On Thursday, March 3, 1774, the drawing up of the lottery began at the great room, formerly Jonathan's Coffee House, in Exchange Alley, when No. 3599 was drawn a blank, but being the first drawn ticket it was entitled to £5000. Nine other prizes were drawn on Friday, and at this rate the drawing continued for some time. The newspapers of the period were full of information and advertisements respecting the lottery; and the art of advertising appears to have been very thoroughly mastered at that time. Tickets were sold in all parts of the town, as well as at the Messrs Adams' office in Robert Street; intending purchasers were told that there was a great demand and that early application was necessary— in fact, that the demand began to be prodigious. Then they were informed that "Messrs Adam propose to keep their office in the Adelphi open till twelve o'clock on Wednesday night next (March 9) for the sale of tickets at £50 each, after which the price of the small quantity remaining in the market must be considerably raised, on account of the consumption of tickets by the wheel." Portions of tickets were sold at the various lottery offices thus—a half cost £25, 5s.; a thirty-second, £1, 13s.; and a sixty-fourth, 17s. Then there are little bits of gossip in the papers, intended to whet the appetite of the public. Thus we are told that No. 3599, the first drawn ticket, entitled to an estate of the value of £5000, was sold by Messrs Richardson and Goodenough not half an hour before the lottery began drawing, and, what is very remarkable, was the only ticket they had left unsold. Soon afterwards, the winner of this ticket disposed of it by auction.
YORK STAIRS AND THE WATER TOWER.
It is to be noted that the prizes were not instantly realizable, for the buildings were to be divided among the prize-holders, and the houses were not yet finished. Those who could not wait for their money sold their prizes by auction, and it may be presumed that in course of time the tickets got into a few hands.[24] The following is the explanation by the Adams of their action:—
"The Messrs Adam having received a letter signed A.B.C., which the writer says is sent to be inserted in the public papers, requiring to know the state of the mortgages on the buildings which constitute the Adelphi lottery, and also what security the public have for their completing the unfinished buildings? In answer to these questions, the Messrs Adam, desirous to satisfy the adventurers in the lottery, and the public in all reasonable demands, think it necessary to inform them that the mortgagees have already been paid one half of their money, but as it is requisite that they should join in assigning the prizes to the fortunate adventurers, they defer paying the other half till such assignments are completed. The Messrs Adam, ever since the obtaining of the Act for their lottery, have proceeded with an amazing rapidity in finishing their houses, in the same substantial manner with those formerly finished and sold in the Adelphi; they are happy to think the whole will be completed, and ready to be assigned, by the time they have ascertained in their scheme and allotment, as no attention and no expense shall be spared for that purpose."
Before proceeding further with the history of the Adelphi, the indomitable brothers themselves call for notice. Robert Adam (1728-1792) was the most noted of the four brothers—John, Robert, James, and William. Their father, William Adam, of Maryburgh, N.B. (died June 24, 1748), was the architect of Hopetoun House, and the Royal Infirmary, Edinburgh, in which city he held the appointment of King's Mason. Robert, the second son, was born at Kirkcaldy, and educated at Edinburgh University. Here he became on friendly terms with several fellow students who also attained fame, including David Hume, Dr William Robertson (the historian), Adam Smith (the political economist), and Adam Ferguson (the philosopher). In his twenty-sixth year Robert Adam visited Italy in the company of Clérisseau, a French architect, and made a minute study of the ruins of the Emperor Diocletian's palace at Spalatro, in Venetian Dalmatia. The journal of his tour was printed in the Library of the Fine Arts, and, in 1764, he published a folio volume with numerous engravings by Bartolozzi and others, from his drawings of the palace. In this important work he states that his object in selecting this ruin for special examination was its residential character, as the knowledge of classical architecture in England was derived exclusively from the remains of public buildings. During his absence on the Continent, he was elected F.R.S. and F.S.A. Soon after his return, he was appointed architect to George III. This office he was obliged to resign in 1768, when he was elected to Parliament as member for Kinross-shire.
The date of Robert Adam's return to England is generally understood to be 1762, but the architect himself makes mention of some work "done since my return to England in 1758." The mistake has probably arisen from the fact that James Adam did not leave his architectural studies in Italy until the former year. Robert, it is certain, is solely responsible for the screen of the Admiralty buildings in Whitehall, built in 1760. "The Admiralty," says Horace Walpole, "is a most ugly device, and deservedly veiled by Mr Adam's handsome screen." About this time there was a pacific invasion of England by the Scots, art being represented by William Chambers, Allan Ramsay—son of the poet—who, in Walpole's opinion, excelled Reynolds as a painter of women, Robert Strange, and the Adam brothers, Robert and James. Mr Clouston doubts the statement that Clérisseau accompanied Robert Adam to Italy. The young French architect was famous at the time of Adam's visit to the Continent, "and one of his pupils, Sir W. Chambers, was making a name in England. It is not altogether evident, therefore, how, a year later, he should have accompanied Adam to Spalatro in the subordinate position of assistant. Still, if any man had the capability of turning a master into a pupil through sheer force of character and magnetic presence, it must be admitted that that man was Robert Adam. His belief in himself was so colossal as probably to approach conceit. The very fact that, as a young man of twenty-nine, who had already had a most expensive education, he spent a considerable amount of his patrimony in a costly expedition, with the view of publishing a book which could not be expected to pay, is enough to show us something of the character of the man.