The three ladies in the picture were the painter’s wife and her sisters. They were the daughters of John Knight, a brother of my mother’s mother, and thus were cousins of mine. John Knight was paymaster of a battalion of the King’s German Legion from 1814 to 1816. He was with his battalion at the battle of Waterloo, and after the campaign he married the beautiful (and wealthy) daughter of the banker through whom he drew the pay at Brussels. The marriage brought him into contact with large financial interests on the Continent, and he settled at Antwerp as a banker; and there he made the acquaintance of Wappers. I remember Wappers very well. In his later years he lived in Paris, and I used to go to his house there. He had been a success as a painter, had been made a Baron, and so on; and was altogether very well contented with the world. He died in 1874.
Amongst other things by Wappers, I have a portrait in pencil of my great-aunt Mary Knight, signed and dated 1843, and a portrait in oils of Charley (a King Charles spaniel) signed and dated 1849 with inscription to “oncle Chᵗ Knight,” that is, his wife’s uncle, my great-uncle Christopher Knight, the owner of the dog.
The dog’s portrait hangs here next its master’s, a big three-quarter length in naval uniform with medal and clasps and the K.H. This portrait of him came to my mother after his decease, and was hung in the dining-room of our house in London. There happened to be a dinner-party soon after it arrived, and some of the guests were rather finding fault with it both as a work of art and as a likeness of the man, when unexpectedly a little voice proclaimed:—“I painted it.” It was the voice of Frederick Havill, a painter who had met with some success, but was a long way from achieving greatness. They had all forgotten who the painter was; and on finding they were face to face with him they discovered many merits in his work.
This old Captain Knight was on the Impregnable at the bombardment of Algiers, 27 August 1816, and next day he did a conscientious drawing of the ship, showing all the shot-holes in the hull and the damage to the rigging. I have it here, with two other water-colours that he did then. One of them shows the ships taking up their positions for the bombardment, the Queen Charlotte carrying Lord Exmouth’s flag as Admiral of the Blue: which flag, now nearly black, may still be seen in Christow church, about five miles from here. The other shows the bombardment in progress—clouds of smoke with the Impregnable and the Rear Admiral’s flag just showing through.
As works of art these water-colours are of little merit, but probably would please such critics as James on Turner’s Battle of Trafalgar, Naval History, vol. 3, p. 473, ed. 1902:—“The telegraphic message is going up, which was hoisted at about 11.40, the mizentopmast is falling, which went about 1.0, a strong light is reflected upon the Victory’s bow and sides from the burning Achille, which ship did not catch fire until 4.30 ... and the Redoutable is sinking under the bows of the Victory, although she did not sink until the night of the 22nd, and then under the stern of the Swiftsure.” He was on the Minotaur at the bombardment of Copenhagen, 5 September 1807, but made no drawings then.
Instead of drawing what they saw—which might be interesting now—people used to occupy themselves with copies; and I have inherited many portfolios of these uninteresting things. But there are copies after Prout by my mother’s sister, Emma King; and, on comparing one of these with its original, I found wonderfully little difference. Many of Prout’s best water-colours went into the collection of the late Martin Swindells of Bollington; and he lent them to my aunt to copy, while she was staying at a house near there. It must have been between 1850 and 1858, but I do not know exactly when. There are a dozen of them framed and hung here.
I once did a water-colour that I thought worth framing; but friends said such unkind things about it, that I took it down and put it in a drawer. It was meant for the apse of a cathedral—no cathedral in particular, though I suspect I had Toledo in my mind. Looking at it thirty years afterwards, I fancied that it was not such a failure after all—unquestionably, some parts of it were excellent: so I took it out again, and hung it up. And then the friends explained to me:—“The picture’s just as bad as ever, only your eyesight has got worse.” I took it down once more.
In a letter of Edward Knight, my great-grandfather—I have seen the letter, but have not got it here—he speaks of meeting the Prince Regent at a dinner at Brighton, “and H.R.H. was pleased to say that Eliza was an uncommon pretty girl.” Eliza was my grandmother; and she must have been uncommonly pretty, if she was really like a miniature of her by William Wood that I have here. I have drawings by Stroehling of her brother Joseph Knight and of her husband H. T. King—my maternal grandfather—and Joseph had fine features then, though in old age (when I remember him) his nose suggested port. I have been told that he was one of the three best-looking men in London in his time, and that Byron was one of the other two, but I cannot remember who the third was. I have also been told that there were letters to him from Byron, and they fell into the hands of one of my great-aunts; and she destroyed them as “things that no right-minded person would desire to read.”
In my library there are many volumes that belonged to these great-aunts; and they are just the books that all “right-minded” persons would desire to read. There are three editions of Pascal’s Pensées and none of his Provinciales; and there are five Tassos to one Dante, and that one has nothing but the Paradiso.
The last of these great-uncles and great-aunts lived on till 1886. I remember several of them in my earliest years, especially at Cheltenham; and, when I first read Cranford some years after that, I felt that I had met the characters before. Cheltenham was perhaps more opulent, but the people were the same. They were full of genuine kindness, but incredibly slow and ceremonious, always giving precedence to the wife of my great-uncle Joseph, because she was the daughter of a Peer. I can hardly imagine people of that type except in shaded drawing-rooms with china bowls of rose-leaves; yet some of them had figured in less tranquil scenes.