Part 25

[342] Tooke did not, therefore, “try the question” of his silver caddy; but had it not been returned he would have done so in his character of the inimitable litigant. “A court of law,” says Hazlitt, in his masterly portrait of Tooke in _The Spirit of the Age_, “was the place where Mr. Tooke made the best figure in public. He might assuredly be said to be ‘native and endued unto that element.’ He had here to stand merely on the defensive: not to advance himself, but to block up the way: not to impress others, but to be himself impenetrable. All he wanted was _negative success_; and to this no one was better qualified to aspire. Cross purposes, _moot-points_, pleas, demurrers, flaws in the indictment, double meanings, cases, inconsequentialities, these were the playthings, the darlings of Mr. Tooke’s mind; and with these he baffled the Judge, dumbfounded the Counsel, and outwitted the Jury. The report of his trial before Lord Kenyon is a masterpiece of acuteness, dexterity, modest assurance, and legal effect. It is much like his examination before the Commissioners of the Income Tax--nothing could be got out of him in either case!”

[343] He had, indeed, prepared a tomb for himself in his garden at Wimbledon, and the funeral invitations, as first sent out, contemplated his burial here. He was buried in a family vault at Ealing, to which the following inscription was added: “JOHN HORNE TOOKE, late of Wimbledon, Author of the _Diversions of Purley_: was born June 1736, and died March 18, 1812, contented and happy.”

[344] The Rev. William Huntington obtained influence over multitudes by a grotesque piety and a compelling pulpit manner. He appended the initials S.S. to his name, signifying “Sinner Saved.” His true name was Hunt, and he himself tells how he added two syllables to it as a disguise after being called upon to support an illegitimate child. The son of a Kentish day labourer, he had been errand boy, gardener, cobbler, and coal-heaver. At last he turned wholly preacher, and in that character came up to London from Thames Ditton, “bringing two large carts, with furniture and other necessaries, besides a post-chaise well filled with children and cats,” as he relates. He became minister of Margaret Street Chapel, where he urged the power of prayer, telling his hearers that whenever he wanted a thing--a horse, a pair of breeches, or a pound of tea--he prayed for it and it came. In 1788 his admirers built him a chapel in the Gray’s Inn Road at a cost of £9000. He called it Providence Chapel, and was shrewd enough to obtain the personal freehold. He carried pulpit brusqueness to the extreme. “Wake that snoring sinner!” and “Silence that noisy numskull!” were his frequent observations. By his marriage with the widow of Sir James Sanderson, who had been Lord Mayor of London, he gained wealth, and in 1811 he became the tenant of Dr. Valangin’s mansion on Hermes Hill, Pentonville. This eminent Swiss physician had named his estate Hermes Hill in honour of Hermes Trismegithus, the fabled discoverer of chemistry. Huntington’s health failed him, and he exchanged the air of Pentonville for Tunbridge Wells, where he died July 1, 1813. Smith’s story of the disciple who purchased a barrel of beer at the sale of Huntington’s effects is apparently true. Extravagant prices were paid for less perishable souvenirs. An arm-chair worth fifty shillings fetched sixty guineas, and an ordinary pair of spectacles seven guineas. The Pentonville mansion has long disappeared, but Hermes Street dingily perpetuates its curious history.

[345] Smith’s Beef Steak friend, John Nixon, was an Irish factor, who, with his brother Richard, lived over his warehouses in Basinghall Street. He was wealthy and convivial, a bachelor, a good business man, an admirable host, an amateur actor, and a comic artist. His drawing of “The Jolly Undertakers” regaling themselves at the Falcon Tavern, near Clapham Junction, is well known; the landlord’s name was Robert Death, and the undertakers are seen regaling themselves “at Death’s door.” Nixon’s original picture long remained at the Falcon (now rebuilt), and was considered a fixture.

The history of the Sublime Society of Beef Steaks was mournfully recalled two years ago by the closing and subsequent sale of its last home, the Lyceum Theatre. John Rich, the patentee of Covent Garden Theatre, is usually named as its founder, but the germ of the Society (its members loathed the name of Club) lay in the creature needs of his scene painter, George Lambert, of whom Edwards relates in his _Anecdotes of Painting_--

“As it frequently happened that he was too much hurried to leave his engagements for his regular dinner, he contented himself with a beefsteak broiled upon the fire in the painting-room. In this hasty meal he was sometimes joined by his visitors, who were pleased to participate in the humble repast of the artist. The savour of the dish and the conviviality of the accidental meeting inspired the party with a resolution to establish a club, which was accordingly done under the title of the ‘Beefsteak Club’; and the party assembled in the painting-room. The members were afterwards accommodated with a room in the playhouse, where the meetings were held for many years.”

Among the earlier members were Hogarth, Theophilus Cibber, George IV., when Prince of Wales, the Earl of Sandwich, George Colman, Wilkes. Charles Morris, the Laureate of the Beefsteaks, was admitted in 1785, and remained a member till his death in 1838, after being for more than fifty years the life and soul of the Society. “Die when you will, Charles, you’ll die in your youth,” were Curran’s words, and Morris died young at ninety-three. His “Sweet shady side of Pall Mall” is the best London song of its kind.

The Society dined and wined itself into the nineteenth century without a thought of change, but when Covent Garden Theatre was burnt down in 1808, the Beefsteakers, who had taken shelter at the Bedford Coffee House, went to the Lyceum Theatre at the invitation of Samuel James Arnold. There, for sixty years, they met in a banquet room behind the stage. In 1867 the number of members had fallen to eighteen, and in that year the famous coterie closed its doors and sent its Lares and Penates to Christie’s, that mart of abandoned playthings. “Brother” Walter Arnold’s _Life and Death of the Sublime Society of Beef Steaks_ (1871) is a singularly complete and interesting memorial of the “jolly old Steakers of England.”

The “Ad Libitum” Society, of which Nixon was also a member, and which was quite distinct from the Beefsteaks, held its meetings successively at the Shakespeare Tavern, the Piazza Coffee House, Robins’s Rooms, and the Bedford Coffee House. Thomas Dibdin gives a list of its members in his _Reminiscences_.

[346] Mrs. Abington died on the 4th.

[347] Garrick’s troubles with this actress were such that he wrote to her in reply to one of her complaints: “Let me be permitted to say, that I never yet saw Mrs. Abington theatrically happy for a week together.” During his later managership Garrick had ceaseless struggles with his actresses, by which he was greatly wearied. “The lively ‘Pivy’ Clive, the stately Mrs. Barry, Pope, the established Hoyden of the theatre, Miss Younge, Mrs. Yates, Mrs. Abington, all tried the effect of a modified revolt” (Percy Fitzgerald: _Life of Garrick_).

[348] Stafford Row was near Stafford Gate, St. James’s Park. Mrs. Yates died here in 1787, and Mrs. Radcliffe, the author of the _Mysteries of Udolpho_, in 1823.

[349] These lines occur in the epilogue to General Burgoyne’s comedy, _The Maid of the Oaks_, written by him expressly for Mrs. Abington, who performed the part of Lady Bab Lardoon in the season 1773-74. Garrick wrote the epilogue in question to be spoken by Mrs. Abington.

[350] These lines do not belong to _The Maid of the Oaks_, the subject of Garrick’s letter of 9th November. I have not been able to trace them.

[351] See Wilmot’s Letters, British Museum.--S.

[352] John Thane (1748-1818) was a well-known printseller in Soho, and the editor of _British Autography: a Collection of Facsimiles of the Handwriting of Royal and Illustrious Personages, with their Authentic Portraits_ (1793).

[353] John Blaquière (1732-1812) sat in both Irish and United Kingdom Parliaments. At this time (1771) he was Secretary of Legation in Paris.

[354] This letter is the earliest from Walpole to Mrs. Abington in Peter Cunningham’s collection, where it bears the more precise date, September 1, 1771. At that time Walpole had no private acquaintance with Mrs. Abington. Eight years later, Mrs. Abington is still seeking his acquaintance, for he writes in April 1779 to excuse himself from an invitation she had sent him. But on May 22, 1779, Walpole says at the end of a letter to the Honourable H. S. Conway: “I am going to sup with Mrs. Abington, and hope Mrs. Clive will not hear of it.” No doubt he did so, and it was after this stage in their acquaintance that he wrote the letter of June 11, 1780 (see opposite page).

[355] Sir Walter James James, first Baronet (1759-1829), married Jane, sister of John Jeffreys, second Earl, and first Marquis, Camden.

[356] At this time Mrs. Jordan was absent from the stage, in obedience to her lover, the Duke of Clarence, afterwards William IV. By him she had ten children. She had also four children by Sir Richard Ford, and a daughter by her Cork manager, Richard Daly. But, says Leigh Hunt, she “made even Methodists love her.” In 1811 the Duke of Clarence made an arrangement by which she received £4400 a year for the maintenance of herself and all her children, on condition that if she returned to the stage the Duke’s daughters and £1500 a year were to revert to him. All these daughters married well. Mrs. Jordan died embarrassed and unhappy at St. Cloud, a good deal of mystery shrouding her end. Tate Wilkinson tells how she finally exchanged her maiden name of Bland for Jordan. “You have crossed the water, my dear,” he said to her once, “so I’ll call you Jordan.” “And by the memory of Sam! if she didn’t take my joke in earnest, and call herself Mrs. Jordan ever since.”

[357] In a letter dated January 24, 1816, in my possession, which was evidently intended to be sent as a circular to some of his stauncher patrons, Smith states that he had found the previous year very “unprofitable to the Arts,” and that owing to the great number of families who left England for France “last season” (_i.e._ after Waterloo), his income had been small. He has applied himself closely to his etching table, and is now able to lay before his correspondent the first three numbers of a small work at a remarkably cheap rate. This was his _Vagabondiana, or Anecdotes of Mendicant Wanderers through the Streets of London, with Portraits of the Most Remarkable drawn from Life_. The increase of beggars in London had engaged serious attention, and legislation was in the air. The Society for the Suppression of Mendicity was founded in 1818. Smith’s work is the artistic forerunner of Charles Lamb’s _Complaint of the Decay of Beggars in the Metropolis_, written in 1822, when “the all-sweeping besom of sectarian reform” had done its work. The Herculean legless beggar whose portrait Lamb draws with so much gusto, appears in Smith’s gallery of etchings. But whereas Mr. E. V. Lucas identifies him as Samuel Horsey, I venture to think he was the beggar named John MacNally. Smith’s figure of Horsey hardly suggests a Hercules, nor does another portrait of him from Kirby’s “Wonderful and Scientific Museum.” I suggest that the beggar of whom Lamb wrote, in 1822, “He seemed earth-born, an Antæus, and to suck in fresh vigour from the soil which he neighboured; he was a grand fragment; as good as an Elgin marble; the nature, which should have recruited his left leg and thighs, was not lost, but only retired into his upper parts, and he was half a Hercules,” was identical with the beggar whom John Thomas Smith describes as an “extraordinary torso”: “His head, shoulders, and chest, which are exactly those of Hercules, would prove valuable models for the artist.” This Hercules is John MacNally. Were there two London legless beggars who could suggest to two minds such images of antique magnificence of physique? It is possible, but unlikely.

[358] First cousin, once removed, of the poet.

[359] Charles Manners-Sutton, Archbishop of Canterbury 1805-28.

[360] Thomas Gilliland, whose _Dramatic Mirror_ is still consulted, was not too popular with the actors and actresses whose lives he compiled. He was practically warned off the Green-room of Drury Lane Theatre by Charles Mathews, the elder.

[361] Smith is mistaken as to the date of the first race. This was rowed on August 1, 1716. A portrait of a waterman in his boat, still preserved in the Watermen’s Hall, St. Mary’s Hill, is supposed to represent the first wearer of the coat and badge, a white horse being painted on the back-board of the boat. It is said that John Broughton, afterwards the prize-fighter, and the founder of boxing, was this winner. Under Doggett’s will, only one prize, the coat and badge, was given, but additional prizes have been added under the will of Sir William Jolliff, in 1820, and by the Fishmongers’ Company. These prizes are generous. Even the last of the six young watermen to reach the winning-post is sure of £2; the other unsuccessful candidates receive sums from £3 to £6 each. The winner of the race is £10 in pocket, his name is added to the long roll of previous winners, and he wears Doggett’s coat (made to fit him) among the coated élite of Watermen’s Hall.

A clever and genial man, Doggett was known everywhere by his immense wig, on the top of which, not without the aid of pins, rested a small cocked hat. He carried a rapier, and took snuff incessantly. Only two portraits of him are known: one represents him dancing the Cheshire Round with the motto, “Ne sutor ultra crepidam,” and the Garrick Club has a portrait, but its authenticity is questioned.

[362] _The Waterman_ was, indeed, announced as the after-piece to _The Wonder_, but Garrick had no part in it, and his great farewell scene rendered its performance impossible alike to actors and audience.

[363] Sarah Sophia Banks (1744-1818) was a virtuoso, and collector of natural history specimens. She kept house for her brother, Sir Joseph Banks, at 32 Soho Square, at the corner of Frith Street. Here Sir Joseph, who is mentioned by Smith elsewhere, gave his Sunday evening conversaziones, at which Cavendish and Wollaston were the prominent guests. Sir Henry Holland describes these evenings in his _Recollections_. Gifford of the _Quarterly_ remarked to Moore, that the Banks’ mansion was to science what Holland House was to literature. Horace Walpole poked incessant fun at Sir Joseph’s curiosity about remote Atlantic islands, and Peter Pindar scribbled verses like this:--

“To give a breakfast in Soho, Sir Joseph’s bitterest foe Must certainly allow him peerless merit: Where on a wagtail and tom-tit He shines, and sometimes on a nit: Displaying powers few gentlemen inherit.”

The house was afterwards the home of the Linnæan Society, and is now the Hospital for Diseases of the Heart.

[364] Knick-knacks.

[365] Elizabeth Carter (1717-1806), of “Epictetus” fame, was the daughter of a Kent parson. She enjoyed the friendship of Dr. Johnson, to whom she was introduced by Cave. Mrs. Carter wrote Nos. 44 and 100 of the _Rambler_, essays which Johnson esteemed highly. Her resolution in acquiring a knowledge of Greek and Latin was extraordinary: she placed a bell at the head of her bed, and arranged that the sexton, who rose between four and five o’clock, should ring it by means of a cord which descended into the garden below. Her translation of Epictetus appeared in 1758; it was published by subscription at one guinea, and she made £1000 by it. Her attainments brought her many distinguished friends, and it was thought that Dr. Secker, afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury, wished to marry her. Mrs. Carter was one of the little company who dined with Johnson at Mrs. Garrick’s house, May 3, 1783, when Hannah More, looking at Johnson, “was struck with the mild radiance of the setting sun.”

[366] Mrs. Dards’ exhibition was at No. 1 Suffolk Street, Cockspur Street. The British Museum has one of her catalogues, dated 1800.

[367] This singular character, whose real name was Henry Constantine Jennings (1731-1819), died within the Rules of the King’s Bench, after spending one fortune on works of art and losing another on the turf. About 1778 he brought to England the antique sculpture known as Alcibiades’ Dog (now at Duncombe Park, Yorkshire), whence he had his nickname, “Dog Jennings.” His purchase of this work for a thousand guineas was the subject of one of Dr. Johnson’s conversations, recorded by Boswell. Jennings lived in the most easterly of the five houses into which Lindsey House, Chelsea, was divided in 1760. In Smith’s _Nollekens_ he appears as a little man in a brown coat walking in Marylebone Fields, where Nollekens was for giving him twopence, mistaking him for a pauper.

Jennings was twice married, and at one time laid claim to a lapsed peerage. At Chelsea, where he maintained his house and grounds in a state of luxurious neglect, it was his custom twice a day to exercise himself with a ponderous lead-tipped broadsword: then (to use his own words), “mount my chaise horse, composed of leather and inflated with wind like a pair of bellows, on which I take exactly one thousand gallops.” Among his treasures was a statue of Venus, which he prized so highly, that for the first six months after acquiring it he had it placed during dinner at the head of his table, with two footmen in laced liveries in attendance on it--a situation that to-day would be worthy of Mr. Anstey’s humour.

[368] Sir Thomas Stepney, ninth and last baronet of Prendergast, Pembroke, died September 12, 1825, aged 65. He was long a member of White’s Club, and wore blue and white striped stockings, a peculiarity he shared with Nollekens, the sculptor. A worthier distinction was his descent from Sir Anthony Vandyke. Sir John Stepney, the third baronet, had married the daughter and heiress of the painter.

[369] Of John Burges, M.D. (1745-1807), there is a manuscript memoir in the library of the Royal College of Physicians. He made a fine collection of the _materia medica_, which ultimately passed to the college, where it is still preserved. Gillray’s legend “From Warwick Lane” refers, of course, to the earlier location of the college in the city.

[370] At the Royal Academy dinner of 1789 the health of Alderman Boydell as “the Commercial Mæcenas of England” was proposed by Edmund Burke. It was in this year that the Alderman began to exhibit in Pall Mall the works which he had commissioned for his Shakespeare Gallery. Next year he became Lord Mayor. Unfortunately, he miscalculated his financial powers, and the outbreak of the French Revolution entailed on him such loss of foreign custom that his death in 1804 was clouded by misfortune. He had employed nearly all the best artists and engravers of his day, and had spent £350,000 in his business. His Shakespeare Gallery, consisting of 170 pictures, was disposed of by lottery; the winner being Tassie, the gem-modeller, who sold them at Christie’s for £6157.

[371] First fashionable in 1745, and named after William, Duke of Cumberland. Smith might have seen it in his boyhood. It was smartly cocked in front.

[372] George Frederick Beltz (1777-1841), Lancaster Herald, and author of _Memorials of the Order of the Garter_, was one of Mrs. Garrick’s executors, and wrote the memoir of her in the _Gentleman’s Magazine_ of November 1822.

[373] “Mr. Dance, in this picture of Garrick, has been guilty of an egregious anachronism. He has actually given Richard the Third the _star_ of the Order of the Garter, when he ought to have known that it was not introduced before the reign of King Charles I.” (Smith: _Nollekens_).

[374] Sir Watkin Williams Wynn, fifth baronet (1772-1840), a generous patron of artists. His town house in St. James’s Square had fine pictures. He died after a fall from his horse in the hunting-field.

[375] The Dowager Lady Amherst would appear to be Elizabeth, daughter and co-heir of Lieutenant-General Honourable George Cary, who married, 1767, Jeffrey, first Lord Amherst, Field-Marshal, who died in 1797, aged 80. Lady Amherst died in 1830.--William George Maton, M.D., dated his fortune from the day when he was approached by an equerry at Weymouth as a person who might be able to name a plant (_arundo epigejos_) which one of the royal princesses had found. He was thus brought into the presence of Queen Charlotte, and later became her physician extraordinary. Maton died on March 30, 1835, and was buried at St. Martin’s-in-the-Fields. There is a tablet to him in Salisbury Cathedral.--Mr. Carr was Mrs. Garrick’s solicitor, and was to be the next occupant of the famous Garrick Villa at Hampton.

[376] Elizabeth Wright Macauley, novelist, actress, and preacher of the gospel, died at York, March 1837, aged 52, in rather straitened circumstances. Her London home was at 52 Clarendon Square, St. Pancras. She published, in 1812, _Effusions of Fancy_, a collection of poems consisting of the “Birth of Friendship,” the “Birth of Affection,” and the “Birth of Sensibility.” In the last year of her life she had travelled the country lecturing on “Domestic Philosophy,” and giving recitations.

[377] At an earlier time the Abbey had been free to sight-seers, but a wanton injury to the figure of George Washington in Major André’s monument had led to the imposition of admission fees. Not long after Smith’s encounter, Charles Lamb wrote his protest against these fees, of which he says: “In no part of our beloved Abbey now can a person find entrance (out of service time) under the sum of _two shillings_.” Lamb’s complaint may have been rather overstrained by reason of its incorporation in his bitter letter to Southey in the _London Magazine_ for October 1823.

Free admission was given to the larger part of the Abbey under Dean Ireland. Authorised guides were first appointed in 1826, and the nave and transepts were opened, and the fees lowered in 1841 at the suggestion of Lord John Thynne (Dean Stanley: _Historical Memorials of Westminster Abbey_).

[378] The Rev. Thomas Rackett (1757-1841), Rector of Spetisbury with Charlton-Marshall, Dorset. He was a musician, a naturalist, an antiquary, and a friend of Garrick. He had been guided as a youth by Dr. John Hunter. His daughter Dorothea married Mr. S. Solly of Heathside, near Poole. She is mentioned on p. 290.

[379] Dr. Francklin was probably the “Thomas Franklin” who signed the round-robin to Dr. Johnson asking him to re-write Goldsmith’s epitaph in English. Here the absence of the _c_ from the name causes Croker to doubt the identity, and Dr. Birkbeck Hill to reject it. It is curious that Smith, with Garrick’s marriage certificate before him, makes the name agree with the questioned signature in the memorial to Johnson. Francklin knew Johnson and dedicated to him a translation of Lucian. “BOSWELL. I think Dr. Franklin’s definition of _Man_ a good one--A tool-making animal. JOHNSON. But many a man never made a tool; and suppose a man without arms, he could not make a tool.” Francklin founded the _Centinel_, a paper of the _Tatler_ variety, and published many translations. He was the first Chaplain to the Royal Academy, and composed a song, “The Patrons,” that was sung at the inaugural dinner.