In August, 1780, Horace Walpole visited "The Temple of Health" in the Adelphi, and pronounced it "the most impudent puppet-show of imposition I ever saw, and the mountebank himself the dullest of his profession, except that he makes spectators pay a crown apiece for admission only." The place acquired notoriety so rapidly that, on September 2, George Colman, the elder, produced at the Haymarket Theatre a skit entitled The Genius of Nonsense, in which John Bannister, in the character of the Emperor of Quacks, mimicked Graham. "His satin sofas on glass legs, his celestial bed, his two porters in long, tawdry greatcoats and immense gold-laced cocked hats, distributing handbills at the door, while his goddess of health was dying of a sore throat from squalling songs at the top of the staircase, were all hit off by a speaking harlequin, who also caricatured the doctor's sliding walk and bobbing bows."[41] The impostor was prevented from buying the "bill of the play," a burlesque on his own handbill, so that he could not bring an action for libel.
The following is an exact copy of one of Graham's advertisements:—
Temple of Health, Adelphi.
To their Excellencies the Foreign Ambassadors,
To the Nobility, Gentry and to Persons
of Learning and Taste,
This Evening exactly at Eight o'Clock,
The Celestial Brilliancy of the
Medico-electrical Apparatus, in all the
Apartments of the
TEMPLE,
Will be exhibited by Dr Graham himself,
Who will have the honour of explaining the true Nature and effects of Electricity, Air, Music, and Magnetism, when applied to the human body.
In the introductory Oration, the whole art of enjoying health and vigour, of body and of mind, and of preserving and exalting personal Beauty and Loveliness; or, in other words, of living with health, honour, and happiness in this world, for at least a hundred years, is pointed out and warmly inculcated.
Previous to the display of the electrical Fire, the Doctor will delicately touch upon the Celestial Beds, which are soon to be opened in the Temple of Hymen, in Pall-mall, for the propagation of Beings rational, and far stronger and more beautiful in mental as well as in bodily endowments—than the present puny, feeble, and nonsensical race of probationary immortals, which crawl and fret, and politely play at cutting one another's throats for nothing at all, on most parts of this terraqueous globe.
This apparatus, which visibly displays, as it were, the various faculties of the material soul of universal and eternal Nature, is acknowledged by all who have seen it, to be by far the largest, most useful, and most magnificent that now is, or that ever was, in the world; and it may be inspected every day, from Ten o'clock in the Morning till four in the Afternoon. Admittance at night, 5s.; in the day, 2s. 6d.
In another announcement he stated that "Vestina, the Rosy Goddess of Health, presides at the evening lectures at the Temple of Health, Adelphi, assisting at the display of the Celestial Meteors, and of that sacred Vital Fire over which she watches, and whose application in the Cure of Diseases she daily has the honour of directing." Graham's "Rosy Goddess of Health" was Emma Lyon, who, in the winter of 1780, when she posed in the Adelphi, was barely twenty years of age. Young as she was, she had lived a strange life, even then. The daughter of a Cheshire blacksmith, she was quite a child when, in the capacity of nurse-maid, she entered the service of Mrs Thomas, wife of a surgeon practising at Hawarden; and she can hardly have been more than fifteen or sixteen years of age when she first came to London. "Here, for a short time, she is said to have been in service: first, with Mrs Linley, of Drury Lane Theatre; secondly, with Dr Budd, one of the physicians of St Bartholomew's Hospital; and finally at a fruiterer's in St James's Market. One of the customers at this shop, 'a lady of fashion,' attracted by the girl's manner, her beautiful face, and her wonderful auburn hair, engaged her in the capacity of companion. But, fortunate as the change at this time may have appeared to her, it speedily put an end to her opportunities of earning an honest living. No long time after, we hear of her as living for a time with Captain (afterwards Admiral) John Willett Payne, who is by some surmised to be the father of a girl to whom she gave birth about the end of 1779 or the beginning of 1780. However this may be, it is certain that, before she had completed her seventeenth year, she did give birth to a child, and that, as soon as possible, it was transferred to the care of her old grandmother at Hawarden."[42] Her poverty drove her to the quack doctor of the Adelphi. Soon after her appearance here, she "kept house," in extravagant fashion, for Sir Harry Fetherstonshaugh, "a dissolute baronet," at Up Park, Sussex, and became "a daring and accomplished horse-woman." At this time she called herself Emma Hart, but on her marriage, in 1791, to Sir William Hamilton, she signed the register as Amy Lyon. The subsequent career of Nelson's Lady Hamilton is too well known for repetition.
SUFFOLK (SUBSEQUENTLY NORTHUMBERLAND) HOUSE.