NOTES ON THE ILLUSTRATIONS.
Countess of Harrington and her Children(Plate I.). Sir Joshua painted her twice also as Miss Fleming.—Robinetta(Plate II.). The Hon. Anna Tollemache was the original of this picture, of which Reynolds painted three versions: that in the National Gallery, Lord Lonsdale’s, and Lord Tollemache’s, from which Jones made his engraving, dedicating it to the picture’s then owner the Hon. William Tollemache.—Master Henry Hoare(Plate III.). The only son of Sir Richard Colt Hoare, Bart., F.R.S., the well-known antiquarian and historian of Wiltshire.—Duchess of Devonshire and Child(Plate IV.). One of Sir Joshua Reynolds’s thirteen exhibits in the Royal Academy of 1786, when Walpole depreciated it. Here is the famous duchess in that tender mother-mood in which Coleridge apostrophised her so exquisitely. The chubby baby, when she grew up, very properly married the son and heir of that Earl of Carlisle who in graceful verse had championed her mother’s introduction of the fashion of feathers.—The Mask(Plate V.). Part of the “Duke of Marlborough and family,” which Sir Joshua painted in 1777. The little Ladies Charlotte and Anne Spencer, being taken into the room at Blenheim where Sir Joshua sat at his easel, the youngest drew back, clutching at her nurse’s gown, crying “I won’t be painted!” a natural action which appealed irresistibly to Reynolds. And little Lady Anne, as Countess of Shaftesbury, lived until 1865, the last survivor of all Sir Joshua Reynolds’s countless sitters.
Bacchante(Emma, Lady Hamilton) (Plate VI.). Painted in 1784 for Sir William Hamilton, when, of course, there was no thought of the marriage. The price was 50 guineas, just about a fifth of what a brilliant impression of the print in colours would fetch to-day. The Hon. Charles Greville, Sir William’s nephew and Emma’s lover at the time, seems to have negotiated the business, for he wrote, in October 1784 to his uncle, who was then in Naples: “Let me know how theBacchanteis to be paid. The dog was ugly, and I made him paint it again.” Later Greville wrote: “Emma’s picture shall be sent by the first ship. I wish Romney yet to mend the dog.” The picture is said to have been lost at sea, on its way back from Naples, but at Greville’s sale in 1810, theBacchante—in that case a replica of the lost canvas—was catalogued as “Diana, original of the well-known engraved picture,” and bought by Mr. Chamberlayne for 130 guineas.—Mrs. Jordan in the character of “The Country Girl”(Plate VII.). It was as Peggy in Garrick’s comedy “The Country Girl,” adapted from Wycherly’s “Country Wife,” that Dorothy Jordan first appeared atDrury Lane in 1785, and immediately bewitched the public with the natural, irresistible joyousness of her acting and the lovable charm of her personality. In the following year she gave Romney thirteen sittings for this picture. At the first he could not satisfy himself as to the best pose for her. After many tries she pretended to be tired of the business, and, jumping up from her chair, in the hoydenish manner and tone of Peggy, she said, “Well, I’m a-going.” “Stay!” cried Romney; “that’s just what I want.” And at once he began to sketch her for this picture. It was bought in 1791 for 70 guineas by the Duke of Clarence, afterwards King WilliamIV., and thereby, of course, hangs the well-known tale of a twenty years’ love, ten children, and unhappy separation. The print, first published asThe Rompat 5s., may now fetch, if fine in colour, like Major Coates’s copy, as much as £200.—Hobbinol and Ganderetta(Plate VIII.). William Somerville’s “Hobbinol” was a mock-heroic poem on rural games, which Mr. Gosse describes as “ridiculous.”—Countess of Oxford(Plate IX.). This is in the National Gallery; but Hoppner exhibited an earlier portrait in 1797. Jane Scott, daughter of a Hampshire vicar, married, in her twentieth year, the fifth Earl of Oxford, whom Byron described as “equally contemptible in mind and body”; but then, she and the poet were lovers when she was forty and he about twenty-five. “The autumn of a beauty like hers is preferable to the spring in others,” he said in after years. “I never felt a stronger passion, which,” he did not forget to add, “she returned with equal ardour.” It was on Lady Oxford’s notepaper that Byron wrote his final letter to Lady Caroline Lamb, and this in the very year in which, it now appears, he revived his boyish passion for Mary Chaworth.—Viscountess Andover(Plate X.). Eldest daughter of William Coke, of Holkham, the famous agriculturist, so long M.P. for Norfolk, and later Earl of Leicester.
St. James’s Park(Plate XIV.). M. Grosley, a Frenchman, describes this scene in his “Tour of London,” 1772: “Agreeably to this rural simplicity, most of these cows are driven about noon and evening to the gate which leads from the park to the quarter of Whitehall. Tied to posts at the extremity of the grass plots, they swill passengers with their milk, which, being drawn from their udders upon the spot, is served, with all the cleanliness peculiar to the English, in little mugs at the rate of a penny a mug.”—A Tea Garden(Plate XV.). Bagnigge House had been the country residence of Nell Gwyn, and in 1757 the then tenant accidentally discovered a chalybeate spring in his grounds, which two years later he turned to profit. Bagnigge Wells then developed a tea garden, with arbours, ponds with fountains and gold-fish, a bun-house,music, and a reputation for the amorous rendezvous. The place was very popular, and much favoured, especially on Sundays, by the would-be fashionable wives of well-to-do city-folk. In the character of “Madam Fussock” Colman took this off in his prologue to Garrick’s Drury Lane farce, “Bon Ton; or High Life above Stairs,” 1776.—The Lass of Livingstone(Plate XVI.). A popular old Scotch song, words by Allan Ramsay. There is also an older version, “The Bonnie Lass o’ Liviston,” associated with an actual person who kept a public-house in the parish of Livingstone.
Lady Cockerell as a Gipsy Woman(Plate XIX.). One of the beautiful daughters of Sir John and Lady Rushout, whose miniatures are, perhaps, Plimer’s masterpieces.—Lady Duncannon(Plate XX.). One of the “Portraits of Four Ladies of Quality,” exhibited by Downman at the Royal Academy in 1788. There are also colour-prints of Viscountess Duncannon after Lavinia, Countess Spencer and Cosway, and, with her more famous sister, Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, after Angelica Kauffman; while they both figure, with other fashionable beauties, in J. K. Sherwin’s picture “The Finding of Moses,” also in Rowlandson’s “Vauxhall,” and two prints in which the same artist celebrated their triumphant share in the Westminster election of 1784, when it was said that “two such lovely portraits had never before appeared on a canvass.” The Countess of Bessborough, as she became, was the mother of Lady Caroline Lamb. Her distinguished grandson, Sir Spencer Ponsonby-Fane, kindly lent the print reproduced here.
Rinaldo and Armida(Plate XXII.). The enchantment of Rinaldo, the Christian Knight, by Armida, the beautiful Oriental sorceress, in Tasso’s “Gerusalemme Liberata.”Love and Beauty: Marchioness of Townshend(Plate XXIV.). One of the three beautiful daughters of Sir William Montgomery immortalised by Reynolds on the large canvas now in the National Gallery, called “The Graces decorating a terminal figure of Hymen.” She married the distinguished general who finished the battle of Quebec when Wolfe had fallen.
Two Bunches a Penny, Primroses(Plate XXV.).Knives, Scissors and Razors to Grind(Plate XXVI.). Numbers 1 and 6 of theCries of London. The other plates are: 2,Milk below, Maids. 3,Sweet China Oranges. 4,Do you want any Matches?5,New Mackerel. 7,Fresh Gathered Peas. 8,Duke Cherries. 9,Strawberries. 10,Old Chairs to Mend. 11,A new Love-song. 12,Hotspice Gingerbread, two plates. 13,Turnips and Carrots. There are still in existence two or three paintings of similar character by Wheatley—one depicting a man selling copper kettles—which would suggest, besides the belated publication of thethirteenth plate, that it was originally intended to issue a larger number of the “Cries” than those we know, had the public encouragement warranted it. The colour-printing of the earliest impressions was superlatively fine, and in the original pink board-wrappers these are, of course, extremely rare, and would realize to-day as much as a thousand pounds.
Mrs. Crewe(Plate XXVII.). The famous beauty, Fulke Greville’s daughter. It was to her house in Lower Grosvenor Street that the triumphant “true blues”—the Prince of Wales among them—crowded in the evening to toast Fox’s victory at Westminster. Reynolds has perpetuated Mrs. Crewe’s rare beauty on three canvasses, and Sheridan in dedicating to her “The School for Scandal” did reverence to her mind as well as her features. Fox poetised in her praise, and Fanny Burney said “She is certainly the most completely a beauty of any woman I ever saw! She uglifies everything near her.”—The Dance(Plate XXVIII.). The tradition, lately repeated in book and periodical, which gives the figures in this print as those of the Gunning sisters, is obviously absurd. When Bunbury was an infant in arms the beauty of the Gunnings first took the town by storm; next year Maria became a countess, Elizabeth a duchess, and, when this print was done the one had been dead twenty-two years, the other already widowed and “double duchessed,” as Horace Walpole put it.—Morning Employments(Plate XXIX.). The name on the harpsichord should obviously be Jacobus Kirkman; there was no Thomas. The instrument with the double keyboard is exactly like that in my own possession, which Dr. Burney selected from Jacob Kirkman’s shop in 1768. When a fashionable craze for the guitar was sending the makers of harpsichords and spinets very near to bankruptcy, Kirkman bought up all his own fine instruments, which the ladies were practically “giving away” for guitars; then he purchased a lot of cheap guitars and presented them to milliner’s girls and street-singers, so that they were twanged everywhere and became vulgar, the ladies bought harpsichords again, and he made a large fortune.
Mademoiselle Parisot(Plate XXXVII.). A noted dancer in the opera ballets at the King’s Theatre in the Haymarket. There is a beautiful mezzotint of her, dated 1797, by J. R. Smith after A. W. Devis. This is very rare, and in colours extremely so.Mdlle.Parisot also figures as one of the three dancers in Gillray’s caricature “Operatical Reform, or La Danse à l’Evêque,” published in 1798 to ridicule the Bishop of Durham’s protest against the scanty attire of the ballet-dancers.—Maria(Plate XXXVIII.). Maria of Moulines, in Sterne’s “Sentimental Journey.”
MALCOLM C. SALAMAN.