Keyse’s realism had been anticipated by such painters as Jordaens and Snyder, whose butcher’s meat remains painfully juicy in the galleries of Brussels and Antwerp.
[266] “Mrs. Wrighten had a vivacious manner and a bewitching smile, and her ‘Hunting Song’ was popular” (Wroth: London Pleasure Gardens).
[267] Captain Edward Topham (1751-1820), after a brilliant regimental career in the Horse Guards, gave himself up to fashion and drama. He produced several plays, and in 1787 founded the World, a scurrilous daily paper, which brought him into the law courts. In Rowlandson’s well-known Vauxhall, the foremost figure in the crowd is an elderly beau, standing bolt upright, and defying through his glass the stare of a gaudy female of mature years who has found another cavalier. This is Captain, afterwards Major, Topham. He wrote the life of Elwes, the miser.
[268] Jonas Blewitt, who died in 1805, lived at Bermondsey, near the Spa Gardens, for which he wrote many songs. He wrote a Treatise on the Organ, and must not be confused with his son, the better-known Jonathan Blewitt, the musical director of the Surrey Theatre.
[269] Jonathan Battishill (1738-1801), composer, organist of Christ Church, Newgate Street, and St. Clement’s, Eastcheap, first became known by his music to the song “Kate of Aberdeen.” His anthems were sung in St. Paul’s Cathedral, and he set many of Charles Wesley’s hymns to music.
[270] Smith underlines Joseph to distinguish him from his better-known brother, James Caulfield, who was the author and printseller, and the publisher of much “Remarkable Persons” literature. Joseph Caulfield was a musical engraver, and a capable teacher of the pianoforte. He lived in Camden Town.
[271] John Montagu, fourth Earl of Sandwich (1718-92), “was the soul of the Catch Club, and one of the Directors of the Concert of Ancient Music, but he had not the least real ear for music, and was equally insensible of harmony and melody” (Charles Butler’s Reminiscences). It was his treachery to Wilkes that gave Lord Sandwich his popular nickname, Jemmy Twitcher, taken from Macheath’s words in the Beggar’s Opera: “That Jemmy Twitcher should peach me, I own surprised me.”
[272] About the year 1770 Battishill wrote this glee in a competition for a gold medal offered by the Noblemen’s Catch Club.
[273] Smith had been Morland’s fellow-student at the Royal Academy, and they had frequently walked home together. Among his innumerable addresses, Morland had several in the Fitzroy Square region.
[274] Otter’s Pool was a country house at Aldenham, Herts, afterwards for many years the seat of Sir James Shaw Willes, the judge of common pleas.