Eighteenth Century Vignettes

Miss Bellenden married Colonel John Campbell, and became a happy wife; the 'beautiful Molly Lepel' paired off with John, Lord Hervey, whose pen-portrait by Pope exhausts the arts of 'conscientious malevolence,' while poor Sophia Howe fell in love, but did not marry at all, and died in 1726 of a broken heart.

When, in June, 1727, George II. passed from Leicester House to the throne of England, another Prince of Wales succeeded him, – though not immediately, – and maintained the traditions of an opposition Court. This was Frederick, Prince of Wales. Bubb Dodington, afterwards Lord Melcombe, was the Chesterfield of this new régime, and Miss Chudleigh and Lady Middlesex, its Bellenden and Lepel. Political intrigue alternated with gambling and theatricals. One of the habitués was the dancing master Desnoyers, whom Hogarth ridiculed; and French comedians made holiday. 'The town,' says a historian of the Square, 'was at this time full of gaiety – masquerades, ridottos, Ranelagh in full swing, and the Prince a prominent figure at all, for he loved all sorts of diversion, from the gipsies at Norwood, the conjurors and fortune-tellers in the bye-streets about Leicester Fields, and the bull-baits at Hockley-in-the-Hole, to Amorevoli at the Opera, and the Faussans in the ballet. When the news came of the Duke of Cumberland having lost the battle of Fontenoy in May, 1745, the Prince was deep in preparation for a performance at Leicester House of Congreve's masque of "The Judgment of Paris," in which he played Paris. He himself wrote a French song for the part, addressed to the three rival goddesses, acted by Lady Catherine Hanmer, Lady Fauconberg, and Lady Middlesex, the dame régnante of the time. It is in the high Regency vein: —

'Venez, mes chères Déesses,Venez, calmez mon chagrin;Aidez, mes belles Princesses,A le noyer dans le vin.Poussons cette douce ivresseJusqu'an milieu de la nuit,Et n'écoutons que la tendresseD'un charmant vis-à-vis."'

'What signifies if Europe has a tyrant more or less, So we but pray Calliope Our verse and song to bless' – proceeds this Anacreontic performance; and Walpole copies out its entire five stanzas to send to Mann at Florence. They miscarry, he says, 'in nothing but the language, the thoughts and the poetry,' – a judgment which is needlessly severe.

In March, 1751, an end came to these lighthearted junketings, when His Royal Highness quitted the scene almost precipitately from the breaking of an abscess in his side, caused by the blow of a cricket-ball at Cliveden. The Princess and her children continued to live in Leicester Fields until 1766. Meanwhile, to the accompaniment of trumpets and kettledrums, the old house witnessed the proclamation of George III., and the marriage, in its great drawing-room, of the Princess Augusta to Ferdinand, Hereditary Prinee of Brunswick, one of the most popular heroes ever huzzaed to by an English mob. After this last occurrence, the only important event connected with royalty in the Fields is the death at Savile House on 29th December, 1765, of one of the princes. 'The King's youngest brother, Prince Frederick,' writes Walpole (with one of those Gallic affectations of phrase which roused the anger of Macaulay) 'is dead, of a dropsy and consumption: he was a pretty and promising boy.'

The Savile House above referred to stood next to Leicester House on the west. Savile House, too, was not without its memories. It was here that Peter the Great had boozed with his pot companion, the Marquis of Caermarthen, who occupied it when the Czar made his famous visit to this country in 1698. More than one English home bore dirty testimony to the passage of the imperial savage and his suite, the decorous dwelling of John Evelyn in particular, at Sayes Court, Deptford, being made 'right nasty.' There is, however, no special record of any wrong to Savile House beyond the spilling, down the autocratic throat, of an 'intolerable deal of sack' and peppered brandy. In January, 1718, the house was taken by the Prince of Wales, and when, a little later, Leicester House was vacated by Lord Gower, a communication was opened between the two, the smaller being devoted to the royal children. It belonged originally to Aylesbury family, and came through them to the Saviles, one of whom was the Sir George Savile who is by some supposed to have sat for Goldsmith's Mr. Burchell. Sir George was its tenant in the riots of '80, when (as Dickens has not failed to remember in 'Barnaby Rudge') it was besieged by the rioters because he had brought in the Catholic Bill. 'Between Twelve and One O'clock Yesterday morning [June 6th] – says the 'Public Advertiser' – 'a large Body [of rioters] assembled before Sir George Savile's House in Leicester Fields, and after breaking all the Windows, destroyed some of the Furniture.' They were finally dispersed by a party of the Horse Grenadier Guards, but not before they had torn up all the iron railings in front of the building, which they afterwards used effectively as weapons of offence. Burke, who had also supported the Bill, was only saved from a like fate by the exertions of sixteen soldiers who garrisoned his house in Charles Street, St. James's Square. With the later use of Savile House, as the home of Hiss Linwood's Art Needlework, which belongs to the present century, this paper has nothing to do.

Moreover, we are straying from Leicester House itself. Deserted of royalty, it passed into the hands of Mr., afterwards Sir Ashton Lever (grand uncle of Charles Lever the novelist), who transferred to it in 1771 the miscellaneous collection he had christened the 'Holophusikon' – a name which did not escape the gibes of the professional jester. His omnium gatherum of natural objects and savage costumes was, nevertheless, a remarkable one, still more remarkable when regarded as the work of a single man. It filled sixteen of the rooms at Leicester House, besides overflowing on the staircases, and included, not only all the curiosities Cook had brought home from his voyages, but also a valuable assortment of bows and arrows of all countries contributed by Mr. Richard Owen Cambridge of Twickenham. 51

Its possessor had been persuaded that his treasures which, in their first home at Alkrington near Manchester, had enjoyed great popularity, would be equally successful in London. The result, however, did not justify the expectation (an admittance of 5s. 3d.. per person must have been practically prohibitive), and poor Sir Ashton was ultimately 'obligated,' as Tony Lumpkin would say, to apply to Parliament for power to dispose of his show, as a whole, by lottery. He estimated his outlay at £50,000. Of 30,000 tickets issued at a guinea each, only 8,000 were taken up. The lottery was drawn in March, 1780, and the winner was a Mr. Parkinson, who transferred his prize to the Rotunda at the Southern or Surrey end of Blackfriars Bridge, changing its name to the Museum Leverianum. But it was foredoomed to misfortune, and in 1800 was dispersed under the hammer. A few years after it had crossed the river, Leicester House in turn disappeared, being pulled down in 1790. 52

In 1791 Lisle Street was continued across its garden; and a little later still, Leicester Place traversed its site, running parallel to Leicester Street, which had existed long previously, being described in 1720 'as ordinarily built and inhabited, except the west side, towards the Fields, where there is a very good house.'

Leicester Place and Leicester Street, – like Leicester Fields itself, – directly preserve the memory of what Pennant aptly calls the 'pouting-place of Princes.' But there are other traces of Leicester House in the nomenclature of the neighbourhood which had grown up about it. One of the family titles survives in 'Lisle Street'; another in 'Sidney Alley.' Bear Street again recalls the Leicester crest, a bear and ragged staff, while Green Street (one side of which has been recently rebuilt), according to Wheatley and Cunningham, derives its name from the colour of the Leicester Mews, which stood to the south of the Fields. The central inclosure seems to have been first systematically laid out – though it had long been railed round – about 1737. Eleven years later arrived from Canons (Lord Burlington's seat at Edgeware) that famous equestrian statue of George I., which Londoners so well remember. At the time of its erection it was lavishly gilt, and was one of the popular sights of the Town. By some it was attributed to Buchard; by others to Van Nost of Piccadilly, then a fashionable statuary (in lead) like Cheere of Hyde Park Corner. The horse was modelled upon that by Hubert Le Sour which carries King Charles I. at Charing Cross.

Considering its prolonged patronage by royalty, Leicester Fields does not seem to have been particularly favoured by distinguished residents. Charles Dibdin, the song-writer, once lived in Leicester Place, where in 1796 (on the east side) he built a little theatre, the Sans Souci; 53 and Woollett, of whose velvety engravings Mr. Louis Fagan, not many years ago, prepared an exhaustive catalogue, had also his habitat in Green Street (No. 11), from the leads of which he was wont – so runs the story – to discharge a small cannon when he had successfully put the last touches to a 'Battle of La Hogue,' or a 'Death of General Wolfe.'

Allan Ramsay (in his youth), Barry, and John Opie all once lodged in Orange Court (now Street); and here – at No. 13 – was born, of a shoemaker sire and a mother who cried oysters, into a life of many changing fortunes, that strange Thomas Holcroft of the 'Road to Ruin.' In St. Martin's Street, next door to the Congregational Chapel on the east side, lived Sir Isaac Newton from 1710 until January 1725, or two years before his death at Kensington. Few traditions, however, connect the abstracted philosopher (he was nearing seventy when he came to the Fields) with the locality, beyond his visits to Princess Caroline at the great house opposite. 54

But there was one member of his household, a few years later, who must certainly have added to the attractions of the ordinary two-storeyed building where he superintended the revision of the second and third editions of the 'Prineipia.' This was his kinswoman, – the 'jolie niece' of Voltaire, – the 'famous witty Miss Barton' of the 'Gentleman's Magazine.' At this date she was 'Superintendant of his domestick Affairs' to Charles, Earl of Halifax, who, dying in 1715, left her £5,000 and a house, 'as a Token' – so runs the bequest – 'of the sincere Love, Affection, and Esteem I have long had for her Person, and as a small Recompence for the Pleasure and Happiness I have had in her Conversation.' This, taken in connection with the fact that, since 1706, she had been in receipt of an annuity of £200 a year, purchased in her uncle's name, but for which Halifax was trustee, has led to the conclusion that the relation between the pair was something closer than friendship, and that, following other contemporary precedents, they were privately married. 55 Be this as it may, Catherine Barton is also interesting as one of the group of gifted women to whom Swift extended the privilege of that half-patronising, half-playful, and wholly unconventional intimacy which is at once the attraction and the enigma of his relations with the other sex.

He met her often in London, though not as often as he wished. 'I love her better than any-one here,' he tells Stella in April, 1711, 'and see her seldomer.' He dines with her 'alone at her lodgings'; he goes with her to other houses; and, Tory though he has become, endures her vivacious Whiggery.

When, at Halifax's death, Catherine Barton, in all probability, returned to her uncle's house, Swift had already gone back to Ireland, and there is no reason for supposing that, although he had lodgings 'in Leicester Fields' in 1711, he ever visited his friend in St. Martin's Street. In August, 1717, Mrs. Barton married John Conduitt, M.P., Xewton's successor as Master of the Mint, and when in town continued to reside with her husband under Newton's roof. And though Halifax was dead, and Swift in exile, and Prior 'in the messenger's hand,' there can be little doubt that during her brief widowhood (?) and second wifehood, those friends who had clustered about the former toast of the Kit Cats must still have continued to visit her. The chairs of Lady Worsley and Lady Betty Germaine must often have waited in the narrow entrance to St. Martin's Street, while the ladies 'disputed Whig and Tory' with Mrs. Conduitt, or were interrupted in their tête-à-tête by Gay and his Duchess. After Sir Isaac – a long while after – the most notable tenant of the old house was Dr. Charles Burney, author of the 'History of Music,' and of Fanny Burney. Indeed, it was in this very building – with the unassuming little chapel on its right where 'Rainy Day' Smith had often heard Toplady preach – that a mere girl in her teens – no, ungallant Mr. Croker discovered her to have been actually a young woman of five-and-twenty – wrote that 'Evelina' which, in 1778, took the Town by storm. There were panelled rooms and a painted ceiling in the Newton-Burney house of yore, but it could scarcely be here that the little person whom in her graver moments Mrs. Piozzi nicknamed the 'Lady Louisa of Leicester Square' danced round an unmetaphoric mulberry tree with delight at her success in letters, for there are no traces of a garden. At present, in this quiet backwater of street traffic, where Burke and Johnson and Franklin and Reynolds all came formerly to visit their favourite authoress, nothing is discoverable but a dingy tenement with dusty upper windows, with a ground floor that is used as a day school, and a front of stucco'd red brick upon which the blue tablet of the Society of Arts has something of the forlorn effect of an order of merit upon a shoeblack.

Turning out of St. Martin's Street on the north another tablet is discernible in the angle of the Fields to the right upon the comparatively modern red brick façade of another school, known as Archbishop Tenison's. Here, at one of the many signs of the 'Golden Head,' lived William Hogarth. * The golden head in his case was rudely carved by himself out of pieces of cork glued together, and represented Van Dyck. To this, says Nichols, succeeded a head in plaster; and this again, when Nichols wrote in 1782, had been replaced by a bust of Newton. About the interior of the house very little seems to be known, but, as it was rated to the poor in 1756 at £60, it must have been fairly roomy. In the later days, when it formed part of the Sablonière Hotel, before the hotel made way for the existing school, there were traditions of a studio, probably far less authentic than those of Sir Isaac's ob* There was even another, in Hogarth's day, in the Fields itself. 'At the Golden Head.' on the south side (Hogarth's was on the east), lived Edward Fisher, the mezzotint engraver, to whom we owe so many brilliant plates after Reynolds.

Not many years after Hogarth first took the house, the square was laid out (it had long been railed in), and he is said to have been often seen walking in the inclosure, wrapped in his red roquelaure, with his hat cocked on one side like Frederick the Great. His stables, when he set up the fine coach which Charles Catton decorated for him with the famous Cyprian crest that figures at the bottom of 'The Bathos,' were in Nag's Head Yard, Orange Street. He had – as we know – a country box at Chiswick; but he was at home in Leicester Fields. His friends were about him. Kind old Captain Coram had lodgings somewhere in the neighbourhood; Pine, the 'Friar Pine' of 'Calais Gate,' lived in St. Martin's Lane; beyond that, in Covent Garden and its vicinity, were George Lambert the scene painter, Saunders Welch the magistrate, Richard Wilson, Fielding, and a host of intimates. It was in Leicester Fields that Hogarth died. He had been driven there from Chiswick on the 25th October, 1764, cheerful, but very weak. 'Receiving an agreeable letter from the American Dr. Franklin,' says Nichols, [he] 'drew up a rough draught of an answer to it; but going to bed, he was seized with a vomiting, upon which he rung his bell with such violence that he broke it, and expired about two hours afterwards in the arms of Mrs. Mary Lewis, who was called up on his being taken suddenly ill. He is buried in Chiswick churchyard, where some years subsequently a monument was erected to his memory, with a well-known epitaph by Garrick. After Hogarth's death his widow continued to keep up the 'Golden Head,' and Mary Lewis sold his prints there. Richard Livesay, the engraver, was one of Widow Hogarth's lodgers, and the Scotch painter, Alexander Runciman, was another. If the house had any further notable occupants, they may be forgotten.

Mrs. Hogarth herself died in 1789. Six years before her death she had a next-door neighbour in the Fields, who, in his way, was as illustrious as Hogarth or Reynolds. This was John Hunter, who, in 1783, became the tenant of No. 28, 56 and at once began extending it backward towards Castle Street (now the Charing Cross Road) to receive his famous museum of Comparative and Pathological Anatomy.

Hogarth had then been dead for nearly twenty years; and it is unlikely that the painter knew much of the young surgeon who was subsequently to become so celebrated; but he was probably acquainted with his brother, William Hunter of Covent Garden, who attended Fielding in 1754. William Hunter had just died when John Hunter came to Leicester Fields. He lived there ten years in the height of his activity and fame, and it was during this period that Reynolds painted that portrait of him in a reverie (now in the Council Room of the College of Surgeons), which was engraved by William Sharp. He survived Sir Joshua but one year.

The house of Reynolds was at the opposite side of the Square, at No. 47, now Puttick and Simpson's auction rooms. He occupied it from 1760 to 1792. We are accustomed to think of Hogarth and Reynolds as contemporaries. But Reynolds was in the pride of his prime when he came to Leicester Fields, while Hogarth was an old and broken man, whose greatest work was done. Apart from this, there could never have been much real sympathy between them. Hogarth, whose own efforts as a portrait-painter were little appreciated in his life time, must have chafed at the carriages which blocked up the doorway of his more fortunate brother; while Reynolds, courtly and amiable as he was, capable of indulgence even to such a caricaturist as Bunbury, could find for his illustrious neighbour, when he came to deliver his famous Fourteenth Discourse, no warmer praise than that of 'successful attention to the ridicule of life.' These things, alas! are the commonplaces of literature and art. It is pleasanter to think of No. 47 filled with those well-known figures of whom we read in Boswell and Madame D'Arblay; – with Burke and Johnson and Goldsmith and Gibbon and Garrick; – with graceful Angelica, and majestic Siddons, and azure-stockinged Montagu; – with pretty Nelly O'Brien and charming Fanny Abington; – with all the crowd of distinguished soldiers, sailors, lawyers and literati who by turns filled the sitter's chair 57 in the octagonal painting-room, or were ushered out and in by the silver-laced footmen.

Then there were those wonderful disorderly dinners, where the guests were so good and the feast so indifferent; where there were always wit and learning, and seldom enough of knives and forks; where it was an honour to have talked and listened, and no one remembered to have dined. Last comes that pathetic picture of Sir Joshua, when his sight had failed him, wandering sadly in the inclosure with his green shade over his eyes, and peering wistfully and vainly for the lost canary which had been wont to perch upon his finger.

When Reynolds died, Burke wrote his eulogy in the very house where his body lay. The manuscript (which still exists) was blotted with its writer's tears. Those royal periods in which the great orator spoke of his lost friend are too familiar to quote. But after Sir Joshua, the interest seems to fade out of the Fields, and one willingly draws one's pen through the few remaining names that are written in its chronicles.

NOTES:

Note 1, p. 91. – A house called Fordhook. This description is, alas! no longer accurate; and the spot from which Fielding set out for Lisbon in June, 1754, is now covered by 'commodious villas.'

Note 2, p. 139. – A writer of comedy with the pencil. This happy characterization was first used by Arthur Murphy in the Gray's Inn Journal for 9th February, 1754.

Note 3, p. 141. – The original No. 17 of the 'North Briton.' Since the above was written, my faith in this relic has been rudely shaken. In looking over a collection of Hogarthiana, temporarily at the British Museum, I came upon another copy of the paper also purporting to be the 'identical' No. 17, etc. Which is the real Simon Pure? Mr. Standly's copy (his Catalogue says at p. 84) was given by Mrs. Hogarth to [Samuel] Ireland. But this second copy I saw, also emanated from that not wholly unimpeachable source. Collectors will please sympathise.

Note 4, p. 211. – Bronze statue of King James the Second. This statue, first placed in Whitehall Gardens on the 31st December, 1686 (Bramston's Autobiography, 1845, p. 253), was transferred in 1897 to an inclosure at the side of Gwydyr House. The present writer well remembers its forlorn departure, prone on a trolly, with one leg stiffly extended. It has again been moved; and now stands at the back of the Admiralty, where it will doubtless give rise to fresh traditions as to the site of the execution of Charles I.

Note d, p. 219. – Ink-bottles… dangling from their button-holes. Flaxman, when he lived in Poland Street, used, in his capacity of parish officer, to collect the watch rates. On these occasions he always wore an ink-bottle at his buttonhole. Johnson also bustled about thus accoutred at the sale of Thrale's brewery (Birkbeck Hill's Boswell, 1887, iv. 87).

Note G, p. 324. – Hogarth's… gold ticket. This is now in the possession of Mr. Fairfax Murray, who bought it at the Forman sale. But recent authorities doubt if the design was Hogarth's own.

Note 7, p. 349. – Her Majesty's 'Yatcht' 'Fubs.' This absurd name, according to a writer in Notes and Queries for 6th October, 1883, had been given to Queen Anne's royal yacht by Charles II., in honour of 'Madam Carwell,' who was 'fubsy' or plump.

Note 8, p. 372. – Danced round an unmetaphoric mulberry tree. Miss Burney's historic performance took place, as a matter of fact, at Chessington, the Surrey hermitage of her friend and critic, 'Daddy' Crisp. It was the uncontrollable outcome of her exhilaration at the praise which, she was informed, Dr. Johnson had bestowed upon her first novel, Evelina. 'It gave me such a flight of spirits, that I danced a jig to Mr. Crisp, without any preparation, music, or explanation – to his no small amazement and diversion (Diary, etc., of Madame D'Arblay, 1904-5, i. 49).

THE END

1

A few sentences in this paper are borrowed from the writer's 'Life of Steele,' 1886.

2

In this last character Charles Jervas painted her. The picture is in the National Portrait Gallery. She has hazel eyes and dark-brown hair.

3

'Harmonious Cibber entertains

The Court with annual Birth-day Strains;

Whence Gay was banish'd in Disgrace.'

Swift, On Poetry: a Rhapsody, 1733.

4

Expedition of Humphrey Clinker' (Letter to Dr. Lewis, September 15).

5

For example, a number of new letters are included in vol. iii. of the privately-printed 'Letters and Journals of Lady Mary Coke,' 1889-92.

6

He did not tell Spence (as he might have done) that his own 'Damn with faint praise' was borrowed from the man he was decrying. 'And with faint praises one another damn,' is a line in one of Wycherley's prologues.

7

This must have been a commonplace. 'Like the sick man, we are just expiring with all sorts of good symptoms,' says Swift, in the 'Conduct of the Allies,' 1711.

8

The copy hero described also contains – but apparently only inserted by a former owner – the scroll book-plate of Pepys.

9

Egham, Staines, and Windsor form a triangle. According to J. T. Smith, Alderman Boydell was one of the last who wore a hat of this type ('Book for a Rainy Day,' 1861, p. 221).