an enormously deep dormer roof, supported by numerous cantilevers, in the centre of which there was, within a very bold pediment, a shield surmounted by foliage with labels below it. The second drawing exhibits the back, or garden front, which consisted of a flat face with a bay window at each end, glazed in quarries;[78] the wall of the back front terminated with five gables. In the midst of some shrubs stands a tall, lusty gentleman dressed in black, with a white Busby-wig and a three-cornered hat, possibly intended for the figure of the Rev. Mr. Fountayne, as he is directing the gardener to distribute some plants. The third drawing, which is taken from the hall, exhibits the grand staircase, the first flight of which consisted of sixteen steps; the hand-rails were supported with richly carved perforated foliage, from its style, probably of the period of Inigo Jones. The fourth drawing consists of the decorations of the staircase, which was tessellated. This mansion was wholly of brick, and surmounted by a large turret containing the clock and bell. Mr. Fountayne was noticed by Handel as well as Clarke, the celebrated Greek scholar.[79] These gentlemen frequently indulged in musical parties, which were attended by persons of rank and worth, as well as fashion and folly.

Mrs. Fountayne was a vain, dashing woman, extremely fond of appearing at Court, for which purpose, as was generally known, she borrowed Lady Harrington’s jewels.[80] Indeed, her passion for display was carried to such an extreme, that she kept her carriage, and that without the knowledge of her husband, by the following artful manœuvre. As the scholars were mostly sons of persons of title and large fortunes, she professed to have many favourites, who had behaved so well that she was often tempted to take them to the play, which so pleased the parents that they liberally reimbursed her in the coach and theatrical expenses, though she actually obtained orders upon those occasions from her friend Mrs. Yates, by which contrivance she was enabled to keep the vehicle in which they were conveyed to the theatres; Mrs. Yates,[81] however, was amply repaid for her orders by the number of tickets which Mrs. Fountayne prevailed on the parents of the scholars to take at her benefits.[82]

Previous to a consultation of physicians respecting the doubtful case of a young gentleman boarder, one of Mr. Fountayne’s daughters overheard something like the following dialogue by placing herself behind the window hangings:—Doctor: “You look better.”—“Yes, sir; I now eat suppers, and wear a double flannel jacket.” At this time the lady behind the curtains tittered. “Hark! what noise is that?” interrogated an old member of Warwick Lane’s far-famed college.[83] “Oh,” said another of the faculty, “it’s only the sneezing of a cat.” After this, instead of saying a word about magnesia, Gaskin’s powder, or oil of sweet almonds, they resumed their conversation upon their indulgences, and finally ended with some severe philippic upon Lord North’s administration. This occupied a considerable portion of their time before the house-apothecary (who had called them in) was questioned as to what he had given the patient. His draught being perfectly consistent with the college pharmacopœia, they all agreed that he could not do better than repeat it as often as he thought proper; and thus the important consultation ended.

In the hall of this house was a parrot, so aged that its few remaining feathers were for years confined to its wrinkled skin by a flannel jacket, which in very cold weather received an additional broadcloth covering of the brightest scarlet, so that Poll, like the Lord Mayor, had her scarlet days. Poll, who had been long accustomed to hear her mistress’s general invitation to strangers who called to inquire after the boarders, relieved her of that ceremony by uttering, as soon as they entered, “Do pray walk into the parlour and take a glass of wine!” but this she finally did with so little discrimination, that when a servant came with a letter or a card for her mistress, or a fellow with a summons from the Court of Conscience, he was greeted by the bird with equal liberality and politeness.

In this year the houses of the north end of Newman Street commanded a view of the fields over hillocks of ground now occupied by Norfolk Street,[84] and the north and east outer sides of Middlesex Hospital garden-wall were entirely exposed. From the east end of Union Street, where Locatelli the sculptor subsequently had his studio,[85] the ground was very deep; and much about that spot, more to the east, stood a cottage with a garden before it, with its front to the south. This was kept by John Smith, one of Mr. Wilton the sculptor’s oldest labourers; immediately behind this cottage was a rope-walk, which extended north to a considerable distance under the shade of two magnificent rows of elms. Here I have often seen Richard Wilson the landscape painter and Baretti walk.[86] At the right-hand side of this rope-walk there was a pathway on a bank, commencing from the site of the foundation of the present workhouse, belonging to St. Paul’s, Covent Garden. This house was then planned out, and finished in the ensuing year, according to the date on its western front.

The bank extended northwards to the “Farthing Pie House,” now the sign of the “Green Man,” and was kept by a person of the name of Price, a famous player on the salt-box.[87] Of this highly respectable publican there is an excellent mezzotinto engraving by Jones, after a picture by Lawranson. It commanded views of the old “Queen’s Head and Artichoke,” the old “Jew’s-Harp House,” and the distant hills of Highgate, Hampstead, Primrose, and Harrow. I was then in my eighth year, and frequently played at trap-ball between the above-mentioned sombre elms.

The south and east ends of Queen Anne[88] and Marylebone Streets were then unbuilt, and the space consisted of fields to the west corner of Tottenham Court Road; thence to the extreme of High Street, Marylebone Gardens, Marylebone Bason, and another pond called Cockney-ladle.[89]

I recollect the building of the north side of Marylebone Street, the whole of that portion of Portland Street north of Portland Chapel, the site of Cockney-ladle, Duke Street, Portland Place, and the greatest part of Harley Street, Wimpole Street, and Portland Place, and Devonshire Place when Marylebone Bason was the terror of many a mother.[90] Of this Bason Chatelain executed a spirited etching, of a quarto size, which is now considered by the topographical collectors a great rarity. The carriage and principal entrance to Marylebone Gardens was in High Street; the back entrance was from the fields, beyond which, north, was a narrow, winding passage, with garden-palings on either side, leading into High Street. In this passage were numerous openings into small gardens, divided for the recreation of various cockney florists, their wives, children, and Sunday smoking visitors. These were called the “French Gardens,” in consequence of having been cultivated by refugees who fled their country after the Edict of Nantes.[91] I well remember my grandmother taking me through this passage to Marylebone Gardens, to see the fireworks, and thinking them prodigiously grand. As the following notices of Marylebone Gardens have given me no small pleasure in collecting, and as they afford more information of that once fashionable place of recreation than has hitherto been brought together, or perhaps known to any other individual, I without hesitation offer my gleanings[92] to the reader, chronologically arranged, commencing with Pepys’s visit in

1668.—“When we abroad to Marrowbone, and there walked in the garden; the first time I ever was there, and a pretty place it is.”[93]

1691.—Long’s bowling-green at the “Rose,” at Marylebone, half a mile distant from London, is mentioned in the London Gazette, January 11.[94]

1718.—“This is to give notice to all persons of quality, ladies and gentlemen, that there having been illuminations in Marybone bowling-greens on his Majesty’s birthday every year since his happy accession to the throne; the same is (for this time) put off till Monday next, and will be performed, with a consort of musick, in the middle green, by reason there is a Ball in the gardens at Kensington with illuminations, and at Richmond also.” (See the Daily Courant, Thursday, May 29.)

1738-9.—Mr. Gough enlarged the gardens, built an orchestra, and issued silver tickets at 12s. for the season, each ticket to admit two persons. From every one without a ticket 6d. was demanded for the evening; but afterwards, as the season advanced, the admission was 1s. for a lady and gentleman. The gardens were open from six till ten.

1740.—An organ, built by Bridge, was added to the band, admittance 6d. each; but afterwards, when the new room was erected, the admission was increased to 1s.

1741. May 23.—A grand martial composition of music was performed by Mr. Lampe, in honour of Admiral Vernon, for taking Carthagena.

1742.—The proprietor of the Mulberry Garden, Clerkenwell, indulged in the following remarks upon five places of similar amusement:—

“Ruckhoult has found one day and night’s alfresco in the week to be inconvenient.[95]

“Ranelagh House, supported by a giant, whose legs will scarcely support him.[96]

“Mary le Bon Gardens down on their marrow-bones.

“New Wells at low water.[97]

“At Cuper’s the fire almost out.”[98] (See the Daily Post, July 28.)

1743.—The holders of Marybone Garden tickets let them out at reduced prices for the evening. Ranelagh tickets were also advertised to be had at Old Slaughter’s Coffee-house at 1s. 3d. each, admitting two persons. Vauxhall tickets were likewise to be had at the same place at 1s. each, admitting two persons. (See the Daily Advertiser for April 23.)

1744.—Miss Scott was a singer, Mr. Knerler played the violin, and Mr. Ferrand an instrument called the Pariton.[99]

1746.—Robberies were now so frequent and the thieves so desperate, that the proprietor of the gardens was obliged to have a guard of soldiers to protect the company to and from London. The best plan of the gardens has been given in Plate I. of Rocque’s Plan of London, published in 1746.

1747.—Miss Falkner, singer;[100] Henry Rose, first violin; and Mr. Philpot, organist.—Admittance to the garden, 6d.; to the concert, 2s.

1748.—Miss Falkner, singer. No persons to be admitted to the balls unless in full dress.

1749.—It appears by the advertisements that dress-balls and concerts were the only amusements of this year.

1750.—Miss Falkner, Mr. Lowe, and Master Phillips, were the singers.

1751.—John Trusler was sole proprietor of the Gardens.[101] Singers, Miss Falkner, Master Phillips, and Master Arne. On the 30th of August there was a ball; and as the road had been repaired, coaches drove up to the door—a ten-and-sixpenny ticket admitted two persons. The doors opened at nine o’clock.

1752.—Miss Falkner and Mr. Wilder singers.

1753.—The Public Advertiser of May 25, June 20, September 10 and 24, states that the gardens were much more extensive by taking in the bowling-green, and considerably improved by several additional walks; that lights had been erected in the coach-way from Oxford Road, and also on the footpath from Cavendish Square to the entrance to the gardens; and that the fireworks were splendid beyond conception. A large sun was exhibited at the top of a picture, a cascade, and shower of fire, and grand air-balloons (perhaps these were the first air-balloons in England) were also most magnificently displayed; and likewise that red fire was introduced. This is the earliest instance of Red fire I have been able to meet with. Mrs. Chambers and Master Moore were singers.

1756.—Two rooms were opened for dinner-parties. Trusler, the proprietor of the gardens, was a cook.

1757.—Mr. Thomas Glanville, Mr. Kear, Mr. Reinhold, and Mr. Champneys were singers.

1758.—The Gardens opened on May the 16th; the singers were, Signora Saratina, Miss Glanvil, and Mr. Kear. No persons were admitted to the ball-rooms without five-shilling tickets, which admitted a gentleman and two ladies; and only twenty-six tickets were delivered for each night. Mr. Trusler’s son produced the first burletta that was performed in the Gardens; it was entitled “La Serva Padrona,” for which he only received the profits of the printed books.[102]

1759.—The Gardens were opened for breakfasting; and Miss Trusler made the cakes. Mr. Reinhold and Mr. Gaudrey were the singers.

1760.—The Gardens, greatly improved, opened on Monday, May 26th, with the usual musical entertainments. The Gardens were opened also every Sunday evening after five o’clock, where genteel company were admitted to walk gratis, and were accommodated with coffee, tea, cakes, etc.

The following announcement appears in the Daily Advertiser of May 6th, this year:—

“Mr. Trusler’s daughter begs leave to inform the Nobility and Gentry, that she intends to make Fruit-Tarts during the fruit Season; and hopes to give equal satisfaction as with the rich Cakes, and Almond Cheesecakes. The Fruit will always be fresh gathered, having great quantities in the Garden; and none but Loaf Sugar used, and the finest Epping Butter. Tarts of a Twelvepenny size will be made every day from One to Three o’clock; and those who want them of larger sizes to fill a Dish, are desired to speak for them, and send their dish or the size of it, and the Cake shall be made to fit.

“The Almond Cheesecakes will be always hot at one o’clock as usual; and the rich Seed and Plum-cakes sent to any part of the town, at 2s. 6d. each. Coffee, Tea, and Chocolate, at any time of the day; and fine Epping Butter may also be had.”[103]

1761.—An excellent half-sheet engraving, after a drawing made by J. Donowell, published this year, represents Marybone Gardens, probably in their fullest splendour. The centre of this view exhibits the longest walk, with regular rows of young trees on either side, the stems of which received the irons for the lamps at about the height of seven feet from the ground. On either side this walk were latticed alcoves: on the right hand of the walk, according to this view, stood the bow-fronted orchestra with balustrades, supported by columns. The roof was extended considerably over the erection, to keep the musicians and singers free from rain. On the left hand of the walk was a room, possibly for balls and suppers. The figures in this view are so well drawn and characteristic of the time, that I am tempted to recommend the particular attention of my reader to it.

The Gardens were opened gratis this year, and the organ was played while the company took their tea.

1762.—The Gardens were in fine order this year, and visited by the Cherokee Kings—admittance sixpence.[104] Mr. Trusler took care to keep out improper company; Miss Trusler continued to make the cakes.

1763.—The Gardens were taken by the famous Tommy Lowe,[105] who engaged Mrs. Vincent, Mrs. Lampe, Jun., Miss Mays, Miss Hyat, Miss Catley, and Mr. Squibb, as singers.

August 12th, Mr. Storace had a benefit;[106] the singers were, Brother Lowe, Miss Catley, Miss Smit, and Miss Plenius. Music. Mr. Samuel Arnold. A large room was cleared in the great house for the brethren to dress in.

Miss Catley’s night was on the 16th of August. Tickets were sold at Miss Catley’s, facing the Gardens.[107]

1764.—The Gardens opened on the 9th May; singers, Mr. Lowe, Mrs. Vincent, Mrs. Lampe, Jun., Miss Moyse, Miss Hyat, and Mr. Squibb. Mr. Trusler left the Gardens this year, and went to reside in Boyle Street, where his daughter continued to make her cakes, etc.

Mr. Lowe returned public thanks to the nobility and gentry for patronising the Gardens.

This year a stop was put to tea-drinking in the Gardens on Sunday evenings.

Mr. Lowe offered a reward of ten guineas for the apprehension of any highwayman found on the road to the Gardens.[108]

1765.—This year, Mrs. Collett, Miss Davis, and Mrs. Taylor were the singers.

1766.—£1, 11s. 6d. was the subscription for two persons for the season. The doors opened on the 1st of May, at six o’clock, and the Gardens closed on the 4th of October, for the season. The principal singers were, Tommy Lowe, Taylor, Raworth, Vincent, and Miss Davis. I have an engraving of a Subscription Ticket, inscribed “No. 222, Marybone, admit two, 1766.” As this ticket is adorned by two palm-branches, surmounted with two French-horns, and has also a music book, I conclude it must have been used on a concert night. This year an exhibition of bees took place in the Gardens, and the public were again accommodated with tea at eightpence per head.

1767.—Mrs. Gibbons was a singer there this season.

1768.—Lowe gave up the Gardens, declaring his loss in the concern to have been considerable.[109]

Mr. Phillips, a singer, in the announcement of his benefit this season, states that tickets were to be had at his house, the “Ring and Pearl,” St. Martin’s Court; and also at Young Slaughter’s Coffee-house, in St. Martin’s Lane. The following are the titles of a few of the Marybone Garden songs of this year:—

The composers of the above songs were Heron and James Hook (father of Theodore Hook); the singers, Reynoldson, Taylor, and Miss Froud. During the time I was collecting the titles of these and other songs, I noticed an immense number which were dedicated to Chloe. Of this I took the titles of no fewer than thirty-five published between the years 1724 and 1740. Why to Chloe? I have no Stephen Weston now to apply to.[110] Dibdin tells us, when praising the good ship Nancy, that Nancy was his wife, and that being the fact, accounts for the number of songs he has left us of his “Charming Nan.”[111]

[1769.—In this year, omitted by Smith, the Gardens were taken over by Dr. Samuel Arnold, the musician. The years 1769-73 were their best period.]

1770.—On June 18th, there was a concert of vocal and instrumental music. First violin, and a concerto, by Mr. Barthelemon; concerto organ, Mr. Hook. The fireworks were under the direction of Signor Rossi. The principal singers this season were, Mr. Reinhold, Mr. Bannister,[112] Mrs. Thompson, Mrs. Barthelemon, and Master Cheney. The music by Signor Pergolesi,[113] with alterations and additional songs by Mr. Arnold. In July, an awning was erected in the garden for the better accommodation of the visitors; and books of the performance were sold at the bar, price sixpence.

1771.—Mr. Bannister, Mrs. Thompson, Miss Catley, and the highly respected Mrs. John Bannister (then Miss Harper) were the singers of this year.

1772.—This season the singers were, Mr. Bannister, Mr. Reinhold, Mrs. Calvert, Mrs. Forbes, Mrs. Cartwright, and Mrs. Thompson. Music by Signor Giardani,[114] Mr. Hook, and Mr. Arnold.

For the convenience of the visitors, coaches were allowed to stand in the field before the back entrance. Mr. Arnold was indicted at Bow Street for the fireworks.[115] Torré, the fire-worker, divided the receipts at the door with the proprietor.

1773.—Proposals were issued for a subscription evening to be held every Thursday during the summer, for which tickets were delivered to admit two persons. The Gardens were opened for general admission three evenings in the week only. On Thursday, May 27th, Acis and Galatea was performed, in which Mr. Bannister, Mr. Reinhold, Mr. Phillips, and Miss Wilde were singers. Signor Torré, the fire-worker, was assisted by Monsieur Caillot of Ranelagh Gardens.

On Friday, September 15th, Dr. Arne conducted his celebrated catches and glees. On the 16th of September, Mr. Clitherow was the fire-worker, for the benefit of the waiters, who parted with their unsold tickets at the doors of the Gardens for whatever they could get. Mr. Winston was in possession of an impression of an admission ticket for this season.

1774.—The Gardens opened on May 20th. The principal singers were, Mr. Dubellamy, Miss Wewitzer (sister of the dramatic performer), and Miss Trelawny. The Gardens were opened this year on Sunday evenings for walking recreation, admittance sixpence. The receipts of one evening were at the Town-gate £10, 7s. 6d., at the Field-gate £11, 7s.[116] This year Signor Torré, one of the fire-workers of the Gardens, had a benefit; the admission was 3s. 6d.[117] Signor Caillot was then also a fire-worker in the Gardens; and I find by two shop-bills, in Miss Banks’s collection in the British Museum, that Benjamin Clitherow and Samuel Clanfield had also been employed as fire-workers.

Doctor Kenrick delivered his lectures on Shakspeare in these Gardens this year.[118]

1775.—After frequent inquiries, and a close examination of the newspapers of this year, I could not find any advertisement like those of preceding times with singing and fireworks. The Gardens are thus mentioned during the first part of the season, in the Morning Chronicle and London Advertiser of Monday, May 29th:—

At the foot of Mr. Baddeley’s subsequent bills the Gardens are announced to be still open on a Sunday evening for company to walk in. Some of the papers of this year declare, under Mr. Baddeley’s advertisements, that “no person going into the Gardens with subscription tickets will be entitled to tea or coffee.”

The next advertisement was on Tuesday, June 20th.

“Indeed, Sir!” is the general exclamation of a passenger in a stage coach, whenever any one observes that he had seen Garrick perform; at least, such an observation has fallen from many of my fellow-travellers, when I have asserted that I had had the pleasure of seeing that great actor. On the 25th of November, 1775, my father first took me to a play, and it was with one of Mr. Garrick’s orders, when he performed in The Alchemist.[122]

1776.—Marylebone Gardens opened this year on the 11th of May, by authority. The “Forge of Vulcan” was represented.[123] On the 16th of the same month the Fantoccini was introduced; on June 3rd Breslaw exhibited his sleight of hand, and also his company of singers, upon which occasion handbills were publicly distributed. Admittance 2s.[124] On the 25th Mrs. Stuart had a ball, and Signor Rebecca (well known for his productions at the Pantheon) painted some of the transparencies.[125]

Subscription tickets to the Gardens were issued at £1, 11s. 6d. to admit two persons every evening of performance. The Gardens were opened on Sunday evenings, with tea, coffee, and Ranelagh rolls. Caillot was the fire-worker this season.

This, as well as the preceding year, was particularly famous for the breed of Canary birds, consisting of Junks, Mealies, Turncrowns, and the Swallow-throats. They were all “fine in feather and full in song,” and could sing in the highest perfection many delightful strains, such as the nightingale’s, titlark’s, and woodlark’s, by candle-light as well as day. The breeders lived in Norwich, Colchester, Ipswich, etc. The sellers in London were principally publicans, and those most in vogue kept the signs of the “Queen’s Arms,” Newgate Street; the “Green Dragon,” Narrow Wall, Lambeth; the “Crown and Horse-shoe,” Holborn; the “Wheatsheaf,” Fleet Market; the “Marquis of Granby,” Fleet Market; the “Old George,” Little Drury Lane; and the “Black Swan,” Brown’s Lane, Spitalfields.[126]

It appears by the various advertisements from the numerous owners of cockpits, that the cruel sport of cock-fighting afforded high amusement this year to the unfeeling part of London’s inhabitants. Of the number of cockpits half a dozen will be quite enough to be recorded on this page.

1. The “Royal Cockpit,” in the Birdcage Walk, St. James’s Park. This Royal Cockpit afforded Hogarth characters for one of his worst of subjects, though best of plates.

2. In Bainbridge Street, St. Giles’s.

3. Near Gray’s Inn Lane.

4. In Pickled-Egg Walk.

5. At the New Vauxhall Gardens, in St. George’s in the East.

6. That at the “White Horse,” Old Gravel Lane, near Hughes’s late riding-school, at the foot of Blackfriars Bridge.[127]

Disputes having frequently occurred as to the characters in which Garrick last appeared, by persons not sufficiently in possession of documents at hand to enable them to decide their controversies, I am induced to conclude that such disputants will be pleased to see a statement of the nights of his acting, the titles of the plays in which he performed, and the names of the characters which he represented, as well as those of the principal actresses who performed with him during the last year of his appearance on the stage. The original play-bills of the time, collected by the late Dr. Burney, now in the British Museum, have enabled me to give this information in the following chronological order:—

Nights of Acting.		Title of Play.	Names of Characters.
Jan.	18.	The Alchemist.	Abel Drugger, Mr. Garrick. (Doll Common, by Mrs. Hopkins.)
	20.	The Discovery	Sir Anthony Branville. (Lady Flutter, by Mrs. Abington.)
	22.	Ditto.	Ditto.
	24.	Ditto.	Ditto.
	26.	Ditto.	Ditto.
	29.	Ditto.	Ditto.
	30.	The Provoked Wife	Sir John Brute. (Lady Brute, by Miss Younge.)
	31.	Ditto.	Ditto.
Feb.	3.	Zara	Lusignan. (Zara, by Miss Younge.)
	5.	The Provoked Wife	Sir John Brute. (Lady Brute, by Miss Younge.)
	7.	The Discovery	Sir Anthony Branville. (Lady Flutter, by Mrs. Abington.)
	9.	Every Man in his Humour.	Kitely. (Mrs. Kitely, Mrs. Greville.)
	12.	Much Ado about Nothing.	Benedict. (Beatrice, by Mrs. Abington.)
	14.	Rule a Wife and have a Wife.	Leon. (Estifania, by Mrs. Abington.)
March	6.	Zara	Lusignan. (Zara, by Miss Younge.)
	7.	Zara	Lusignan. (Zara, by Miss Younge.)
April	11.	The Alchemist.	Abel Drugger. (Doll Common, by Mrs. Hopkins.)
	16.	Much Ado about Nothing.	Benedict. (Beatrice, by Mrs. Abington.)
	25.	Every Man in his Humour.	Kitely. (Mrs. Kitely, by Mrs. Greville.)
	27.	Hamlet	Hamlet. (Ophelia, by Mrs. Smith.)
	30.	The Provoked Wife.	Sir John Brute. (Lady Brute, Miss Younge.)
May	2.	Rule a Wife and have a Wife.	Leon. (Estifania, Mrs. Abington)
	7.	The Stratagem.	Archer. (Mrs. Sullen, Mrs. Abington.)
	9.	Much Ado about Nothing.	Benedict. (Beatrice, by Mrs. Abington.)
	13.	King Lear	King Lear. (Cordelia, Miss Younge.)
	16.	The Wonder	Don Felix. (Violante, by Mrs. Yates.)
	21.	King Lear	King Lear. (Cordelia, by Miss Younge.)
	23.	The Suspicious Husband.	Ranger. (Mrs. Strickland, Mrs. Siddons; Clarinda, Mrs. Abington.)
	27.	King Richard the Third.	King Richard. (Lady Anne (first time), Mrs. Siddons.)
	30.	Hamlet	Hamlet. (Ophelia, by Mrs. Smith.)
	31.	The Suspicious Husband.	Ranger. (Mrs. Strickland, Mrs. Siddons; Clarinda, Mrs. Abington.)
June	1.	Ditto.	Ditto.
	3.	King Richard the Third.	King Richard. (Lady Anne, by Mrs. Siddons.)
	5.	King Richard the Third.	King Richard. (Lady Anne, by Mrs. Siddons.) By command of their Majesties.
	8.	King Lear	King Lear. (Cordelia, Mrs. Younge.)
	10.	The Wonder	Don Felix. (Violante, by Mrs. Yates.)[128]

Notwithstanding it has been said that Mr. Garrick spoke slightingly of Mrs. Siddons’s talents, the above list incontrovertibly proves that he considered her powers sufficiently great to appear in principal characters with him no fewer than six nights of the last nine in which he performed.

I shall now subjoin a similar list of Mrs. Siddons’s nights of performance at Drury Lane Theatre, during the last year of Mr. Garrick’s acting.[129]

Jan.	13, 15, 17.	Epicœne, or The Silent Woman (as a Collegiate Lady).
Feb.	1, 2, 3.	The Blackamoor Washed White.
Between Feb. 15 and April 18 (22 nights).		The Runaway (as Miss Morley).
May	23.	The Suspicious Husband (as Mrs. Strickland).
	24.	The Runaway (as Miss Morley).
	27.	King Richard the Third (as Lady Anne).
	31.	The Suspicious Husband (as Mrs. Strickland).
June	1.
	3.	King Richard the Third (as Lady Anne).
	5.	Ditto. Ditto. By command of their Majesties.

Of six plays of which there were no bills in the Burney collection, I was enabled to add instances of the performance of Mrs. Siddons on those nights from a portion of that truly rare and valuable library purchased by Government of the late Dr. Burney’s son for the British Museum.

Ladies this year wore goloshes, four distinct falls of lace from the hat to the shoulders, and rolled curls on either side of the neck: they continued to carry fans.[130]

I remember well that in an autumn evening of this year, during the time my father lived in Norton Street,[131] going with him and his pupils on a sketching party to what is now called Pancras Old Church; and that Whitefield’s Chapel in Tottenham Court Road, Montague House, Bedford House, and Baltimore House,[132] were then uninterruptedly seen from the churchyard, which was at that time so rural that it was only enclosed by a low and very old hand-railing, in some parts entirely covered with docks and nettles. I recollect also that the houses on the north side of Ormond Street commanded views of Islington, Highgate, and Hampstead, including in the middle distance Copenhagen-house, Mother Red-cap’s, the Adam and Eve, the Farthing Pie House, the Queen’s Head and Artichoke, and the Jew’s Harp House.[133]

Early in this year Spiridione Roma,[134] who had cleaned the pictures of the Judges then hanging in Guildhall, published a prospectus for Bartolozzi’s print from the portrait of Mary Queen of Scots in Drapers’ Hall, said to have been painted by Zucchero.[135]

At this period I began to think there was something in a prognostication announced to my dear mother by an old star-gazer and tea-grouter,[136] that, through life, I should be favoured by persons of high rank; for, in this year, Charles Townley, Esq. (the collector of the valuable marbles which now bear his name in the British Museum), first noticed me when drawing in Mr. Nollekens’ studio, and pouched me half a guinea to purchase paper and chalk.[137] This kindness was followed up by Dr. Samuel Johnson, who was then sitting for his bust. The Doctor, after looking at my drawing, then at the bust I was copying, put his hand heavily upon my head, pronouncing “Very well, very well.” Here I frequently saw him, and recollect his figure and dress with tolerable correctness. He was tall, and must have been, when young, a powerful man: he stooped, with his head inclined to the right shoulder: heavy brows, sleepy eyes, nose very narrow between the eye-brows, but broad at the bottom; lips enormously thick; chin, wide and double. He wore a stock and wristbands; his wig was what is called a “Busby,” but often wanted powder. His hat, a three-cornered one; coats, one a dark mulberry, the other brown, inclining to the colour of Scotch snuff, large brass or gilt buttons; black waistcoat and small-clothes—sometimes the latter were corduroy; black stockings, large easy shoes, with buckles; his gait was wide and awkwardly sprawling; latterly he used a hooked walking-stick, in consequence of his having saved the life of a young man as he was crossing from Queenhithe to Bankside.

One of the Doctor’s sticks of this shape brought me into a scrape. It was given to me by the late William Tunnard, Esq., of Bankside;[138] he received it from his friend Mr. Perkins;[139] it was one of many that the Doctor kept at Thrale’s. This stick I promised to my worthy and liberal friend the Rev. James Beresford, of Kibworth, Market Harborough;[140] but, alas! when I went to “stick-corner” somebody had walked it off. However, if this page should meet the eye of its present possessor, I hope, even should the “Bannister” I now rest upon be deemed useless by Time’s sandy-glass, his conscience may order the Johnsonian relic to be delivered to the above-named gentleman, whose property I declare it unquestionably to be. My present strong stick, named “Bannister,” was given to me when afflicted with the gout, by a fellow-sufferer, universally known under the friendly appellation of “Honest Jack.”

I once saw him follow a sturdy thief, who had stolen his handkerchief in Grosvenor Square, seize him by the collar with both hands, and shake him violently, after which he quickly let him loose; and then, with his open hand, gave him so powerful a smack on the face, that sent him off the pavement staggering.

Ladies appeared for the first time in riding-habits of men’s cloth, only descending to the feet; they also walked with whips like short canes, with a thong at the end. The elderly ladies continued to wear goloshes. Fans were in general use.

For the honour of female genius, be it here recorded, that, in the Ladies’ Pocket-book, published this year, an engraved group of nine whole-length female figures was published, viz. Miss Carter, Mrs. Barbauld, Angelica Kauffman, Mrs. Sheridan, Mrs. Lenox, Mrs. Montague, Miss More, Mrs. Macaulay, and Mrs. Griffith, each lady in the character of a Muse. Four Pocket-books appeared this year, entitled Ladies’ Pocket-book, Ladies’ own Memorandum Book, Ladies’ Annual Journal, and Ladies’ Complete Pocket-book.[141]

On Monday, February 1st, Taylor, the facetious pupil of Frank Hayman, and the old friend of Jonathan Tyers, lifted Nollekens’ studio door-latch, put in his head, and announced, “For the information of some of the sons of Phidias, I beg to observe, that David Garrick is now on his way to pay his respects to Poet’s Corner. I left him just as he was quitting the boards of the Adelphi.”[142] I am now employing the exact words he made use of, though certainly the levity was misapplied on so solemn an occasion.

I begged of my father, who then carved for Mr. Nollekens, to allow me to go to Charing Cross to see the funeral pass, which he did with some reluctance. I was there in a few minutes, followed him to the Abbey, heard the service, and saw him buried.[143]

Mr. Garrick died on the 20th of January, in the back room of the first floor, in his house in the Adelphi. The ceiling of the drawing-room was painted by Zucchi: the subject, Venus attired by the Graces. The chimneypiece in this room is said to have cost £800.[144]

On a night when Mr. Garrick was acting the part of Lear, one of the soldiers who stood on the stage blubbered like a child. Mr. Garrick, who was as fond of a compliment as most men, when the play was over, sent for the man to his room, and gave him half a crown. It was the custom formerly for two soldiers to stand on the stage during the time of performance, one at either end of the proscenium.

This year the Grotto Garden, Rosamond Row, near the London Spa, was kept by Jackson, a man famous for grottoes and fireworks. He had made great additions to it, viz. a new Mounted Fountain, etc. The admittance was sixpence.[145]

Although I could model and carve a little, I longed to be an engraver, and wished much to be placed under Bartolozzi, who then lived in Bentinck Street, Berwick Street.[146] My father took me to him, with a letter of introduction from Mr. Wilton, the sculptor. Mr. Bartolozzi, after looking at my imitations of several of Rembrandt and Ostade’s etchings, declared that he should have been glad some years previous to take such a youth, but that, in consequence of ill-treatment from some of his pupils, he had made up his mind to take no more. The Bishop of Peterborough (Dr. Hinchliffe),[147] one of my father’s patrons, then prevailed on Sherwin to let me in at half-price; and under his roof I remained for nearly three years. Here I saw all the beautiful women of the day; and, being considered a lively lad, I was noticed by several of them. Here I received a kiss from the beautiful Mrs. Robinson.

This impression was made upon me nearly as I can recollect in the following way:—It fell to my turn that morning, as a pupil, to attend the visitors, and Mrs. Robinson came into the room singing. She asked to see a drawing which Mr. Sherwin had made of her, which he had placed in an upper room. When I assured her that Mr. Sherwin was not at home, “Do try to find the drawing of me, and I will reward you, my little fellow,” said she. I, who had seen Rosetta, in Love in a Village, the preceding evening, hummed to myself, as I went upstairs, “With a kiss, a kiss, and I’ll reward you with a kiss.”

I had no sooner entered the room with the drawing in my hand, than she imprinted a kiss on my cheek, and said, “There, you little rogue.” I remember that Mrs. Darby, her mother, accompanied her, and had brought a miniature, painted by Cosway, set in diamonds, presented by a high personage, of whom Mrs. Robinson spoke with the highest respect to the hour of her dissolution.[148] The colour of her carriage was a light blue, and upon the centre of each panel a basket of flowers was so artfully painted, that as she drove along it was mistaken for a coronet.[149]

Early in the month of December, this year, Sherwin painted, engraved, and published a glorious portrait of Mrs. Siddons, in the character of the Grecian Daughter. That lady sat in the front room of his house, St. James’s Street. I obeyed Mr. Sherwin’s orders in raising and lowering the centre window-curtains, the shutters of the extreme ones being closed for the adjustment of that fine light and shade upon her face which he has so beautifully displayed in the print. This print, in consequence of a purse having been presented to Mrs. Siddons by her admirers in the profession of the Law, was dedicated to “The Gentlemen of the Bar.”[150]

By the liberality of my amiable friend, William Henderson, Esq.,[151] I am in possession of a cast taken by Lochee, the modeller, from the face of this wonderful actress, which I intend leaving to that invaluable gallery of theatrical portraits, so extensively formed by that favourite offspring of Nature, Charles Mathews,[152] Esq., at Kentish Town; but should that collection ever be dispersed, which I most heartily trust it never will be, then I desire that it may go to the Green-room of Drury Lane Theatre. To this bequest I subscribe my name,

Witnesses to this my declaration,

One of the numerous subjects which I drew this year for Mr. Crowle,[154] was the old brick gateway entrance to St. Giles’s churchyard, then standing opposite to Mr. Remnent’s timber-yard, in which drawing I introduced the figure of old Simon, a very remarkable beggar, who, together with his dog, generally took their station against one of the gate-piers. This man, who wore several hats, at the same time suffered his beard to grow, which was of a dirty yellow-white. Upon his fingers were numerous brass rings. He had several waistcoats, and as many coats, increasing in size, so that he was enabled by the extent of the uppermost garment to cover the greater part of the bundles, containing rags of various colours; and distinct parcels with which he was girded about, consisting of books, canisters containing bread, cheese, and other articles of food; matches, a tinder-box, and meat for his dog; cuttings of curious events from old newspapers; scraps from Fox’s Book of Martyrs, and three or four dog’s-eared and greasy thumbed numbers of the Gentleman’s Magazine.

From these and such like productions he gained a great part of the information with which he sometimes entertained those persons who stopped to look at him.

When I knew him,—for he was one of my pensioners,—he and his dog lodged under a staircase in an old shattered building called “Rats’ Castle,” in Dyot Street, mentioned in Nollekens and his Times as that artist’s rendezvous to discover models for his Venuses. Dyot Street has disappeared, and George Street is built on its site.[155] His walks extended to the entrances only of the adjacent streets, whither he either went to make a purchase at the baker’s or the cook’s shops. Rowlandson drew and etched him several times; in one instance Simon had a female placed before him, which the artist called “Simon and Iphigenia.” There is a large whole-length print of him, published by John Seago, with the following inscription:—

Simon Edy, born at Woodford, near Thrapston, Northamptonshire, in 1709: died May 18, 1783.[156]

Respecting his last dog, for he had possessed several, which wicked boys had beguiled from him, or the skinners of those animals had snatched up, the following anecdote is interesting:—A Smithfield drover, whose dog’s left eye had been much injured by a bullock, solicited Simon to take him under his care till he got well. The mendicant cheerfully consented, and forthwith, with a piece of string, confined him to his arm; and when, by being more quiet, he had regained his health sufficiently to resume his services to his master, old Simon, with the most affectionate reluctance, gave him up, and was obliged to content himself with the pleasure of patting his sides on a market-day, when he followed his master’s drove to the slaughter-house in Union Street. These tender and stolen caresses from the hand which had bathed his wound, Rover would regularly stop to receive at St. Giles’s porch, and then hastily run to get up with the bullocks. Poor Simon, after missing the dog as well as his master for some weeks, was one morning most agreeably surprised to see the faithful animal crouch behind his feet, and with an uplifted and sorrowful eye, for he had entirely lost the blemished one, implore his protection by licking his beard, as a successor to his departed and lamented keeper. Rover followed Simon, according to Dr. Gardner’s idea, to “his last and best bedroom”;[157] or, according to Funeral Weever,[158] his “bed of ease.” Shortly before Simon’s death, I related to Mrs. Nollekens several instances of Rover’s attachment. “I think, Sir,” observed that lady, “you once told me that he had been a shepherd’s dog from Harrow-on-the-Hill. I don’t like a shepherd’s dog: it has no tail,[159] and its coat is as rough as the bristles of a cocoanut. No, Sir, my little French dog is my pet.” However, fortunately for poor Simon, the Hon. Daines Barrington[160] was present when Dr. Johnson’s Pekuah[161] made this silly remark, for he never after passed the kind-hearted mendicant without giving him sixpence. There was an elegy printed for poor Simon, with a woodcut portrait of him.

Ugly and deficient in sight and tail as Rover certainly was, it is also as equally unquestionable that Simon never had occasion to carry him to Fox Court, St. James’s Street, for the recovery of his health, under the direction of Dr. Norman,[162] the canine physician, so strenuously recommended upon all occasions by George Keate, the poet,[163] and far-famed connoisseur. No, poor Rover was kept in health by being allowed to range the streets from six till nine, the hours in which the nightly stealers of the canine race, and the dexterous of all dentists, were on their way to Austin’s, at Islington,[164] to dispose of their cruel depredations upon many a true friend to the indigent blind, “to whom the blackbird sings as sweetly as to the fairest lady in the land.”

Mr. West, to whom I had sat for the head of St. John in his picture of the Last Supper, for the altar of St. George’s Chapel, Windsor,[165] frequently engaged me to bid for him at auctions, an honour also occasionally conferred on me for similar services by Sir Joshua Reynolds. It was during one of these commissions in this year, that the late Richard Wyatt, Esq., of Milton Place, Egham, Surrey, noticed me; he was then starting as a collector of pictures, prints, and drawings.[166] That gentleman kindly invited me to his house, and not only introduced me to his amiable family, but to his most intimate neighbours. He allowed me the use of a horse, to enable me more readily to visit the beauties of Windsor Park and Forest, the scenery of which so attracted and delighted me, that during one month’s stay I made nearly one hundred studies. The two Sandbys were visitors to my patron; and to Thomas, then Deputy Ranger of Windsor Great Park, a situation given to him by his Royal Highness William, Duke of Cumberland (Thomas Sandby had been engineer draughtsman to his Royal Highness at the battle of Culloden), I am indebted for my knowledge of lineal perspective. The Misses Wyatt were delightful persons, and much noticed at the Egham Balls, for one or two of which occasions I had the pleasure of painting butterflies on a muslin dress, and also imitating the “Sir Walter Raleigh,” the “Pride of Culloden,” and other curious and rare carnations, on tiffany, for their bouquets, which were then scented and much worn.

I was here introduced to Viscount Maynard, to whom Mr. Wyatt had been guardian. His Lordship married the celebrated Nancy Parsons,[167] and was a most spirited draughtsman of a horse. Among other gentlemen, I was also introduced to the late Sir Richard Colt Hoare, Bart.,[168] and the late Rev. George Huddesford,[169] of Oxford, Kett’s satirist, and the witty author of poems entitled Salmagundi, dedicated to Mr. Wyatt. Several of these I have often heard him most humorously sing, particularly those of “the renowned History and rare Achievements of John Wilkes.” The chorus ran thus:—

“The Barber’s Nuptials,” which may be seen in the Elegant Extracts, and almost every other collection of fugitive poetry, was also written by him.[170]

Mr. Huddesford had studied under Sir Joshua Reynolds, and had copied many of the President’s pictures with tolerable ability, with an intention of pursuing the arts, but his master-talent was more conspicuously displayed in compositions of fruit, in which his representations of ripe and melting peaches, and the rich transparent grape, were inimitable. The late Sir George Beaumont, Bart., with whom Mr. Huddesford had been extremely intimate, was in possession of a remarkably fine specimen by him, which the worthy baronet frequently allowed to be copied.

Huddesford, after the death of Warton, chalked on the walls of the College—

He published The Elements of General Knowledge, which were called, at Oxford “The Elements of General Ignorance”; and his last work, Emily, procured him the name of Emily Kett. His supposed resemblance to a horse was the occasion of much academical waggery:—his letter-box was often filled with oats; and when he wished to have his portrait taken, he was sent to the famous Stubbs,[172] the horse painter, who, on receiving him, and expecting to hear whether his commission was to be for a filly or a colt, was much surprised to find Kett pompously announce that he expected the likeness to be in full canonicals.

Samuel Woodforde (afterwards a Royal Academician)[173] was employed by Mr. Wyatt, in consequence of an introduction by Sir Richard Colt Hoare, Bart., to paint trees and landscapes on the panels of his drawing-room, mostly from scenes in Windsor Park and Forest. Mr. Wyatt was one of Opie’s early friends. He painted for that gentleman several of the Burrell and Hoare family; indeed, he was instrumental in bringing that artist out of his humble and modest lodging in Orange Court, Leicester Fields,[174] to his house in Queen Street, next door to that for many years occupied by that comic and most exemplary child of Nature, the late Miss Pope,[175] whose inimitable acting as Miss Allscrip, in The Heiress, not only delighted the public, but was deservedly complimented by its author, General Burgoyne, who at one time lived in Hertford Street, May Fair, in the house that had been inhabited by Lord Sandwich, and subsequently by R. B. Sheridan and Mr. Dent.[176]

This year, Mr. Flaxman, who then lived in Wardour Street, introduced me to one of his early patrons, the Rev. Henry Mathew, of Percy Chapel, Charlotte Street, which was built for him;[177] he was also afternoon preacher at St. Martin’s-in-the-Fields. At that gentleman’s house, in Rathbone Place, I became acquainted with Mrs. Mathew and her son, the late John Hunter’s favourite pupil. With that gentleman, in his youthful days, I had many an innocent frolic. I was obliged to him in several instances, and can safely say no one could excel him as an amiable friend, a dutiful son, or excellent husband. At Mrs. Mathew’s most agreeable conversaziones I first met the late William Blake,[178] the artist, to whom she and Mr. Flaxman had been truly kind. There I have often heard him read and sing several of his poems. He was listened to by the company with profound silence, and allowed by most of the visitors to possess original and extraordinary merit. A time will come when the numerous, though now very rare, works of Blake (in consequence of his taking very few impressions from the plates before they were rubbed out to enable him to use them for other subjects) will be sought after with the most intense avidity.[179] He was considered by Stothard and Flaxman (and will be by those of congenial minds, if we can reasonably expect such again) with the highest admiration. These artists allowed him their most unqualified praise, and were ever anxious to recommend him and his productions to the patrons of the Arts; but alas! they were not so sufficiently appreciated as to enable Blake, as every one could wish, to provide an independence for his surviving partner Kate, who adored his memory. The late Sir Thomas Lawrence has been heard to declare that England would be for ever immortalized by the productions of Sir Joshua Reynolds, Flaxman, and Stothard.

Mrs. Mathew was not only a great encourager of musical composers, particularly the Italians, but truly kind to young artists. She patronized Oram, Loutherbourg’s assistant: he was the son of Old Oram, of the Board of Works, an artist whose topographical pictures possess considerable merit, and whose name is usually introduced in picture catalogues under the appellation of “Old Oram.”[180]

Mr. Flaxman, in return for the favours he had received from the Mathew family, decorated the back parlour of their house, which was their library, with models (I think they were in putty and sand) of figures in niches, in the Gothic manner; and Oram painted the window in imitation of stained glass; the bookcases, tables, and chairs were also ornamented to accord with the appearance of those of antiquity.

Rathbone Place, at this time, entirely consisted of private houses, and its inhabitants were all of high respectability. I have heard Mrs. Mathew say that the three rebel lords, Lovat, Kilmarnock, and Balmerino, had at different times resided in it; and that she had also been informed that the floor of her parlours, which is now some steps above the street, was even with the floor of the recess under the front pediment of St. Paul’s Cathedral.

Many a summer’s evening, when I have been enjoying Runnymede, and its far surrounding variegated meadows, from the wooden seat of Cooper’s Hill (upon which were engraven numerous initials of lovers, and the dates of their eternal vows), little did I think that in my future days it would be in my power to state that I had made drawings of most of the parish churches as well as family mansions which were then in view, for the topographical collections of the Duke of Roxborough, Lord Leicester, the Hon. Horace Walpole, Mr. Bull, Mr. Storer, Dr. Lort, Mr. Haughton James, Mr. Crowle, and Sir James Winter Lake, Bart.[181] Several of these, which have since been distributed, I now and then meet with in the portfolios of more modern illustrators, and they bring to my recollection some truly pleasing periods. It was in the old house at Ankerwycke that I was introduced by Lady Lake to Lady Shouldham. It was at Old Windsor that I dined with Mrs. Vassal, and at Staines Bridge with the beautiful Miss Towry, since Lady Ellenborough. It was at Chertsey I was first introduced to Mr. Douglas, Colonel St. Paul, and those truly kind-hearted characters, Mr. Fox and Mrs. Chamberlain Clark. At Staines I was benefited by the skill of Dr. Pope;—at Harrow made known to Dr. Drury;—at Southgate to Alderman Curtis;—at Trent Park to Mr. Wigston;—at Forty Hill, Enfield, to the antiquary Gough;—at Bull’s Cross to the facetious Captain Horsley, brother to the Bishop of Rochester, and the Boddams;—at the “Firs,” Edmonton, to my ever-to-be-revered friend the late Sir James Winter Lake, Bart.;—at Weir Hall to the benevolent and highly esteemed Mr. Robert Jones, Mr. Webster and his friendly son;—at Bruce Castle to Mr. Townsend;—at Tottenham to Mr. John Snell, and to Mr. Samuel Salt. This gentleman informed me that he was one of the four who buried Sterne.[182] Of the friendly inhabitants of these houses, and many others to whom I had the pleasure of being known, within the extensive view from Cooper’s Hill, very few are now living.

During the Races on Runnymede, I have often seen their late Majesties George the Third and Queen Charlotte driving about in an open four-wheeled chaise, enjoying the pleasures of the course on equal terms with the visitors. I remember to have been spoken to three times by his Majesty; once on a very foggy morning at a stile near Clewer, when I stepped back to give a gentleman, who had nearly approached it in the adjoining field, the preference of coming over first; but upon his saying, “Come over, come over,” I knew the voice to be the King’s, consequently I took off my hat, and obeyed. His Majesty observed in his quick manner, when getting over, “A thick fog, thick fog.” Another time, when I was drawing an old oak in Windsor Park, the King and Queen drove very near me in their chaise, and one of his Majesty’s horses shied at my paper; upon which the King called out to me, “Shut your book, sir, shut your book!”

The last time I was noticed by the King, I must say his Majesty appeared to be a little startled, as well he might. It was under the following circumstances. Wishing to make a drawing of one of the original stalls in St. George’s Chapel, Windsor, before they were finally taken down, a shilling prevailed upon one of the workmen to lock me in during his dinner-hour. However, it so happened that his Majesty, who frequently let himself into the Chapel at that time to look at the progress of the works, did not perceive me, as I stood in a corner, but on his return from the altar, he asked, “Who are you, sir? Oh! you startled my horse in the park the other day. What are you about?” I then held up my drawing; and his Majesty, who must have noticed my embarrassment, did me the honour to say, “Very correct; I believe you are at Mr. Wyatt’s,—a very good man;—I have a high regard for him and all his family.”

During the time I was studying the scenery of Windsor Park, Mr. Thomas Sandby, who was busily engaged in placing the numerous stones to form the representation of rocks and caverns at the head of the Virginia Water, in Windsor Park, frequently dug for stones in Bagshot Heath. Fortunately he discovered one of an immense size, which he thought would afford him a massive breadth in his composition, but it was so large he was under the necessity of breaking it with gunpowder; however, fortune favoured his design by blowing it into two nearly equal parts, so that he was enabled to join them on their destined spot to great advantage as to general effect. This was Mr. Thomas Sandby’s second attempt at the water-head;[183] he had in the first instance failed by using only sand and clay, for which failure that worthy man was not only nicknamed “Tommy Sandbank,” but roughly scourged by the throng of Huddesford, who composed a song upon the occasion, from which I have selected the following verses:—

For many years the back parlour of the “Feathers”[184] public-house (a sign complimentary to its neighbour, Frederick, Prince of Wales, who inhabited Leicester House), which stood on the side of Leicester Fields, had been frequented by artists, and several well-known amateurs. Among the former were Stuart,[185] the Athenian traveller; Scott,[186] the marine painter; old Oram, of the Board of Works;[187] Luke Sullivan,[188] the miniature painter, who engraved that inimitable print from Hogarth’s picture of the “March to Finchley,” now in the Foundling Hospital; Captain Grose,[189] the author of Antiquities of England, History of Armour,[190] etc.; Mr. Hearne,[191] the elegant and correct draughtsman of many of England’s Antiquities (so beautifully engraved by his amiable friend Byrne), Nathaniel Smith, my father, etc. The amateurs were Henderson, the actor; Mr. Morris, a silversmith; Mr. John Ireland, then a watchmaker in Maiden Lane, and since editor of Boydell’s edition of Dr. Trusler’s work, Hogarth Moralized; and Mr. Baker, of St. Paul’s Churchyard, whose collection of Bartolozzi’s works was unequalled.[192] When this house, the sign of the “Feathers,” was taken down to make way for Dibdin’s Theatre, called the “Sans Souci,” several of its frequenters adjourned to the “Coach and Horses” public-house in Castle Street, Leicester Fields; but in consequence of their not proving customers sufficiently expensive for that establishment, the landlord one evening venturing to light them out with a farthing candle, they betook themselves to Gerard Street, and thence to the “Blue Posts” in Dean Street, where the club dwindled into two or three members, viz. Edridge, the portrait draughtsman; Alexander, of the British Museum; and Edmunds, the upholsterer, who had been undertaker to the greater part of the club.[193]

Mr. Baker, the gentleman before mentioned, being a single man, and sometimes keeping rather late hours, was now and then accompanied by a friend half way home, by way of a walk. It was on one of these nights, that, just as he and I were approaching Temple Bar, about one o’clock, a most unaccountable appearance claimed our attention,—it was no less an object than an elephant, whose keepers were coaxing it to pass through the gateway. He had been accompanied by several persons from the Tower Wharf with tall poles, but was principally guided by two men with ropes, each walking on either side of the street, to keep him as much as possible in the middle on his way to the menagerie, Exeter Change; to which destination, after passing St. Clement’s Church, he steadily trudged on with strict obedience to the commands of his keepers. I had the honour afterwards of partaking of a pot of Barclay’s Entire with this same elephant, which high mark of his condescension was bestowed when I accompanied my friend the late Sir James Winter Lake, Bart., to view the rare animals in Exeter Change—that gentleman being assured by the elephant’s keeper that if he would offer the beast a shilling, he would see the noble animal nod his head and drink a pot of porter. The elephant no sooner had taken the shilling, which he did in the mildest manner from the palm of Sir James’s hand, than he gave it to the keeper, and eagerly watched his return with the beer. The elephant then, after placing his proboscis to the top of the tankard, drew up nearly the whole of the then good beverage. The keeper observed, “You will hardly believe, gentlemen, but the little he has left is quite warm;” upon this we were tempted to taste it, and it really was so. This animal was afterwards disposed of for the sum of one thousand guineas.[194]

Possibly the present frequenters of print sales may receive some little entertainment from a description of a few of the most singular of those who constantly attended the auctions during my boyish days. The elder Langford, of Covent Garden, introduced by Foote as Mr. Puff, in his farce of The Minor,[195] I well remember; yet by reason of my being obliged to attend more regularly the subsequent evening sales at Paterson’s and Hutchins’s—next-door-neighbour auctioneers, on the north side of King Street, Covent Garden,[196] I am better enabled to speak to the peculiarities of their visitors than those of Mr. Langford.

It was in 1783, during the sales of the extensive collection of Mr. Moser, the first keeper of the Royal Academy,[197] and Mr. Millan, bookseller at Charing Cross,[198] that I noticed the following remarkable characters. I shall, however, first endeavour to describe the person of Paterson, a man much respected by all who really knew him; but perhaps by none with more sincerity than Doctor Johnson, who had honoured him by standing godfather to his son Samuel, and whom he continued to notice as he grew up with the most affectionate regard, as appears in the letters which the doctor wrote in his favour to his friends Sir Joshua Reynolds and Mr. Humphrey, printed by Boswell.[199] Mr. Paterson was in height about five feet eight inches, and stooped a little in the shoulders. When I first knew him, he was a spare man, and wore a powdered clubwig, similar to that worn by Tom Davies, the bookseller and biographer of Garrick, of whom there is an engraved portrait. Paterson was really a walking library, and of manners precisely coinciding with the old school. I remember that by a slight impediment in his speech, he always pronounced the letter R as a V; for instance, Dart’s History of Canterbevy, and a dromedary, he pronounced a dwammedavy; notwithstanding this defect, he publicly lectured on the beauties of Shakspeare.

Mr. Gough,[200] the Editor of Camden’s Britannia, was the constant frequenter of his book-sales. This antiquary was about the same height as the auctioneer, but in a wig very different, as he wore, when I knew him, a short shining curled one. His coat was of “formal cut,” but he had no round belly; and his waistcoat and smallclothes were from the same piece. He was mostly in boots, and carried a swish-whip when he walked. His temper I know was not good, and he seldom forgave those persons who dared to bid stoutly against him for a lot at an auction: his eyes, which were small and of the winky-pinky sort, fully announced the fretful being. As for his judgment in works of art, if he had any it availed him little, being as much satisfied with the dry and monotonous manner of Old Basire,[201] as our late President West was with the beautiful style of Woollett and Hall.

Dr. Lort,[202] the constant correspondent of Old Cole,[203] was a man of his own stamp, broad and bony, in height nearly six feet, of manners equally morose, and in every respect just as forbidding. His wig was a large Busby, and usually of a brown appearance, for want of a dust of powder. He was chaplain to the Duke of Devonshire; and as he wore thick worsted stockings, and walked anyhow through the mud, considered himself in no way obliged to give the street-sweepers a farthing. He had some wit, however, but it was often displayed in a cowardly manner, being mostly directed towards his little opponent, Doctor Gossett,[204] who was unfortunately much afflicted by deformity, and of a temper easily roused by too frequent a repetition of threepenny biddings at Paterson’s. Paterson sold his books singly, and took threepence at a bidding.

Hutchins was about five feet nine inches, but in appearance much shorter by reason of his corpulency. His high forehead, when compared with a perpendicular, was at an angle of forty-five. He was what Spurzheim would call a simple honest man: his wife was of the same build, but most powerfully possessed the organ of inquisitiveness, which induced her to be a constant occupant of a pretty large and easy chair, by the side of the fire in the auction-room, in order that she might see how business was going on. Mr. and Mrs. Hutchins appeared so affectionately mutual in all their public conclusions, that Caleb Whitefoord, the witty wine-merchant, one of the print-sale visitors, attempted to flourish off the following observation as one of his invention: “You see,” said he to Captain Baillie, “Cocker is not always correct; one and one do not in this instance make two.”[205]

Caleb Whitefoord[206] was what is usually called a slight-built man, and much addicted when in conversation to shrug up his shoulders. He had a thin face, with little eyes; his deportment was gentlemanly, though perhaps sometimes too high for his situation in life. His dress, upon which he bestowed great attention, was in some instances singular, particularly in his hat and wig, which were remarkable as being solitary specimens of the Garrick School. He considered himself a first-rate judge of pictures, always preferring those by the old masters, but which he endeavoured to improve by touching up; and when in this conceited employment, I have frequently seen him fall back in his chair, and turn his head from one shoulder to the other, with as much admiration of what he had done, as Hogarth’s sign-painter of the Barley-mow in his inimitable print of Beer Street.

Captain William Baillie[207] was also an amateur in art; he suffered from an asthma, which often stood his friend by allowing a lengthened fit of coughing to stop a sentence whenever he found himself in want of words to complete it. When not engaged in his duties as a commissioner of the Stamp Office, he for years amused himself in what he called etching; but in what Rembrandt, as well as every true artist, would call scratching. He could not draw, nor had he an eye for effect. To prove this assertion, I will “end him at a blow,” by bringing to my informed reader’s recollection the captain’s execrable plate, which he considered to be an improvement upon Rembrandt’s “Three Trees.” Mr. West classed him amongst the conceited men.—“Sir,” said the venerable President, “when I requested him to show me a fine impression of Rembrandt’s Hundred Guilder print, he placed one of his own restored impressions before me, with as much confidence as my little friend Edwards[208] attempts to teach Perspective in the Royal Academy.” Captain Baillie commonly wore a camlet coat, and walked so slowly and with such measured steps, that he appeared like a man heavily laden with jack-boots and Munchausen spurs; and whenever he entered an auction-room, he generally permitted his cough to announce his arrival.

Mr. Baker,[209] an opulent dealer in lace, was nightly to be found bidding for the choicest impressions, which he seldom allowed any antagonist, however powerful, to carry away. He was well-proportioned, and though sometimes singular in his manner, and too negligent in his dress, was a most honourable man.

Mr. Woodhouse, of Tokenhouse Yard, was also a bidder for fine things; he did not possess so much of the milk of human kindness as Mr. Baker; indeed, his manners were at times a little repulsive, although he had been many years principal cashier in Sir George Prescott’s banking-house. He was an extensive collector of Cipriani’s drawings.[210]

Mr. Musgrave,[211] of Norfolk Street, frequently attended auctions of prints, but particularly those of pictures; he was an accomplished gentleman in his address, and most feelingly benevolent in his actions. His figure was short, his features pleasing, and he seldom went abroad without a rose in his button-hole. When I state that no man could have had fewer enemies, I think even the descendants of “Vinegar Tom”[212] will never haunt my bedside.

There was another truly polite and kind-hearted attendant at Hutchins’s sales, Mr. Pitt, of Westminster. The manners of this gentleman were precise, and he wore a large five-story white wig.

The next collector at this period was Mr. Wodhull,[213] the translator of Euripides. He was very thin, with a long nose and thick lips; of manners perfectly gentlemanly. The great singularity of his appearance arose, perhaps, from his closing his coat from the first button, immediately under his chin, to the last, nearly extending to the bottom of his deep-flap waistcoat-pockets. He seldom spoke, nor would he exceed one sixpence beyond the sum which he had put down in his catalogue, to give for the articles he intended to bid for; and though he frequently went away without purchasing a single lot, or even speaking to any one during the whole evening, he always took off his hat, and bowed low to the company before he left the auction-room.

Mr. Rawle, an accoutrement-maker, then living in the Strand, was a visitor: he was the friend of Captain Grose, and the executor of Thomas Worlidge,[214] the etcher. In his early days he had collected many curious and valuable articles. His cabinets contained numerous interesting portraits in miniature of Elizabethan characters. He was a professed Commonwealth man, and possessed many of the Protector’s, or, according to some writers, the usurper’s letters. He also prided himself upon having the leathern doublet, sword, and hat in which Oliver dissolved the Parliament, and showed a helmet that he could incontrovertibly prove had belonged to him. He likewise frequently expatiated for a considerable time upon a magnificent wig, which he said had been worn by that Merry Monarch, King Charles the Second.[215] This singular character never would allow more than a halfpenny-worth of vegetables to be put upon his table, though they were ever so cheap; and when they were above his price, he went without.[216]

Another singular character of the name of Beauvais, who at one time had flourished at Tunbridge Wells as a miniature-painter,[217] attended the evening auctions. This man, who was short and rather lumpy in stature, indeed nearly as wide as he was high, was a native of France, and through sheer idleness became so filthily dirty in his person and dress, that few of the company would sit by him. Yet I have seen him in a black suit with his sword and bag, in the evening of the day on which he had been at Court, where for years he was a constant attendant. This “Sack of Sand,” as Suett the actor generally called him, sat at the lower end of the table; and as he very seldom made purchases, few persons ventured to converse with him. He frequently much annoyed Hutchins by the loudest of all snoring; and now and then Doctor Wolcot would ask him a question, in order to indulge in a laugh at his mode of uttering an answer, which Peter Pindar declared to be more like the gobbling of a turkey-cock than anything human. He lived in a two-pair-of-stairs back room in St. James’s Market; and, after his death, Hutchins sold his furniture. I recollect his spinet, music-stool, and a few dog’s-eared sheets of lessons sold for three-and-sixpence.

Mr. Matthew Mitchell,[218] the banker, frequently joined these parties, and seldom went away without a purchase of prints under his arm. He was extremely well-proportioned, and walked in what I have often heard the ladies of the old school style a portly manner. He was remarkable for a width of chin, which was full as large as Titus Oates’s, and a set of large white teeth. His features altogether, however, bespoke a good-natured and liberal man. This gentleman was very kind to me when I was a boy, and I never hear his name mentioned but with unspeakable pleasure.

Mr. Mitchell had a most serious antipathy to a kitten. He could sit in a room without experiencing the least emotion from a cat; but directly he perceived a kitten, his flesh shook on his bones, like a snail in vinegar. I once relieved him from one of these paroxysms, by taking a kitten out of the room; on my return he thanked me, and declared his feelings to be insupportable upon such an occasion. Long subsequently I asked him whether he could in any way account for this agitation. He said he could not, adding that he experienced no such sensations upon seeing a full-grown cat; but that a kitten, after he had looked at it for a minute or two, in his imagination grew to the size of an overpowering elephant.

At this period Hogarth’s prints were in such high request, that whenever anything remarkable appeared, it was stoutly contested: for Mr. Packer, of Combe’s Brewhouse, was one of the most enterprising of the Hogarth collectors. This gentleman, though his manners sometimes appeared blunt, was highly respected by all who really knew him: it was at this time he became my friend.[219]

He was tall, of good proportion, and well-favoured. He had his peculiarities in dress, particularly as to his hat, which was an undoubted original. Mr. Packer’s opponents in Hogarth prints were two persons, one of the name of Vincent, a tall, half-starved-looking man, who walked with a high gilt chased-headed cane (he had been a chaser of milk-pots, watch-cases, and heads of canes, and he always walked with this cane as a show-article), and the other of the name of Powell, better known under the appellation of “Old black wig.”

Henderson, the player,[220] who was also a collector of Hogarth’s works, seldom made his appearance on these boards—John Ireland being his deputy-manager.[221]

I must not omit to mention another singular but most honourable character, of the name of Heywood, nicknamed “Old Iron Wig.” His dress was precise, and manner of walking rather stiff. He was an extensive purchaser of every kind of article in art, particularly Rowlandson’s drawings; for this purpose he employed the merry and friendly Mr. Seguier,[222] the picture-dealer, a schoolfellow of my father’s, to bid for him.

I shall now close this list by observing that my early friend and fellow-pupil, Rowlandson, who has frequently made drawings of Hutchins and his print-auctions, has produced a most spirited etching, in which not only many of the above-described characters are introduced, but also most of the printsellers of the day. There is another, though it must be owned very indifferent, plate, containing what the publisher called “Portraits of Printsellers,” from a monotonous drawing by the late Silvester Harding, whose manner of delineation made persons appear to be all of one family, particularly his sleepy-eyed and gaudily-coloured drawings of ladies.

At this time my mimic powers induced Delpini the clown,[223] who had often been amused with several of my imitations of public characters, to mention me to Mr. John Palmer,[224] who, after listening to my specimens, promised me an engagement at the Royalty Theatre, which was then erecting; but as that gentleman was too sanguine, and failed in procuring a licence, I, as well as many other strutting heroes, was disappointed.

After this my friends advised me to resume the arts; and, with the usual confidence of an unskilful beginner, I at once presumed to style myself “drawing-master.” However, my slender abilities, or rather industry, were noticed by my kind patrons, who soon recommended me to pupils, and by that pursuit I was enabled, with some increase of talent, to support myself for several years. It is rather extraordinary that mimicry with me was not confined to the voice, for I could in many instances throw my features into a resemblance of the person whose voice I imitated. Indeed, so ridiculous were several of these gesticulations, that I remember diverting one of my companions by endeavouring to look like the various lion-headed knockers as we passed through a long street. Skilful, however, as I was declared to be in some of my attempts, I could not in any way manage the dolphin knockers in Dean Street, Fetter Lane. Their ancient and fish-like appearance was certainly many fathoms beyond my depth; and as much by reason of my being destitute of gills, and the nose of that finny tribe, extending nearly in width to its tremendous mouth, I was obliged to give up the attempt.

When first I saw these knockers, which were all of solid brass, seventeen of the doors of the four-and-twenty houses in Dean Street were adorned with them, and the good housewives’ care was to keep them as bright as the chimney-sweeper’s ladle on May-day. As my mind from my earliest remembrance was of an inquisitive nature, my curiosity urged me to learn why this street, above all others, was thus adorned; and my inquiry was, as I then thought, at once answered satisfactorily.

This ground and the houses upon it belong to the Fishmongers’ Company, was the answer returned by one of the oldest inhabitants; and the heraldic reader will recollect that the arms of that worshipful and ancient body are dolphins. Not being satisfied with this assertion, however, I went to Fishmongers’ Hall, and was there assured that the Company never had any property in Dean Street, Fetter Lane. On the 17th of May, 1829, I visited this street in order to see how many of my brazen-faced acquaintances exposed themselves, and I found that Dean Street was nearly as deficient in its dolphin knockers as a churchyard is of its earliest tombstones, for out of seventeen only three remained.[225]

In the commencement of this year I took lodgings in Gerrard Street, and acquiesced in the regulations of my landlady; one of the principal of which was, that I never was to expect to be let in after twelve o’clock, unless the servant was apprised of my staying out later, and then she was to be permitted to sit up for me. Being in my twenty-first year, of a lively disposition, and moreover fond of theatrical representations, I did not at all times “remember twelve”; for although Mrs. Siddons sounded it so emphatically upon my ear, I could never quit the theatre till half an hour after. My finances at this period being sometimes too slender to afford an additional lodging for the night, and not often venturing to expose myself to insult, or the artful and designing, by perambulating the city, unless the moon invited me, I fortunately hit upon the following expedient, which not only sheltered me from rain, but afforded me a seat by the fireside. I either used to go to the watch-house of St. Paul, Covent Garden, or that of St. Anne, Soho; so, having made myself free of both by agreeing with the watch-house keeper to stand the expense of two pots of porter upon every nocturnal visit, I was enabled to see what is called “life and human nature.”

One of the curious scenes witnessed upon a more recent occasion afforded me no small amusement. Sir Harry Dinsdale, usually called Dimsdale, a short, feeble little man, was brought in to St. Anne’s watch-house, charged by two colossal guardians of the night with conduct most unruly. “What have you, Sir Harry, to say to all this?” asked the Dogberry of St. Anne. The knight, who had been roughly handled, commenced like a true orator, in a low tone of voice, “May it please ye, my magistrate, I am not drunk; it is languor. A parcel of the bloods of the Garden have treated me cruelly, because I would not treat them. This day, Sir, I was sent for by Mr. Sheridan to make my speech upon the table at the Shakspeare Tavern, in Common Garden; he wrote the speech for me, and always gives me half a guinea, when he sends for me to the tavern. You see I didn’t go in my Royal robes; I only put ’um on when I stand to be member.” Constable—“Well, but Sir Harry, why are you brought here?” One of the watchmen then observed, “That though Sir Harry was but a little shambling fellow, he was so upstroppolus and kicked him about at such a rate, that it was as much as he and his comrade could do to bring him along.” As there was no one to support the charge, Sir Harry was advised to go home, which, however, he swore he would not do at midnight without an escort. “Do you know,” said he, “there’s a parcel of raps now on the outside waiting for me.”

The constable of the night gave orders for him to be protected to the public-house opposite the west end of St. Giles’s Church, where he then lodged. Sir Harry hearing a noise in the street, muttered, “I shall catch it; I know I shall.” “See the conquering hero comes” (cries without). “Ay, they always use that tune when I gain my election at Garrett.”

Although many of my readers may recollect Sir Harry Dinsdale, yet it may be well for the information of others to state who and what he was. Before I commence his history, however, I should observe that the death of Sir Jeffery Dunstan, a dealer in old wigs, who had been for many years returned member for Garrett, first gave popularity to Harry Dinsdale, who, from the moment he stood as candidate, received mock knighthood, and was ever after known under the appellation of “Sir Harry.”[226] There are several portraits of this singular little object, by some called “Honeyjuice,” as well as of his more whimsical predecessor, Sir Jeffery Dunstan, better known as “Old Wigs.” Sir Harry exercised the itinerant trade of a muffinman in the afternoon; he had a little bell, which he held to his ear, smiling ironically at its tingling. His cry was “Muffins! muffins! ladies come buy me! pretty, handsome, blooming, smiling maids.” Flaxman the sculptor, and Mrs. Mathew, of blue-stocking memory, equipped him as a hardware man, and as such I made two etchings of him.

Many a time when I had no inclination to go to bed at the dawn of day, I have looked down from my window to see whether the author of the Sublime and Beautiful had left his drawing-room, where I had seen that great orator during many a night after he had left the House of Commons, seated at a table covered with papers, attended by an amanuensis who sat opposite to him.[227] Major Money, who had nearly been lost at sea with his balloon, at that time lodged in the same house. Of the Major’s perilous situation at sea, the elder Reinagle made a spirited picture, of which there is an engraving.[228]

In this year I had the honour for the first time of exhibiting at the Royal Academy. My production was a portrait of the venerable beech-tree which stood within memory at a short distance from Sand-pit Gate, in Windsor Forest, and which tree has been so admirably painted by West. This picture, which measures five feet in height and seven in length, was sold by auction at Mr. West’s house, in May 23rd, 1829. My drawing, as well as many of my studies made from that delightful display of forest scenery, was highly finished in black chalk; it was purchased by the late Earl of Warwick, who was not only an admirable draughtsman himself, but kind to young artists. By that nobleman I was introduced to the Hon. F. Charles Greville [the Earl’s brother and a Vice-President of the Royal Society], whose taste for the Fine Arts is too well known to need any eulogium from me.[229] This gentleman gave Cipriani above one hundred guineas for an elaborate drawing of the famous Barberini vase, brought to England by Sir William Hamilton.[230] Several learned writers have given their conjectures as to the subject so beautifully sculptured on this vase; but I understand that nothing has been adduced as yet that sufficiently elucidates it. This vase is deposited in the British Museum.

This grey and silver beech was the loftiest in the forest, and particularly beautiful when the sun shone upon its ancient limbs; his capacious and hollow trunk, with a small additional hut, afforded accommodation for a woodman, his wife, four children, a sow and a numerous litter of pigs. This happy family retreat, which had frequently been noticed by King George III., was at last unavoidably obliged, from the symptoms it exhibited of falling, to submit to the woodman’s axe—that woodman whose family had weathered many a storm, and had been screened from the scorching sunbeams under its majestic branches, several of which, by reason of its “bald and high antiquity,” had not issued foliage for many a summer. The King, however, who never suffered the humblest of his subjects whose industry he had noticed, to sigh under calamity, ordered a snug, neat brick cottage to be built for the honest occupant and his dependents, which was erected in the same forest, and at as short a distance as possible from the former residence.

One curious and interesting discovery resulted from the demolition of this venerable tree. The woodman, who had allowed the smoke from his peat-piled fire to pass through one of the hollow limbs of the tree for several years without sweeping it, had, by accumulated incrustations, produced a mass of the finest brown colour, resembling the present appearance of that used by Rembrandt, so much coveted by the English artists. The discovery was made by Mr. Paul Sandby, who was fortunately passing at the time the timber was on the ground, who immediately secured a tolerable quantity to enable him to prove that the smoke from forest fuel, united with the heated branch of a hollow and aged beech, produced the finest bistre: his son, the present Mr. Sandby, gave me a lump of it, which I presented to the late Sir George Beaumont.[231] Having mentioned this bistre to several Roman artists, they informed me that a strong decoction of the sap of the ilex, or evergreen oak, produces a colour nearly similar; and of this I have had satisfactory proof. These, and suchlike bistres, would be much safer for the artist to use than that called sepia, which is made from the ink of the cuttle-fish, which, being a marine production, ever retains its saline and pernicious qualities, as may be seen in several of the numerous drawings made by Guercino, where the colour has left a blot, which has completely eaten through the paper. However, after all the trials of our experimentalists to match the present tint of Rembrandt’s drawings, and however pleasingly ingenious their discoveries have been, still I am inclined to believe that much, if not the whole, of the effect of old drawings is owing to that produced by time; and in this idea I am borne out by a small drawing which the ever-to-be-revered Flaxman made with a pen in common writing-ink: he drew it when I was a lad, and it is now a deep rich brown. May we not also fairly conclude, from the brown tint of most of our old manuscripts, that time has thus operated upon the ink? if so, the question is, what will the future colour of that which we now use in imitation, consisting of many ingredients, be, after fifty-five years, the elapsed time since I received my drawing from the kind hand of Flaxman? It is a curious fact, however, that the ink used by the ancient Egyptians on nearly two hundred specimens of the written inscriptions on papyrus collected by Mr. Salt,[232] now in the British Museum, are as jet a black as Cozens’s[233] blotting-ink, or Day and Martin’s far-famed blacking.

Although not considered an Adonis by the ladies, yet most of those to whom I had the pleasure to be known, noticed me as a favourite, and by some my appearance in company was cordially greeted. “Friend Thomas,” asked one, “pray what play didst thou see last night?” With this appellation I was frequently addressed, in consequence of my mother having been a member of the Society of Friends. “Love’s Labour Lost,” being my answer to the pre-engaged fair one, uttered perhaps with a smile, she was induced to rejoin, “If you had not hitherto been so blind a son of Venus, you would not have lost my smiles.” After this rebuke, my pursuit became brisker, and I at last fixed my heart upon my first wife.[234] Upon becoming a Benedict, I partly recovered the use of my senses, gave up my clubs, dissolved many connections, and in order to be faithful to my pledge, “to love and to cherish,” I applied myself steadily to my etching-table, and commenced a series of quarto plates, to illustrate Mr. Pennant’s truly interesting account of our great city (entitled Some Account of London), which I dedicated to my patron, Sir James Winter Lake, Bart.

Sir James was a governor of the Hudson’s Bay Company,—a situation, it is well known, he filled with credit to himself as well as the satisfaction of every one connected with that highly-respected body. Sir James most kindly invited me to take a house near him at Edmonton, where I had the honour, for the space of seven years, of enjoying the steady friendship of himself and family. Lady Lake, who then retained much of her youthful beauty, by her elegance of language and extreme affability charmed every one. To clever people of every description she was kind, and benevolent to the poor.

The Lake family consisted of Sir James, his lady, their sons, James, Willoughby, Atwill, and Andrew,—their daughters, Mary, Charlotte, and Anne.[235] Their residence, which had long been their family mansion, was distant about a mile from the Angel Inn, and was called “The Firs,” in consequence of the approach to the house being planted on either side with double rows of that tree.

This year proved more lucrative to me than any preceding, for at this time I professed portrait painting both in oils and crayons; but, alas! after using a profusion of carmine, and placing many an eye straight that was misdirected, before another season came, my exertions were mildewed by a decline of orders, owing not only to the salubrity of the air of Edmonton, but to the regularity of those who had sat to me, for they would neither die nor quit their mansions, but kept themselves snug within their King-William iron gates and red-brick-crested piers, so that there was no accommodation for new-comers; nor would the red land-owners allow one inch of ground to the Tooley Street Camomile Cottage builders.[236] However, I experienced enough to convince me that, had I diverged along the cross-roads towards the Bald-faced Stag, the highway to the original Tulip-tree at Waltham Abbey, or the green lanes to Hornsey Wood House, I might have considerably increased my income; but this would have been impossible without a conveyance. Nevertheless, as it was, the reader will hardly believe that my marches of fame were far more extensive than those of Major Sturgeon;[237] his were confined to marches and counter-marches, from Ealing to Acton, and from Acton to Ealing, next-door neighbours: now, my doves took a circuitous flight from Tottenham to “Kicking Jenny” at Southgate; then to Enfield, ay, even to its very Wash, rendered notorious by Mary Squires and Bet Canning;[238] thence over Walton’s famed river Lea: thence up to Chingford’s ivy-mantled tower; down again, crossing the Lea with the lowing herd, to Tottenham High Cross, finishing where they put up on the embattlements of the once noble Castle of Bruce.

It was in the centre of the above vicinities, at “Edmonton so gay,” the rendezvous of Shakspeare’s merry devil,[239] that I profiled, three-quartered, full-faced, and buttoned up the retired embroidered weavers, their crummy wives, and tightly-laced daughters. Ay, those were the days! my friends of the loom, as Tom King declared in the prologue to Bon Ton, when Mother Fussock could ride in a one-horse chaise, warm from Spitalfields, on a Sunday![240]

Many a rural walk have I and my beloved enjoyed, accompanied by our uninvited, playful, tailed butterfly-hunter, through the lonely honeysuckled lanes to the “Widow Colley’s,” whose nut-brown, mantling home-brewed could have stood the test with that of Skelton’s far-famed Elyn—the ale-wife of England, upon whose October skill Henry VIII.’s Poet Laureate sang.[241] Sometimes our strolls were extended to old Matthew Cook’s Ferry, by the side of the Lea, so named after him, and well known to many a Waltonian student. Matthew generally contrived to keep sixteen cats, all of the finest breed, and, as cats go, of the best of tempers, all of whom he had taught distinct tricks; but it was his custom morning and evening to make them regularly, one after the other, leap over his hands joined as high as his arms could reach: and this attention to his cats, which occupied nearly the whole of his time, afforded him as much pleasure as Hartry, the cupper in May’s Buildings,[242] and his assistant could receive in phlebotomizing, in former days, above one hundred customers on a Sunday morning, that being the only leisure time the industrious mechanic could spare for the operation.

Melancholy as Cook’s Ferry is during the winter, it is still more so in the time of an inundation, when it is almost insupportable; and had not Matty enjoyed the society of his cats, who certainly kept the house tolerably free from rats and mice, at the accustomed time of a high flood he must have been truly wretched. In this year, during one of these visitations, in order to gratify my indefatigable curiosity, I visited him over the meadows, partly in a cart and partly in a boat, conducted by his baker and Tom Fogin, his barber. We found him standing in a washing-tub, dangling a bit of scrag of mutton before the best fire existing circumstances could produce, in a room on the ground floor, knee-deep in water, whilst he ever and anon raised his voice to his cats in the room above, where he had huddled them for safety.

The baker, after delivering his bread in at the window, and I, after fastening our skiff to the shutter-hook, waited the return of Fogin, who had launched himself into a tub to shave Matthew, who had perched himself on the coroneted top of a tall Queen Anne’s chair, and drawn his feet as much under him as possible, and then, with the palms of his hands flat upon his knees to keep the balance true, was prepared to suck in Fogin’s tales in the tub during his shave. Tom retailed all the scandal he had been able to collect during the preceding week from the surrounding villages; how Dolly alias Matthew Booth, a half-witted fellow, was stoutly caned by old John Adams, the astronomical schoolmaster, for calling him “a moon-hauler,”—how Mr. Wigston trespassed on Miss Thoxley’s waste,—of the sisters Tatham being called the “wax dolls” of Edmonton, whose chemises Bet Nun had declared only measured sixteen inches in diameter,—of old Fuller, the banker, riding to Ponder’s End with a stone in his mouth to keep it moist, in order to save the expense of drink,—upon Farmer Bellows’s and old Le Grew’s psalm-singing,—of Alderman Curtis and his Southgate grapery, and of his neighbour, a divine gentlem—man, I had very nearly called him, who had horsewhipped his wife.

I remember on a midsummer morn of this year making one of a party of pleasure, consisting of the worthy baronet Sir James Lake, the elder John Adams,[243] schoolmaster of Edmonton, Samuel Ireland,[244] author of the Thames, Medway, etc. We started from my cottage at Edmonton, and took the road north. The first house we noticed was an old brick mansion at the extreme end of the town, erected at about the time of King Charles I., opposite butcher Wright’s. This dilapidated fabric was let out in tenements, and the happiest of its inmates was a gay old woman who lived in one of its numerous attics. She gained her bread by spinning, and as we ascended she was singing the old song of “Little boy blue, come blow me your horn” to a neighbour’s child, left to her care for the day. “Well, Mary,” quoth the a-b-c-darian, “you are always gay; what is your opinion of the lads and lasses of the present time, compared with those of your youthful days?” “I’ faith,” answered Mary, “they are pretty much the same.” She was then considerably beyond her eightieth year. We then proceeded to Ponder’s End, where I conducted my fellow-travellers to a field on the left, behind the Goat public-house, to see “King Ringle’s Well,” but why so called even Mr. Gough has declared he was unable to discover.[245]

The next place we visited consisted of extensive moated premises, called “Durance,” on the right of the public road. This house, as tradition reported, had been the residence of Judge Jeffreys; and here it is said that he exercised some severities upon the Protestants.[246]

We then returned through Green Street; and at a cottage we discovered an Elizabethan door, profusely studded with flat-headed nails. This piece of antiquity Samuel Ireland stopped to make a drawing of, which circumstance I beg the reader will keep in mind, as it will be mentioned hereafter. We then, after descanting upon the beauties of Waltham Cross, proposed to visit the father of the Tulip-trees, an engraving of which appeared in Farmer’s History of Waltham Abbey.[247] We looked in vain for a portion of King Harold’s tomb. There were remains of it in Strutt’s early days: he made a drawing of them. Our next visit was to a small ancient elliptic bridge in a field a little beyond the pin-manufactory; this bridge has ever been held as a great curiosity, and one of high antiquity. As we returned through Cheshunt, we rummaged over a basket of old books placed at the door of the barber’s shop, where Sir James Lake bought an excellent copy of Brooke’s Camden’s Errors for sixpence, and also an imperfect copy of Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy, for the sake of a remarkably fine impression of a portrait of its author on the title-page. After dining at the Red Lion, we visited another old moated mansion, the property of Dr. Mayo, said to have been originally a house belonging to Cardinal Wolsey, or in which he had at one time resided.[248] After crossing a drawbridge, and passing through the iron gates, the gardener ushered us into a spacious hall, and showed us a curiously constructed chair, in which he said the Cardinal’s porter usually sat. Of this singular chair above mentioned I made a drawing, and had the honour to furnish the late Marquis of Lansdowne with a copy, to enable his Lordship to have a set made from it. In an adjoining room was a bedstead and furniture, considered to be that in which the Cardinal had slept; it was of a drab-coloured cloth, profusely worked over with large flowers in variously coloured silks. We were then conducted to an immense room filled with old portraits. I recollect noticing one in very excellent preservation of Sir Hugh Myddelton, with an inscription on the background totally differing from the one by Cornelius Janssen, engraved by Vertue.[249] Thus ended this pleasant excursion.

That Vandyke did not possess that liberal patron in King Charles I. which his biographers have hitherto stated, is unquestionably a fact, which can be proved by a long bill which I have lately seen (by the friendly indulgence of Mr. Lemon[250] and his son), in the State Paper Office, docketed by the King’s own hand. For instance, the picture of his Majesty dressed for the chase (which I conjecture to be the one engraved by Strange),[251] for which Vandyke had charged £200, the King, after erasing that sum, inserted £100; and down in proportion, nay, in some instances they suffered a further reduction. Of several of the works charged in the bill, which his Majesty marked as intended presents to his friends, I recollect one of two that were to be given to Lord Holland was reduced to the sum of £60. Other pictures in the bill the King marked with a cross, which is explained at the back by Endymion Porter, that as those were to be paid for by the Queen, the King had left them for her Majesty to reduce at pleasure.

That a daughter of Vandyke was allowed a pension for sums owing by King Charles I. to her father, is also true, as there is a petition in consequence of its being discontinued still preserved in the State Paper Office, in which that lady declares herself to be plunged into the greatest distress, adding that she had been cheated by the purchaser of her late father’s estate, who never paid for it.[252]

It would be the height of vanity in me to offer anything beyond what the author of The Sublime and Beautiful has said of Sir Joshua Reynolds, who died this year at his house in Leicester Square.[253] As Mr. Burke’s character of this most powerful of painters may not be in the possession of all my readers, I shall here reprint it.[254]

The following letter was addressed to me by my worthy friend Colonel Phillips:[255]—

“Wednesday, 27th March.

ROYAL BUN HOUSE, CHELSEA,

GOOD FRIDAY.

No Cross Buns.

“Mrs. Hand respectfully informs her friends, and the public, that in consequence of the great concourse of people which assembled before her house at a very early hour, on the morning of Good Friday; by which her neighbours (with whom she has always lived in friendship and repute) have been much alarmed and annoyed; it having also been intimated, that to encourage or countenance a tumultuous assembly at this particular period, might be attended with consequences more serious than have hitherto been apprehended; desirous, therefore, of testifying her regard and obedience to those laws by which she is happily protected, she is determined, though much to her loss, not to sell Cross Buns on that day, to any person whatever;—but Chelsea Buns as usual.

“Mrs. Hand would be wanting in gratitude to a generous public, who, for more than fifty years past, have so warmly patronised and encouraged her shop, to omit so favourable an opportunity of offering her sincere acknowledgments for their kind favours; at the same time, to assure them she will, to the utmost of her power, endeavour to merit a continuance of them.”[258]

The origin of wooden tessellated floors having been a subject of much inquiry among many of my friends, I here insert a copy of an advertisement introduced in a catalogue of books, published 1676, under the licence of Roger L’Estrange.[259]

“There is now in the press, and almost finished, that excellent piece of architecture,[260] written by Andrea Palladio, translated out of Italian, with an Appendix, touching Doors and Windows, by Pierre le Muet, Architect to the French King: translated out of French, by G. R.; also Rules and Demonstrations, with several designs for the framing any manner of Roofs, either above pitch, or under pitch, whether square or bevel; never published before; with designs of Floors of Variety of small pieces of Wood, lately made in the Palace of the Queen-Mother, at Somerset House—a curiosity never practised in England.

“The third Edition, corrected and enlarged, with the new model of the Cathedral of St. Paul’s as it is now building.”

The floors of the oldest parts of the British Museum,[261] retained specimens of this tessellated work, until they were removed on the construction of the new building.

Having often heard my father expatiate upon the extraordinary talents of Keyse,[262] the proprietor of Bermondsey Spa, as a painter, I went one July evening to Hungerford, and engaged “Copper Holmes”[263] to scull me to “Pepper Alley Stairs”; from thence I proceeded to the gardens. This I was the more anxious to accomplish, as that once famed place of recreation was most rapidly on the decline. I entered under a semicircular awning next to the proprietor’s house, which I well remember was a large wooden-fronted building, consisting of long square divisions, in imitation of scantlings of stone. My surprise was great, for no one appeared, but three idle waiters, and they were clumped for the want of a call. The space before the orchestra, which was about a quarter the size of that of Vauxhall, was in the centre, totally destitute of trees, the few that these gardens could then boast of being those planted close to the fronts of the surrounding boxes of accommodation, as a screen to prevent the public from overlooking the gardens.

My attention was attracted by a board with a ruffled hand, within a sky-blue painted sleeve, pointing to the staircase which led “To the Gallery of Paintings.” In this room I at first considered myself as the only spectator; and as the evening sun shone brilliantly, the refraction of the lights gave me a splendid and uninterrupted view of the numerous pictures with which it was closely hung, each of which had just claims to my attention, as I found myself frequently walking backwards to enjoy their deceptive effects. When I had gone round the gallery, which by the bye was oblong, and in size similar to that of the Academician, J. M. W. Turner, in Queen Anne Street, I voluntarily recommenced my view, but, in stepping back to study the picture of the Green-stall, “I ask your pardon,” said I, for I had trodden upon some one’s toes; “Sir, it is granted,” replied a little thick-set man, with a round face, arch look, closely curled wig, surmounted by a small three-cornered hat, put very knowingly on one side, not unlike Hogarth’s head in his print of the Gates of Calais. “You are an artist, I presume; I noticed you from the end of the gallery when you first stepped back to look at my best picture. I painted all the objects in this room from nature and still life.” “Your Greengrocer’s Shop,” said I, “is inimitable; the drops of water on that Savoy appear as if they had just fallen from the element. Van Huysum could not have pencilled them with greater delicacy.” “What do you think,” said he, “of my Butcher’s Shop?” “Your pluck is bleeding fresh, and your sweetbread is in a clean plate.” “How do you like my bull’s eye?” “Why it would be a most excellent one for Adams or Dollond[264] to lecture upon. Your knuckle of veal is the finest I ever saw.” “It’s young meat,” replied he; “any one who is a judge of meat can tell that from the blueness of its bone.” “What a beautiful white you have used on the fat of that South Down leg! or is it Bagshot?”[265]

“Yes,” said he, “my solitary visitor, it is Bagshot; and as for my white, that is the best Nottingham, which you or any artist can procure at Stone and Puncheon’s, in Bishopsgate Street Within. Sir Joshua Reynolds,” continued Mr. Keyse, “paid me two visits. On the second, he asked me what white I had used; and when I told him, he observed, ‘It is very extraordinary, Sir, how it keeps so bright; I use the same.’ ‘Not at all, Sir,’ I rejoined: ‘the doors of this gallery are open day and night; and the admission of fresh air, together with the great expansion of light from the sashes above, will never suffer the white to turn yellow. Have you not observed, Sir Joshua, how white the posts and rails on the public roads are, though they have not been repainted for years?—that arises from constant air and bleaching.’

“Come,” said Mr. Keyse, putting his hand upon my shoulder, “the bell rings, not for prayers, nor for dinner, but for the song.” As soon as we had reached the orchestra, the singer curtsied to us, for we were the only persons in the gardens. “This is sad work,” said he, “but the woman must sing according to our contract.” I recollect that the singer was handsome, most dashingly dressed, immensely plumed, and villainously rouged; she smiled as she sang, but it was not the bewitching smile of Mrs. Wrighten,[266] then applauded by thousands at Vauxhall Gardens. As soon as the Spa lady had ended her song, Keyse, after joining me in applause, apologised for doing so, by observing that, as he never suffered his servants to applaud, and as the people in the road (whose ears were close to the cracks in the paling to hear the song), would make a bad report if they had not heard more than the clapping of one pair of hands, he had in this instance expressed his reluctant feelings.

As the lady retired from the front of the orchestra, she, to keep herself in practice, curtsied to me with as much respect as she would had Colonel Topham been the patron of a gala night.[267] “This is too bad,” again observed Keyse; “and I am sure you cannot expect fireworks!” However, he politely asked me to partake of a bottle of Lisbon, which upon my refusing, he pressed me to accept of a catalogue of his pictures.

Blewitt[268] (who at that time lived in Bermondsey Square), the scholar of Jonathan Battishill,[269] was the composer for the Spa establishment. The following verse is the first of his most admired composition,—“In lonely cot by Humber’s side.”

My old and worthy friend Joseph Caulfield,[270] Blewitt’s favourite pupil, of whom he learned thorough bass, related to me the following anecdote of a musical composer, as told him by his master:—“When I was going upstairs,” said Blewitt, “to the attics, where one of my instructors lived (for I had many), I hesitated on the second-floor landing-place, upon hearing my master and his wife at high words. ‘Get you gone!’ said the lofty paper-ruffled composer, ‘retire to your apartments!’ This command of her lord she did not immediately obey; however, in a short time after, I heard the clattering of plates against the wall, and upon entering the room, I discovered that the lady had retired, but not before she had covered the whitewashed wall profusely with the unbroiled sprats.”

“I was at a musical party,” continued my friend Joseph, “at Lord Sandwich’s,[271] in Hertford Street, Mayfair, when, among other specimens of the best masters, I heard Battishill’s beautiful composition of

Upon expressing my pleasure at hearing the above performed in so superior a style, his Lordship told me he had written a sequel, which he thus repeated:—

It appears that in poetry, as well as in painting and prints, and also in dwellings, decorations, and dress, there has ever been a fashion for a time. Battishill was the composer of that justly celebrated glee, commencing with “Underneath this myrtle shade.” Myrtles, after having had a great run, were succeeded by Cupid’s darts; and that little rogue Love played old gooseberry with the hearts of Chloes and Colins, Robins and Robinets; then the ever-blooming lasses of Patterdale and Richmond Hill attracted our giddy notice. These were succeeded by “Bacchus in green ivy bound,” giving “Joy and pleasure all around.” After that, moonlight meetings were preferred, and “Buy a broom, ladies,” was continually dinning our ears “through and through.”

In the summer of this year, the late John Wigston, Esq., then of Millfield House, Edmonton, having repeatedly expressed a wish to see the famous George Morland before he commenced a collection of his pictures, I having been known to that child of nature in my boyish days, offered to introduce them to each other.[273] Morland then resided in Charlotte Street, Fitzroy Square, in the house formerly inhabited by Sir Thomas Apreece. He received us in the drawing-room, which was filled with easels, canvases, stretching-frames, gallipots of colour, and oil-stones; a stool, chair, and a three-legged table were the only articles of furniture of which this once splendid apartment could then boast. Mr. Wigston, his generous-hearted visitor, immediately bespoke a picture, for which he gave him a draft for forty pounds, that sum being exactly the money he then wanted; but this gentleman had, like most of that artist’s employers, to ply him close for his picture.

As Mrs. Wigston had a great desire to see Morland, he was invited to take a day’s sport with the hounds, which the artist accepted, with a full assurance of punctuality. However, as usual with that eccentric man, he only arrived time enough for dinner, accompanied by eight of those persons denominated his friends. Mrs. Wigston, an elegant and most accomplished lady, was in consequence deprived of a sight of this far-famed genius. I was deputed by my honoured friend Mr. Wigston to take Mrs. Wigston’s abdicated chair, and carved for this pretty set, consisting of persons unaccustomed to sit at such a table. Our worthy host soon discovered their strong propensity for spirituous liquors, three of them even during dinner, instead of taking wine, of which there were many sorts on the table, calling for a glass of brandy. After hearing several jokes and humorous songs from some of the party, George Morland declared he must go, having an engagement with Mrs. Laye, and other friends, at “Otter’s Pool.”[274]

When Morland and his party entered the stable-yard, the following altercation took place between Mr. Wigston and his groom.

Mr. Wigston.—“Bring out these gentlemen’s horses.”

Groom.—“Horses, horses! they’ll find ’um at the ‘Two Jolly Brewers.’ Horses, indeed!”

Mr. Wigston.—“And why, Sir, were they sent there?”

Groom.—“Why, I would not suffer such cattle to come near your stud; for I never saw such a set-out in my life!”

The party accordingly betook themselves to the “Brewers”; but upon our return to the honest though rough diamond of a groom, he observed that it was past two o’clock, and that the dog ought to have been let loose two hours ago!

Although my mother continued till the time of her death in the habit of the Society of Friends, and my father followed most of the popular Methodists, I, from my earliest days of reflection, gave a preference to the Established Church of England. Notwithstanding this, my inquisitiveness now and then induced me to hear celebrated preachers of every sect. I remember one Sunday morning in this year, after intending to enter some church on my way to dine with my great-aunt on Camberwell Green, my ears were most agreeably greeted with the swelling pipes of the Surrey Chapel organ.[275] Why, thinks I to myself, should not I hear Rowland Hill? Surely it must be now full twenty years since I saw him in Moorfields, at my last visit to the Tabernacle. In I accordingly went; and though a smile with me was always deemed highly indecorous during divine worship, yet the truth must out; I could not help sometimes laughing—as heartily, though not so loudly, I hope, as all of us when led into the enjoyment of Momus’s strongest fits by the inimitable Mathews.

No sooner was the sermon over and the blessing bestowed, than Rowland electrified his hearers by vociferating, “Door-keepers, shut the doors!” Slam went one door; bounce went another; bang went a third; at last, all being anxiously silent as the most importantly unexpected scenes of Sir Walter Scott could make them, the pastor, with a slow and dulcet emphasis, thus addressed his congregation:—“My dearly beloved, I speak it to my shame, that this sermon was to have been a charity sermon, and if you will only look down into the green pew at those—let me see—three and three are six, and one makes seven, young men with red morocco prayer-books in their hands, poor souls! they were backsliders, for they went on the Serpentine River, and other far distant waters, on a Sabbath; they were, however, as you see, all saved from a watery grave. I need not tell ye that my exertions were to have been for the benefit of that benevolent institution the Humane Society.—What! I see some of ye already up to be gone; fie! fie! fie!—never heed your dinners; don’t be Calibans, nor mind your pockets. I know that some of ye are now attending to the devil’s whispers. I say, listen to me! take my advice, give shillings instead of sixpences; and those who intended to give shillings, display half-crowns, in order not only to thwart the foul fiend’s mischievousness, but to get your pastor out of this scrape; and if you do, I trust Satan will never put his foot within this circle again. Hark ye! I have hit upon it; ye shall leave us directly. The Bank Directors, you must know, have called in the dollars; now, if any of you happen to be encumbered with a stale dollar or two, jingle the Spanish in our dishes; we’ll take them, they’ll pass current here. Stay, my friends, a moment more. I am to dine with the Humane Society on Tuesday next, and it would shock me beyond expression to see the strings of the Surrey Chapel lay dangle down its sides like the tags upon Lady Huntingdon’s servants’ shoulders. Now, mind what I say, upon this occasion I wish for a bumper as strenuously as Master Hugh Peters did, when he recommended his congregation in Broadway Chapel to take a second glass.” It is recorded that when he found the sand of his hour-glass had descended, he turned it, saying, “Come, I know you to be jolly dogs, we’ll take t’other glass.”[276] I understand that Rowland Hill is not made up of veneer, but of solid well-seasoned stuff, with a heart of oak, and ever willing to exercise kindness to his fellow-creatures, upon the system of my friend Charles Lamb.[277]

In May this year I applied to my worthy friend, Mr. John Constable, now a Royal Academician, for any particulars which he might be able to procure respecting Gainsborough, he being also a Suffolk man; and I had the pleasure of receiving the following letter:—

Mrs. Pope, the actress, died this year in Half Moon Street, Piccadilly, and was buried in the cloisters of Westminster Abbey.[282]

Being anxious to add something more to the memory of this amiable character, I applied to her surviving husband; when that gentleman very obligingly favoured me with the following copy of a record, which he made soon after her death:—

“The best of women and the best of wives drew her last breath at half-past two o’clock on Wednesday morning, the 15th of March, 1797.

“Her illness lasted about seven weeks; her complaint palsy, beginning in her head, and depriving her of the use of her left hand. Her death was an awful lesson; her loss irreparable.”[283]

In the room with the bow-window on the first-floor of the same house, Mr. Pope[284] produced some excellent portraits in crayons, of persons of the first fashion, many of them little inferior in every respect to those of the celebrated Francis Cotes;[285] the inimitable whole-length portrait of Grattan, of which there is an engraving, will be a lasting and mutual record of the artist and patriot. The following letter, given to me by my late worthy friend Dr. Mathew, was written by Mrs. Pope, to her friend Mrs. Mathew, of Rathbone Place:—

This year, in consequence of the death of Mr. Green,[286] who had been drawing-master to Christ’s Hospital, I stood candidate for the situation; and, though I was unsuccessful, my testimonials being so flattering, I cannot withstand the temptation of printing them, whatever may be said by my enemies, who may not be able to produce anything half so honourable.

On the 4th of August this year, died at his mansion in Rutland Square, Dublin, the Right Hon. James, Earl of Charlemont,[287] who was born 18th of August, 1728. This gentleman was truly a nobleman, for he was one of the greatest patrons of the fine arts this country could boast of. He was the great friend of Hogarth; bought many of his pictures, particularly that most elegant performance so justly celebrated under the title of “The Lady’s Last Stake,” so admirably engraven by Mr. Cheesman.[288] The following is a copy of an original letter given to me by a late worthy friend; it is addressed to the late Sir Lawrence Parsons, Bart.,[289] and written by Lord Charlemont within eight months of his Lordship’s death.

In this year, James Barry, the painter of those mighty pictures on the walls of the great room of the Society of Arts, received a severe blow by having his name erased from those of the Royal Academicians by King George III., who believed what had been represented respecting the Professor’s conduct in the Royal Academy.[290]

The admission of one hundred additional members into the House of Commons, arising from the union with Ireland, obliged Mr. Wyatt to cut away the side-walls of the room internally, in order to make recesses for two extra benches.[292]

In the autumn of this year I passed a most agreeable day with the Hon. Hussey Delaval,[293] at his house near Parliament Stairs.[294] This learned and communicative gentleman, among whose works that on Colours is generally considered the most interesting, was as friendly to me, as the jealousy of that well-known odd compound of nature, my antagonist, John Carter,[295] who was of our party, would allow; for with that artist’s opinions as to Gothic architecture, Mr. Delaval so entirely coincided, that he employed him to provide the ornamental decorations of his house, which were mostly in putty mixed with sand, and in some instances cast from the decorations of several Gothic structures, particularly Westminster Abbey. This house was originally fire-proof, the floors being of stone or composition, and the window-sashes of cast iron, but since the death of Mr. Delaval, wood has been substituted for the sashes and other parts.

The apartments are ten in number, besides small offices. The lower rooms consist of two halls: in the north wall of the first are three pretty Gothic recesses for seats, for servants or persons in waiting; the second hall is filled with Gothic figures placed upon brackets under canopies. The chimney-piece and other parts of the dining-parlour looking over the Thames, are decorated in a similar manner; the kitchen is on the same floor towards the north. The staircase leading to the first-floor is a truly tasteful little specimen, not equalled by anything at Strawberry Hill, which, by reason of Mr. Bentley’s[296] fancy mouldings interfering so often with parts which are really chaste, must be considered a mule building. The drawing-room and library also look over the water. On the same floor are two bed-chambers towards the west; above which are two attics, with a door opening upon the embattled leads over the drawing-room. Upon these leads we took our wine—attended by female servants only, as Mr. Delaval never would allow a man-servant to enter the house, but with messages—and here enjoyed the glowing, Cuyp-like effect of the sun upon west-country barges laden either with blocks of stone or fresh-cut timber, objects ever picturesque on the water. Mr. Delaval was so pleased with this scenery, and the pencil of my friend G. Arnald, Associate of the Royal Academy, that he bespoke two pictures of him, Views up and down the River, the figures in which, by the order of Mr. Delaval, were painted by his friend G. F. Joseph, A.R.A. They were exhibited at Somerset House.[297]

How often do we find peculiar attachments and propensities in the minds of persons of reported good understanding. Within my time, many men have indulged most ridiculously in their eccentricities. I have known one who had made a pretty large fortune in business, get up at four o’clock in the morning and walk the streets to pick up horseshoes which had been slipped in the course of the night, with no other motive than to see how many he could accumulate in a year. I also remember a rich soap-boiler who never missed an opportunity of pocketing nails, pieces of iron hoops, and bits of leather, in his daily walks; and these he would spread upon a large walnut-tree three-flapped dining-table, with a similar view to that of the above-mentioned gentleman. This wealthy citizen would often put on a red woollen cap, in shape like those worn by slaughter-house men, and a waggoner’s frock, in order to stoke his own furnace; after which, he would dress, get into his coach, and, attended by tall servants in bright blue liveries, drive to his villa, where his hungry friends were waiting his arrival.

The allusion to these peculiarities, which certainly are harmless, will serve by way of prelude to a more extraordinary one. The late Duke of Roxburgh,[298] whose wonderful library will ever be spoken of with the highest delight by bibliomaniacs, had an attachment to the portraits of malefactors as closely as Rowland Hill to his petted toad. I made many drawings of such characters for his Grace during their trials or confinement; that which I made this year, was of Governor Wall, whose trial produced much discussion.[299] Having been deprived of admission at the Old Bailey on the day of his trial, I went to the Duke, and he immediately wrote to a nobleman high in power, for an order to admit me to see the unfortunate criminal in the condemned cell, which application was firmly, and, in my humble opinion, very properly, refused. I walked home, where I found Isaac Solomon waiting to show me some of his improved black-lead pencils. Isaac, upon hearing me relate to my family the disappointment I had experienced, assured me that he could procure me a sight of the Governor, if I would only accompany him in the evening to Hatton Garden, and smoke a pipe with Dr. Forde, the Ordinary of Newgate,[300] with whom he said he was particularly intimate. Away we trudged; and, upon entering the club-room of a public-house, we found the said Doctor most pompously seated in a superb masonic chair, under a stately crimson canopy placed between the windows. The room was clouded with smoke, whiffed to the ceiling, which gave me a better idea of what I had heard of the Black Hole of Calcutta than any place I had seen. There were present at least a hundred associates of every denomination; of this number, my Jew, being a favoured man, was admitted to a whispering audience with the Doctor, which soon produced my introduction to him.

“Man’s life is all a mist, and in the dark our fortunes meet us.” Standing beneath a masonic lustre, the Doctor immediately recognised me as a friend of John Ireland, but more particularly of his older crony, Atkinson Bush; he requested me to take a pipe, to me a most detestable preliminary. He then whispered, “Meet me at the felon’s door at the break of day.” There I punctually applied, but, notwithstanding the order of the Doctor, I found it absolutely necessary, to protect myself from an increasing mob, to show the turnkey half-a-crown, who soon closed his hand and let me in. I was then introduced to a most diabolical-looking little wretch, denominated “the Yeoman of the Halter,” Jack Ketch’s head man. The Doctor soon arrived in his canonicals, and with his head as stiffly erect as a sheriff’s coachman when he is going to Court, with an enormous nosegay under his chin, gravely uttered, “Come this way, Mr. Smith.”

As we crossed the Press-yard a cock crew; and the solitary clanking of a restless chain was dreadfully horrible. The prisoners had not risen. Upon our entering a stone-cold room, a most sickly stench of green twigs, with which an old round-shouldered, goggle-eyed man was endeavouring to kindle a fire, annoyed me almost as much as the canaster fumigation of the Doctor’s Hatton Garden friends.

The prisoner entered. He was death’s counterfeit, tall, shrivelled, and pale; and his soul shot so piercingly through the port-holes of his head that the first glance of him nearly petrified me. I said in my heart, putting my pencil in my pocket, God forbid that I should disturb thy last moments! His hands were clasped, and he was truly penitent. After the Yeoman had requested him to stand up, “he pinioned him,” as the Newgate phrase is, and tied the cord with so little feeling, that the Governor, who had not given the wretch the accustomed fee, observed, “You have tied me very tight;” upon which Dr. Forde ordered him to slacken the cord, which he did, but not without muttering. “Thank you, Sir,” said the Governor to the Doctor, “it is of little moment.” He then observed to the attendant, who had brought in an immense iron shovelful of coals to throw on the fire, “Ay, in one hour that will be a blazing fire;” then, turning to the Doctor, questioned him: “Do tell me, Sir: I am informed I shall go down with great force; is it so?” After the construction and action of the machine had been explained, the Doctor questioned the Governor as to what kind of men he had at Goree. “Sir,” he answered, “they sent me the very riffraff.” The poor soul then joined the Doctor in prayer; and never did I witness more contrition at any condemned sermon than he then evinced.

The sheriff arrived, attended by his officers, to receive the prisoner from the keeper. A new hat was then partly flattened on his head; for, owing to its being too small in the crown, it stood many inches too high behind. As we were crossing the Press-yard, the dreadful execrations of some of the felons so shook his frame, that he observed, “the clock had struck;” and, quickening his pace, he soon arrived at the room where the sheriff was to give a receipt for his body, according to the usual custom. Owing, however, to some informality in the wording of this receipt, he was not brought out so soon as the multitude expected; and it was this delay which occasioned a partial exultation from those who betted as to a reprieve, and not from any pleasure in seeing him executed. For the honour of England, I may say we are not so revengeful as some of our Continental neighbours have been; as Mrs. Cosway[301] assured me that she was in the room with David, then esteemed the first painter in Paris, at the time that he and Robespierre were in power; and that when the Reporter, from the guillotine, came in to announce eighty as the number of persons executed that morning, David, in the greatest possible rage, exclaimed, “No more!”

After the execution, as soon as I was permitted to leave the prison, I found the Yeoman selling the rope with which the malefactor had been suspended, at a shilling an inch; and no sooner had I entered Newgate Street, than a lath of a fellow, past threescore years and ten, who had just arrived from the purlieus of Black Boy Alley,[302] woe-begone as Romeo’s apothecary, exclaimed,—“Here’s the identical rope at sixpence an inch.” A group of tatterdemalions soon collected round him, most vehemently expressing their eagerness to possess bits of the cord. It was pretty obvious, however, that the real business of this agent was to induce the Epping butter-men to squeeze in with their canvas bags, which contained their morning receipts in Newgate market.[303] A little further on, at the north-east corner of Warwick Lane, stood “Rosy Emma,” exuberant in talk, and hissing-hot from Pie Corner,[304] where she had taken her morning dose of gin and bitters; and as she had not waited to make her toilet, was consequently a lump of heat.

Possibly she might have been a descendant of Orator Henley, and I make no doubt at one time passionately admired by her Henry. I can safely declare, however, that her cheeks were purple, her nose of poppy-red or cochineal.

Her eyes reminded me of Sheridan’s remark on those of Dr. Arne, “Like two oysters on an oval plate of stewed beet-root.”[305] I regretted most exceedingly, while she was cutting her rope and twisting her mouth, that most of her once-famed ivories had absconded; but it gave me inexpressible delight to see that her lips were not at all chapped. If Emma’s lips had been ever so deeply cracked, she could not have benefited by my friend “Social Day” Coxe’s[306] Conservatoria, as it was not then sold.

Emma in her tender blossom, I understand, assisted her mother in selling rice-milk and furmety to the early frequenters of Honey Lane market; and in the days of her full bloom, new-milk whey in White Conduit Fields, and at the Elephant and Castle. She must have been, as to her outward charms, during her highest flattery, little inferior to the beautiful Emma Lyon;[307] but in her last stage, perhaps not altogether unlike the heroine so voluptuously portrayed by my late highly talented friend, the Rev. George Huddesford, in his poem entitled “The Barber’s Nuptials.”[308] Rosy Emma, for so she was still called, was the reputed spouse of the Yeoman of the Halter, and the cord she was selling as the identical noose was for her own benefit. This was, according to the delightful writer, Charles Lamb,

Now, as fame and beauty ever carry influence, Emma’s sale was rapid; had she been as lamentable as a Lincolnshire goose after plucking-time, “Misery’s Darling,” or like Alecto when at the entrance of Pandemonium, she would have had a sorry sale.[310] This money-trapping trick, steady John, the waiter at the Chapter Coffee-house, assured me was invariably put in practice whenever superior persons or notorious culprits had been executed. Then to breakfast, but with little or no appetite; however, after selecting one of Isaac Solomon’s H.B.’s, I made a whole-length portrait of the late Governor by recollection, which Dr. Buchan, the flying physician of the “Chapter”[311] frequenters, and several of the Pater-Noster vendors of his Domestic Medicine, considered a likeness; at all events, it was admitted into the portfolio of the Duke, with the following acknowledgment written on the back: “Drawn by memory.”

About this time, in order to see human nature off her guard, I agreed with a good-tempered friend of mine, one of Richard Wilson’s scholars, to perambulate Bartholomew Fair, which we did in the evening, after taking pretty good care to leave our watches at home. Our first visit was to a show of wild beasts, where, upon paying an additional penny, we saw the menagerie-feeder place his head within a lion’s mouth.

Our attention was then arrested by an immense baboon, called General Jacko, who was distributing his signatures as fast as he could dip his pen in the ink, to those who enabled him to fill his enormous craw with plums, raisins, and figs. The next object which attracted our notice was a magnificent man, standing, as we were told, six feet six inches and a half, independent of the heels of his shoes. The gorgeous splendour of his Oriental dress was rendered more conspicuous by an immense plume of white feathers, which were like the noddings of an undertaker’s horse, increased in their wavy and graceful motion by the movements of the wearer’s head.

As this extraordinary man was to perform some wonderful feats of strength, we joined the motley throng of spectators at the charge of “only threepence each,” that being vociferated by Flockton’s[312] successor as the price of the evening admittance.

After he had gone through his various exhibitions of holding great weights at arm’s-length, etc., the all-bespangled master of the show stepped forward, and stated to the audience that if any four or five of the present company would give, by way of encouraging the “Young Hercules,” alias the “Patagonian Samson,” sixpence apiece, he would carry them all together round the booth, in the form of a pyramid.

With this proposition my companion and myself closed; and after two other persons had advanced, the fine fellow threw off his velvet cap surmounted by its princely crest, stripped himself of his other gewgaws, and walked most majestically, in a flesh-coloured elastic dress, to the centre of the amphitheatre, when four chairs were placed round him, by which my friend and I ascended, and, after throwing our legs across his lusty shoulders, were further requested to embrace each other, which we no sooner did, cheek-by-jowl, than a tall skeleton of a man, instead of standing upon a small wooden ledge fastened to Samson’s girdle, in an instant leaped on his back, with the agility of a boy who pitches himself upon a post too high to clear, and threw a leg over each of our shoulders; as for the other chap (for we could only muster four), the Patagonian took him up in his arms. Then, after Mr. Merryman had removed the chairs, as he had not his full complement, Samson performed his task with an ease of step most stately, without either the beat of a drum, or the waving of a flag.

I have often thought that if George Cruikshank, or my older friend Rowlandson, had been present at this scene of a pyramid burlesqued, their playful pencils would have been in running motion, and I should have been considerably out-distanced had I then offered the following additional description of our clustered appearance. Picture to yourself, reader, two cheesemonger, ruddy-looking men, like my friend and myself, as the sidesmen of Hercules, and the tall, vegetable-eating scarecrow kind of fellow, who made but one leap to grasp us like the bird-killing spider, and then our fourth loving associate, the heavy dumpling in front, whose chaps, I will answer for it, relished many an inch thick steak from the once far-famed Honey Lane market,[313] all supported with the greatest ease by this envied and caressed Pride of the Fair, to whose powers the frequenters of Sadler’s Wells also bore many a testimony.

In the year 1804, Antonio Benedictus Van Assen engraved a whole-length portrait of this Patagonian Samson, at the foot of which his name was thus announced, “Giovanni Baptista Belzoni.” This animated production was executed at the expense of the friendly Mr. James Parry, the justly celebrated gem and seal engraver, of Wells Street, Oxford Street.

After the close of Bartholomew Fair, this Patagonian was seen at that of Edmonton, exhibiting in a field behind the Bell Inn, immortalised by Cowper in his “Johnny Gilpin;” and I have been assured that, so late as 1810, at Edinburgh, he was, during his exhibition in Valentine and Orson, soundly hissed for not handling his friend the bear, at the time of her death, in an affectionate manner. Several years rolled on, and he was nearly forgotten in England, until the year 1820, and then many people recognised in the Egyptian traveller Belzoni the person who had figured away at fairs, as I have stated. The following anecdotes, in private circulation, of this extraordinary man may not be considered wholly uninteresting.

He was a native of Padua, and educated in order to become a profound monk; but, during the frenzy of war, being noticed by the French army, in consequence of his commanding figure, to be admirably well calculated for a fugleman, prudently avoided seizure for so deadly a service, by getting together what few things time would permit him, and so left Rome. I should have stated to the reader that, upon his arrival in London in the year 1803, he walked into Smithfield during Bartholomew Fair time, where he was seen by the master of a show, who, it is said, thus questioned his Merry Andrew:—“Do you see that tall-looking fellow in the midst of the crowd? he is looking about him over the heads of the people as if he walked upon stilts; go and see if he’s worth our money, and ask him if he wants a job.” Away scrambled Mr. Merryman down the monkey’s post, and, “as quick as lightning,” conducted the stranger to his master, who, being satisfied of his personal attractions, immediately engaged, plumed, painted, and put him up.

The reader will readily conceive that a man like Belzoni, seriously educated for the duties of the Church, and accustomed to associate with people of good manners, could with no little reluctance endure the vulgar society his pecuniary circumstances alone compelled him to associate with. However, after the expiration of nine years, in the course of which time he had married and saved money, he and his wife were enabled to visit Portugal, Spain, and Malta, from which place they embarked for Egypt. Fortunately for Belzoni, the wife he had chosen more than equally shared his numerous dangers, by spiritedly joining in all his enterprises, which some of my readers will recollect are most delightfully described by herself in what she styles “A Trifling Account,” printed at the end of her husband’s Travels in Egypt, Nubia, etc.[314]

As most of my readers have perused this work, I shall only state that, shortly after the arrival of Belzoni and his wife in England, my friend Dr. Richardson,[315] the traveller, who had been kind to them in every possible way when in Egypt, introduced me to them when they lodged in Downing Street, Westminster. Here I not only had great pleasure in seeing my steady supporter again, but enjoyed most pleasantly the conversation I had with his enterprising partner, whose sensible and intrepid cast of features well accorded with her artless, unsophisticated, and interesting “Trifling Account,” to which I have alluded.

In 1784, when Sir Ashton Lever petitioned the House of Commons for a lottery for his museum, Mr. Thomas Waring made the following declaration before the Committee to whom the petition was referred:—“That he had been manager of Sir Ashton’s collection ever since it had been brought to London in the year 1775; that it had occupied twelve years in forming; and that there were upwards of twenty-six thousand articles. That the money received for admission amounted, from February 1775 to February 1784, to about £13,000, out of which £660 had been paid for house-rent and taxes.” Sir Ashton Lever proposed that his whole museum should go together, and that there should be 40,000 tickets at one guinea each.[316]

Few people would believe that so lately as this year, the Duke of Dorset, Lord Winchilsea, Lord Talbot, Colonel Tarleton, Mr. Howe, Mr. Damer, Hon. Mr. Lennox, and the Rev. Mr. Williams played at cricket in an open field near White Conduit House.[317] Who could have conjectured that Du Val’s Lane, branching from Holloway, within memory so notoriously infested with highwaymen that few people would venture to peep into it even in mid-day, should, in 1831, be lighted with gas?[318]

In 1784, Nathaniel Hillier’s[319] collection of prints was sold by Christie: they were well selected as to impression, but much deteriorated in value by Mr. Hillier’s attachment to strong coffee, with which he had stained them. It has been acknowledged by one of the family that, what with the expense of staining, mounting, and ruling, his collection only brought them one-fifth of the cost of the prints in the first instance.

Dr. Samuel Johnson also died this year [1784]; during the time the surgeon was engaged in opening his body, Sir John Hawkins, Knight, was in the adjoining room seeing to the weighing of the Doctor’s tea-pot, in the presence of a silversmith, whom Sir John, as an executor, had called upon to purchase it.[320]

In the month of June this year, the late Atkinson Bush,[325] then of Great Ormond Street, brought to my house Mr. Parton, vestry-clerk of St. Giles’s-in-the-Fields, with a view to obtain such particulars of that parish as I was acquainted with, he being then busily engaged in collecting materials for its history. In the course of conversation, I was astonished to find that it was his intention to have a plan of the parish engraved for his work, purporting to have been taken between the years twelve and thirteen hundred, a period more than two centuries and a half earlier than Aggas’s plan of London, and from which I could not help observing that in my opinion he had most glaringly borrowed. When he assured me he had not, my request was then to know his authority for producing such a plan, but for that question he was not provided with an answer, nor did he appear to be willing to be probed by further interrogatories. To my great astonishment, when Mr. Parton’s book made its appearance, I not only found this plan professing to be between the years twelve and thirteen hundred so minutely made out, with every man’s possession in the parish most distinctly attributed, but every plot of garden so neatly delineated, with the greatest variety of parterres, walks with cut borders, as if the gardener of William III. or Queen Anne had then been living. As Mr. Parton omitted to give any authority for the introduction of so wonderfully early a piece of ichnography, I applied to several leading men in the parish of St. Giles, but could gain no intelligence whatever respecting it: so much for this plan of St. Giles’s parish, as produced by Mr. Parton.[326]

On the 7th of November of this year, aged 65, died at Rome the celebrated Angelica Kauffmann, who was appointed a member of the Royal Academy by King George III. at its foundation.[327] That she was a great favourite with the admirers of art may be inferred by the numerous engravings from her productions by Bartolozzi and the late William Wynn Ryland.[328] Her pictures are always tasteful, and often well composed, clearly and harmoniously coloured, and extremely finished with a most delicate but spirited pencil. Indeed, her talents were so approved by her brother Academicians, that those gentlemen allotted her compartments of the ceiling in their council-chamber at Somerset Place for decoration, in which most honourable and pleasing task she so well acquitted herself, that her performances are the admiration of every visitor, but more particularly those who possess the organ of colour. She etched numerous subjects; the best impressions are those before the plates were aqua-tinted.

When I was a boy, my father frequently took me to Golden Square to see her pictures, where she and her father had for many years resided in the centre house on the south side. There are several portraits of her, but none so well-looking as that painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds, of which there is an engraving by Bartolozzi.

Angelica Kauffmann was a great coquette, and pretended to be in love with several gentlemen at the same time.[329] Once she professed to be enamoured of Nathaniel Dance;[330] to the next visitor she would divulge the great secret that she was dying for Sir Joshua Reynolds. However, she was at last rightly served for her duplicity by marrying a very handsome fellow personating Count de Horn. With this alliance she was so pleased, that she made her happy conquest known to her Majesty Queen Charlotte, who was much astonished that the Count should have been so long in England without coming to Court. However, the real Count’s arrival was some time afterwards announced at Dover; and Angelica Kauffmann’s husband turned out to be no other than his valet de chambre. He was prevailed upon subsequently to accept a separate maintenance.[331] After this man’s death she married Zucchi, and settled in Rome. During her residence there, she was solicited by the artists in general, but more particularly by the English, to join them in an application to this country for permission to bring their property to England duty free; and as I possess the original letter which that lady wrote to Lord Camelford[332] upon the subject, I cannot refrain from inserting it.

This year, my laborious work, entitled Antiquities of Westminster, was delivered to its numerous and patient subscribers.[335] The following congratulatory letter is one of the many with which I have been honoured by its extensive and steady friends:—

On the first of November this year, George Dance, the Royal Academician, signed the dedication page of his first volume of portraits of eminent men drawn in pencil, with parts touched lightly with colour from life, and engraved by William Daniell, A.R.A., now a Royal Academician (he died 1837), consisting of thirty-six in number. The second volume, which also contained thirty-six in number, was published in 1814.[337]

Fuseli, when viewing several of these portraits, was heard by one of Mr. Dance’s sitters to make the following observations upon the likenesses. Of Benjamin West he said, “His eye is like a vessel in the South Sea,—I can just spy it through the telescope;” of that of Joseph Wilton the sculptor, he observed, “How simple are the thinking parts of this man’s head, and how sumptuous the manducatory;” of that of James Barry he made the following declaration, “This fellow looks like the door of his own house;” of that of Northcote he exclaimed, “By Cot, he is looking sharp for a rat;” and of that of Sir William Chambers, he observed, drawling out his words, “What a grate, heavy, humpty-dumpty, this leaden fellow is.”[338]

In this sort of wit Fuseli had a formidable force of gunnery, and his shot seldom missed its destination; however, it cannot shatter the above work, as most of the portraits are of worthies too well known even to need it necessary to engrave their names under them.

The greater portion of these likenesses are highly valuable to the illustrators of Boswell’s Life of Johnson, and, indeed, most of the modern biographical publications.

I cannot more pleasantly close this year than by inserting a copy of one of John Bannister’s bills for his Budget;[339] and as the original is now an extreme rarity, I conclude that some of those “gude folks” who witnessed the delightful humour displayed by that gifted son of Thespis, may possibly be better enabled to recollect how much they giggled twenty-three years ago.

The type of the long lines in the original bill, which is of a small folio size, being too small to be read without spectacles, I have necessarily, in some instances, been obliged to increase the number of lines in the following copy.

My reader will find by the following copy of a paper written by the Rev. Stephen Weston, B.D.,[340] and read at the Society of Antiquaries’ meeting, 25th January 1810, that the term Swan-hopping is to be considered a popular error.

“It appears in the Swan-rolls, exhibited by the Right Honourable Sir Joseph Banks, that the King’s were doubly marked, and had what was called two nicks, or notches. The term, in process of time, not being understood, a double animal was invented, unknown to the Egyptians and Greeks, with the name of the Swan with Two Necks. But this is not the only ludicrous mistake that has arisen out of the subject, since Swan-upping, or the taking up of Swans, performed annually by the Swan companies, with the Lord Mayor of London at their head, for the purpose of marking them, has been changed by an unlucky aspirate into Swan-hopping, which is not to the purpose, and perfectly unintelligible.”[341]

In the summer of this year, the Earl of Pembroke allowed me to copy a picture at Wilton, painted by the celebrated architect, Inigo Jones. It is a view of Covent Garden in its original state, when there was a tree in the middle. The skill with which he has treated the effect is admirable.

There is also, in that superb mansion, a companion picture of Lincoln’s Inn Fields by the same artist.

The political career of John Horne Tooke, Esq., is well known, and the fame of his celebrated work, entitled the Diversions of Purley, will be spoken of as long as paper lasts.

In the year 1811 a most flagrant depredation was committed in his house at Wimbledon by a collector of taxes, who daringly carried away a silver tea and sugar caddy, the value of which amounted, in weight of silver, to at least twenty times more than the sum demanded, for a tax which Mr. Tooke declared he never would pay. This gave rise to the following letter:—

As Mr. Croft and Mr. Dilke were proceeding on the Putney Road, they met the tax-collector with the tea-caddy under his arm, on his way back with the greatest possible haste to return it, with an apology to Mr. Tooke,—that being the advice of a friend. The two gentlemen returned with him, and witnessed Mr. Tooke’s kindness when the man declared he had a large family.[342]

On the 18th of March this year (1812), Mr. Tooke died, at his house at Wimbledon. He was put into a strong elm shell. The coffin was made from the heart of a solid oak, cut down for the purpose. It measured six feet one inch in length; in breadth at the shoulders, two feet two inches; the depth at the head, two feet six inches; and the depth at the feet, two feet four inches. This enormous depth of coffin was absolutely necessary, in consequence of the contraction of his body. His remains were conveyed in a hearse and six, to Ealing, in Middlesex, attended by three mourning coaches with four horses to each. It was Mr. Tooke’s wish to have been buried in his own ground; but to this the executors very properly made an objection.[343]

At the sale of the effects of the Rev. William Huntington (vulgarly called the “Coal-heaver”), which commenced on the 22nd of September, and continued for three following days, at his late residence, Hermes Hill, Pentonville, one of his steady followers purchased a barrel of ale, which had been brewed for Christmas, because he would have something to remember him by.[344]

Mr. John Nixon, of Basinghall Street, gave me the following information respecting the Beefsteak Club. Mr. Nixon, as Secretary, had possession of the original book. Lambert’s Club was first held in Covent Garden Theatre, in the upper room, called the “Thunder and Lightning;” then in one even with the two-shilling gallery; next in an apartment even with the boxes; and afterwards in a lower room, where they remained until the fire. After that time, Mr. Harris insisted upon it, as the playhouse was a new building, that the Club should not be held there. They then went to the Bedford Coffee-house next door. Upon the ceiling of the dining-room they placed Lambert’s original gridiron, which had been saved from the fire. They had a kitchen, a cook, and a wine-cellar, etc., entirely independent of the Bedford Coffee-house. When the Lyceum, in the Strand, was rebuilt, Mr. Arnold fitted up a room for the Beefsteak Club, where it remained until the late fire.

The society held at Robins’s room was called the “Ad Libitum” Society, of which Mr. Nixon had the books; but it was a totally different society, quite unconnected with the Beefsteak Club.[345]

One of the biographers of Mrs. Abington, the first actress who played the part of Lady Teazle in the School for Scandal, and so justly celebrated in characters of ladies in high life, states that she died on the 1st of March 1815, in her 84th year. Another informs us that she died on the 4th; but neither of the writers say where she died, or where she was buried; on inquiry, I found that she died at Pall Mall.[346] Of all the theatrical ungovernable ladies under Mr. Garrick’s management, Mrs. Abington, with her capriciousness, inconsistency, injustice, and unkindness, perplexed him the most. She was not unlike the miller’s mare, for ever looking for a white stone to shy at. And though no one has charged her with malignant mischief, she was never more delighted than when in a state of hostility, often arising from most trivial circumstances, discovered in mazes of her own ingenious construction.[347]

Mrs. Abington, in order to keep up her card-parties, of which she was very fond, and which were attended by many ladies of the highest rank, absented herself from her abode to live incog. For this purpose she generally took a small lodging in one of the passages leading from Stafford Row, Pimlico,[348] where plants are so placed at the windows as nearly to shut out the light, at all events, to render the apartments impervious to the inquisitive eye of such characters as Liston represented in Paul Pry. Now and then she would take the small house at the end of Mount Street, and there live with her servant in the kitchen, till it was time to reappear; and then some of her friends would compliment her on the effects of her summer’s excursion.

As Sherwin’s plate from this beautiful picture was published by the late Mr. John Thane,[352] on February 1st, 1791, and as Mrs. Abington’s letter to Mr. Webster is dated November 4th, 1794, it appears that the engraver retained it nearly four years after the plate was finished; so that, according to Mrs. Abington’s date, it must have been upwards of two years in hand.

My old friend, Mr. Thomas Thane, son of the publisher, who is now in possession of the plate, kindly gave me impressions of it in three states. The first is a great rarity: a proof before any letters, and the reduction of the plate. The second is after the sides of the plate had been reduced, with the names of the painter, engraver, and publisher, perfectly engraved, and the name of Roxalana slightly etched. The third and last state is, after the etched name Roxalana has been taken out and engraved higher in the plate, to make room for some lines of poetry.

At page 70 of the Wilmot Letters in the British Museum is the following letter, addressed by the Hon. Horace Walpole to Mrs. Abington the actress:—

Further on the same writer observes:—

As a playful relaxation from my former more serious applications, I commenced my work of the most remarkable London Beggars, with biographical sketches of each character.[357] By this publication I gained more money than by all my antiquarian labours united. Her late Majesty, Queen Charlotte, and the Princess Elizabeth, much encouraged their publicity; but I must acknowledge that my greatest success was owing to the warm and friendly exertions of the late Charles Cowper,[358] Esq., of the Albany, a gentleman whose memory must be dear to every one who had the pleasure of knowing him.

Much about this time, the Print Room of the British Museum was closed, in consequence of the death of the highly talented Mr. William Alexander, when several friends exerted their interest to procure me the situation of Keeper, an appointment which, I hope, I have held with no small benefit to that National Institution, and with credit to myself. The interest required to obtain this appointment may be conceived, when the number of candidates is considered. The following letter was written by his Grace the late Archbishop of Canterbury to one of his Grace’s relations:—

Perhaps the only gala day now which gladdens the heart of the loyal spectator, is the one afforded by Thomas Doggett, comedian, on the 1st of August, to commemorate the accession of the House of Brunswick. This scene is sure to be picturesque and cheerful, should the glorious sun, “that gems the sea, and every land that blooms,” reflect the pendent streamers of its variegated show, in the quivering eddies of Father Thames’s silver tide. At what time Mr. Thomas Doggett was born, I am ignorant. All I have been able to glean of him is, that Castle Street, Dublin, has been stated as the place of his birth; and that he had the honour of being the founder of our water games. Colley Cibber, speaking of him, says, “As an actor he was a great observer of Nature; and as a singer he had no competitor.” He was the author of the Country Wake, a comedy, and was a patentee of Drury Lane Theatre until 1712; and my friend, Mr. Thomas Gilliland,[360] in his work entitled The Dramatic Mirror, states his death to have taken place on the 22nd of September 1721.

In 1715, the year after George I. came to the throne, Doggett, to quicken the industry and raise a laudable emulation in our young men of the Thames, whereby they not only may acquire a knowledge of the river, but a skill in managing the oar with dexterity, gave an orange-coloured coat and silver badge, on which was sculptured the Hanoverian Horse, to the successful candidate of six young watermen just out of their apprenticeship, to be rowed for on the 1st of August, when the current was strongest against them, starting from the “Old Swan,” London Bridge, to the “Swan” at Chelsea. On the 1st of August 1722, the year after Doggett’s death, pursuant to the tenor of his will, the prize was first rowed for, and has been given annually ever since.[361]

This gratifying sight I have often witnessed; and the never-to-be-forgotten Charles Dibdin considered it so pleasing a subject, that in 1774 he brought out at the Haymarket Theatre a ballad opera, entitled The Waterman, or the First of August. In this piece, Tom Tug, the hero, is in love with a gardener’s daughter, before whom he sings,

Poor Tug, who considered himself slighted for another lover, whom the girl of his heart appeared to prefer, after declaring that he would go on board a man-of-war to cast away his care, sings a song, of which the following is the first verse:—

However, Tom rowed for Doggett’s Coat and Badge, which he had an eye upon, in order to obtain the girl, if possible, by his prowess. She was seated at the Swan, and admired the successful candidate before she discovered him to be her suitor Thomas, then

The part of Tom Tug was originally performed by Charles Bannister, and esteemed so great a favourite, that Mr. Garrick selected the entertainment of The Waterman, to follow the comedy of The Wonder, on the evening of his last performance on the stage.[362] Had the author of The Waterman, when composing that little entertainment, suspected that the Plague’s blood-red bills of

had been fixed upon this house, the Swan, his Muse most likely would have whispered, “You must not sadden these scenes.” Pepys, in his Diary, made the following entry:—

“April 9th, 1666.—Thinking to have been merry at Chelsey, but being come almost to the house, by coach, near the water-side, a house alone, I think the Swan, a gentleman walking by called to us to tell us that the house was shut up of the sickness.”

It is scarcely possible for any person, possessing the smallest share of common observation, to pass through ten streets in London, without noticing what is generally denominated a character, either in dress, walk, pursuits, or propensities. As even my enemies are willing to give me credit for a most respectful attention to the ladies, I hope they will not in this instance impeach my gallantry, because I place the fair sex at the head of my table of remarks, as to the eccentricity of some of their dresses. Miss Banks,[363] the sister of Sir Joseph, was looked after by the eye of astonishment wherever she went, and in whatever situation she appeared. Her dress was that of the Old School; her Barcelona quilted petticoat had a hole on either side for the convenience of rummaging two immense pockets, stuffed with books of all sizes. This petticoat was covered with a deep stomachered gown, sometimes drawn through the pocket-holes, similar to those of many of the ladies of Bunbury’s time, which he has introduced in his prints. In this dress I have frequently seen her walk, followed by a six-foot servant with a cane almost as tall as himself.

Miss Banks, for so that lady was called for many years, was frequently heard to relate the following curious anecdote of herself. After making repeated inquiries of the wall-vendors of halfpenny ballads for a particular one which she wanted, she was informed by the claret-faced woman, who strung up her stock by Middlesex Hospital-gates, that if she went to a printer in Long Lane, Smithfield, probably he might supply her Ladyship with what her Ladyship wanted. Away trudged Miss Banks through Smithfield, “all on a market-day”; but before she entered Mr. Thompson’s shop, she desired her man to wait for her at the corner, by the plumb-pudding stall. “Yes, we have it,” was the printer’s answer to the interrogative. He then gave Miss Banks what is called a book, consisting of many songs. Upon her expressing her surprise when the man returned her eightpence from her shilling, and the great quantity of songs he had given her, when she only wanted one,—“What, then!” observed the man, “are you not one of our chanters? I beg your pardon.”

It has been stated that this lady and Lady Banks, out of compliment to Sir Joseph, who had been deeply engaged in the production of wool, had their riding-habits made of his produce, in which dresses those ladies at one period upon all occasions appeared. Indeed, so delighted was Miss Banks with this overall-covering, that she actually gave the habit-maker orders for three at a time,—and they were called Hightum, Tightum, and Scrub. The first was her best, the second her second best, and the third her every-day one.

I have been informed that once, when Miss Banks and her sister-in-law visited a friend with whom they were to stay several days, on the evening of their arrival they sat down to dinner in their riding-habits. Their friend had a large party after dinner to meet them, and they entered the drawing-room in their riding-habits. On the following morning they again appeared in their riding-habits; and so on, to the astonishment of every one, till the conclusion of their visit.

Being in possession of an immense number of tradesmen’s tokens current at this time, I left them in Soho Square, with a note begging Miss Banks’s acceptance of any she might want. After a few hours, her footman’s knock at my door announced the arrival of Miss Banks, who entered the parlour holding up the front of her riding-habit with both hands, the contents of which she delivered upon the table, at the same time observing “that she considered herself extremely obliged to me for my politeness, but that, extraordinary as it might appear, out of so many hundred there was not one that she wanted.”

Although Miss Banks displayed great attention to many persons, there were others to whom she was wanting in civility. I have heard that a great genius, who had arrived a quarter of an hour before the time specified upon the card for dinner, was shown into the drawing-room, where Miss Banks was putting away what are sometimes called rattle-traps.[364] When the visitor observed, “It is a fine day, Ma’am,” she replied, “I know nothing at all about it; you must speak to my brother upon that subject when you are at dinner.” Notwithstanding the very singular appearance of Miss Banks, she was in the prime of life, a fashionable whip, and drove four-in-hand.

Mrs. Carter,[365] the translator of Epictetus, was also singular in her dress. Her upper walking-garment, in the latter part of her life, which was cut short, was more like a bed-gown than anything else. The last time I met this benevolent lady was in 1801, at Mrs. Dards’s exhibition,[366] an immense collection of artificial flowers made entirely by herself with fish-bones, the incessant labour of many years. I remember, in the course of conversation, Mrs. Dards observed, “No one can imagine the trouble I had in collecting the bones for that bunch of lilies of the valley; each cup consists of the bones which contain the brains of the turbot; and from the difficulty of matching the sizes, I never should have completed my task had it not been for the kindness of the proprietors of the London, Free-Masons’, and Crown and Anchor Taverns, who desired their waiters to save all the fish-bones for me.”

This ingenious person distributed a card embellished with flowers and insects, upon which was engraven the following advertisement:—

Mr. Jennings,[367] latterly known as Constantine Noel, barring his eccentricities, was an accomplished gentleman, a traveller of infinite taste, and one of the most liberal and entertaining companions imaginable. Mr. Noel’s figure was short, thin, and much bent by age; and he was very singular in his dress. The crown of his hat fitted his head as close as a pitch-plaster; his coat was short, of common cloth, and, like Mr. Wodhull’s, regularly buttoned up from his waist to his chin. His stockings were not striped blue and white, like those of Sir Thomas Stepney,[368] but of pepper-and-salt mixture, and of worsted. He stepped astride in consequence of the bowness of his legs, and generally attracted notice by striking his walking-stick hard on the stones with his right arm fully extended, while his left hung swinging low before him. He wore thick-sole shoes, with small buckles, and seldom showed linen beyond the depths of his stock.

My father, who knew him well, used to relate the annexed anecdote. Mr. Noel one day, when at the corner of Rathbone Place, close to Wright’s, the intelligent grocer, finding himself rather fatigued, called repeatedly to the first coachman, who, after laughing at him for some time, increased the insult by observing, “A coach, indeed! a coach! who’s to pay for it?”

“You rascal,” exclaimed Mr. Noel, clenching his stick in the position of chastisement, “why don’t you come when I call, Sir; I’ll make an example of you, I will.”

The coachman continued laughing, till a gentleman accosted Mr. Jennings thus:—“My worthy friend, what is all this about?”

The coachman was immediately curbed; and when Mr. Noel’s friend had parted with him, by shaking his hand in the coach, the coachman, touching the front of his hat, wished to know of his honour “Where to?”

“I’ll give you a pretty dance,” replied Mr. Noel; “drive me to h——, you rascal; to Whitechapel, and from thence to Hyde Park Corner. I’ll take care it shall be long enough before you get any dinner, you rascal, I will.” Then, with a nod and a smile to the assembled crowd, he declared, to their no small amusement, “I’ll punish him.”

Dr. Burges, of Mortimer Street, whose singular figure has been etched by Gillray, under which he wrote, “From Warwick Lane,” was one of the last men who wore a cocked-hat and deep ruffles. What rendered his appearance more remarkable, he walked on tiptoe.[369]

It was the regular custom of Mr. Alderman Boydell, who was a very early riser, at five o’clock, to go immediately to the pump in Ironmonger Lane. There, after placing his wig upon the ball at the top of it, he used to sluice his head with its water. This well-known and highly respected character,[370] who has done more for the British artists than all the print-publishers put together, was also one of the last men who wore the three-cornered hat commonly called “Egham, Staines, and Windsor.”

I recollect another character, a bricklayer, of the name of Pride, of Vine Street, Piccadilly, who wore the three-cornered hat commonly called “The Cumberland Cock.”[371]

In October this year the venerable Mrs. Garrick departed this life, when seated in her armchair in the front drawing-room of her house in the Adelphi. She had ordered her maid-servants to place two or three gowns upon chairs, to determine in which she would appear at Drury Lane Theatre that evening, it being a private view of Mr. Elliston’s improvements for the season. Perhaps no lady in public and private life held a more unexceptionable character. She was visited by persons of the first rank; even our late Queen Charlotte, who had honoured her with a visit at Hampton, found her peeling onions for pickling. The gracious Queen commanded a knife to be brought, saying, “I will peel some onions too.” The late King George IV. and King William IV., as well as other branches of the Royal Family, frequently honoured her with visits.

In the course of conversation with Mrs. Garrick (to whom I had been introduced by the late Dr. Burney), that lady expressed a wish to see the collection of Mr. Garrick’s portraits, which the Doctor had most industriously collected. After the honourable trustees had purchased the Doctor’s library, which contained ten folio volumes of theatrical portraits, I reminded Mrs. Garrick of her wish, in consequence of which I received the following letter:—

On the appointed morning Mrs. Garrick arrived, accompanied by Mr. Beltz. She was delighted with the portraits of Mr. Garrick, many of which were totally unknown to her. Her observations on some of them were extremely interesting, particularly that by Dance, as Richard III.[373] Of that painter she stated, that Mr. Garrick, who had been the artist’s best friend and benefactor, behaved in the most dirty manner in return; for in the course of his painting the picture Mr. Garrick had agreed to give him two hundred guineas for it. One day at Mr. Garrick’s dining-table, where Dance had always been a welcome guest, he observed that Sir Watkin Williams Wynn,[374] who had seen the picture, spontaneously offered him three hundred guineas for it. “Did you tell him it was for me?” questioned Mr. Garrick. “No, I did not.” “Then you mean to let him have it?” Garrick rejoined. “Yes, I believe I shall,” replied the painter. “However,” observed Mrs. Garrick, “my husband was very good; he bought me a most handsome looking-glass, which cost him more than the agreed price of the picture; and that was put up in the place where Dance’s picture was to have hung.” Mrs. Garrick being about to quit her seat, said she should be glad to see me at Hampton. “Madam,” said I, “you are very good; but you would oblige me exceedingly by honouring me with your signature on this day.” “What do you ask me for? I have not taken a pen in my hand for many months. Stay, let me compose myself; don’t hurry me, and I will see what I can do. Would you like it written with my spectacles on, or without?” Preferring the latter, she wrote “E. M. Garrick,” but not without some exertion.

“I suppose now, Sir, you wish to know my age. I was born at Vienna, the 29th of February, 1724, though my coachman insists upon it that I am above a hundred. I was married at the parish of St. Giles at eight o’clock in the morning, and immediately afterwards in the chapel of the Portuguese Ambassador, in South Audley Street.”

A day or two after Mrs. Garrick’s death, I went to the Adelphi, to know if a day had been fixed for the funeral. “No,” replied George Harris, one of Mrs. Garrick’s confidential servants; “but I will let you know when it is to take place. Would you like to see her? she is in her coffin.” “Yes, I should.” Upon entering the back room on the first-floor, in which Mr. Garrick died, I found the deceased’s two female servants standing by her remains. I made a drawing of her, and intended to have etched it. “Pray, do tell me,” looking at one of the maids, “why is the coffin covered with sheets?” “They are their wedding sheets, in which both Mr. and Mrs. Garrick wished to have died.” I was informed that one of these attentive women had incurred her mistress’s displeasure by kindly pouring out a cup of tea, and handing it to her in her chair. “Put it down, you hussey; do you think I cannot help myself?” She took it herself, and a short time after she had put it to her lips, died. This lady continued her practice of swearing now and then, particularly when any one attempted to impose upon her. A stonemason brought in his bill with an overcharge of sixpence more than the sum agreed upon; on which occasion he endeavoured to appease her rage by thus addressing her:—“My dear Madam, do consider”—“My dear Madam! What do you mean, you d—— fellow? Get out of the house immediately. My dear madam, indeed!!”

On the following day I received the promised letter, by the post.

On the day of the funeral, Miss Macauley,[376] the authoress, wishing to see this venerable lady interred, placed herself under my protection; but when we arrived at the Abbey, we were refused admittance by a person who observed, “If it be your wish to see the waxwork, you must come when the funeral’s over, and you will then be admitted into Poets’ Corner, by a man who is stationed at the door to receive your money.”

“Curse the waxwork!” said I; “this lady and I came to see Mrs. Garrick’s remains placed in the grave.”—“Ah, well, you can’t come in; the Dean won’t allow it.” As soon as the ceremony was over, we were admitted for sixpence at the Poets’ Corner, and there we saw the earth that surrounded the grave, and no more, as we refused to pay the demands of the showmen of the Abbey. Surely this mode of admission to see the venerable structure, and the monuments put up there at a most liberal expense by the country, as memorials of departed worth, is an abominable disgrace to the English Government.[377]

Being disappointed in a sight of the burial, I applied to my friend, the Rev. Thomas Rackett, one of Mrs. Garrick’s executors, for a list of those persons who attended the funeral.

As Mr. Garrick was married by his friend, the celebrated Dr. Francklin,[379] who at that time had a chapel in Great Queen Street, I was anxious to ascertain whether the ceremony took place there or at the parish church. I therefore applied to my friend, the Rev. Charles M’Carthy, who favoured me with the following certificate:—

In 1822, to the disgrace of the Antwerp picture collectors, notwithstanding their professed zeal for the protection of high works of art, they allowed the most precious gem, their boasted corner-stone, to be carried away from their city. However, to the great honour of Mr. Smith, the picture-dealer, it was secured for England.

This corner-stone, which had been coveted by most of the amateurs in the world, was no less a treasure than the picture known under the appellation of the “Chapeau de Paille,”[381] by Rubens, which had been in the Lunden’s, and then the Steir’s family, from the time it was sold after the painter’s death, to the 29th of July, 1822, the day on which it was brought to auction for the benefit of the last possessor’s family.

When the auctioneer ordered the doors of the case in which it was kept to be thrown open, every person took off his hat, and greeted the picture with loud and repeated cheerings. After the company had, for some time, gratified their eyes, the doors were locked and biddings commenced, the company remaining uncovered till the bidders were silent. It was then knocked down for the sum of thirty-two thousand seven hundred florins, to a foreigner displaying an orange ribbon, hired by the real purchaser, Mr. Smith, who suspected that if an Englishman had offered to bid, he would have brought down a direful opposition. When it was discovered that it was to be conveyed to England, the Antwerpers not only shed tears, but followed it to Mr. Smith’s place of residence, expressing the strongest desire to take their farewell look. Mr. Smith, not willing to risk its safety, gave a seaman five guineas to convey it on shipboard by night, and saw it safely landed on British ground.

Upon its arrival in London, King George IV. commanded a sight of it; and on the morning of Tuesday, September 3rd, Mr. Smith had it conveyed from his house in Marlborough Street, to Carlton Palace, where it was placed in the King’s dressing-room, the King keeping the key of the case, that only private friends might see it. After the expiration of a fortnight, the picture was returned; and in the month of March, 1823, it was publicly exhibited at Stanley’s rooms. The Right Hon. Sir Robert Peel became its liberal purchaser and protector. This picture is painted on oak, and has been joined at the lower part across the hands, and there is every reason for believing that Rubens painted it in the frame, as the ground was unpainted upon, within the width of the rabbit.

The popular report respecting this picture is, that it was the portrait of Elizabeth Lunden, a young woman to whom Rubens was particularly partial, who died of the small-pox, to the great grief of the painter.

In this year I find the following letter in my album:—

The following notice is written in my album this year, by Major Cartwright:—

“John Cartwright, born at Marnham, near Tuxford, in the county of Nottingham, on the 17th of September, 1740, old style, corresponding with the 28th, new style. In the year 1758 he entered the naval service, under the command of Lord Howe; was promoted to a lieutenancy in September, 1762, and continued on active service until the spring of 1771. Then retiring to recruit his health, he remained at Marnham till invited by his old Commander-in-chief, in the year 1775 or 1776; but not approving of the war with America, he declined accepting the proffered commission. About the same time he became Major of the regiment of Nottinghamshire Militia, then for the first time raised in that county, in which he served seventeen years.

“When George III. arrived at the year of the Jubilee, a naval promotion of twenty Lieutenants to the rank of Commanders, and the name of J. C. standing the twentieth on the list, he was commissioned as a Commander accordingly.

“In the year 1802 he published The Trident, a work in quarto, having for its object to promote that elevation of character which can alone preserve the vital spirit of a navy, as well as to furnish an inexhaustible patronage of the arts.

“John Cartwright, residing in Burton Crescent, 26th Jan., 1824.”

The Major died on the 23rd of September this year, at his house in Burton Crescent, at the venerable age of eighty-four.[386]

An author, in whose real character I was for many years deceived, frequently importuned me to caricature literary females. But this malicious advice, being repugnant to my feelings, I never could listen to, nor is it my intention even to make public a memory-sketch now in my possession of the adviser, when he was stooping over and pretending to kiss the putrid corpse of him a portion of whose vast property he is in possession of, and, I was going to say, happily enjoys.[387] Profoundly learned as the person above alluded to considers himself to be, the reader will, after perusing the following lines, written purposely for my album, be convinced that jealousy towards the fair sex must be that man’s master-passion.

IMPROMPTU LINES BY MISS BENGER, ON THE PAUCITY OF INFORMATION RESPECTING THE LIFE AND CHARACTER OF SHAKSPEARE.

The much-famed Cup, carved from Shakspeare’s Mulberry-tree, lined with, and standing on a base of silver, with a cover surmounted by a branch of mulberry leaves and fruit, also of silver-gilt, which was presented to Mr. Garrick on the occasion of the Jubilee at Stratford-upon-Avon, was sold by Mr. Christie on May the 5th, 1825,[389] who addressed the assembly nearly in the following words, for the recollection of which I am obliged to the memory of my worthy friend, Henry Smedley, Esq.:[390]—

After one hundred guineas had been bid, Mr. Christie added, “I was wishing that I had some of Falstaff’s sack here, with which I might fill the Cup, and pledge this company, so as to invigorate their biddings; but I think I may say now that at least there is no want of spirit among them.”

The term busby, now sometimes used when a large bushy wig is spoken of, most probably originated from the wig denominated a buzz, frizzled and bushy. At all events, we are not satisfied that the term busby could have arisen, as many persons believe, from Dr. Busby, Master of Westminster School, as all his portraits either represent him with a close cap, or with a cap and hat.[391]

During a most minute investigation of a regular series of English portraits, which I was led into by a friend, in order, if possible, to clear up this point, I was induced to look for the origin of wigs in England, and their various sorts and successions, by commencing at the time of William the Conqueror. In this search I was not able to find any representation of wigs earlier than those worn by King Charles II.[392] upon his Restoration, in proof of which I refer the reader to Faithorne’s numerous portraits of that monarch, and he will find that that sort of wig continued to be worn, with very little deviation, by succeeding kings till George II.’s time, with whom it ended. The Merry Monarch, it has been stated, followed the fashion of wearing a wig from Louis XIV.,[393] with whom that custom commenced with the kings of France. The Duke of Burgundy wore a wig.

King George III. commenced his reign with wearing his own hair dressed and powdered in the style of Woollett’s beautiful engraving of his Majesty,[394] after a picture painted by Ramsey. King George III. wore a wig, in the latter part of his reign, made from one of those worn by Mr. Duvall, one of the masons of the Board of Works, with which shape his Majesty was much pleased.

The line in Pope,

alludes to the wig carved on the monument of Sir Cloudesley Shovel in Westminster Abbey.[395]

This sort of wig, which received the appellation of “A Brown George,” was also worn by several persons of rank, particularly the late Earl of Cremorne.[396] Townsend, a Bow-street officer, condescendingly noticed by the King, thought proper to wear a wig of this kind, in which he appeared at the morning service in Westminster Abbey.

It is worthy of observation, that in the reign of King Charles II. the Lord Mayors of London followed his Majesty’s example, by wearing wigs precisely of the same make, and equal to those worn by the Royal Family, the highest courtiers, and persons of the first eminence in official capacities. Nay indeed, Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey, a wood and coal-monger, wore wigs of this shape, perhaps because he was a Justice of the Peace within the King’s Court. The same kind of wig, equally deep, but with curls rather looser and more tastefully flowing, was also worn by the following high literary characters in the reigns of Charles II., James II., William III., and Queen Anne:—Waller, Dryden, Addison, Steele, Congreve, Vanbrugh, Butler, Rowe, Prior, Wycherley, etc.[397] Of these, perhaps the two last-mentioned were the most foppish in their wigs, particularly Wycherley, from whom the sets of large and beautifully engraven combs of the finest tortoise-shell are named. With these combs (which were carried in cases in their pockets) the wearers of wigs adjusted their curls, ruffled and entangled by the wind. These combs are held as curiosities by many of our old families. The last I saw was in the possession of the friendly Dr. Meyrick, author of The History of Armour. I have somewhere read that Wycherley, who was esteemed one of the handsomest men of his day, was frequently seen standing in the pit of the theatre combing and adjusting the curls of his wig, whilst in lolling conversation with the first ladies of fashion in the boxes.[398] Most of Sir Godfrey Kneller’s portraits were painted in this flowing wig, particularly that celebrated series entitled Queen Anne’s Admirals.[399] These pictures were lately moved by command of King George IV. from Hampton Court Palace to the Nautical Gallery in Greenwich Hospital, where they are placed to the highest advantage among numerous other portraits of England’s naval victors.

The actors at this time wore immense wigs, particularly Bullock, Penkethman, etc.; Cibber’s was in moderation. It must here be observed, that I now allude to their private wigs; their state wigs were, as they are now, purposely caricatured to please the galleries.[400] I believe that the first wig worn by an English divine was that of John Wallis,[401] engraved by Burghers, and published at Oxford in the year 1699; it was profusely curled, but not so deep over the shoulders as those of statesmen.

There were many singular, and, indeed, learned characters whose wigs were peculiarly shaped, such, for instance, as that of Bubb Doddington, Lord Chesterfield, and the Duke of Newcastle. MacArdell’s print of Lord Anson, after a picture by Sir Joshua Reynolds, was, I have every reason to think, the first of the shape erroneously called the Busby. This sort, Dr. Samuel Johnson, Armstrong, Hunter, the Rev. George Whitfield, Lord Monboddo, etc., wore in their latter years.

The earliest engraved portraits of Dr. Johnson exhibit a wig with five rows of curls, commonly called “a story wig.”[402] Among the old dandies of this description of wig we may class Mr. Saunders Welch, Mr. Nollekens’ father-in-law—he had nine storeys. So was that worn by Mr. Nathaniel Hillier,[403] an extensive print-collector, as is represented in an engraved portrait of that gentleman. Dr. Goldsmith’s wig was small and remarkably slovenly, as may be seen by Bretherton’s etching. Sir Joshua’s portrait of him is without a wig. Mr. Garrick’s wigs (I mean his private ones) were three in number,—the first is engraved by Wood, published in the year 1745; the second is by Sherwin, engraved for Tom Davies; the last is from a private plate by Mrs. Solly, after a drawing by Dance. I will leave off here with the wig, and give a few instances of the tails. These perhaps originated with the Chinese, but the first specimen of a tail, which I have hitherto been able to procure, to which a date can be given, is in Sherwin’s print of Frederick, King of Prussia.[404]

The Londoners, but more particularly the inhabitants of Westminster, who had been for years accustomed to recreate within the chequered shade of Millbank’s willows, have been by degrees deprived of that pleasure, as there are now very few trees remaining, and those so scanty of foliage, by being nearly stript of their bark, that the public are no longer induced to tread their once sweetly variegated banks.[405]

Here, on many a summer’s evening, Gainsborough, accompanied by his friend Collins, amused himself by sketching docks and nettles, which afforded the Wynants and Cuyp-like effects to the foregrounds of his rich and glowing landscapes. Collins resided in Tothill Fields, and was the modeller of rustic subjects for tablets of chimneypieces in vogue about seventy years back. Most of them were taken from Æsop’s Fables, and are here and there to be met with in houses that have been suffered to remain in their original state. I recollect one, that of the “Bear and Bee-hives,” in the back drawing-room of the house formerly the mansion of the Duke of Ancaster on the western side of Lincoln’s Inn Fields.[406]

Millbank, which originally extended with its pollarded willows from Belgrave House[407] to the White Lead Mills at the corner of the lane leading to “Jenny’s Whim,” afforded similar subjects to those selected by four of the old rural painters; for instance, the boat-builders’ sheds on the bank, with their men at work on the shore, might have been chosen by Everdingen;[408] the wooden steps from the bank, the floating timber, and old men in their boats, with the Vauxhall and Battersea windmills, by Van Goyen;[409] the various colours of the tiles of the cart-sheds, entwined by the autumnal tinged vines, backed with the most prolific orchards, with the women gathering the garden produce for the ensuing day’s market, would have pleased Ruysdael;[410] and the basket-maker’s overhanging smoking hut, with a woman in her white cap and sunburnt petticoat, dipping her pail for water, might have been represented by the pencil of Dekker.[411] It was within one of the Neat House Gardens[412] near this bank that Garnerin’s kitten descended from the balloon which ascended from Vauxhall Gardens in the year 1802.[413] This descent is thus handed down in a song attributed to George Colman the younger, entitled

Most willingly would I have resigned all the pleasures I ever enjoyed, save that of my wedding-day, to have joined the throng of enthusiastics in art, who assembled at Nuremberg this year, to do homage to the memory of that morning star in art, Albert Dürer. Of the many descriptions of the proceedings upon that glorious occasion, none gave me higher delight than that of Mr. L. Schutze,[414] of Carlsruhe, an artist of very considerable abilities, who, upon my requesting him to favour me with an account, goodnaturedly complied with my wishes, but with all the diffidence of one who had not long written in the English language.

For the following dates I am indebted to Albert Dürer’s Diary, contained in the Foreign Quarterly Review for January 1833, a work replete with most interesting information. Albert Dürer was born in 1471; his father taught him the goldsmith’s craft. In 1486 he was bound for three years to Michael Wohlgemuth, an engraver on wood. He was married to Agnes, an un-lamb-like daughter of Hans Frey. He died on the 6th of April, 1528, of a decline. His wife, an avaricious shrew, “gnawed him to his very heart,—he was dried up to a faggot.”[418] Little did Albert Dürer think, particularly from the period of his unhappy marriage to the hour of his dissolution, when he was only fifty-seven years of age, that such honours would be paid to his memory.

The following letter is perhaps worth insertion here:—

The following letter is curious:—

In July, I went to Hungerford Stairs to gain what information I could respecting “Copper Holmes.” A waterman, whose face declared he had seen a few liberal days, accosted me with the usual question, “Oars, sculler?” I shook my head; but, upon a nearer approach, asked him the following question, “How long has Copper been dead?” “There sits his widow at that window mending her stockings,” said he; “we’ll go and put it to her.”

On approaching her the waterman said, “This gentleman wants to know how long Copper has been dead?” “How do you do?” said I, “your husband has often in my early days rowed me to Pepper Alley.” “He died,” said the woman (who retained enough in her care-worn features to induce me to believe she had been pretty), sticking her needle on her cap, “he died, poor fellow, on the 3rd of October, 1821, and a better man never trod shoe-leather. He was downright and honest, and what he said he would do, he did. I had been his wife two-and-twenty years; but he married me after he left the Ark. His first wife lived in the Ark with her children.” “What vessel had the Ark been?” “She had been a Westcountryman, and it cost him altogether (with her fittings-up with sheets of copper) one hundred and fifty pounds, and that gave him the name of ‘Copper Holmes.’ His Christian name was Thomas. Ay, Sir, his lawsuit with the City crippled him:[421] but I will say this for him, his Majesty had not a better subject than poor Copper.” While she uttered this declaration, both her eyes, which were seriously directed to her nose, were moistened with the tears of affectionate memory, which induced me to turn to my new acquaintance the waterman, and ask where he was buried? “In the Waterman’s churchyard, Sir, under the pump-pavement on the south side of St. Martin’s church.[422] Lord bless you! don’t you know the Waterman’s burying-ground? I could take you to the spot where fifty of us have been buried.” “What was his age?” “Sixty-six when he died.”

After parting with the widow, I requested the master of the ceremonies to allow his man to ferry me over to the King’s Head Stairs, Lambeth Marsh. “He shall,” said Charles Price; “and I’ll go with you, too.” The waggish, though youthful countenance of the lad employed to bring in our boat, revived the pleasure Mathews had afforded me in his description of Joe Hatch,[423] and induced me to inquire after the waterman whose look, voice, and manner he had borrowed for that inimitable representation. “George Heath, you mean, Sir,” answered the boy; “Of Strand Lane,” observed Price; “Heath is his real name. Lord bless ye, he’s a good-hearted fellow! Why, I have often known him put his hand in his pocket and relieve a fellow-creature in distress.”

This mention of Hatch induced me to question Price as to the Halfpenny Hatch,[424] where Astley had first rode,[425] before he took the ground at the foot of Westminster Bridge, on which the present Amphitheatre stands. Before Price could answer, as we had made the shore, “You will find the Halfpenny Hatch (for it still remains, though in a very ramshackled state) at the back of St. John’s Church, Waterloo Road, at the end of Neptune Place,” I was told upon my landing by a little chubby, shining, red-faced woman, in what was formerly called a mob-cap. Thither I went, and to my great surprise found the Halfpenny Hatch in a dell, by reason of the earth being raised for the pavement of the adjacent streets.[426] Field was the name of the person who occupied the house; and, only a few years ago, money was received for the accommodation of the public who chose to go through the hatch. It was built subsequent to the year 1771, by Curtis, the famous botanist,[427] whose name it still retains; but the original Hatch-house, Mrs. Field informed me, was still standing at the back of the present one.

The ground belonging to the Halfpenny Hatch was freehold, of about seven acres, and sold by the Curtis family to Messrs. Basing, Atkins, and Field, for the sum of £3500. They disposed of it in about six months afterwards to Mr. Roupell, the present owner, for the sum of £8000.[428] Being determined to take a sketch of the remains of this vine-mantled Halfpenny Hatch, I took water at Strand Lane Stairs[429] on the following evening, where I found George Heath busily engaged in his boat. Upon seeing a poor chimney-sweeper who descended the steps with me, he stood up and cried out, “I tell you what, Sir Cloudesley Shovel, although you are a miller, depend upon it, I’ll dust your jacket for the injury you have done my vessel.” A ferryman observed, “His wife was gone to take a walk up Highgate Hill.” “A strainer,” observed George Heath. During the time occupied in sketching, William Field, who lives in the Hatch, pointed out part of the gate which had received a bullet, supposed to have been aimed by some scoundrel at the elder Mr. Curtis, who providentially escaped, though the ball, which came from a considerable distance, passed only a few inches above his head.

On the 25th of July, 1829, being on my way to the great Sanctuary, my pleasure was inconceivable upon observing that the intended repairs of Whitehall Chapel had commenced. The scaffolding was erected before its street-front, and the masons had begun their restorations at the south corner, strictly according with the fast decaying original.[430] “Well,” said I to my respected friend, Mr. Henry Smedley, whose house I had entered just as the chimes of the venerable Abbey and St. Margaret’s had agreed to complete their quarters for nine, “I am delighted to find that Inigo’s beautiful front of Whitehall is in so fair a way of recovery.”[431]

Bonington’s drawings, held at a respectful distance from the butter-dish, were the next topic of conversation.[432] “I agree with you,” observed my friend, “they are invaluable; even his slightest pencil-touches are treasures. I have shown you the studies from the figures which surround Lord Norris’s monument in the Abbey; have they not all the spirit of Vandyke?[433] Ay, that drawing of the old buildings seems to be your favourite; what a snug effect, and how sweetly it is coloured!—there never was a sale of modern art so well attended.”

After taking boat at the Horse Ferry for Vauxhall,—for the reader must be informed that Mr. Smedley and myself had an engagement to pass the day with Mr. William Esdaile, on Clapham Common,[434]—I asked the waterman some questions as to “Copper Holmes.” He could not speak correctly as to the time of his death, but said that he had been much reduced by the lawsuit he had with the City about his barge. “Yes, that I know,” said I; “and it certainly was a nuisance on the banks of the Thames, and also an encroachment upon the City’s rights and privileges.”

On arriving at Mr. Esdaile’s gate, Mr. Smedley remarked that this was one of the few commons near London which had not been enclosed.[435] The house had one of those plain fronts which indicated little, but upon ascending the steps I was struck with a similar sensation to those of the previous season, when first I entered this hospitable mansion. If I were to suffer myself to utter anything like an ungrateful remark, it would be that the visitor, immediately he enters the hall, is presented with too much at once, for he knows not which to admire first, the choice display of pictures which decorate the hall, or the equally artful and delightful manner in which the park-like grounds so luxuriantly burst upon his sight. Mr. Esdaile entered the library during our admiration of its taste of design and truly pleasing effect.

The walls are painted with a subdued red, a colour considered by most artists best calculated to relieve pictures, particularly those with broad gold frames. The first picture which attracted our notice was the upper one of two upon the easel nearest the window. The subject is a Virgin and Child, attributed to Albert Dürer, though I must own the style is so elegantly sweet, with so little of the German manner, that I should have considered it the work of a high Italian master. The upper one of the two pictures on the correspondent easel near the bookcase, is from the exquisite pencil of Adrian Ostade; it was the property of Monsieur de Calonne,[436] at whose auction Mr. Esdaile purchased it when he became a collector of pictures.

It would be highly presumptuous in me to attempt to describe the pictures from so cursory a view. Suffice it to say, they are chiefly of the first class; and I cannot charge the possessor with an indifferent specimen. Wilson and Gainsborough were honoured with two of the best places in this room, which commands a most beautiful view of the grounds. In passing to the best staircase, our eyes were attracted by the works of Rubens, Ruysdael, Salvator Rosa, etc. I was highly gratified with the standing of the colours of one of the rich landscapes from the easel of my old and worthy friend, George Arnald, A.R.A. This picture was originally purchased by my revered patron, Richard Wyatt, of Milton Place, Egham, at whose sale Mr. Esdaile bought it. Two sumptuously rich and large dishes of Oriental china, with their stands, occupy the corners of the staircase, which leads to several chambers; the walls of the left-hand one of which are adorned with drawings, framed and glazed, by Cipriani and Bartolozzi; but more particularly with several architectural ruins by Clerisseau, in his finest manner. On the north side of this room stands a magnificent japan glazed case, which contains specimens of the Raphael ware and Oriental porcelain, with two richly adorned alcoves, with figures of Gibbon the historian, and his niece, manufactured at Dresden.

In Mr. Esdaile’s bedroom are other specimens of curious porcelain, of egg-shell plates, cups and covers of the dragon with five claws, and two exquisite black and mother-o’-pearl flower-pots, from the collection of the Duchess-Dowager of Portland. On the top of a curiously wrought cabinet, in the drawing-room below stairs, stand three dark rich blue vases of Sèvres, and two vases of deep blue, embossed with gold leaves, from the Chelsea manufactory. These articles, with a curious figure of Harlequin set in precious stones, the body of which is formed of an immense pearl, were purchased by Mr. Esdaile at the sale of her late gracious Majesty Queen Charlotte. The lower parts of the japan case in the upper room are filled with drawings; so are two other cases which stand on the western side of the room, made purposely for their reception.

The first drawings of our repast this day (for it would take twenty to see the whole) were those by the inimitable hand of Rembrandt, many of which were remarkably fine, one particularly so, of a man seated on a stile near some trees, which appear to have been miserably affected by a recent storm. This drawing is slight, and similar in manner to the artist’s etching, called by some collectors the “Mustard Print.” One of the drawings with landscapes on both sides is remarkably curious, as they are drawn with what is called “the Metallic Pen”; it is certainly the first specimen of the kind I have seen. The Ostade drawings were our next treat, two of which the artist etched; one is the long print of a merry-making on the outside of an alehouse, penned and washed; the other is of the backgammon-players, completely finished in water-colours. At this time the servant announced nooning; after which Mr. Smedley requested to see Hogarth’s prints, in order to report to Mr. Standly[437] the rarities in Mr. Esdaile’s collection. In this, however, we were disappointed, as it did not contain any which that gentleman did not possess.

On our return to Mr. Esdaile’s room, we were indulged with several of Hogarth’s drawings. A volume containing numerous drawings by Wilson was then placed on the table. “Bless me,” said I, “here is the portrait of my great-uncle, Tom of Ten Thousand.”[438] This is the identical drawing thus described by Edwards:—“It may, however, be asserted, that he drew a head equal to any of the portrait-painters of his time. A specimen of which may be seen by a drawing, now in the possession of J. Richards, Esq., R.A.,[439] which is the portrait of Admiral Smith, and which was drawn before Wilson went abroad. It is executed in black and white chalk, as large as life, upon brown French paper, and is treated in a bold, masterly manner; but this is not a work which can authorise the critic to consider him as superior to the other portrait-painters of his day.”[440]

This drawing was made by Wilson, before he commenced the picture which I am now in possession of, so well engraved in mezzotinto by Faber. Of these inestimable drawings, which are mostly in black chalk, stumped, perhaps the most interesting are those for Celadon and Amelia, and the Niobe. Valuable and truly epic as these specimens certainly are, I must say, for my own part, I should give the preference to the book containing those by Gainsborough, of rustic scenery. I had seen many of them before, in the possession of the artist, Colonel Hamilton, Mr. Nassau, and Mr. Lambert. Two that were possessed by the latter, are stamped with Gainsborough’s initials in gold.

Dr. Richardson,[441] Mr. Esdaile’s son-in-law, having arrived, and dinner being announced, we gave up these fascinating sources of pleasure, for that which would enable us to enjoy them another day.

The Doctor, with his accustomed elegance of manners, delighted us during our repast with some most interesting observations made during his travels; after which, Flora invited us to the garden, where Mr. Esdaile had, with his usual liberality, allowed her to display some of her most rare as well as picturesque sweets. On our return from the enchanting circuit of the grounds, our general conversation was on the pleasures we had received; and, indeed, so delighted were we with the entertainment of the day, that we talked of little else till our arrival at Westminster Bridge.

Beautiful and truly valuable as Mr. Esdaile’s drawings unquestionably are, it would not only be considered an impeachment upon my judgment, but a conviction of the deepest injustice towards that wonderful collection so classically formed by Sir Thomas Lawrence, were I not unequivocally to state, that this latter is by far the most choice, as well as extensive, of any I have yet seen or heard of, and perhaps it may be stated with equal truth, ever formed. What catalogue can boast so formidably of Michael Angelo, Raphael, Claude, Rubens, and Rembrandt?[442] Surely none; for I have seen those of Sir Peter Lely, the Duke of Argyle, and Hudson,[443] at the last of whose sales the immortal Sir Joshua employed me as one of his bidders, his pupil Mr. Score[444] was another. It would be assuming too much, to attempt a description of the individual and high importance of the productions of all the four above-mentioned masters, possessed by the liberal President.

As prospective pleasures are seldom realised, a truth many of my readers must acknowledge, and being determined never to colour a picture at once, but to await the natural course of events,[445] I on the 3rd of August started with my wife for Hampton Court, not only to see the present state of that palace, but to notice the sort of porcelain remaining there, without fixing upon any further plan for the completion of the day’s amusement.

King William III., who took every opportunity of rendering these apartments as pleasing to him as those he had left in the house in the Wood, introduced nothing by way of porcelain, beyond that of delf, and on that ware, in many instances, his Majesty had W. R., surmounted by the crown of England, painted on the fronts. Of the various specimens of this clumsy blue and white delf, displayed in the numerous rooms of this once magnificent palace, the pride of Wolsey and splendour of Henry VIII., the eight large pots for the reception of King William III.’s orange-trees, now standing in her Majesty’s gallery, certainly have claims to future protection. As for the old and ragged bed-furniture, it is so disgraceful to a palace, that, antiquary as I in some degree consider myself, I most heartily wish it in Petticoat Lane. In passing through the rooms, I missed the fine whole-length picture of Admiral Nottingham,[446] and also the thirty-four portraits of the Admirals. The guide informed me that they were presented by our present King, William IV., to the Painted Hall at Greenwich. “A noble gift,” said I, “but where can they put them up?” In order to take some refreshment, we entered the parlour of the “Canteen,” that being the sign of the suttling-house of the Palace. During our stay, Legat’s[447] fine engraving from Northcote’s forcibly effective picture of the “Death of the Princes in the Tower,” which honoured the room, caught the attention of one of two other visitors to the Palace. “Bless me,” said he, “are those brutes going to smother those sweet babes? Why, they are as beautiful as the Lichfield children.”[448] The observation was not made to me, and as the subject has been too often mentioned, I shall forbear saying more about it.

As my wife and I were strolling on, in order to secure places for our return to London in the evening, I ventured to pull the bell at Garrick’s Villa, and asked for permission to see the temple in which Roubiliac’s figure of Shakspeare had originally been placed.[449] Mr. Carr, the present proprietor of the estate, received us with the greatest politeness. Upon expressing a hope that my love for the fine arts would plead my apology for the intrusion, he assured me it would afford him no small pleasure to walk with us to the lawn. “Do sit down, for a tremendous storm appears to be coming on; we must wait a little.” His lady, of most elegant manners, at this moment entered the room and cordially joined in her husband’s wishes to gratify our curiosity, observing that, if we pleased, she would show us the house. This offer was made in so delightful a manner, that we were truly sensible of the indulgence.

Upon returning to a small room which we had passed through from the hall, “Ah! ah!” said I, “you are curious in porcelain, I see,—the crackle. What fine Dresden! I declare here is a figure of Kitty Clive, as the Fine Lady in Lethe, from the Chelsea manufactory.”[450] There is an engraving of this by Moseley, with the landscape background etched by Gainsborough. This figure of Mrs. Clive, which was something less than a foot in height, was perfectly white, and one of a set of celebrated characters, viz., John Wilkes; David Garrick, in Richard the Third; Quin, in Falstaff; Woodward, in the Fine Gentleman; the Duke of Cumberland, etc. Most of these were characteristically coloured, and are now and then to be met with.[451]

“How you enjoy these things!” observed Mrs. Carr. “This is the drawing-room; the decorated paper is just as it was in Mr. Garrick’s time; indeed, we have had nothing altered in the house. I never enter this room without regretting the enormous expense we were obliged to incur, in taking down a great portion of the roof, owing to a very great neglect in the repairs of the house during Mrs. Garrick’s time. Fortunately it was discovered just as we took possession of the premises, or the consequences might have been fatal.” “Your grounds are beautiful,” observed my wife. “Yes,” said Mrs. Carr, “and several of the trees were planted by Mrs. Garrick; that mulberry-tree was a sucker from Shakspeare’s tree at Stratford; that tulip-tree was one of her planting, and so was the cedar. Now you shall see our best bed-room.” The end of this room which contains the bed is divided from the larger portion by a curtain suspended across the ceiling, which gives it the appearance of a distinct drawing-room, for the comfort of a visitor, if indisposed. “We will now go to Mr. and Mrs. Garrick’s bed-room.” Notwithstanding the lowness of the ceiling, the room still carries an air of great comfort. Here we were again gratified with a display of some choice specimens of Oriental porcelain.

We then descended to the dining-room, in which were portraits of the Tracy family. On one side of the chimneypiece hangs a half-length picture of Mrs. Garrick, holding a mask in her right hand. This was painted by Zoffany,[452] before her marriage, who was one of her admirers; over the sideboard hangs a portrait of Tom Davies, the author of the Life of Garrick, who had been his steadfast friend.[453] We then returned to the bow-room, in which we were first received; from thence we entered the library, and were then shown Mr. Garrick’s dressing-table. On our return to the bow-room, I asked Mr. Carr in what part of the house Hogarth’s Election pictures had hung. “In this,” said he; “one on either side of the fireplace.”[454]

The rain still continuing, our amiable shelterers insisted on our staying dinner, as it was impossible to see the Temple in such a storm. We accepted this hospitable invitation; and in the course of conversation Mrs. Carr assured us that we were not only seated upon the sofa frequently occupied by Dr. Johnson, but also the identical cover. “Now, Mrs. Smith, I will show you my Garrick jewels, which Mr. Carr, in consequence of a disappointment I received, by their not being left to me by will, according to Mrs. Garrick’s repeated promises, most liberally purchased for me at the price fixed upon them by Messrs. Rundell and Bridge; for I must inform you that the intimacy of my family with Mrs. Garrick was of thirty years’ standing, and that lady and I were inseparable.” The first treasure produced was a miniature of Mr. Garrick, set in brilliants; the second, a rich bracelet of pearls, containing the hair of Mr. and Mrs. Garrick. Mrs. Carr politely presented my wife and myself with impressions of a profile of Mr. Garrick, contemplating the features of Shakspeare.

After dinner was announced, and in the course of taking our wine, I thanked our worthy hosts for their hospitality. “This house,” said Mr. Carr, “was ever famous for it. Dr. Johnson has frequently knocked up Mr. and Mrs. Garrick at a very late hour, and would never go to bed without a supper.”[455] I asked his opinion as to the truth of the anecdote related by Lee Lewis concerning Mrs. Garrick’s marriage. “There certainly is,” he replied, “a mystery as to who her father was.” Mrs. Carr observed that, after Mrs. Garrick had read Lewis’s assertions, she, with her usual vivacity, exclaimed, “He is a great liar; Lord Burlington was not my father, but I am of noble birth.”

“Is it true,” I asked, “that Lord Burlington gave Mr. Garrick £10,000 to marry her?”

“No, nor did Mrs. Garrick ever receive a sum of money from Lord Burlington: she had only the interest of £6000, and that she was paid by the late Duke of Devonshire.”[456]

The rain now subsided; and as we passed through the passage cut under the road, Mrs. Carr stopped where Mrs. Garrick had frequently stood, while she related the following anecdote. ‘Capability Brown,’[457] was consulted as to the communication of these grounds with those by the water. Mr. Garrick had an idea of having a bridge to pass over the road, similar to the one at Pain’s Hill;[458] but this was objected to by Capability Brown, who proposed to have a tunnel cut. Mr. Garrick at first did not like that idea; but Dr. Johnson observed, “David! David! what can’t be over-done may be under-done.”[459]

As we entered the Temple, instead of seeing a vacant recess, we were agreeably surprised to find that the present owner had occupied it by a cast of Roubiliac’s statue of Shakspeare, most carefully taken by Mr. Garrard,[460] similar to the one with which he furnished the late Mr. Whitbread for the hall of Drury Lane Theatre. On our return to the villa, we were shown a small statue of Mr. Garrick, in the character of Roscius; but by whom it was modelled I was not able to learn. The following inscription was placed under the plinth:—“This figure of Garrick was given to Mr. Garrard, A.R.A., by his widow, and is now respectfully presented to Mrs. Carr, to be placed in Garrick’s Villa, July 14, 1825.”

In the bow-room, in which we again were seated, is a portrait of Mr. Hanbury Williams, and also two drawings of Mr. and Mrs. Garrick, by Dance, of which there are lithographic engravings by Mrs. Solly, the daughter of the Rev. Mr. Racket, with impressions of which that lady honoured me for my wife’s illustrated copy of the Life of Dr. Johnson. Mrs. Solly also favoured me with a sight of a pair of elegant garnet bracelets, which had been left to her by Mrs. Garrick. The bell, Nollekens’s old friend, announced the arrival of the stage, and we took our departure.

On the following morning, taking advantage of the Museum vacation allowed to officers of that establishment, and feeling an inquisitive inclination to know in what way the portraits of the admirals had been disposed of in Greenwich Hospital, I went thither, where I found a display of great taste in the distribution of the pictures which adorn the Painted Hall of that national and glorious institution. Many of my readers will recollect that in second editions of works errors are usually corrected. Such, I understand, has been the case in the hanging of the pictures in this splendid gallery; for, in the first instance, numerous small and also indifferent subjects were hung at the top of the room, and the spectator was told that this arrangement was merely to produce uniformity, until a period arrived when larger and better productions could occupy their places. The liberality of King William IV., who gave no fewer than fifty-five pictures, in addition to the very valuable presents made by the Governors of the British Institution, enabled Mr. Seguier, keeper of the royal collection, to display his best taste in the re-arrangement.

All the small pictures have been taken away, and a most judicious display of whole-length portraits, the size of life, occupy their spaces. Modern artists must not only be pleased with the truly liberal manner in which their works are here exhibited, but will rejoice in having an opportunity of retouching and improving their pictures, from the manner in which the light falls upon them—an advantage always embraced in large edifices by the old masters, but perhaps more particularly by Rubens, who, it is well known, worked upon his performances after they had been elevated to their respective destinations. I must own, without a wish to cast the least reflection upon the works of other modern artists displayed in this gallery, that the noble picture of the Battle of Trafalgar, painted by Arnald, the Associate of the Royal Academy, at the expense of the Governors of the British Institution, at present arrests most powerfully the attention.

As I was admiring the dignity of the Hampton Court admirals, who never appeared to such advantage, a well-known voice whispered over my shoulder, “You are not aware, perhaps, that Vandevelde painted the sea-distances in those pictures?” “No,” answered I; “that is a very interesting fact;” adding that “I could not believe Kneller to have been the painter of all the heads.” Mr. Seguier rejoined, “Dahl, in my opinion, painted some of them.”[461] In the course of conversation he gave me no small pleasure by observing that he had read my work of Nollekens and his Times.—“I can answer as to the truth of nine-tenths of what you have asserted,” said he, “having known the parties well.”

Upon leaving this interesting gallery, a pleasing thought struck me, that if a volume of naval history, commencing with the early ballads in the Pepysian Library, and ending with the delightful compositions of Dibdin, were printed, and given to every collier’s apprentice as a reward for his good behaviour, it might create in him that spirit of emulation which, when drafted from his vessel, would induce him to defend the long-famed wooden walls of Old England most undauntedly. Humble as the versification of these our old ballads may justly be considered, yet I have frequently seen the tear of gratitude follow the melody of Incledon while singing the song of “Admiral Benbow.”[462]

“What, upon the old trot, Master?” observed a funny-mover,[463] as I descended the rotten old stairs of Hungerford Market. “Will you make one with us? I know you don’t mind where you steer.” We had hardly made Chelsea Reach, when one of our crew noticed a foundered freshman, who had most ingeniously piloted himself into a cluster of osiers, in order to adjust his cravat, as a lady in our boat was to meet him that evening in Vauxhall Gardens. Our steersman, who was fond of a bit of fun, thus assailed him, “I say, Maty, why you’re water-logged there; you put me in mind of the Methodist parson who ran adrift last Saturday nearly in the same place: he made a pretty good thing of it.” “Ay,” observed a dry old fresh-water passenger in our boat, “I saw the fellow; and when the Battersea gardeners[464] quizzed him, he attempted to stand up like a poplar; but the wind operating upon his head, it hung like a bulrush. However, when he was seated, instead of advising them to make ready for simpling-time, or bespattering them with low language, he exercised his pulpit volubility in favour of vegetables, declaring that for years he had lived upon them, and insisted that every young person of every climate should eat nothing else, strengthening this opinion with the following quotation from Jeremy Taylor, who declared that ‘a dish of lettuce and a clear fountain would cool all his heats.’ After this he most strenuously advised them to ask more money for their pecked fruit than they had been accustomed to receive, observing, that they should keep Shakspeare’s caution in mind, ‘Beware all fruit but what the birds have pecked.’[465] At the close of his address, a descendant of old Mother Bagley, called ‘The King of Spades,’ proposed to his men not only to join him in all their coppers, but to fresh-water the poor fellow’s boat, for which he thanked them, and declared that he was almost ready to float in his own perspiration; but that he, like Sterne’s[466] ‘Starling,’ could not get out. The Mortlake boys soon gave him three cheers, and away he scuttled like an eel towards Limehouse Hole, sticking as close to his boat as a toad to the head of a carp.”

At this the lady simpered. “Bless your heart, fair one,” observed the narrator, addressing the lady who was destined for Vauxhall Gardens, “you never saw such a skeleton as this vegetable-eater. As for his complexion, it was for all the world like—what shall I say?”

“Perhaps a Queen Anne’s guinea,” observed our waterman, “that they used to let into the bottom of punch-ladles”—many of which were frequently to be seen in the pawnbrokers’ windows in Wapping.

“As for his voice during his preaching,” rejoined our entertaining companion, “no lamb’s could be more innocent.”

As we were tacking about, the wind standing fair to drop the lady at Vauxhall-stairs, our old weathergage, the waterman, who reminded me of Copper Holmes, thus addressed a lopped Chelsea Pensioner:—“I say, old Granby,[467] people say that he who loves fighting is much more the sexton’s friend than his own.” “Ay, Master Smelter,” answered the corporal, “we are all alive here, and, like the Greenwich boys, willing to fight again; Old England for ever!”

I then requested the waterman to put me on shore, in order to visit Chelsea College, purposely to see what had been done with my friend Ward’s allegorical picture of the Triumph of the Duke of Wellington. The Right Hon. Noblemen and Gentlemen, Governors of the British Institution, wishing to perpetuate the memory of the noble victory on the plains of Waterloo, they, with their accustomed liberality to the fine arts, commissioned James Ward, Esq., R.A., to paint an allegorical picture worthy a place in the Hall of that glorious establishment, Chelsea Hospital. Having heard that Mr. Ward’s picture had been hung up, I went thither, but, to my utter astonishment, found it not only suspended without a frame (just as a showman in a fair would put out his large canvas to display “the true and lively portraiture” of a giant, the Pig-faced Lady, or the Fire-eater), but with its lower part projecting over a gallery, just like the lid of a kitchen salt-box; so that the upper and greater half, being on an inclined plane, had copiously received the dust, and doubtless, if it be allowed to accumulate, the Duke’s scarlet coat will undergo a brick-dust change, and his cream-coloured horses become the dirtiest of all the drabs.

If this picture be considered worth preserving, why expose it so shamefully to injury by suffering it to hang as it does? If, on the contrary, why not at once consign it to the waters of oblivion, by casting it into Chelsea Reach? Mr. Ward’s superior talents have been in numerous instances acknowledged by some of the best judges.

Descending Villiers Street on one of my peregrination mornings, a tremendous storm obliged me to request shelter of Mrs. Scott, the wife of the present keeper of York Terrace, and successor of Hugh Hewson, a man who declared himself to be the genuine character famed by Dr. Smollett in The Adventures of Roderick Random, under the appellation of Hugh Strap.[468] Here I met with a young man whose father had attended Hewson’s funeral, who informed me that Hugh had been frequently known to amuse the ambulators of that walk by recapitulating the enterprising events which had taken place during his travels with the Doctor. Hugh, who had for years followed the trade of a hairdresser, was buried in St. Martin’s-in-the-Fields, and his funeral was attended by three generations.

On my way towards Hungerford Stairs, my organ of inquisitiveness was arrested by two carvings in stone, of a wheatsheaf and sickles, let into either side of the north-end houses in the alley leading to the “The Swan.” A waterman informed me that the south portion of Hungerford Market was originally allotted for the sale of corn, but I have since learned that that device is the crest of the Hungerford family. “Pray now,” said I to my oracle, “do enumerate the signs of Swans remaining on the banks of the Thames, between London and Battersea Bridges.” “Why, let me see, Master, there’s the Old Swan at London Bridge, that’s one;—there’s the Swan in Arundel Street, two;—then ours here, three;—the Swan at Lambeth, that’s down, though;—well then, the Old Swan at Chelsea, but that has long been turned into a brewhouse, though that was where our people rowed to formerly, as mentioned in Doggett’s Will; now they row to the sign of the New Swan beyond the Physic Garden; we’ll say that’s four;—then there’s the two Swan signs at Battersea, six.”[469]

Next evening, away I trudged to take water with George Heath (Mathews’s Joe Hatch) at Strand Lane. “I find the Swan to be your usual sign up the river,” said I.

“Why, yes,” replied George; “I don’t know what a coach, or a waggon and horses, or the high-mettled racer have to do with our river. Bells now, bells, we might have bells, because the Thames is so famous for bells.” Bless me, thought I, how delighted would my old friend Nollekens have been, had he heard this remark!

“You like bells, then, Master Heath?”

“Oh yes! I was a famous ringer in my youth, at St. Mary Overies. They are beautiful bells; but of all the bells give me Fulham; oh, they are so soft, so sweet![470] St. Margaret’s are fine bells; so are St. Martin’s; but after all, Fulham for my money, I say. I forget where you said I was to take you to, Master?”

“Row me to Hungerford,” said I.

Here I alighted, and then went round to Wood’s coal-wharf, at the foot of Northumberland Street,[471] where the said Mr. Wood dwells in the very house in which Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey resided, who was strangled in Somerset House.[472] Sir Edmund Berry was a woodmonger, and became the court justice. In this appointment he was so active, that during the time of the Great Plague, 1665, which continued to rage in 1666, upon the refusal of his men to enter a pest-house, to bring out a culprit who had furnished a thousand shops with at least a thousand winding-sheets stolen from the dead, he ventured in alone, and brought the wretch to justice. In Evelyn’s interesting work on medals, the reader will find that four were struck, commemorative of Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey’s death; and in addition to the elaborately engraved portraits noticed by Granger, he will also find an original picture of him in the waiting-room adjoining the vestry of St. Martin’s-in-the-Fields, where he was interred, and his funeral sermon preached by Dr. Lloyd.[473]

In a little work published in 1658, entitled The Two Grand Ingrossers of Coals, viz. the Woodmonger and the Chandler,[474] the reader will find the subtle practices of the coal-vendors shortly after that article was in pretty general use.

It is curious to observe how fond Horace Walpole, and indeed all his followers, have been of attributing the earliest encouragement of the fine arts in England to King Charles I. That is not the fact; nor is that Monarch entitled, munificent as he was, to that degree of praise which biographers have thought proper to attribute to him as a liberal patron; and this I shall immediately prove. King Henry VIII. was the first English Sovereign who encouraged painting, in consequence of Erasmus introducing Hans Holbein to Sir Thomas More, who showed his Majesty specimens of that artist’s rare productions. Upon this the king most liberally invited him to Whitehall, where he gave him extensive employment, not only in decorating the panels and walls of that palace with portraits of the Tudors, as large as life, but with easel pictures of the various branches of his family and courtiers, to be placed over doors and other spaces of the state chambers.

Holbein may be recorded as the earliest painter of portraits in miniature, which were mostly circular, and all those which I have seen were relieved by blue backgrounds. He was also the designer and draughtsman of numerous subjects for the use of the court jewellers, as may be seen in a most curious volume preserved in the print-room of the British Museum, many of which are beautifully coloured. Holbein must have been a most indefatigable artist, for he was not only employed to paint that fine picture of King Henry granting the charter to the Barber-Surgeons,[475] now to be seen in Barbers’ Hall, Monkwell Street,[476] that in Bridewell of King Edward VI. granting the charter to the citizens of London,[477] but numerous portraits for the Howards, and other noble families; indeed, the quantity of engravings from the burin of Hollar and other artists, from Holbein’s works, prove that painter to have been just as extensively employed as Vandyke.

King Charles I., it is stated, became possessed of numerous portraits drawn by Holbein, of several personages of the crown and court of King Henry VIII., from characters high in office, to Mother Jack,[478], considered to have been the nickname of Mrs. Jackson, the nurse of Prince Edward. These interesting drawings, it is said, the King parted with for a picture; but how they again became the property of the Crown, I am uninformed. However, true it is that they were discovered in Kensington Palace, and taken from their frames and bound in two volumes. During Mr. Dalton’s[479] librarianship he etched many of them in his coarse and hurried manner. Since then Mr. Chamberlaine,[480] his successor, employed Mr. Metz[481] to engrave one or two as specimens of an intended work, but Mr. Bartolozzi’s manner being considered more likely to sell, that artist was engaged to produce the present plates, which certainly are far from being facsimiles of Holbein’s drawings, which I have seen. Many of this master’s invaluable pictures are engraved and published in the work entitled Portraits of Illustrious Personages of Great Britain; accompanied by the biographical lucubrations of Edmund Lodge, Esq.[482]

The liberality of the brothers Paul and Thomas Sandby, Royal Academicians, will be remembered by every person who had the pleasure of being acquainted with them; but more particularly by those who benefited by their disinterested communications and cheering encouragement in their art. For my own part, I shall ever consider myself indebted to them for a knowledge of lineal perspective. By their indefatigable industry, the architecture of many of the ancient seats of our nobility and gentry will be perpetuated; and I may say, but for the very accurate and elaborate drawings taken by Paul from Old Somerset House gardens, exhibiting views up and down the river, much of the Thames scenery must have been lost.[483] The view up the river exhibits the landing-stairs of Cuper’s Gardens, and that part of the old palace of Whitehall then inhabited by the Duchess of Portland, upon the site of which the houses of that patron of the arts, Lord Farnborough,[484] and other noblemen and gentlemen, have recently been erected. The one down the river displays an uninterrupted view of the buildings on either side to London Bridge, upon which the houses are seen, by reason of Blackfriars Bridge not then being erected. These drawings are in water-colours, and are preserved in the thirteenth volume of Pennant’s interesting account of London, magnificently illustrated, and bequeathed to the print-room of the British Museum by the late John Charles Crowle, Esq.[485]

Should my reader’s boat ever stop at York Watergate,[486] let me request him to look up at the three upper balconied windows of that mass of building on the south-west corner of Buckingham Street. Those, and the two adjoining Westminster, give light to chambers occupied by that truly epic historical painter, and most excellent man, Etty, the Royal Academician, who has fitted up the balconied room with engravings after pictures of the three great masters, Raphael, Nicholas Poussin, and Rubens.

The other two windows illumine his painting-room, in which his mind and colours resplendently shine, even in the face of one of the grandest scenes in Nature, our river Thames and city edifices, with a most luxuriant and extensive face of a distant country, the beauties of which he most liberally delights in showing to his friends from the leads of his apartments, which, in my opinion, exhibit the finest point of view of all others for a panorama. The rooms immediately below Mr. Etty’s[487] are occupied by Mr. Lloyd, a gentleman whose general knowledge in the graphic art, I and many more look up to with the profoundest respect. The chambers beneath Mr. Lloyd’s are inhabited by Mr. Stanfield,[488] the landscape-painter, whose clear representations of Nature’s tones have raised the scenic decorations of Drury Lane Theatre to that pinnacle of excellence never until his time attained, notwithstanding the productions of Lambert, Richards, nay, even Loutherbourg. Mr. Stanfield’s easel pictures adorn the cabinets of some of our first collectors, and are, like those of Callcott, Constable, Turner, Collins, and Arnald, much admired by the now numerous publishers of little works, who unquestionably produce specimens of the powers of England’s engravers, which immeasurably out-distance the efforts of all other countries.

However, although I am willing to pass the highest encomiums on the landscape-engraver for his Liliputian labours, I am much afraid, in the course of time, we shall have productions smaller still; and that the diminutive size of a watch-paper, measuring precisely in diameter one inch, two-eighths, and one-sixteenth, will be the noblest extent of their labours. To men of their talent (and there are several among these pigmy burinists), I will venture, now I am upon the silver streams of noble Father Thames, to lead their attention to Woollett’s Fishery, but more particularly to West’s La Hogue, and then let them ask themselves this question: Would it not redound more to our glory to be master of equal excellence in the grand style in which those works are produced, than to contribute too long to the illustrations of scrapbooks only? Yes, gentlemen, I think you would say so. Let me endeavour, then, to arrest your gravers from this blinding of the public, by reducing your works to so deplorable a nicety, that by-and-by you will find yourselves totally blind. Why not, as talent is not wanting, prove to the collectors that England has more Woolletts than one? It is true there are several at present engaged in engraving plates from the fine old pictures in the National Gallery, who have my cordial good wishes for their success; yet I trust that, after that task is at an end, they will, with a considerable augmentation to their numbers, pay a becoming respect so justly due to modern painters of their own country, whose works in historical subjects, as well as portraits and landscape, extinguish unquestionably those of foreign powers; and I may say, with equal truth, equal most of those of the old schools. Such a publication, however successful their present one may be, I can answer for it would be patronised by the noblemen and gentlemen of England with redoubled liberality, and in such tasks the engravers will have the opportunity of producing finer things by the more powerful, and indeed inestimable advantage of having their progressive proofs touched upon by the painters themselves.

“Pull away, my hearty” (for I was again in a boat).—“To Westminster, Master?”—“Ay, to Westminster.”

Being now in view of the extensive yards which for ages have been occupied by stone and marble merchants, “Ay,” said I, “if these wharfs could speak, they, no doubt, like the Fly, would boast of their noble works. Was it not from our blocks that Roubiliac carved his figures of Newton, the pride of Cambridge, and that of Eloquence, in Westminster Abbey; Bacon’s figure of Mars, now in Lord Yarborough’s possession; Rossi’s Celadon and Amelia, and Flaxman’s mighty figure of Satan, in the Earl of Egremont’s gallery at Petworth; as well as three-fourths of Nollekens’s numerous busts, which, according to whisperings, have only been equalled by Chantrey? And then, has not our Carrara been conveyed to the studios of Westmacott and Baily?[489]”

After the truly interesting information the print-collectors have received from the pen of Mr. Ottley,[490] a gentleman better qualified than any I know to speak on works of art, more particularly those of the ancient schools of Italy, it would be the highest audacity in me to offer my own observations, however conversant my friends are pleased to consider me on those subjects. All I shall therefore now add to Mr. Ottley’s valuable stock of knowledge are the following circumstances, which occurred respecting that beautiful impression in sulphur, taken from a pax, engraved by Tomaso Finiguerra, before the said impression was so liberally purchased by the Duke of Buckingham, who has most cheerfully afforded it an asylum at Stowe. It has been for many years in the Print-Room of the British Museum.[491]

Mr. Stewart favoured me, at my earnest request, with the following statement of the fortunate manner in which he secured this unique and inestimable production as a treasure for England.

“The sulphur cast, from the celebrated pax of ’Maso Finiguerra, came into my hands in the following manner:—The Cavalier Seratti, in whose valuable collection it originally existed, was captured in going from Cagliari to Leghorn, and carried to Tunis, where he resided, I believe, for one or two years; but, dying in captivity, the Dey of Tunis took possession of the whole of his property. Such part of it as was not of any intrinsic value was sold to a party of Jews, who brought it over to Malta with a view of sending it to Great Britain for sale. This took place about the commencement of 1804. The property coming from Barbary was of course placed in the lazaretto. While there the plague broke out in the island, and it was a full year before the property was liberated. The Jews by this time had become apprehensive, owing to the numerous obstacles they had encountered in the realisation of their projects; and my friend the Abbate Bellanti, librarian to the Government Library, with a view to retain the collection in his native island, induced a Maltese merchant to make the Jews such an offer for the whole of the Seratti collection as they at last accepted. The merchant, however, retracted; and the abbot, after having made himself responsible for the bargain towards the Jews, found himself in an unpleasant predicament. In this dilemma he applied to me, and I readily engaged to fulfil the agreement which the merchant had forfeited. The sulphur in question formed the object of a separate bargain. I paid the value of £15 for it. I was very unfortunate in the transmission of my collection to England, two ships having been cast away in the Channel in November, 1815, both with a considerable portion of my property on board. I was more successful with the third portion, which arrived in 1816; in this was the sulphur cast. I never would have parted with it but for the above accident, whereby at that time I was much straitened in my circumstances.

“The sulphur I sold to Mr. Colnaghi for £150, which I thought a low price at the time for such an interesting and unique curiosity, indispensable for illustrating and fixing the date of the invention of the art of engraving (as it is now called). This sulphur, with the print preserved at Paris, and the pax of Finiguerra himself, preserved at Florence, together with the entry in the journal of the Goldsmiths’ Company, also preserved at Florence, showing the date of the completion of the pax to be 1452, form altogether an irrefragable chain of proof which must satisfy the most sceptical. By a memorandum in Seratti’s own handwriting, which is amongst my papers (but having been sent from Bombay to Liverpool, I have not yet got), it appears that he purchased the sulphur from a painter, who bought it with a heap of other trinkets at the stall of a petty dealer in Florence: and on acquiring it Seratti compared it with the pax itself, and ascertained it to be the genuine work of Finiguerra.

“I may add a few observations of my own, not altogether irrelevant to the subject.

“The silver vessel, or pax, generally enclosed some relic, and was kissed by the congregation or other individuals in token of devotion; and the Count Seratti mentions that the one of which this sulphur is in part a facsimile, is very much worn by this repeated act of devoutness. The word pax appears to be a corruption of pyxis, a box; and we have in Shakspeare a pyx of little value. The engraving was usually filled up with a metallic mixture of a dark composition, which, being fused by the action of fire, became incorporated with the vessel itself. This process was called Niello, or Anniello, Niellare, or Anniellare; hence our anneal, the term probably derived from nigellum, or perhaps even from Mêl, the Indian term for black, and applied to indigo, by which name that dye was originally known in Europe, and it was probably used in the composition before alluded to. The term anniello, and the purpose to which these pyxes were applied, is further illustrative of a passage in Shakspeare, which I believe has hitherto puzzled commentators. It is this:—Hamlet accuses his uncle of having dispatched his father ‘unhousel’d, unanointed, unanneal’d;’ it alludes to the custom in Catholic countries of offering relics preserved in their pyxes to be kissed after extreme unction.

“I shall be happy to communicate any further particulars respecting this interesting vestige of art which may be required of me, in as far as I am able.

“J. Stewart.

“2nd May, 1829.”

The glowing evening of the 16th of July added lustre to the enchanting grounds of William Atkinson, Esq. of Grove End, Paddington;[492] and perhaps, if I were to assert that few spots, if any, excel in the variety of its tasteful walks and unexpected recesses, I should not outstep the verge of truth.

The villa was designed by Mr. Atkinson, with his usual attention to domestic comfort; the grounds were peculiarly manured under his direction, and the rarest trees and choicest plants he could procure from all the known parts of the globe were planted by his own hand, and that too in the course of the last twelve years. On the knolls the antiquary will find sculpture from Carthage; and in the silent trickling dells the mineralogist specimens of the varieties of English stone, imbedded in the most picturesque strata. The delightful surprise of the spectator is beyond belief, particularly on turning back to view his trodden path, when that sun which fired the mind of Claude sparkles among the gently waving branches from climes he may never visit. Upon my observing to Mrs. Atkinson that in this meandering retreat my mind would be instantly soothed, that lady then recalled to my recollection Allan Ramsay’s Gentle Shepherd, by repeating the following lines:

Here the Waltonian, too, will find a seat, and view the canal—

My thanks are here offered to my friend Mr. West,[494] late of Drury Lane Theatre, now a professor of music, for the kind loan of an imperfect copy (which he met with at a stall) of a work of rarity, of which I have not been able to hear of another copy. It is not mentioned by Watt, and, what is more remarkable, the Rev. Hartwell Horne,[495] of the British Museum, never heard of it. It is a small quarto, bearing the following title:—

Page 191 of the third volume affords the admirers of wax effigies the following information:—

From the following flummery bespattered on this wax-worker by the editor of the Post Angel, I may, with the greatest probability, conclude that his substance was just as vulnerable as that of many of the hirelings who feed themselves by puffing what they denominate “the fine arts,” and that he had no objection to a dozen of port, had it been ever so crusted.

“The Observator” states that “the ingenuity of man hath found out several ways to imitate Nature, and represent natural bodies to the eye by sculpture, picture, carving, waxwork, etc.; and though some of the ancients were famed for this art, as Zeuxis and Apelles, yet our last ages have outstripped them, and made considerable improvements, as may be easily discernible to those who are skilled in antiquities, and have observed the rude and coarse pieces of the ancients. Those that question the truth of this, need but step to that famous artist, Mrs. Goldsmith, in the Old Jewry, whose workmanship is so absolute (in the effigies which she has made of his late Majesty), as it admits of no correction. She also made the late Queen, the Duke of Gloucester, to the general satisfaction of a great number of the nobility and gentry. I am not for the Hungarian’s wooden coat of mail, the work of fifteen years; nor Myrmeride’s coach with four horses, so little that you might hide them under a fly’s wing: these are but a laborious loss of time, an ingenious profusion of one of the best talents we are entrusted with; but this effigy of his late Majesty has taken up but a small part of Mrs. Goldsmith’s time, and yet it is made with so much art, that nothing seems wanting but life and motion. I own,” continues this time-server, “’tis little wonder to see a picture have motion; but Mrs. Goldsmith is such a person (as all will own that see this effigy which she has made of King William), that she has almost found the secret to make even dead bodies alive.”

“You are never idle,” observed my old, OLD, very OLD friend John Taylor,[497] as he entered my parlour on the 3rd of November, in his ninety-third year: “bless me, how like that is to your father! Well, Howard is a very clever fellow! Pray now, do tell me, did your father know Churchill? My friend Jonathan Tyers introduced me to him in Vauxhall Gardens much about the time Hogarth represented him as a bear with a pot of porter.[498] I think, to the best of my recollection, the print was brought out in 1763. Mr. Tyers asked Mr. Churchill what he thought of it. ‘Oh!’ said he, ‘it is a silly thing, Sir. I should have thought Hogarth had known better.’” I then requested Mr. Taylor to describe Mr. Churchill’s dress for Vauxhall Gardens. “Oh! not as a clergyman, not in black, as he appeared in the pit of the theatre. Let me see: his coat was blue, edged with a narrow gold lace; a buff waistcoat; but I won’t be certain whether that was laced or not—I rather think it was not. He had black silk small-clothes, white silk stockings, small silver shoe-buckles, and a gold-laced three-cornered hat.”

“Did you know Gainsborough, Sir?” “Oh! I remember him; he was an odd man at times. I recollect my master Hayman coming home after he had been to an exhibition, and saying what an extraordinary picture Gainsborough had painted of the Blue Boy; it is as fine as Vandyke.”[499] “Who was the Blue Boy, Sir?” “Why, he was an ironmonger, but why so called I don’t know. He lived at the corner of Greek and King Streets, Soho; an immensely rich man.” “Did you know Mrs. Abington?” “Oh yes; she was a most delightful actress of women of fashion, though she made herself very ridiculous by attempting the part of Scrub.[500] Mr. Hoole, when he heard she was to play the character that evening, sent for a chair and went to see her; but he said it was so truly ridiculous, that he was quite disgusted. Ay, I see you have got Nollekens’s bust of Dr. Johnson. I made two drawings of him when I was at Oxford: one was for Sir Robert Chambers,[501] who married the pretty Miss Wilton, that went to India; who had the other, I can’t immediately say. I remember the Doctor asked me what countryman I was.—‘A Londoner, Sir, a Londoner.’ ‘And where born?’ ‘In the parish of Ethelburga, in Bishopsgate Within.’ It is a very small church; but my father and mother[502] were buried there, though I suppose, by this time, there’s nothing of them left. My friend Jonathan Tyers took milk and water for upwards of twenty years at his meals, though he very well knew what a good glass of wine was, as well as any man in England. Ay, and a fine haunch of venison, too. Many and many a time I have dined with him in the gardens, when I was making the drawing for Boydell, of Hayman’s picture of the Admirals. Mr. Tyers gave very excellent dinners, I must say.”

The truly skilful manner in which Mr. John Seguier has proceeded with the pictures painted by Rubens, which adorn the ceiling of Whitehall Chapel, will, I hope, prove a lasting record of his success in picture-cleaning. When first I ascended the scaffold, my astonishment was beyond conception at the enormous size of the objects. The children are more than nine feet, and the full-grown figures from twenty to twenty-five in height. The pictures were in a most filthy and husky state. However, it afforded me infinite delight to hear Mr. Seguier declare, that he firmly believed he should be able to remove Cipriani’s washy colouring completely; and that he expected to find that of Rubens in its pristine state. Upon my seeing these pictures on the floor, after they had been cleaned,[503] I found his predictions verified, and can now, by the judicious nourishment afforded to the canvas, announce their effect to be truly glorious. Every precaution has been taken, under the able direction of Sir Benjamin Clarke Stevenson, to render the roof impervious to the most inveterate weather, so that posterity, in all probability, may long enjoy the beauties of these masterpieces of art.

Mrs. Piozzi, in her anecdotes of Dr. Johnson, speaking of Porridge Island, says it “is a mean street in London, filled with cook-shops, for the convenience of the poorer inhabitants; the real name of it I know not, but suspect that it is generally known by to have been originally a term of derision.”

Porridge Island consisted of a nest of old rat-deserted houses, lately forming narrow alleys south of Chandos Street, and east of St. Martin’s church, which were originally occupied by numerous cooks for the accommodation of the workmen engaged in erecting the said church.[507]

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