Part 27

[433] This elaborate and beautiful work stands in the centre of St. Andrew’s Chapel. Beneath a canopy supported on columns lie the effigies of Lord and Lady Norris, and round them kneel their six soldier sons, four of whom died on the field. In his _Antient Topography_ Smith tells how Roubiliac admired this stately cenotaph. “When my father had occasion to go to his master (Roubiliac) during the time he was putting up Sir Peter Warren’s monument in the Abbey, he was generally found standing by the monument of Norris, or by that of Vere. On one of these attendances he was observed with his arms folded before the north-west corner figure of one of the six knights (the sons) who support the cenotaph of Lord Norris, and appeared as if rivetted to the spot. My father, who had thrice delivered his message, without being once noticed, was at last smartly pinched on the elbow by Roubiliac, who at the same time said, but in a soft and smothered tone of voice, ‘Hush! Hush! He’ll _speak_ presently.’”

[434] William Esdaile (1758-1837) was a partner in the banking house of Esdaile, Hammet, & Co., 21 Lombard Street. He took up print-collecting and bought lavishly. Falling into ill health, he spent the last five years of his life in poring over his prints, and died in his Clapham house, October 2, 1837. The disposal of his remarkable collection at Christie’s occupied sixteen days, and was attended by buyers from the Continent.

[435] The Clapham visited by Smith was that of Lord Macaulay’s young manhood and of Ruskin’s boyhood, and was rural and open beyond the belief of the present generation. In his recently published _Life and Letters of Sir George Grove_, Mr. Charles L. Graves says: “All the way from Wandsworth Road to Clapham Junction the neighbourhood was a favourite resort for solid City people, the wealthiest living on Clapham Common. But Clapham was thoroughly rural and not even semi-suburban in the ‘twenties’ and ‘thirties.’ Mr. Edmund Grove distinctly recollects seeing a man in the stocks at Clapham, then a most picturesque village with a watch-house for the ‘Charlies,’ and old inns with timbered fronts and spacious courtyards.”

[436] Charles Alexandre de Calonne succeeded Necker as comptroller-general of finance in 1783. He was unable to reduce French finance to order, and in 1787 found it advisable to retire to England. In Sir Nathaniel Wraxhall’s _Memoirs_ I find the following:--

“The tester of Calonne’s bed having fallen upon him during the night, together with a portion of the ceiling of the room, he narrowly escaped suffocation. All Paris, when the fact became known, exclaimed, ‘Juste ciel!’ The tester of a bed is denominated in French ‘le ciel du lit.’… With him may be said to have commenced the emigration (to England) which soon became so general.”

[437] Henry Peter Standly, of St. Neot’s, an active magistrate, possessed an unrivalled collection of Hogarth’s prints and drawings, which was dispersed at Christie’s in 1845. He purchased drawings of landscapes from Smith.

[438] See note, p. 4.

[439] John Inigo Richards, R.A., was one of the original members of the Royal Academy, and its secretary from 1788. He was for many years principal scene-painter at Covent Garden. He died in his Academy apartments, Dec. 18, 1810.

[440] Edwards’s _Anecdotes of Painters_.--S.

[441] Probably Dr. Robert Richardson, M.D., who had been travelling physician to Lord Mountjoy. He died in Gordon Street, Bloomsbury, November 5, 1847.

[442] Enthusiasm for art and carelessness of money went to the forming of Sir Thomas Lawrence’s unrivalled collection. Cunningham says: “Of every eminent artist he had such specimens as no other person possessed; not huddled into heaps, or scattered like the leaves of the Sibyl, but arranged in fine large portfolios properly labelled and enshrined.”

[443] Smith could not have seen the whole of Sir Peter Lely’s collection of prints and drawings. These were sold by auction in 1687, the sale lasting more than a month.--Thomas Hudson (1701-79) painted the portraits of members of the Dilettanti Society, and, being wealthy, collected many fine prints and drawings.--Archibald Campbell, third Duke, formed a very fine library.

[444] This name is given as Serre in the three old editions of the _Rainy Day_--a very misleading erratum. William Score was born in Devonshire about 1778. He became a pupil of Joshua Reynolds, and regularly exhibited portraits at the Royal Academy.

[445] “Sir Joshua Reynolds commenced two of his finest historical pictures without settling in what way the compositions were to be completed, or, indeed, without even thinking of their subjects. The head of Count Ugolino at Knowle, and the Infant Christ in Macklin’s picture, were painted on the canvases long before the artist considered subjects or combinations” (S.).--This historical painting, says Northcote, existed simply as a head of the Count until Burke and Goldsmith praised it, whereupon Sir Joshua had his canvas enlarged in order that he might add the other figures. When finished, the picture was bought by the Duke of Dorset for 400 guineas. It is not Reynolds at his best, and Charles Lamb, who saw it at the Reynolds exhibition held in 1813 in Pall Mall, criticised it rather severely.

[446] Charles Howard, Earl of Nottingham, Lord High Admiral at the defeat of the Armada, best known to history as Lord Howard of Effingham. The portrait Smith missed was painted by Frederigo Zucchero, whose (attributed) portraits of Queen Elizabeth, Leicester, Raleigh, and James I. are in the National Portrait Gallery. His Howard is now in the Painted Hall at Greenwich. The portraits of the Admirals were presented to Greenwich Hospital by George IV. (not William IV.) in 1823. William IV. added five naval pictures in 1835. As will be seen on a later page, Smith’s curiosity about the hanging of these pictures led him to visit Greenwich next day.

[447] Francis Legat, a Scotch engraver, came to London about 1780, and lived at 22 Charles Street, Westminster. Here he engraved “Mary Queen of Scots resigning her Crown” after Hamilton in 1786, and later Northcote’s painting. He died in 1809.

[448] Chantrey’s group, “The Sleeping Children,” in Lichfield Cathedral.

[449] This statue is now in the British Museum.

[450] The Chelsea porcelain manufacture was founded about 1745, and was at the height of its fame from 1750 to 1764 under Mr. Sprimont. The works finally closed in 1784. The Chelsea potters went forthwith to Derby, where they founded the Chelsea-Derby pottery. Remains of the old Chelsea furnaces, in which Dr. Johnson was allowed to test his compositions, are still to be seen in the cellars of the Prince of Wales Tavern, at the corner of Justice Walk and Lawrence Street, Chelsea.

[451] The case of Chelsea china in the British Museum contains similar figures of the Earl of Chatham, George III., a Thames waterman wearing Doggett’s Coat and Badge, etc.

[452] Johan Zoffany, R.A., born at Frankfort about 1735, painted portraits of Garrick, one of the best representing the actor as Abel Drugger.

[453] Thomas Davies, the actor and bookseller, more famous as the introducer to Dr. Johnson of Boswell. Johnson wrote the first sentence of his _Memoirs of David Garrick_.

[454] These pictures were the “Canvass,” the “Poll,” the “Chairing,” and the “Election Feast.” They are said to have been painted by Hogarth for about forty-five guineas apiece. At the sale of Garrick’s pictures at Christie’s in June 1823 they were bought by Sir John Soane, and are in the Soane Museum.

[455] In 1829 the surprising period of seventy-three years had elapsed since Garrick became the tenant of his famous villa. He had enlarged and improved the house, planted many trees in the grounds, and erected on his lawn a “Grecian Temple” to receive the statue of Shakespeare by Roubiliac which now stands in the entrance hall of the British Museum. Here also stood his famous Shakespeare chair, designed by Hogarth: it is now in the possession of the Baroness Burdett-Coutts. At Hampton Garrick received his friends with great hospitality, and occasionally gave _fêtes champêtres_ with the accompaniments of fireworks and illuminations. Horace Walpole, finding himself a fellow-visitor with the Duke of Grafton, Lord and Lady Rochford, the Spanish Minister, and other great people, wrote to Bentley: “This is being _sur un assez bon ton_ for a player.” Garrick gave treats to the children of Hampton in his grounds. After his death, Hampton House and the house in Adelphi Terrace were occupied for forty-three years by Mrs. Garrick. She preserved the Hampton furniture exactly as her husband left it.

[456] The mystery of Mrs. Garrick’s origin has never been cleared up. Some authorities say that she was the daughter of a respectable Vienna citizen named John Veigel. According to the story told by Charles Lee Lewis (see his _Memoirs_, 1805), and denied by Mrs. Garrick, she was the fruit of a liaison which the Earl of Burlington formed with a young lady of family on the Continent. At the time of her birth the Earl was back in England, whence he remitted funds for his daughter’s support. The money is said to have been dishonestly retained by the person in whose charge she was placed, and the child herself to have been forced to earn a living as a dancer. The Earl, hearing of this, arranged that she should come to England and dance for a higher salary. Later he took her into his house as companion and teacher to his legitimate daughter. Then Garrick appeared on the scene, and the benevolent Earl said to him: “Do you think you could satisfactorily receive her from my hands with a portion of ten thousand pounds?--and here let me inform you that she is my daughter.”

The above story is told by Lee Lewis on the authority of “an aged domestic who lived at the time it happened at Burlington House, Piccadilly.” Apparently the same gossiping lady is referred to in the following note in Mr. Percy Fitzgerald’s _Life of Garrick_: “A curious little story comes to me, told originally by a housekeeper in the Burlington family, and, though based on such a loose foundation, may be worth repeating. On this authority, the story ran that Lord Burlington, coming to see her, was struck by a picture, and, on inquiry, found she was actually the daughter of a lady whom he had known abroad. The result was the discovery that the Violette was actually his daughter. The authority of the old housekeeper seems below the dignity of biography, but her testimony comes to us very circumstantially.”

The story of Violette’s relationship to the Earl of Burlington was supported by the covert kindness which she received from that nobleman. But it has to be remembered that she was the “rage” of the whole town, “the finest and most admired dancer in the world,” according to Walpole, and that Lady Burlington, not less than her lord, was so fond of her, that she would accompany her to the theatre, and wait in the wings with a pelisse to throw over her when she came off the stage. Mr. Fitzgerald’s conclusion on the whole matter is that “her father was someone of rank at Vienna, possibly one of the Starenberg family, from whom it is said she brought letters of introduction to England.”

[457] Lancelot Brown (1715-83) is generally considered the founder of modern “natural” as distinct from “formal” landscape-gardening. He laid out Kew, the grounds of Blenheim, and parts of St. James’s Park and Kensington Gardens. His conversational abilities, extolled by Hannah More, contributed to his fame. John Taylor relates that he once assisted the gouty Lord Chatham into his carriage. “Now, sir, go and adorn your country,” said the grateful statesman. To which Brown aptly replied: “Go you, my lord, and save it.”

[458] Pain’s Hill, at Cobham, Surrey, was considered a triumph of landscape gardening by Horace Walpole and other connoisseurs. Its owner, the Hon. Charles Hamilton, not content with artificial ruins and temples disposed after the pictures of Poussin and Claude, added a hermitage and engaged a hermit at £700 a year. But as the hermit had all the hardship, and Hamilton all the sentiment, the arrangement broke down.

[459] Mr. Carr’s mention of Johnson’s frequent visits recalls the answer he made to Garrick when asked how he liked the spot: “Ah, David! it is the leaving of such places that makes a death-bed terrible.” Some interesting matter relating to the Garricks at Hampton will be found in Mr. Henry Ripley’s _History and Topography of Hampton-on-Thames_. The existence of the villa has recently been threatened by the westward extension of London’s electric tramways, but, happily, the danger of its removal has been averted.

[460] George Garrard, A.R.A. (1760-1826), animal painter and sculptor, led a successful movement to obtain copyright protection for works of plastic art. He died at Queen’s Buildings, Brompton.

[461] Michael Dahl (1656-1743) was born in Stockholm. He settled in London, and became the rival of Kneller. “If he excelled, it was only in the mediocrity by which he was surrounded” (Redgrave). He was buried in St. James’s Church, Piccadilly.

[462] “I have not heard that song better performed since Mr. Incledon sung it. He was a great singer, sir, and I may say, in the words of our immortal Shakespeare, that, take him for all in all, we shall not look upon his like again.” In these words Hoskins of the _Cave of Harmony_ complimented Colonel Newcome on his rendering of “Wapping Old Stairs.” Incledon began life in the navy, where he sang himself into the good graces of his Admiral. Coming to London in 1783, he became a public singer; but it was not until 1790 that his success was established by his performance in _The Poor Soldier_ at Covent Garden. In his later years he relied mainly on the provinces, in which he travelled under the style of “The Wandering Melodist.” Though exquisite in song he was clumsy in appearance. Leslie, the painter, describes him as having “the face and figure of a low sailor,” yet with these “the most manly and at the same time the most agreeable voice I ever heard.” Another good authority records that his voice “was of extraordinary power, both in the natural and the falsetto. The former, from A to G, a compass of about fourteen notes, was full and open, neither partaking of the reed nor the string, and sent forth without the smallest artifice; and such was its ductility, that when he sang _pianissimo_, it retained its original ductility. His falsetto, which he could use from D to E or F, or about ten notes, was rich, sweet, and brilliant.”

[463] Funny-movers attended to the boats. A funny was a narrow, clinker-built pleasure boat for a pair of sculls. “A most melancholy accident happened one evening this week in the river off Fulham. A young couple, on the point of marriage, took a sail in a funny, which unfortunately upset, and the two lovers were drowned” (_Annual Register_, 1808).

[464] The Battersea market-gardeners were famous. A rhyme of 1802 says--

“Gardeners in shoals from Battersea shall run, To raise their kindlier hot-beds in the sun.”

The first asparagus raised in England is said to have come from Battersea; and such was the extent of the market-gardens, that large numbers of Welshwomen tramped thither every spring for employment in the summer months.

[465] Not Shakespeare.

[466] In _A Sentimental Journey_. See “The Passport,” “The Captive,” and “The Starling.”

[467] “Old Granby” was doubtless intended as a jesting compliment to the pensioner, in allusion to the bluff Lord Manners, Marquess of Granby, renowned for his toughness and gallantry.

[468] Hugh Hewson died in 1809, and it appears from a newspaper of that year, quoted by Robert Chambers (_Favourite Authors_: Smollett), that he was proud of being the prototype of Strap. “His shop was hung round with Latin quotations, and he would frequently point out to his acquaintance the several scenes in _Roderick Random_ pertaining to himself, which had their foundation, not in the Doctor’s inventive fancy, but in truth and reality. The Doctor’s meeting him at a barber’s shop at Newcastle-upon-Tyne, and the subsequent mistake at the inn; their arrival together in London, and the assistance they experienced from Strap’s friend, were all of that description.”

But there are four Straps in the field. Faulkner, in his _Chelsea_, finds the “real” Strap in one William Lewis, a book-binder, who died in 1785. Smollett, he says, induced Lewis to set up business in Chelsea, and procured him customers. “I resided seven years in the same house with his widow, and had frequent opportunities of hearing a confirmation of the anecdotes of her husband, as related by the celebrated novelist.”

Another claimant was one Duncan Niven, a Glasgow wig-maker, referred to in the _Gentleman’s Magazine_ as “the person, it is said, from whom Dr. Smollett took his character of Strap in _Roderick Random_.”

Lastly, one Hutchinson, a Dunbar barber, had some pretensions to be Strap.

[469] Of these taverns the most famous are the Old Swans at London Bridge and Chelsea. The former stood for centuries beside Swan Stairs (now represented by the Old Swan Pier), and was well known to all passengers on the river who elected to avoid the dangerous “shooting” of London Bridge. On July 30, 1763, Dr. Johnson and Boswell landed for this reason at the Old Swan on their way down to Greenwich, re-embarking at Billingsgate.

The name of the Old Swan of Chelsea, an inn known to Pepys, is perpetuated in Old Swan House, a modern residence built from the designs of Mr. Norman Shaw. The “New Swan,” which, however, was really a second “Old Swan,” has also disappeared, but, according to Mr. R. Blunt’s excellent _Historical Handbook to Chelsea_, its quaint garden, entered by steps from the river, under the long signboard, is within the memory of many residents.

[470] “The bells of this church were recast by Ruddle, and tuned by Mr. Harrison, the inventor of the Timekeeper; they are esteemed equal to any peal of bells in this Kingdom, and have nearly the same sound as those of Magdalen College, Oxford” (Faulkner: _Historical Account of Fulham_, 1813).

[471] In _Magna Britannia_ it is not only stated that this street was originally called Hartshorn Lane, but that Ben Jonson once lived in it (S.). The belief that Ben Jonson lived here as a boy rests on the statement of Fuller, who, in his _Worthies_, says: “Though I cannot with all my industrious inquiry find him in his cradle, I can fetch him from his long coats. When a little child he lived in Hartshorn Lane, near Charing Cross, where his mother married a bricklayer for her second husband.”

[472] The circumstances of this crime have remained an unsolved mystery. Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey was found in a ditch near Primrose Hill on the evening of October 17, five days after his disappearance from his house in Green Lane, Strand, and five weeks after hearing Titus Oates swear to the existence of a Popish plot. Smith’s statement that he was murdered in Somerset House rests on the utterly corrupt and contradictory testimony of Miles Prance, the Roman Catholic silversmith. His evidence, however, sent three men to the gallows, who protested their innocence to the last. The whole subject is re-examined by Mr. Andrew Lang in _Longman’s Magazine_ of August 1903.

Four different medals were struck to commemorate and characterise the murder. In one of these Godfrey is represented walking with a sword through his body, while on the reverse St. Denis is shown carrying his head in his hand, with the inscription--

“Godfrey walks uphill after he is dead; Dennis walks downhill carrying his head.”

The design of another medal illustrates Prance’s statement that Godfrey’s body was first moved from Somerset House in a sedan chair, and then on a horse to Primrose Hill.

The burial of the murdered Justice in St. Martin’s Church was attended by more than a thousand people of distinction, and his portrait was placed in the vestry-room, where it hangs to this day.

[473] William Lloyd (1627-1717), successively Bishop of St. Asaph, Lichfield-and-Coventry, and Worcester, was Vicar of St. Martin’s-in-the-Fields 1677-80.

[474] “The two grand Ingrossers of Coles: viz. The Woodmonger, and the Chandler. In a dialogue, expressing their unjust and cruell raising the price of Coales, when, and how they please, to the generall oppression of the Poore. Penn’d on Purpose to lay open their subtile practices, and for the reliefe of many thousands of poore people, in, and about the Cities of London, and Westminster. By a Well-willer to the prosperity of this famous Common-wealth. London, Printed for John Harrison at the Holy-Lamb at the East end of S. Pauls, 1653.”

[475] It has been demonstrated by Mr. Sidney Young in his learned work, _The Annals of the Barber Surgeons_ (1890), that this painting cannot represent the granting of the Charter by Henry VIII. This event occurred in 1512, when the King was but twenty-one years of age; Holbein makes him a man of fifty. Mr. Young believes Holbein’s subject to be the Union of the Barbers Company with the Guild of Surgeons, accomplished by Act of Parliament in 1540.

[476] Of this picture, which narrowly escaped the Fire of London, Pepys thus speaks in his Memoirs:--August 28, 1688. “And at noon comes by appointment Harris to dine with me: and after dinner he and I to Chyrurgeons’-hall, where they are building it new,--very fine; and there to see their theatre, which stood all the fire, and (which was our business) their great picture of Holbein’s, thinking to have bought it, by the help of Mr. Pierce, for a little money: I did think to give £200 for it, it being said to be worth £1000; but it is so spoiled that I have no mind to it, and is not a pleasant, though a good picture.”--S.

[477] This painting represents Edward VI. presenting the Royal Charter of Endowment to the Lord Mayor in 1552; it cannot, therefore, be by Holbein, who died in 1543. Walpole attributes the painting to Holbein, but says the picture was not completed by him. He states that Holbein introduced his own head into one corner. Wornum thinks that there is not a trace of this master’s hand in the picture.

[478] Her portrait has not been identified with certainty. An old Windsor catalogue, however, contains her name.

[479] Richard Dalton was keeper of pictures and antiquary to George III., and one of the artists who presented to George III. the petition for the foundation of the Royal Academy. In 1774, Dalton published about ten etchings from Holbein’s drawings. Perhaps his greatest service to British art was his bringing Bartolozzi to England.

[480] John Chamberlaine (1745-1812), antiquary, succeeded Dalton in 1791, and published “_Imitations of Original Drawings_, by Hans Holbein, in the Collection of His Majesty, for the Portraits of Illustrious Persons at the Court of Henry VIII.” He died at Paddington Green.

[481] Conrad Martin Metz (1755-1827) studied engraving in London under Bartolozzi; he engraved and imitated many drawings by the old masters.

[482] Edmund Lodge (1756-1839), Clarenceux Herald in 1838. His book, known briefly as _Lodge’s Portraits_, was originally issued in forty folio parts.

[483] Of Sandby’s “View of Westminster from the garden of old Somerset House” there is an engraving by Rawle in Smith’s _Westminster Antiquities_.

[484] Charles Long, Baron Farnborough (1761-1838), was Secretary of State for Ireland, and held other important posts. Thomas Moore calls him “the most determined placeman in England” (Memoirs, iv. 28). His advice was sought on the decoration of the royal palaces and on London street improvements. He gave many fine pictures to the National Gallery.