Part 8

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

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

1790.

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

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

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

1791.

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

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

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

1792.

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

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

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

“The illness of Sir Joshua Reynolds was long, but borne with a mild and cheerful fortitude, without the least mixture of anything irritable or querulous, agreeably to the placid and even tenor of his whole life.

“He had, from the beginning of his malady, a distinct view of his dissolution; and he contemplated it with that entire composure which nothing but the innocence, integrity, and usefulness of his life, and unaffected submission to the will of Providence, could bestow. In this situation he had every consolation from family tenderness, which his own kindness to his family had indeed well deserved.

“Sir Joshua Reynolds was, on very many accounts, one of the most memorable men of his time. He was the first Englishman who added the praise of the elegant arts to the other glories of his country. In taste, in grace, in facility, in happy invention, and in the richness and harmony of colouring, he was equal to the great masters of the renowned ages. In portrait he was beyond them; for he communicated to that description of the art, in which English artists are the most engaged, a variety, a fancy, and a dignity derived from the higher branches, which even those who professed them in a superior manner did not always preserve, when they delineated individual nature. His portraits remind the spectator of the invention of history and the amenity of landscape. In painting portraits, he appeared not to be raised upon that platform, but to descend to it from a higher sphere. His paintings illustrate his lessons; and his lessons seem to be derived from his paintings. He possessed the theory as perfectly as the practice of his art. To be such a painter, he was a profound and penetrating philosopher.

“In full happiness of foreign and domestic fame, admired by the expert in art, and by the learned in science, courted by the great, caressed by sovereign powers, and celebrated by distinguished poets, his native humility, modesty, and candour never forsook him, even on surprise or provocation, nor was the least degree of arrogance or assumption visible to the most scrutinising eye, in any part of his conduct or discourse.

“His talents of every kind, powerful from nature, and not meanly cultivated by letters--his social virtues in all the relations and in all the habitudes of life--rendered him the centre of a very great and unparalleled variety of agreeable societies, which will be dissipated by his death. He had too much merit not to excite some jealousy, too much innocence to provoke any enmity. The loss of no man of his time can be felt with more sincere, general, and unmixed sorrow. ‘Hail! and farewell!’”

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

“DEAR SIR,--If it was not for having you older than your friends would wish you, I should be glad you had been of the party, where I heard an argument between Dr. Johnson and Sir Joshua Reynolds, on the wonderful power of the human eye. Dr. Johnson made a quotation which I do not remember. ‘Sir,’ said Sir Joshua, in reply, ‘that divine effect is produced by the parts appertaining to the eye, and not from its globe, as is generally supposed; the skull must be justly proportioned.’

“_Mrs. Cholmondeley._[256]--‘My dear Sir Joshua, was there nothing in the magic of Garrick’s eye? its comicality. The Duke of Richmond, the Duke of Dorset, and young Sheridan[257] have superb eyes; but I don’t know what effect they would have on the stage.’

“_Sir Joshua._--‘Little or none, Madam; the great beauty of the Duke of Richmond’s eye proceeded from its fine and uncommon colour, dark blue, which would be totally lost on the stage, the light being constantly either too high or too low. Garrick’s eye, unaccompanied by the action of his mouth, would not fascinate. When you are near a person, a pretty woman for instance, and have a good light, the contraction and expansion of the pupilla, which bids defiance to our art, is delightful; it is more perceptible in fine grey and light blue eyes, than in any other colour. We, however, cannot deny the majestic look of the Belvedere Apollo, though unassisted by iris, pupil, eye-lashes, or colour.’

“_Dr. Johnson._--‘Sir, a tiger’s eye, and, I am told, a snake’s, will intimidate birds, so that they will drop from trees for its prey, without using their wings.’

“After Dr. Johnson had quaffed about twenty-four cups of tea, he gave a blow of considerable length from his mouth, drew his breath, and said, ‘Sir, I believe you are right, it is but rational to suppose so: I wish that rogue Burke was here.’

“I am sorry, my dear Sir, that my memory is not better, so as to give you verbatim what passed. I feel like a person giving evidence in a court, trammelled by the apprehension of saying too much, or, as a late friend of mine said, ‘remembering a great many circumstances that never happened;’ and I only write this to show my readiness to comply with any request you could possibly make of your obliged friend,

“M. PHILLIPS.”

“If you ask how it comes, the faithful Bossy was not present; Bossy was not always producible after dinner.”

“_Wednesday, 27th March._

ROYAL BUN HOUSE, CHELSEA,

GOOD FRIDAY.

_No Cross Buns._

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

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

1794.

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

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

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

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

1795.

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

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

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

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