Part 16

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._”

1830.

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:

“How wholesome is’t to breathe the vernal air, And all the sweets it bears, when void of care.”[493]

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

“Kissing with eddies soft the bordering grass.”

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:--

“THE POST ANGEL, OR, UNIVERSAL ENTERTAINMENT.

“London: printed, and to be sold by A. Baldwin, near the Oxford Arms, in Warwick Lane, 1702, where is to be had the first and second volume, or any single month, from January, 1701, to this time; price of each, one shilling.”[496]

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

“TO THE EDITOR.