[74] “Mr. Fountayne had one son, afterwards Dean of York, and three daughters, viz. Mrs. Hargrave, Mrs. Jones, and Mrs. Metz. Mrs. Hargrave was lately living; she was the wife of Counsellor Hargrave, and was esteemed a great beauty. Another daughter of Monsieur De la Place married the Rev. Mr. Dyer, brother to the author of Grongar Hill, to whose nephew, the late Mr. Dyer, the printseller, I am obliged for some parts of the above information.”—S.
[75] Reproduced in Mr. Clinch’s Marylebone and St. Pancras (1890).
[76] Michael Angelo Rooker (1743-1801), the water-colour painter and engraver. “His works are drawn with conscientious accuracy, and show a sweet pencil” (Redgrave). He died March 3, 1801, in Dean Street, Soho, and was buried in the ground belonging to St. Martin-in-the-Fields, in the Kentish Town Road. Examples of his work are hung at South Kensington.
[77] The wonderful extra-illustrated copy presented to the Museum by John Charles Crowle, and valued at £5000.
[78] That is to say tiled.
[79] The Rev. John Fountayne was more than “noticed” by Handel; the two men were intimate. A grandson of Fountayne wrote in 1832: “One evening as my grandfather and Handel were walking together and alone, a new piece was struck up by the band. ‘Come, Mr. Fountayne,’ said Handel, ‘let us sit down and listen to this piece—I want to know your opinion of it.’ Down they sat, and after some time the old parson, turning to his companion, said, ‘It is not worth listening to—it’s very poor stuff.’ ‘You are right, Mr. F.,’ said Handel, ‘it is very poor stuff—I thought so myself when I had finished it.’ The old gentleman, being taken by surprise, was beginning to apologise; but Handel assured him there was no necessity; that the music was really bad, having been composed hastily, and his time for the production limited; and that the opinion given was as correct as it was honest” (Hone’s Year Book). “Clarke” was doubtless Dr. Adam Clarke, the Wesleyan, who died in Bayswater in 1832, and was well known for his bibliographical and theological works.
[80] Lady Harrington might well lend her jewels, since she often borrowed. Horace Walpole tells how, at the Coronation of George III., she appeared “covered with all the diamonds she could borrow, hire, or seize, with the air of Roxana, the finest figure at a distance.”
[81] The great actress. She played Violante to Garrick’s Don Felix in the actor’s last appearance.
[82] In his Memoirs, the Rev. John Trusler, who was educated at Dr. Fountayne’s school, does not spare Mrs. Fountayne’s tuft-hunting tendencies. In one instance she was covered with ridicule through the action of a Soho pastry-cook named Jenkins, who, wishing his son to enter the school, arranged that he should do so under the name of the Prince De Chimmay. When Mrs. Fountayne discovered that his father made tarts a mile from the school door, “she had the laugh so much against her, that she could not show her face for months.”
[83] The Royal College of Physicians, then housed in Warwick Lane.