[318] Du Val’s Lane is now represented by Hornsey Road. It seems to have been originally “Devil’s Lane,” but to have been popularly re-named from Claude Duval (1643-70), the highwayman, who, like Dick Turpin, favoured this district. Born at Domfront in Normandy, Du Val came to England in the train of the Duke of Richmond, and took to the road. He was famous for his gallantries to his victims. He was captured on January 17, 1669 or 1670, in the Hole-in-the-Wall Tavern, Chandos Street, and although intercession was made for him by ladies of rank, he was hanged at Tyburn within four days. The exhibition of his body at the Tangier Tavern, St. Giles’s, drew such crowds that it had to be stopped. It is hard to believe that Du Val was accorded a grave in the centre aisle of Covent Garden Church, and that his epitaph began—

but it is so stated in the Memoirs of Monsieur Du Val, 1670. His funeral, we read, “was attended with many flambeaux, and a numerous train of mourners, whereof most were of the beautiful sex.”

[319] Nathaniel Hillier, of Pancras Lane, merchant, died March 1, 1783, aged 76 (Gentleman’s Magazine).

[320] This tea-pot passed into the possession of that eccentric virtuoso, Henry Constantine Noel, of whom Smith gives an account under 1818. Noel had the following extraordinary inscription engraved on it:—

“We are told by Lucian, that the earthen lamp, which had administered to the lucubrations of Epictetus, was at his death purchased for the enormous sum of three thousand drachmas: why, then, may not imagination equally amplify the value of this unadorned vessel, long employed for the infusion of that favourite herb, whose enlivening virtues are said to have so often protracted the elegant and edifying lucubrations of Samuel Johnson; the zealous advocate of that innocent beverage, against its declared enemy, Jonas Hanway. It was weighed out for sale under the inspection of Sir John Hawkins, at the very minute when they were in the next room closing the incision through which Mr. Cruickshank had explored the ruinated machinery of its dead master’s thorax; so Bray the silversmith, conveyed there in Sir John’s carriage, thus hastily to buy the plate, informed its present possessor, Henry Constantine Noel, by whom it was, for its celebrated services, on the 1st of November 1788, rescued from the undiscriminating obliterations of the furnace.”

[321] In this letter, Charles Townley, the collector of the Townley marbles, probably refers to William Lock (1732-1810), the wealthy connoisseur, and a friend of Madame d’Arblay. He lived at Norbury Park, where he was hospitable to Madame de Staël. He was described as the “arbiter, advocate, and common friend of all lovers of art.”

[322] The “Triumph of Bacchus” was one of eight great pictures which Rubens painted for the palace at Madrid.

[323] Annibale Caracci was employed by Cardinal Farnese to decorate the famous gallery that bears his name. He produced a masterly series of frescoes.

[324] Welbore Ellis, first Baron Mendip, was the third owner of Pope’s Villa at Twickenham, after the poet.

[325] “1811, Feb. 3.—In Great Ormond Street, Atkinson Bush, Esq., in the 76th year of his age” (European Magazine, February 1811).

[326] Parton’s book, Some Account of the Hospital and Parish of St. Giles’ in the Fields, Middlesex (1822), by “the late” Mr. John Parton, gives the plan in question, but does not touch on the matter of its authenticity. It is clear, however, that his plans and maps are largely conjectural.

[327] A distinction she shared with Miss Mary Moser. These are the only women who have been members of the Royal Academy, but it cannot be said that their talent was very exceptional. Peter Pindar irreverently said that Mary Moser was made an R.A. for “a sublime Picture of a Plate of Gooseberries.”

[328] The annals of British art do not contain a more tragic story than that of “the late” William Wynn Ryland. A man of great talent, he was engraver to George III., and an exhibitor at the Royal Academy; but it was his fate to be hanged at Tyburn for forging a bond of several thousand pounds. How he presented this document in person at the India House, is narrated by Henry Angelo as a proof of his extraordinary self-command.

“The cashier, on receiving the document, examined it carefully, and referred to the ledger; then, comparing the date, observed, ‘Here is a mistake, Sir; the bond, as entered, does not become due until to-morrow.’

“Ryland, begging permission to look at the book, on its being handed to him, observed: ‘So I perceive—there must be an error in your entry of one day;’ and offered to leave the bond, not betraying the least disappointment or surprise. The mistake appearing to the cashier to be obviously an error in his office, the bond was paid to Ryland, who departed with the money. The next day the true bond was presented, when the forgery was discovered, of course; and, within a few hours after, the fraud was made public, and steps were taken for the recovery of the perpetrator.

“This document, lately in the possession of a gentleman now deceased, I have often seen. It is, perhaps, the most extraordinary piece of deceptive art, in the shape of imitation, that was ever produced.”

A reprieve for Ryland was sought on the ground of his extraordinary abilities, but, as was usual in cases of forgery, without success. George III. is said to have replied: “No; a man with such ample means of providing for his wants could not reasonably plead necessity as an excuse for his crime.” But the artist’s petition for a respite was both granted and renewed. He explained that he desired no extension of life except as the means of completing his last engraving, and so adding to his wife’s stock of plates. The subject was Queen Eleanor sucking the poison from the arm of her husband, Edward I., from a painting by Angelica Kauffmann. He laboured hard on this work, and when he received the first proof from his printer, said, “Mr. Haddril, I thank you; my task is now accomplished.” He was hanged within a week, and his was the last execution at Tyburn. Henry Angelo says that, like Dr. Dodd, Ryland was allowed to proceed to Tyburn in a mourning coach.

The story of William Blake’s prophecy of Ryland’s end is well known. His father had intended to apprentice him to Ryland, but was frustrated by the unaccountable attitude of the boy, who, after they had called on the engraver at his studio, said, “Father, I do not like the man’s face; it looks as if he will live to be hanged.” Twelve years later came the fulfilment. Col. W. F. Prideaux recently mentioned in Notes and Queries that he possesses a curious collection concerning Ryland’s case which was formed by the Rev. H. Cotton, the ordinary of Newgate. It includes the original handbill offering a reward for Ryland’s apprehension, and a drawing of the engraver’s mother by John Thomas Smith.

[329] In the Dictionary of National Biography, Miss E. T. Bradley sums up the impressions Angelica Kauffmann made: “Goldsmith wrote some lines to her; Garrick, whom she painted, was much fascinated by her, and Fuseli paid addresses to her. Her most serious flirtation, however, was with Sir Joshua Reynolds, whose acquaintance she made directly she arrived in London. He painted her portrait twice. She frequently visited his studio, and painted a weak and uncharacteristic portrait of the painter, which Bartolozzi engraved. Nathaniel Dance, whom she had met in Italy, is also said to have been hopelessly in love with her.”

[330] Sir Nathaniel Dance-Holland, first baronet (1734-1811), met Angelica Kauffmann in Italy, and was said to have been hopelessly in love with her. He was an original member of the Royal Academy, but resigned his diploma in 1790 on his marriage to Mrs. Drummer, known facetiously as “The Yorkshire Fortune,” from her possession of £18,000 a year. He assumed the additional name of Holland, and sat in Parliament for Grinstead. In his time he was a capable but stiff portrait painter, and painted full-length portraits of George III. and his Queen.

[331] A deed of separation was obtained from Pope Pius VI. After the “Count’s” death, Angelica Kauffmann married in London, July 14, 1781, Antonio Pietro Zucchi, a Venetian painter who had long lived in England, and had been employed by Adam, the architect. He decorated Garrick’s house in the Adelphi. He died in 1795.

[332] Thomas Pitt, first Baron Camelford, was a prominent politician and an opponent of Lord North. At Twickenham, where he settled in 1762, he and Horace Walpole exchanged ideas on Gothic architecture.

[333] Probably the well-known Dr. Bates, M.D., of Missenden, Bucks.

[334] Willey Reveley, architect, and editor of vol. iii. of Stuart’s Antiquities of Athens.

[335] Smith’s task had been protracted by his tiresome quarrel with his collaborator, John Sidney Hawkins. They pamphletted and “vindicated” to their hearts’ content, but the dispute is not worth unravelling.

[336] Henry White, then Sacrist of Lichfield Cathedral.

[337] George Dance, who died in 1825, was the architect of the recently demolished Newgate Prison, also of St. Luke’s Hospital and the Guildhall entrance façade. He was the last survivor of the foundation members of the Royal Academy, and was buried in St. Paul’s Cathedral. William Daniell, R.A., was well known for his Indian and Oriental illustrations. He painted a panorama of Madras, and another of “The City of Lucknow and the mode of Taming Wild Elephants.” His painting, “A View of the Long Walk, Windsor,” is in the royal collection.

[338] Fuseli’s quaint violences of speech were many, and gained in effect from his Swiss accent. He swore roundly, a habit which Haydon says he caught from his friend Dr. Armstrong, the poet. He said a subject should interest, astonish, or move; if it did none of these, it was worth “noding by Gode.” A visitor to his imposing, but unsuccessful, Milton Gallery of forty paintings, said to him, “Pray, sir, what is that picture?” “It is the bridging of Chaos; the subject from Milton.” “No wonder,” said the inquirer, “I did not know it, for I never read Milton, but I will.” “I advise you not, sir, for you will find it a d——d tough job.” He said, on looking at Northcote’s painting of the angel meeting Balaam and his ass: “Northcote, you are an angel at an ass, but an ass at an angel.” Once, at the table of Mr. Coutts, the banker, Mrs. Coutts, dressed like Morgiana, came dancing in, presenting her dagger at every breast. As she confronted Nollekens, Fuseli called out, “Strike—strike—there’s no fear; Nolly was never known to bleed.” He recommended a sculptor to find some newer emblem of eternity than a serpent with a tail in its mouth. The something newer (says Cunningham) startled a man whose imagination was none of the brightest, and he said, “How shall I find something new?” “Oh, nothing so easy,” said Fuseli; “I’ll help you to it. When I went away to Rome I left two fat men cutting fat bacon in St. Martin’s Lane; in ten years’ time I returned, and found the two fat men cutting fat bacon still; twenty years more have passed, and there the two fat fellows cut the fat flitches the same as ever. Carve them—if they do not look like an image of eternity, I wot not what does.”

[339] In the last ten years of his stage career Bannister travelled with his “Budget” of songs, anecdotes, and imitations, through England, Scotland, and Ireland.

[340] The Rev. Stephen Weston, F.R.S. (1747-1830), a well-known antiquary and classical scholar, held the Devonshire livings of Mainhead and Little Hempston, Devon, but left that county after the death of his wife. He engaged in some spirited attempts to translate Gray’s Elegy into Greek, and published his Elegia Grayiana, Græce, in 1794. He was fond of the French capital, and published The Praise of Paris in 1803. An old friend of Nollekens, he was present at the funeral so airily described by Smith in his life of the sculptor.

[341] Swan upping (or marking) is still carried out yearly on the Thames by the representatives of the Crown and by the Dyers’ and Vintners’ Companies, who have the privilege of keeping swans on the river. Formerly the state barges of the City went up to Staines, and ceremonies were performed. Even to-day the expedition of the swan-markers is picturesque; the skiffs bear the flags of the several authorities, the markers wear flannels and distinguishing jerseys, and the overseers don special tunics and peaked caps. The birds are caught by means of long hooked poles.

[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:—

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.