TO THE HON. WM. TUDOR.
Quincy, March 29, 1818.
DEAR SIR,
IS your daughter, Mrs. ******, who I am credibly informed, is one of the most accomplished ladies, a painter? Are you acquainted with Miss ***** *****, who I am also credibly informed is one of the most accomplished ladies, and a painter? Do you know Mr. Sargent? Do you correspond with your old companion in arms, Col. John Trumbull? Do you think Fisher will be an historical painter?
Whenever you shall find a painter, male or female, I pray you to suggest a scene and subject.
The scene is the council chamber of the old town house in Boston. The date is the month of February, 1761, nine years before you came to me in Cole lane. As this is five years before you entered college, you must have been in the second form of master Lovell's school.
That council chamber was as respectable an apartment, and more so too, in proportion, than the house of lords or house of commons in Great Britain, or that in Philadelphia in which the declaration of independence was signed in 1776.
In this chamber, near the fire, were seated five judges, with lieutenant governor Hutchinson at their head, as chief justice; all in their new fresh robes of scarlet English cloth, in their broad bands, and immense judicial wigs. In this chamber was seated at a long table all the barristers of Boston, and its neighbouring county of Middlesex, in their gowns, bands and tye-wigs. They were not seated on ivory chairs; but their dress was more solemn and more pompous than that of the Roman Senate, when the Gauls broke in upon them. In a corner of the room must be placed wit, sense, imagination, genius, pathos, reason, prudence, eloquence, learning, science, and immense reading, hung by the shoulders on two crutches, covered with a cloth great coat, in the person of Mr. Pratt, who had been solicited on both sides but would engage on neither, being about to leave Boston forever, as chief justice of New York.
Two portraits, at more than full length, of king Charles the second, and king James the second, in splendid golden frames, were hung up in the most conspicuous side of the apartment. If my young eyes or old memory have not deceived me, these were the finest pictures I have seen. The colours of their long flowing robes and their royal ermines were the most glowing, the figures the most noble and graceful, the features the most distinct and characteristic: far superior to those of the king and queen of France in the senate chamber of congress. I believe they were Vandyke's. Sure I am there was no painter in England capable of them at that time. They had been sent over without frames, in governor Pownal's time. But as he was no admirer of Charleses or Jameses, they were stowed away in a garret among rubbish, till governor Bernard came, had them cleaned, superbly framed, and placed in council for the admiration and imitation of all men, no doubt with the concurrence of Hutchinson and all the junto; for there has always been a junto. One circumstance more. Samuel Quincy and John Adams had been admitted barristers at that term. John was the youngest. He should be painted, looking like a short thick fat archbishop of Canterbury, seated at the table, with a pen in his hand, lost in admiration, now and then minuting those despicable notes which you know that ******** ******** stole from my desk, and printed in the Massachusetts Spy, with two or three bombastic expressions interpolated by himself; and which your pupil, judge Minot, has printed in his history.