Part 23

[252] The bill of which Smith gives particulars is quoted in full by William Hookham Carpenter in his _Pictorial Notices of Sir Anthony Van Dyck_ (1844). “It is more than probable that the account had been submitted to the supervision of Bishop Juxon, who, by the influence of Archbishop Laud, was appointed to the office of Lord Treasurer in 1635, which he held till 1641; and Anthony Wood tells us ‘he kept the King’s purse when necessities were deepest, and clamours were loudest.’” Vandyke had from Charles, in addition to payments against pictures, an annuity of £200 a year and houses at Blackfriars and Eltham.

[253] On February 23. After lying in state in the Royal Academy, the remains of Sir Joshua Reynolds were interred, on Saturday, March 3, in the crypt of St. Paul’s Cathedral, near the resting-place of Sir Christopher Wren. The pall was borne by ten peers, and the Archbishop of York took part in the service.

[254] Burke’s tribute had appeared in the _Annual Register_.

[255] Lieut.-Colonel Molesworth Phillips, whose career links Dr. Johnson to Charles Lamb, was the companion of Captain Cook on his last voyage. His marriage in 1782 to Susannah Elizabeth, daughter of Dr. Charles Burney, and sister of Fanny Burney, brought him into the Johnson set. He escorted Miss Burney to Westminster Hall to hear Warren Hastings on his defence. Lamb, recalling his old whist-playing friends in his “Letter of Elia to Robert Southey,” names him as “the high-minded associate of Cook, the veteran Colonel, with his lusty heart still sending cartels of defiance to old Time.” He died in 1832.

[256] Mrs. Cholmondeley, who appears several times in Boswell’s _Life_, was a younger sister of Peg Woffington, and the wife of the Hon. and Rev. George Cholmondeley.

[257] “Sheridan had very fine eyes, and he was very vain of them. He said to Rogers on his deathbed, ‘Tell Lady Besborough that my eyes will look up to the coffin-lid as brightly as ever.’”

[258] The Old Bun House at Chelsea flourished for nearly a century and a half, and yielded a livelihood to four generations of the same family. In its best days it was the resort of royalty and rank. Queen Charlotte presented Mrs. Hand with a silver mug, containing five guineas. The shop had a pleasant arcaded front, and, besides buns, offered its customers the sight of a number of curiosities. As many as fifty thousand people would assemble here on Good Friday mornings, and it is clear that Mrs. Hand had reason to issue her curious notice. The site of the Bun House and its garden is on the north side of the Pimlico Road, between Union Street and Westbourne Street. The name of Bunhouse Place, at the back, commemorates the establishment, which disappeared in 1839.

The danger of a mob assembling outside a London bun-shop on Good Friday morning has passed away. Mr. Henry Attwell sadly observed, in _Notes and Queries_, April 28, 1900, that “the last Good Friday of the nineteenth century” found the hot-cross bun degenerated from a spiced bun (“the spice recalling to the few who cared about its religious suggestiveness the embalming of our Lord”) into a vulgarised currant bun marked with deep indentures for convenience of division, instead of the old slight cross in which there was a touch of mystery.

[259] Roger L’Estrange, the pamphleteer and miscellaneous writer (1616-1704), was deprived of his office of surveyor and licenser of the press in 1688.

[260] _The First Book of Architecture_, first published in English in 1668.

[261] Then Montagu House. “I apprehend,” says Smith, in his _Antient Topography of London_, “that the custom of inlaying, or tesselating, wooden floors commenced in England in the reign of King Charles the First, and ended in that of Queen Anne. I have secured patterns of four such floors: two belonging to the reign of Charles the First, and two to that of Charles the Second. No. 1 is from that part of Whitehall lately inhabited by the Duchess of Portland. No. 2 is from Somerset House. Nos. 3 and 4 are from the present old gallery and waiting-room in the Marquis of Stafford’s house in Cleveland Row.”

[262] One of the first exhibitors before the establishment of the Royal Academy (S.). Keyse opened Bermondsey Spa in 1770, and in 1780 obtained a music licence. His greatest bid for public favour was a farewell representation of the Siege of Gibraltar. The present Spa Road crosses the site of the gardens, which were closed about 1805.

[263] See note, p. 269.

[264] George Adams (died 1773) and his son George (died 1796) were mathematical instrument makers to George III. A book by the father on Terrestrial Globes was supplied with a dedication to the King by Dr. Johnson.--Peter Dollond (1730-1820) was second in the line of opticians. He was succeeded by his nephew, George Huggins, who assumed the name of Dollond.

[265] A critic wrote:

“Keyse’s mutton Show’d how the painter had a strife With nature, to outdo the life.”

Keyse’s realism had been anticipated by such painters as Jordaens and Snyder, whose butcher’s meat remains painfully juicy in the galleries of Brussels and Antwerp.

[266] “Mrs. Wrighten had a vivacious manner and a bewitching smile, and her ‘Hunting Song’ was popular” (Wroth: _London Pleasure Gardens_).

[267] Captain Edward Topham (1751-1820), after a brilliant regimental career in the Horse Guards, gave himself up to fashion and drama. He produced several plays, and in 1787 founded the _World_, a scurrilous daily paper, which brought him into the law courts. In Rowlandson’s well-known _Vauxhall_, the foremost figure in the crowd is an elderly beau, standing bolt upright, and defying through his glass the stare of a gaudy female of mature years who has found another cavalier. This is Captain, afterwards Major, Topham. He wrote the life of Elwes, the miser.

[268] Jonas Blewitt, who died in 1805, lived at Bermondsey, near the Spa Gardens, for which he wrote many songs. He wrote a _Treatise on the Organ_, and must not be confused with his son, the better-known Jonathan Blewitt, the musical director of the Surrey Theatre.

[269] Jonathan Battishill (1738-1801), composer, organist of Christ Church, Newgate Street, and St. Clement’s, Eastcheap, first became known by his music to the song “Kate of Aberdeen.” His anthems were sung in St. Paul’s Cathedral, and he set many of Charles Wesley’s hymns to music.

[270] Smith underlines _Joseph_ to distinguish him from his better-known brother, James Caulfield, who was the author and printseller, and the publisher of much “Remarkable Persons” literature. Joseph Caulfield was a musical engraver, and a capable teacher of the pianoforte. He lived in Camden Town.

[271] John Montagu, fourth Earl of Sandwich (1718-92), “was the soul of the Catch Club, and one of the Directors of the Concert of Ancient Music, but he had not the least real ear for music, and was equally insensible of harmony and melody” (Charles Butler’s _Reminiscences_). It was his treachery to Wilkes that gave Lord Sandwich his popular nickname, Jemmy Twitcher, taken from Macheath’s words in the _Beggar’s Opera_: “That Jemmy Twitcher should peach me, I own surprised me.”

[272] About the year 1770 Battishill wrote this glee in a competition for a gold medal offered by the Noblemen’s Catch Club.

[273] Smith had been Morland’s fellow-student at the Royal Academy, and they had frequently walked home together. Among his innumerable addresses, Morland had several in the Fitzroy Square region.

[274] Otter’s Pool was a country house at Aldenham, Herts, afterwards for many years the seat of Sir James Shaw Willes, the judge of common pleas.

[275] Surrey Chapel is now occupied by a large machinery firm. Rowland Hill used to say, in allusion to its octagonal form, that he liked a round building because there were no corners for the devil to hide in. Here he won the devotion of his congregation and the esteem of the many distinguished people who came to hear him. Sheridan said: “I go to hear Rowland Hill because his ideas come red-hot from the heart.” Dean Milner said to him, “Mr. Hill! Mr. Hill! I felt to-day ’tis this slap-dash preaching, say what they will, that does all the good.” He died at his house in Blackfriars Road, April 11, 1833, aged 88, and was buried in a vault under his pulpit.

[276] This fanatical advocate of Charles the First’s execution (at St. Margaret’s, Westminster) was one of the regicides executed in 1660.

[277] Smith is nowhere mentioned by Lamb, and other evidence of their acquaintance is wanting.

[278] George Frost (1754-1821) is remembered as the intimate friend of Constable. Smart was John Smart (1740-1811), the miniature painter. He died in London.

“His genius lov’d his Country’s native views; Its taper spires, green lawns, or sheltered farms; He touch’d each scene with Nature’s genuine hues, And gave the _Suffolk_ landscape all its charms.”

[279] Smith had evidently asked Constable to ascertain for him the exact date of Gainsborough’s birth. This is still uncertain: it took place in Sepulchre Street, Sudbury, at the end of April or beginning of May 1727. He was baptized on 14th May of that year in the Independent meeting-house in Sudbury.

[280] James Gubbins was a subscriber to Smith’s _Remarks on Rural Scenery_ (1797), a volume of etchings of cottage and rural scenes around London. One of its drawings represents a squatter’s shanty in Epping Forest, bowered in trees, and is entitled “Lady Plomer’s Palace on the summit of Hawke’s Hill Wood, Epping Forest.”

[281] The Minories drawing referred to by Constable was Smith’s etching in his _Antient Topography_ of the north and east walls of the Convent of St. Clare, the remains of which were destroyed by fire on March 23, 1797. Only a year before, Mr. John Cranch (the C----h of Constable’s letter) had presented Smith with a sketch of the convent. Constable, therefore, refers to the swift supersession of Cranch’s sketch by Smith’s drawing after the fire.

[282] Elizabeth Pope died on 15th March of this year, aged 52. The funeral to the Abbey was met everywhere by great crowds. Her abilities had not been dimmed by those of Garrick, Mrs. Siddons, and Miss Farren, and her private life was blameless. The resemblance she bore to Lady Sarah Lennox was such that George III., seeing her act late in her career, exclaimed to his queen, “She is like Lady Sarah still.” There is a fine story of her parting with Garrick. On June 8, 1776, his last appearance but one, when he was playing Lear to her Cordelia, Garrick said to her with a sigh: “Ah, Bess! this is the last time of my being your father; you must now look out for someone else to adopt you.” “Then, sir,” she exclaimed, dropping on her knees, “give me a father’s blessing.” Garrick, deeply touched, raised her, and said, “God bless you!”

[283] Nevertheless Pope married two more wives. His most lasting affections appear to have been set on table delicacies. Once, when Kean asked him to act with him at Dublin, and take a benefit there, he declined, saying: “I must be at Plymouth at the time; it is exactly the season for mullet.” He maintained that there was but one crime: peppering a beef-steak.

[284] Pope had begun life as a crayon portrait painter in his birthplace, Cork. A highly finished water-colour portrait of Henry Grattan, from his hand, is in the British Museum Print Room.

[285] Francis Cotes, born in Cork Street, 1725, was a foundation member of the Royal Academy, and famous for his crayon portraits. He built himself a house in Cavendish Square (No. 32), in which Romney afterwards lived for twenty-one years, followed by Sir Martin A. Shee. It was demolished in 1904. The British Museum has four portrait subjects by Cotes in crayon. He is poorly represented in the National Gallery by a small portrait of Mrs. Brocas.

[286] Benjamin Green, born at Halesowen, became a drawing-master at Christ’s Hospital, and member of the Incorporated Society of Artists. He published many topographical plates, and engraved the illustrations in Morant’s _History and Antiquities of the County of Essex_ (1768). His drawings of Canonbury Tower and Highbury Barn are in the British Museum Print Room. He died about 1800.

[287] The Right Honourable James Caulfield, first Earl of Charlemont (1728-99), distinguished himself in Ireland politically; in London he mixed with the Reynolds and Johnson set and was a member of the Dilettanti Club. In the college at St. Andrews, which Johnson and Boswell playfully imagined might be staffed by members of the Literary Club, Lord Charlemont was assigned the chair of modern history, and it was on Lord Charlemont that Boswell, Burke, Sir Joshua Reynolds, and others laid the task of bringing Dr. Johnson’s conversational powers into play by asking him whether a ludicrous statement in the newspapers that he was taking dancing lessons from Vestris was true.

[288] Thomas Cheesman, who had been pupil to Bartolozzi, engraved “The Lady’s Last Stake, or Picquet, or Virtue in Danger,” after Hogarth. He lived, successively, at 40 Oxford Street, 71 Newman Street, and 28 Francis Street. His portrait, by Bartolozzi, is in the National Portrait Gallery.

[289] Sir Lawrence Parsons (1758-1841), afterwards Earl of Rosse. Like Lord Charlemont, he was opposed to the Union, and twelve days after the date of this letter he moved in the Irish House of Commons an address to the Crown to expunge a paragraph in favour of the Union. This was carried by a majority of five votes.

[290] Had James Barry possessed no more than a tithe of the suavity of Reynolds or West, his career would have been more fortunate. In vain Burke, his best friend, pointed out that his business was to paint, not to dispute. He used his chair of painting at the Royal Academy to vilify the members to the students. In 1799 the climax arrived, and the Academicians resolved on his expulsion. The King consented, and the following entry appears in the records: “I have struck out the adjoining name, in consequence of the opinion entered in the minutes of the Council, and of the General Meeting, which I fully approve. April 23, 1779.--G. R.” No work of Barry’s is in the National Gallery, but he has an enduring memorial in his six great paintings in the hall of the Society of Arts, John Street. Here he finally lay in state among his works--as Haydon said, “a pall worthy of the corpse.”

[291] John Brand (1744-1806), the excellent historian of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, and author of the _Popular Antiquities_. He came to London in 1784, to fill the rectory of St. Mary-at-Hill. In the same year he was appointed Resident Secretary of the Society of Antiquaries, but he continued to discharge his duties in the City, and died there, suddenly, in his rectory. He was buried in the chancel of his church.

[292] The publication Flaxman indicates, and to which he wishes to subscribe, is Smith’s important “Antiquities of Westminster, the old Palace, St. Stephen’s Chapel (now the House of Commons).… Containing two hundred and forty-six engravings of topographical subjects, of which one hundred and twenty-two no longer remain.”

The reduction of the thickness of the side walls of St. Stephen’s Chapel from three feet to one foot gave additional four feet to the width of the chamber. So soon as the wainscotting was removed, it was seen that the walls were adorned with beautiful paintings of scriptural and historical subjects. The discovery excited great interest, both on account of the antiquity of the paintings, which were found to date from Edward III., and the fact that they were painted in oils and were consequently among the earliest specimens of that class of painting. Smith obtained permission to copy them. He began work each morning, as soon as it was light, and was followed so closely by the workmen that they sometimes demolished in the afternoon the painting he had copied in the morning. This task occupied him for six weeks. These valuable drawings are engraved and coloured in the _Antiquities of Westminster_.

[293] Edward Hussey Delaval (1729-1814) of Seaton-Delaval, Northumberland, the chemist, has a claim on the remembrance of Londoners. In 1769 he and Benjamin Franklin were commissioned to report to the Royal Society on the best means of protecting St. Paul’s from lightning. Parliament Stairs, where his house stood, was at the west end of the present Houses of Parliament, giving access to the river from Abingdon Street. Delaval, who traced his descent from the Conqueror’s standard-bearer at Hastings, died here, aged 85.

[294] Parliament Stairs were open several months in the summer for the accommodation of those gentlemen of Westminster School, who practise the manly and healthy exercise of rowing; the key was held by Mr. Tyrwhitt, whose servants regularly opened and closed the gates night and morning.--S.

[295] John Carter, F.R.S. (1748-1817), is airily described by Michael Bryan as “a harmless and inoffensive drudge.” He was employed by the Society of Antiquaries, and by Horace Walpole and others. His chief work, _The Ancient Architecture of England_, occupied him many years. Carter was enthusiastically musical, but the two operas on which he ventured are forgotten.

[296] Richard Bentley, only son of Dr. Bentley, the Master of Trinity. He designed beautiful illustrations for Walpole’s _edition-de-luxe_ of six of Gray’s poems, including the _Elegy_, and gave much assistance in the architectural treatment of Strawberry Hill. Walpole was under no delusion about their joint experiments in Gothic. “Neither Mr. Bentley nor my workmen had _studied_ the science,” he wrote to Thomas Barrett (June 5, 1788); “my house therefore is but a sketch for beginners.”

[297] George Arnald (1763-1841) is represented in the National Gallery by one pleasing landscape, hung in Room XX., “On the Ouse, Yorkshire.” Some of his London subjects are reproduced by Smith in his _Westminster_. His “View of the Palace and Abbey,” painted in 1803, just excludes Delaval’s house on the left.--George Francis Joseph, A.R.A. (1764-1846), was a well-known portrait painter in his day. He is represented in the National Gallery by portraits of Spencer, Perceval, and Sir Stamford Raffles, and in the British Museum Print Room by a water-colour portrait of Charles Lamb, engravings from which appear in many editions of Lamb’s works.

[298] John Ker, third Duke of Roxburgh (1740-1804), one of the greatest of book-collectors, lived at No. 11 St. James’s Square. Smith’s epithet “the late” appertains to the time at which he wrote this passage.

[299] The case of Colonel Joseph Wall was remarkable for the culprit’s twenty years’ evasion of justice. His crime was the murder of a soldier while he was Lieutenant-Governor of Goree, in Senegambia, in 1782. The command of the fort at Goree was an inferior appointment, usually given to some claimant who stood in no great favour with the War Minister, and the troops of the garrison were commonly regiments in disgrace. Wall exercised his authority with great cruelty, and in 1782 punished Benjamin Armstrong, a sergeant, with a wilful severity which resulted in his death. Aware of the nature of his action, Wall fled to France. He then came to England, and was tried by court-martial for cruelty; but the proceedings hung fire, and he went to reside at Bath. He was re-arrested in 1784, but escaped to the Continent. Finally, in 1797, he wrote to the Home Secretary, offering to stand his trial for murder. He was tried, and sentenced to death, and, though the likelihood of a reprieve seemed great, was hanged outside Newgate, January 28, 1802.

[300] The _Gentleman’s Magazine_ records that Dr. Forde, the Ordinary of Newgate, was “a very worthy man, and was much and deservedly esteemed by the City magistrates, who, on his retirement from office, settled on him an annuity which provided for the comforts of his latter days.” Dr. Forde no doubt satisfied the City authorities, but the Parliamentary Committee which investigated the state of the prison in 1814 reported: “Beyond his attendance in chapel, and on those who are sentenced to death, Dr. Forde feels but few duties to be attached to his office. He knows nothing of the state of morals in the prison; he never sees any of the prisoners in private; … he never knows that any have been sick till he gets a warning to attend their funeral; and does not go to the infirmary, for it is not in his instructions.” Dr. Forde was succeeded by the Rev. Mr. Cotton, who first officiated August 8, 1814.

[301] Maria Cosway, wife of Richard Cosway, the miniaturist.

[302] Black Boy Alley was notorious in the eighteenth century, and at one time was infested by a gang who drowned their victims in the Fleet River. No fewer than twenty-one were executed at once, after which the humour of the neighbourhood called the place Jack Ketch’s Common. In 1802, and earlier, Black Boy Alley was the scene of a weekly display of badger-baiting.

[303] In the eighteenth century, Epping sent butter and sausages to the London market, but the industry declined long ago.

[304] Pie Corner was at the Smithfield end of Giltspur Street, a short distance north from the Old Bailey. “A very fine dirty place,” is D’Urfey’s description of this spot, where the Great Fire of London ended. It was long famous for its greasy cook-shops.

[305] In his _Nollekens_ Smith puts the same jibe into the mouth of John Hamilton Mortimer, the painter. “Mortimer made Dr. Arne, who had a very red face with staring eyes, furiously angry by telling him that his eyes looked ‘like two oysters just opened for sauce put upon an oval side-dish of beet-root.’”

[306] Peter Coxe, an auctioneer, and the author of a poem in four cantos called “The Social Day,” published in 1823. He wrote also “The Exposé, or Napoleon Buonaparte unmasked in a Condensed Statement of his Career and Atrocities” (1809). His emollient has escaped my search. Coxe was one of a long line of well-known men who lived in the middle one of the three houses into which Schomberg House, Pall Mall, was divided. He died in 1844.

[307] This generous woman, better known under the lawful title of Lady Hamilton, when I showed her my etching of the funeral procession of her husband’s friend, the immortal Nelson, fainted and fell into my arms; and, believe me, reader, her mouth was equal to any production of Greek sculpture I have yet seen (S.).--Smith’s etching was entitled, “An Accurate View (drawn and etched by J. T. Smith, Engraver of the _Antiquities of London and Westminster_) from the house of W. Tunnard, Esq., on the Bankside, adjoining the Scite of Shakespeare’s Theatre, on Wednesday the 8th January 1806, when the remains of the great Admiral Lord Nelson were brought from Greenwich to Whitehall.”

[308]

“The Fair One, whose charms did the Barber enthral, At the end of Fleet Market of fish kept a stall: As red as her cheek no boil’d lobster was seen, Not an eel that she sold was as soft as her skin.”

THE BARBER’S NUPTIALS.

[309] From _The Wife’s Trial_, Lamb’s dramatic version of Crabbe’s _Confidant_. See Mr. Lucas’s _Works of Charles and Mary Lamb_, vol. v. p. 257.

[310] All previous relic-selling at Newgate was, however, eclipsed by the sale held in the partly demolished prison on Wednesday, 4th February 1903. The following account appeared in the _City Press_ of 7th February:--

“In its way, probably, the sale which Messrs. Douglas Young & Co. conducted in the middle of the week, within the gloomy precincts of crime-stricken Newgate, was the most unique and memorable of its kind ever held. Crowds of the curious and speculative were naturally attracted to the fortress prison site.