[371] First fashionable in 1745, and named after William, Duke of Cumberland. Smith might have seen it in his boyhood. It was smartly cocked in front.
[372] George Frederick Beltz (1777-1841), Lancaster Herald, and author of Memorials of the Order of the Garter, was one of Mrs. Garrick’s executors, and wrote the memoir of her in the Gentleman’s Magazine of November 1822.
[373] “Mr. Dance, in this picture of Garrick, has been guilty of an egregious anachronism. He has actually given Richard the Third the star of the Order of the Garter, when he ought to have known that it was not introduced before the reign of King Charles I.” (Smith: Nollekens).
[374] Sir Watkin Williams Wynn, fifth baronet (1772-1840), a generous patron of artists. His town house in St. James’s Square had fine pictures. He died after a fall from his horse in the hunting-field.
[375] The Dowager Lady Amherst would appear to be Elizabeth, daughter and co-heir of Lieutenant-General Honourable George Cary, who married, 1767, Jeffrey, first Lord Amherst, Field-Marshal, who died in 1797, aged 80. Lady Amherst died in 1830.—William George Maton, M.D., dated his fortune from the day when he was approached by an equerry at Weymouth as a person who might be able to name a plant (arundo epigejos) which one of the royal princesses had found. He was thus brought into the presence of Queen Charlotte, and later became her physician extraordinary. Maton died on March 30, 1835, and was buried at St. Martin’s-in-the-Fields. There is a tablet to him in Salisbury Cathedral.—Mr. Carr was Mrs. Garrick’s solicitor, and was to be the next occupant of the famous Garrick Villa at Hampton.
[376] Elizabeth Wright Macauley, novelist, actress, and preacher of the gospel, died at York, March 1837, aged 52, in rather straitened circumstances. Her London home was at 52 Clarendon Square, St. Pancras. She published, in 1812, Effusions of Fancy, a collection of poems consisting of the “Birth of Friendship,” the “Birth of Affection,” and the “Birth of Sensibility.” In the last year of her life she had travelled the country lecturing on “Domestic Philosophy,” and giving recitations.
[377] At an earlier time the Abbey had been free to sight-seers, but a wanton injury to the figure of George Washington in Major André’s monument had led to the imposition of admission fees. Not long after Smith’s encounter, Charles Lamb wrote his protest against these fees, of which he says: “In no part of our beloved Abbey now can a person find entrance (out of service time) under the sum of two shillings.” Lamb’s complaint may have been rather overstrained by reason of its incorporation in his bitter letter to Southey in the London Magazine for October 1823.
Free admission was given to the larger part of the Abbey under Dean Ireland. Authorised guides were first appointed in 1826, and the nave and transepts were opened, and the fees lowered in 1841 at the suggestion of Lord John Thynne (Dean Stanley: Historical Memorials of Westminster Abbey).
[378] The Rev. Thomas Rackett (1757-1841), Rector of Spetisbury with Charlton-Marshall, Dorset. He was a musician, a naturalist, an antiquary, and a friend of Garrick. He had been guided as a youth by Dr. John Hunter. His daughter Dorothea married Mr. S. Solly of Heathside, near Poole. She is mentioned on [p. 290].
[379] Dr. Francklin was probably the “Thomas Franklin” who signed the round-robin to Dr. Johnson asking him to re-write Goldsmith’s epitaph in English. Here the absence of the c from the name causes Croker to doubt the identity, and Dr. Birkbeck Hill to reject it. It is curious that Smith, with Garrick’s marriage certificate before him, makes the name agree with the questioned signature in the memorial to Johnson. Francklin knew Johnson and dedicated to him a translation of Lucian. “Boswell. I think Dr. Franklin’s definition of Man a good one—A tool-making animal. Johnson. But many a man never made a tool; and suppose a man without arms, he could not make a tool.” Francklin founded the Centinel, a paper of the Tatler variety, and published many translations. He was the first Chaplain to the Royal Academy, and composed a song, “The Patrons,” that was sung at the inaugural dinner.