And room was becoming very necessary; for Mrs. Cosway's receptions were now the town rage—were crowded to inconvenience. They were marked by what was then a speciality; though it has since become a common enough characteristic of such assemblies. 'Lions' were to be met with there—literary, artistic, and otherwise. The last new poets, painters, players, were to be seen with their honours in their newest gloss; the latest discoverers, navigators, and travellers—freshly escaped from shipwreck or cannibals—the rising stars of the House of Commons—anybody and everybody of the least note, with the provision, possibly, that they should be 'elegant and ingenious,'—these thronged the charming Mrs. Cosway's drawing-rooms. The elect of society, for the first time on the same floor and under the same roof, met and shook hands, deriving a curious piquant sort of pleasure from the proceeding, with—Bohemia; the word must be used, though not an agreeable one, much misused and liable to be misinterpreted, and above all, though in the Cosway period it was altogether unknown and unheard of. Especially were to be noted among the guests the Whig adherents of the Prince of Wales, the politicians of the buff and blue school: little Cosway, busy in the midst of them, attempting a statesman-like attitude, sympathizing with revolution, and affecting to discover in the convulsions of the French nation the dawn of an empire of reason and taste, in which genius and virtue alone would be honoured. Possibly the painter expressed too unreservedly his views in these respects. A prince may be permitted to masquerade as a prolétaire; but for a bystander to talk red republicanism to a royal heir-apparent is rather doubtful taste, to say the least of it. By-and-by wild Prince Hal came to power, and shrunk from his old associates. The Regent abandoned his buff and blue friends, looked coldly upon his whilom political companions: withdrawing his favour from Cosway among the rest. The painter troubled himself little about the matter. He was too proud or too indifferent to make any effort to regain the royal patronage. If he had done little to merit its bestowal upon him in the first instance, certainly he had done nothing to deserve its withdrawal from him at last.
A frequent guest at Mrs. Cosway's during the last ten years of his life was Horace Walpole, very pleased at receiving 'little Italian notes of invitation' from the winning lady. He relates to the Countess of Ossory, in 1786, his meeting 'la Chevalière d'Eon,' after many years' interval, at Mrs. Cosway's. He found 'la Chevalière' noisy and vulgar; 'in truth,' he writes, 'I believe she had dined a little en dragon. The night was hot, she had no muff or gloves, and her hands and arms seem not to have participated of the change of sexes, but are fitter to carry a chair than a fan.' At another time he admits: 'Curiosity carried me to a concert at Mrs. Cosway's—not to hear Rubinelli, who sang one song at the extravagant price of ten guineas, and whom, for as many shillings, I have heard sing half-a-dozen at the Opera House; no, but I was curious to see an English Earl [Cowper] who had passed thirty years at Florence, and who is more proud of a pinchbeck principality and a paltry order from Wirtemberg than he was of being a peer of Great Britain when Great Britain was something.' Elsewhere he speaks admiringly of Mrs. Cosway, and describes her reception as a Diet at which representatives of all the princes of Europe assemble.
From Pall Mall Cosway moved to a larger mansion at the south-west corner of Stratford Place, Oxford Street. A carved stone lion stood on guard at the entrance—a fact which incited some wag to affix to the door the following lines, generally attributed to Peter Pindar:—
'When a man to a fair for a show brings a lion, 'Tis usual a monkey the sign-post to tie on. But here the old custom reversed is seen, For the lion's without, and the monkey's within.'
According to Smith, a certain ape-like look in Cosway's face in a measure justified the satire. Irritated by the attack, the painter moved once more—to No. 20 in the same street.
Dr. Wolcot (Peter Pindar), who had been busy throwing mud and stones at the Royal Academicians, did not of course spare either Cosway or his wife. In the lines beginning—
'Fie, Cosway! I'm ashamed to say, Thou own'st the title of R.A.'
he recommends the painter to find some more honest calling, and bids Mrs. Cosway mend shirts and stockings, and mind her kitchen, rather than expose her daubs to the public. Then, as though repenting of his rudeness, he proceeds:—
'Muse, in this criticism I fear Thou really hast been too severe: Cosway paints miniatures with decent spirit, And Mrs. Cosway boasts some trifling merit.'
The furniture and fittings of Cosway's house in Stratford Place seem to have been of a most extravagant kind. He surrounded himself with suits of armour, Genoa velvet, mother-of-pearl, ebony and ivory, carving and gilding. His rooms were crowded with mosaic cabinets set with jasper, bloodstone, and lapis-lazuli, ormolu escritoires, buhl chiffoniers, Japanese screens, massive musical clocks, damask ottomans, with Persian carpets and Pompadour rugs on the floor, and costly tapestries on the walls; enamelled caskets set with onyxes, rubies, opals, and emeralds loaded the tables; the chimney-pieces, sculptured by Banks, were decked with bronzes, cut-glass, models in wax and terra-cotta, Nankin, Dresden, and Worcester china: altogether the place must have been quite a broker's paradise. Yet the painter was immensely proud of it; never seemed to weary of adding new curiosities to his overcrowded collection.