[433] This elaborate and beautiful work stands in the centre of St. Andrew’s Chapel. Beneath a canopy supported on columns lie the effigies of Lord and Lady Norris, and round them kneel their six soldier sons, four of whom died on the field. In his Antient Topography Smith tells how Roubiliac admired this stately cenotaph. “When my father had occasion to go to his master (Roubiliac) during the time he was putting up Sir Peter Warren’s monument in the Abbey, he was generally found standing by the monument of Norris, or by that of Vere. On one of these attendances he was observed with his arms folded before the north-west corner figure of one of the six knights (the sons) who support the cenotaph of Lord Norris, and appeared as if rivetted to the spot. My father, who had thrice delivered his message, without being once noticed, was at last smartly pinched on the elbow by Roubiliac, who at the same time said, but in a soft and smothered tone of voice, ‘Hush! Hush! He’ll speak presently.’”
[434] William Esdaile (1758-1837) was a partner in the banking house of Esdaile, Hammet, & Co., 21 Lombard Street. He took up print-collecting and bought lavishly. Falling into ill health, he spent the last five years of his life in poring over his prints, and died in his Clapham house, October 2, 1837. The disposal of his remarkable collection at Christie’s occupied sixteen days, and was attended by buyers from the Continent.
[435] The Clapham visited by Smith was that of Lord Macaulay’s young manhood and of Ruskin’s boyhood, and was rural and open beyond the belief of the present generation. In his recently published Life and Letters of Sir George Grove, Mr. Charles L. Graves says: “All the way from Wandsworth Road to Clapham Junction the neighbourhood was a favourite resort for solid City people, the wealthiest living on Clapham Common. But Clapham was thoroughly rural and not even semi-suburban in the ‘twenties’ and ‘thirties.’ Mr. Edmund Grove distinctly recollects seeing a man in the stocks at Clapham, then a most picturesque village with a watch-house for the ‘Charlies,’ and old inns with timbered fronts and spacious courtyards.”
[436] Charles Alexandre de Calonne succeeded Necker as comptroller-general of finance in 1783. He was unable to reduce French finance to order, and in 1787 found it advisable to retire to England. In Sir Nathaniel Wraxhall’s Memoirs I find the following:—
“The tester of Calonne’s bed having fallen upon him during the night, together with a portion of the ceiling of the room, he narrowly escaped suffocation. All Paris, when the fact became known, exclaimed, ‘Juste ciel!’ The tester of a bed is denominated in French ‘le ciel du lit.’… With him may be said to have commenced the emigration (to England) which soon became so general.”
[437] Henry Peter Standly, of St. Neot’s, an active magistrate, possessed an unrivalled collection of Hogarth’s prints and drawings, which was dispersed at Christie’s in 1845. He purchased drawings of landscapes from Smith.
[439] John Inigo Richards, R.A., was one of the original members of the Royal Academy, and its secretary from 1788. He was for many years principal scene-painter at Covent Garden. He died in his Academy apartments, Dec. 18, 1810.
[440] Edwards’s Anecdotes of Painters.—S.
[441] Probably Dr. Robert Richardson, M.D., who had been travelling physician to Lord Mountjoy. He died in Gordon Street, Bloomsbury, November 5, 1847.