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Some Distinguished Victims of the Scaffold
An illustrious feather-pate, gazing with idolatry upon his own modern photograph, has screamed, “Camera beats the brush! Look upon that picture, and then presume to tell me that Rembrandt or Velasquez has fashioned its equal.” Obviously, for those painters never had such a model as illustrious feather-pate. Yet feather-pate but babbles the gibberish of his times. All who inveigh against soulless lithograph or poll-parrot photography, saying that monarchs of the brush are with us still whose works are worthy of the engraver’s steel, cry as prophets of the wilderness. “Camera beats the print,” shrieks Cosmos; “magna est vilitas, et prævalebit.” Thus poor Cinderella, who never went to the ball with her more gorgeous sisters, is driven even from her home in the kitchen.
Still, could some god transport Wynne Ryland from the sunny plains, he would find work for his hand as alluring as the canvas of Angelica Kauffman. In the gossamer creations of such as Alma Tadema and Blair Leighton, the soft-coloured print might begin a new life. Is it too late to hope that ere he passed over the dark river he left his mantle upon the shore?
BIBLIOGRAPHY OF THE RYLAND CASE
I. Contemporary Authorities1. Authentic Memoires of William Wynne Ryland. Printed for J. Ryall, No. 17 Lombard Street, 1784. Brit. Mus.
As these Authentic Memoires do not present a very lucid account, it is necessary to place the principal events of Wynne Ryland’s career in chronological order: —
Born November 2, 1733, in St John’s Street, Clerkenwell; the third son and fifth child of Edward and Mary Ryland.
Baptized December 2, at St Martin’s Church, Ludgate, where his name appears in the register as William Wynn.
Studied at St Martin’s Lane Academy – probably during the latter half of the forties.
If, as is generally stated, he served an apprenticeship of five years with Ravenet, he must have been bound to that engraver before 1750.
The second volume of Les Fables choisies de la Fontaine, with illustrations after Oudry, shows that he was in Paris in 1755. Having studied for two years under Le Bas, it would seem that he went to Boucher about 1757. According to most accounts he remained abroad for five years.
Probably he was in England in 1761, for several of his red-chalk engravings after the old master were finished during the next year.
In April 1762 he published at Lichfield Street, Soho, an engraving of George III., after Ramsay.
In February 1763 his engraving of Lord Bute, after Ramsay, was finished.
From 1763-67 he was engaged upon the portrait of George III. in his Coronation Robes, after Ramsay.
In the spring of 1765 he visited Paris on a commission for the King (v. Journal of J. G. Wille).
In 1767 he was living in Stafford Row, Pimlico.
From 1767-69 he was engaged upon the portrait of the Queen, after Cotes.
In 1767 or 1768 he entered into partnership with his late pupil, Henry Bryer, at 27 Cornhill. This firm became bankrupt in December 1771.
In 1772 he was living at Queen’s Row, Knightsbridge, and in 1773 near the Hammersmith turnpike.
In 1774 he opened his print-shop, No. 159 in the Strand.
On November 4, 1782, he deposited the forged bill on the East India Company with Messrs Ransome, Moreland & Ammersley, bankers.
On the 1st of April 1783 he fled from his home at Knightsbridge, and the advertisement offering £300 for his arrest was published in the newspapers on April 3.
2. A Catalogue of Mr Ryland’s Exhibition at Mr Pollard’s in Piccadilly. Brit. Mus.
3. Exhibition Catalogue of Incorporated Society of Artists, 1761-69. “In their Great Room in Spring Gardens, Charing Cross.” Brit. Mus.
The following were Ryland’s exhibits: —
4. Catalogue of the Royal Academy. 1772-1775. Brit. Mus. The exhibits of Ryland, with their dates, are as follows: —
5. Dodd’s Memoires of English Engravers, xi. pp. 104-110. Add. MSS. 33404. Brit. Mus.
6. Joseph Strutt’s Biog. Dic. of Engravers (1785-6), ii. 285. Brit. Mus.
7. A Collection of Prints in Imitation of Drawings. 2 vols. 1778. Edited by Charles Rogers. Brit. Mus.
Ryland contributed fifty-seven plates. These two volumes should be included in any collection of Ryland’s works.
8. Nichol’s Literary Anecdotes (1813). Vol. iii. 256, vol. v. 668, 681, 686.
9. Reminiscences of Henry Angelo. 2 vols. London, 1828-30. Vol. i. pp. 473-83. New Edition by Joseph Grego and H. Lavers Smith. Kegan Paul. 1904. Vol. i. pp. 366, 370-75.
Ryland was a frequent visitor at the fencing and riding school, which the elder Angelo had established at Carlisle House, Carlisle Street, and which, oddly enough, was the second building of that name in Soho Square.
10. Mémoires et Journal de J. G. Wille. 2 vols. Jules Renouard. Paris, 1857. Vol. i. pp. 287, 288.
Wille met Ryland in Paris on April 17, April 18, and May 9, 1765. He tells us that he had been acquainted with him when the English engraver was in France seven or eight years previously (i. e. in 1757-1758), which dates fit in with other known incidents of Ryland’s life.
II. Contemporary Newspapers and Magazines
The most complete account of the trial will be found in the Morning Post, Monday, July 28, 1783. Those who are interested in the much-debated question whether the site of the ‘Tyburn Tree’ was in Connaught Square, Bryanston Street, or Upper Seymour Street, would do well to remember that on August 29, 1783 (so the papers tell us), the gallows were placed fifty yards nearer the park wall than usual. Naturally, its position was changed from time to time.
Notes
Note I. —Dic. Nat. Biog. The date of Ryland’s birth is given as July 1732! Nor was he the eldest, but the third son of his father.
Note II. —Eighteenth Century Colour Prints. Mrs Julia Frankau. Macmillan (1900).
Mrs Frankau’s explanation of the flight of Ryland is scarcely plausible. It is not credible that a man who is engaged in a frantic search for a lost mistress would remain in close hiding, posing as an invalid, only venturing abroad after dark. Nor is it a tenable assumption that he attempted to commit suicide in a fit of despair because he fancied that he was being arrested for debt, and thus might lose all chance of finding his chère amie. One of the strongest pleas in his defence was that his fortune was ‘princely’ and he protested that he fled because he could not find the man from whom he had received the fatal bill. It is a strange coincidence that the discovery of the fraud upon the East India Company should have taken place on the eve of his disappearance. Moreover, he was not arrested for the forgery that secured his conviction. The warrant charged him with counterfeiting two other bills of exchange to the value of £7114 (as reference to the advertisement columns of the daily papers of April 3 will show), and it was not until this publicity that Mr Moreland, the banker, examined the bill for £210, which Ryland had deposited with his house. Thus the accusation of one crime led to the discovery of another! And it is still more strange that the artist should have cashed an East India Company bill of the value of £210 on September 19, 1782, while on November 4 he should have handed to his banker another bill – an exact copy of the first – bearing a similar date, denomination, and acceptances. Although these two identical bills came into Ryland’s possession within the space of a few weeks, he did not seek an explanation of the remarkable coincidence. A careful survey of all the facts must convince everyone of the guilt of the unfortunate engraver, but it is a pleasure to be able to agree with Mrs Frankau – except in some minor details – in her contention that the evidence was not conclusive. Ryland was convicted because he failed to show that he had received the forged bill from another person, and to cast thus the burden of proof from the prosecution to the defence is quite foreign to the methods of a modern tribunal.
Since the Catholic has become the spoilt child of contemporary literature, it is not surprising to find Wynne Ryland hailed as the victim of Protestant persecution. Yet there appears to be no evidence to support this assumption. There is not a line in the newspapers of the day to indicate that any anti-Romanist feeling was aroused, and had such been the case, the Public Advertiser, at all events, whose animosity towards ‘Popery’ is sufficiently evident, would have trumpeted loudly. It is significant that the mob never behaved with greater propriety – very unusual conduct in the howling Tyburn crowd – than on August 29, 1783. How different would it have been if the word had been whispered that a Papist was going to the gallows! Strutt and Angelo, who write so sympathetically of their friend, have nothing to say on this subject, and, indeed, accept his guilt as proved. Although the former, who wrote in 1785, might have reason for reticence, yet the latter, whose book was published a year before the Emancipation Act, could have no reason to suppress such evidence. Indeed, we have only the doubtful authority of the Authentic Memoires for the statement that Ryland was a ‘supposed’ Catholic in his early youth. With this very ambiguous suggestion we must reconcile the strange fact that he was buried in a graveyard of the Established Church, and that the last rites were performed by an Anglican clergyman. There are one or two slips of the pen in Mrs Frankau’s interesting memoir. As the catalogue of the Royal Academy shows that Ryland contributed his first drawing in 1772 – four years after the institution was established – he was not “one of the earliest exhibitors.” From the same catalogue it appears that the print-shop in the Strand was opened in 1774. The date of the publication of the Authentic Memoires, given as 1794, is, of course, a clerical error. Owing to the footnote attached to Ryland’s letter to Francis Donaldson of Liverpool, printed in the Morning Post, September 2, 1783, the document must be regarded with suspicion. No trivial disagreement with the conclusions of Mrs Frankau can diminish the interest of her delightful account of the great engraver, which must remain the most valuable of recent monographs.
Note III. – There are references to W. W. Ryland in the innumerable dictionaries of painters and engravers, French, German, and English, such as Basan, Le Blanc, Portalis and Beraldi, Andreas Andrescen, Redgrave, Bryan, etc. One of the best of modern notices will be found in the Print Collectors’ Handbook, by Alfred Whitman.
A LIST OF WILLIAM WYNNE RYLAND’S ENGRAVINGS.
(By Ruth Bleackley.)
Note.– The Morning Herald, May 5, and the Morning Post, August 28, 1783, state that Ryland left unfinished a plate of the Battle of Agincourt, after Mortimer.
BOOK ILLUSTRATIONS
1. The Book of Common Prayer. Published by Edward Ryland, May 1, 1755. Nine plates by Ryland – after S. Wale.
2. The Book of Common Prayer in Welsh (1770), with the same plates as in former edition.
3. The Complete Angler, by Isaac Walton, edited by Sir John Hawkins. With fourteen plates, dated 1759, by Ryland – after S. Wale. First edition 1760.
4. “Les Fables choisies de la Fontaine.” Illustrated by J. B. Oudry (1755-59). Seven plates by Ryland in vols. ii., iii., and iv.
5. L’Ecole Des Armes. Par M. Angelo. A Londres: chez R. & J. Dodsley, Pall Mall. February 1763. Second edition 1765. With forty-seven plates. A few copies in colours. Ryland engraved fourteen of these plates. Hall, Grignion, Elliot, and Chamber did the rest – all after drawings by John Gwynn. Thus Henry Angelo’s account of this work is inaccurate.
6. A Collection of Prints in Imitation of Drawings. Edited by Charles Rogers. Published London 1778. Contains fifty-seven plates by Ryland in addition to the mezzotint portrait of Rogers.
7. The School of Fencing, by D. Angelo, edited by Henry Angelo. 1787. With forty-seven plates, the same as in the first edition. This book is not well edited, as the letterpress does not always agree with the pictures.
Note.– In every case the date of the engraving has been copied from an existing impression. Possibly there are earlier and later states.
A SOP TO CERBERUSTHE CASE OF GOVERNOR WALL, 1782-1802
On the 26th of August 1782, a captain in the army, named Joseph Wall, just come home from foreign service, sat down to compose his report to the Secretary of State. A glance would tell that he was one of those chosen by destiny to rule man and enslave woman. Although the swift, hot courage of the Celt shone in his fearless eyes and slumbered in his rough-hewn features, the beetling brow, resolute jaw, and fierce, mobile mouth were softened by the gentle mesmeric charm that marks all of his race. In stature he was a giant; while his sweeping shoulders, which towered above the heads of most, the thick, gnarled fingers and stalwart limbs, indicated a mighty strength. For the rest, he was a clean-looking man, with light brown hair and a fresh complexion. Yet the dull grey lines in his face told that the tropics had levied that tax upon his physique which the British soldier is ever eager to pay.
There was nothing of moment in the officer’s report to Secretary Townshend. It was merely a rough account of the termination of his stewardship while Governor for eighteen months at the island of Goree. Mere chance had thrown this tiny sun-baked rock once more into the possession of Great Britain. Three years previously the French fleet under de Vaudreuil, en route to the West Indies, sweeping down upon Senegal, had seized the English posts at Fort Lewis and Fort James. The victory of Sir Edward Hughes had reversed the position. By the capture of the island of Goree, which nestles south of Cape Verde scarcely three miles from the mainland, the approach to the enemies’ settlements on the opposite shore was placed in the hands of England. Being a station of some importance for trading purposes, owing to its proximity to two great rivers of West Africa, a British garrison remained there during the course of the war. Though deemed less unhealthy than the coast, its climate was deadly. Not a mile in length, and scarcely more than a quarter in breadth, the men had little scope for exercise. All ranks detested the place. The regiment was composed of the riff-raff of the army; the officers were those who could get no other appointment.
Joseph Wall was worthy of better things. Nature had made him one of those soldiers of fortune whom his native land has sent forth unceasingly year by year into the armies of every country in the world. About the time of George III.’s accession he had flung aside the religion of his fathers to obtain a commission, and two years later, at the age of twenty-five, the young Irishman saw his first fight in the West Indies. His fiery valour during the storming of Fort Moro gained him promotion, and he returned home from Havannah in 1762 with the rank of captain. Fate, however, robbed him of his birthright, for twelve years of weary peace laid their rust upon his restless soul. Soon an appointment under Company John took him to Bombay, but opportunity never came to draw his sword in a war of nations. At the close of his residence in India he returned to his father’s home, Abbeyleix, in Queen’s County, a sad example of him whom fortune welcomes with a smile and then turns away her face for ever. The keen spirit that could find no outlet under arms was ill fitted for the civilian’s life. Joseph Wall, the soldier of fortune, possessed none of the grace of humour which might have softened his red, untamable temper. Broils innumerable led to many a bloody duel, and on one occasion – so tradition relates – he crossed swords with ‘Fighting Fitzgerald’ Rumour credits him also with the death of a faithful friend, and, ’tis said, dux femina facti. Indeed, several affairs of gallantry stain his record, and once he was called upon to answer an insult to a lady in a court of justice.
At last he sought active service once more. The British colony that borders the river Gambia in North-West Africa offered him employment, and Fort James, a station on the estuary, became his home. Unfortunately, Colonel Macnamara, the Lieutenant-Governor, was a man of similar disposition to his young officer, and during August 1776 the inevitable encounter took place. Wall, on the plea of ill-health, happening to disregard one of the orders of his superior, was cast into prison without trial, and was immured for nine months. An action at law, which appears to have been heard during the year 1779, was the result, and the jury, who, guided by Lord Mansfield, held the opinion that Colonel Macnamara had acted with unnecessary severity, ordered him to pay the sum of a thousand pounds to the victim of his tyranny.
Previously, having returned to England, the Irishman had become fortune-hunter, and cut a dash at Bath or Harrogate, searching in vain for his rich heiress. Such a precarious existence could not endure, and during the year 1780, Joseph Wall, whose finances were at a low ebb, again was compelled to seek employment. The command of the recently captured island of Goree was going a-begging – two Governors having succumbed to the climate in a space of eighteen months – and he accepted the post. Its perquisites were considerable; for as the control of the vast trade along the coast of Senegambia was in his hands, there were endless chances of lucrative commissions and levying extortion upon the native chiefs. Huge inflammable Wall was just the man to tame and cow the rebellious gaol-birds who formed his garrison, and he ruled them with a hand of steel. Neither men nor officers loved his methods. As ships touched but seldom at this far-distant port, the soldiers were called upon often to submit to short commons. A glance from the fiery Governor quelled the murmurs, for a merciless flogging was the fate of the unlucky one upon whom his eye rested for a second time. Even the iron frame of Joseph Wall was soon conquered by the deadly climate. In less than two years he was compelled to send in his resignation. On the 11th of July 1782 he quitted the arid rock, and, his ship being lucky enough to avoid the cruisers of France and Spain, he landed safely at Portsmouth before the end of August. Thus it came about that this soured and disappointed man sent his report to Mr Townshend.
Joseph Wall was only in his forty-sixth year. Although his health had broken down temporarily, he was capable still of a long period of active service. But the unkind fate that had offered his only chance at the close of the Seven Years’ War, and had kept him styed in Senegambia during the struggle with the American colonies, was smoothing the way for the younger Pitt and his ten years’ peace. Thus fortune sports with nations, giving to one Frederick, to another Daun, working miracles with Chatham, or assisting Choiseul to open the flood-gates of a deluge. Lucky, indeed, for humanity that every man has not his opportunity. Valour was not lacking in the British officers who fought at Lexington, at Bunker’s Hill or Saratoga, but theirs was no mate to the courage of those who did battle against them beneath the shadow of the rope. During the early years of the American War a hundred Joseph Wall might have erected a forest of gibbets and have made the colony a second Poland, but the United States never would have survived its birth. It is far better as it is. Truly, there were giants in those days – cruel, untamable giants, but capable of superhuman achievements; and though from time to time we cast off their chains, bidding them stalk through a world of slaughter, yet, to the credit of our race, the spirit even of that robust age kept them mostly in their dungeons of obscurity.
For only ten months did the Irish soldier of fortune enjoy his retirement undisturbed. Dark rumours had been whispered of his bloody régime in West Africa, and one Captain Roberts made grave accusations, of which, however, a court-martial at the Horse Guards took little heed – merely censuring the giant tenderly in minor matters, as the beating of a sentry, with a humorous rider that the man got what he deserved. They are tedious complaints, such as rise to the lips of the slack and spiteful when a strenuous commander insists upon a rattle of bones. It was not until the troopship Willington brought home the remainder of the garrison of Goree – now ceded to the French – that a more substantial charge was laid against the ex-Governor. In a few days the newspapers announced that the surgeon and a couple of officers, who had been examined before the Privy Council, had presented a terrible indictment of cruelty against their late commander. Towards the end of February 1784, two men set out for Bath to take Joseph Wall into custody. Although distressed by the warrant, he submitted quietly, merely asking that a lady friend should be allowed to accompany him to London. The ‘Castle Inn,’ Marlborough, was the first halting-place on the journey along the most famous of coach-roads, and on the 1st of March, the next evening, they rested at the old ‘Brown Bear’ in Reading. Here Captain Wall protested that his custodians should not occupy the same bedroom as himself; and to humour him, as ordinary mortals are in the habit of humouring a restive giant, they agreed to remain in an adjoining chamber. A drop to the ground from a first-floor window was not the obstacle to deter the untamable soldier, and the next morning the police-officers found that their captive had vanished. A reward of £200 was offered for his apprehension on the 8th of March, the day on which he is believed to have set foot on French soil. It is understood that he wrote to a friend, stating he should surrender for trial as soon as the popular clamour against him had died away, and it is certain that he sent a letter containing a similar promise to Secretary Townshend, now Lord Sydney, on the 15th of October of the same year. This intention, however, was not fulfilled, and gradually the case of Governor Wall, whose cruelty had excited so much indignation, faded from public memory.
The cause of his arrest was an incident that occurred on the eve of his departure from Goree in 1782. For some time the felon soldiers under his command had been muttering low growls of discontent. Short allowance had been their lot for a long period, and the fear arose that the usual compensation would not be paid unless they received it before the Governor left the island. On the 10th of July preparations were hastened for Wall’s departure. All was bustle at the storekeeper’s office, where a servant was packing the commander’s luggage. No doubt it was whispered among the men that the home-bound vessel would carry a wealth of merchandise, which by right should be left for the garrison. Early in the morning the Governor observed a body of soldiers, twenty or more, marching across the hot sand towards his residence, where they had no right to intrude. Though enraged at this evidence of insubordination, he merely gave an order that they should retire. Two hours later, a still larger number was seen approaching Government House. Wall went out into the blazing tropical sunlight to meet them. So determined were they to vent their grievances that they did not pause to consider that this act was flagrant mutiny. Since their commanding officer had forbidden a similar gathering, the right course was to send a deputation to the Governor, explaining their demands through the proper channels.