[452] Johan Zoffany, R.A., born at Frankfort about 1735, painted portraits of Garrick, one of the best representing the actor as Abel Drugger.
[453] Thomas Davies, the actor and bookseller, more famous as the introducer to Dr. Johnson of Boswell. Johnson wrote the first sentence of his Memoirs of David Garrick.
[454] These pictures were the “Canvass,” the “Poll,” the “Chairing,” and the “Election Feast.” They are said to have been painted by Hogarth for about forty-five guineas apiece. At the sale of Garrick’s pictures at Christie’s in June 1823 they were bought by Sir John Soane, and are in the Soane Museum.
[455] In 1829 the surprising period of seventy-three years had elapsed since Garrick became the tenant of his famous villa. He had enlarged and improved the house, planted many trees in the grounds, and erected on his lawn a “Grecian Temple” to receive the statue of Shakespeare by Roubiliac which now stands in the entrance hall of the British Museum. Here also stood his famous Shakespeare chair, designed by Hogarth: it is now in the possession of the Baroness Burdett-Coutts. At Hampton Garrick received his friends with great hospitality, and occasionally gave fêtes champêtres with the accompaniments of fireworks and illuminations. Horace Walpole, finding himself a fellow-visitor with the Duke of Grafton, Lord and Lady Rochford, the Spanish Minister, and other great people, wrote to Bentley: “This is being sur un assez bon ton for a player.” Garrick gave treats to the children of Hampton in his grounds. After his death, Hampton House and the house in Adelphi Terrace were occupied for forty-three years by Mrs. Garrick. She preserved the Hampton furniture exactly as her husband left it.
[456] The mystery of Mrs. Garrick’s origin has never been cleared up. Some authorities say that she was the daughter of a respectable Vienna citizen named John Veigel. According to the story told by Charles Lee Lewis (see his Memoirs, 1805), and denied by Mrs. Garrick, she was the fruit of a liaison which the Earl of Burlington formed with a young lady of family on the Continent. At the time of her birth the Earl was back in England, whence he remitted funds for his daughter’s support. The money is said to have been dishonestly retained by the person in whose charge she was placed, and the child herself to have been forced to earn a living as a dancer. The Earl, hearing of this, arranged that she should come to England and dance for a higher salary. Later he took her into his house as companion and teacher to his legitimate daughter. Then Garrick appeared on the scene, and the benevolent Earl said to him: “Do you think you could satisfactorily receive her from my hands with a portion of ten thousand pounds?—and here let me inform you that she is my daughter.”
The above story is told by Lee Lewis on the authority of “an aged domestic who lived at the time it happened at Burlington House, Piccadilly.” Apparently the same gossiping lady is referred to in the following note in Mr. Percy Fitzgerald’s Life of Garrick: “A curious little story comes to me, told originally by a housekeeper in the Burlington family, and, though based on such a loose foundation, may be worth repeating. On this authority, the story ran that Lord Burlington, coming to see her, was struck by a picture, and, on inquiry, found she was actually the daughter of a lady whom he had known abroad. The result was the discovery that the Violette was actually his daughter. The authority of the old housekeeper seems below the dignity of biography, but her testimony comes to us very circumstantially.”
The story of Violette’s relationship to the Earl of Burlington was supported by the covert kindness which she received from that nobleman. But it has to be remembered that she was the “rage” of the whole town, “the finest and most admired dancer in the world,” according to Walpole, and that Lady Burlington, not less than her lord, was so fond of her, that she would accompany her to the theatre, and wait in the wings with a pelisse to throw over her when she came off the stage. Mr. Fitzgerald’s conclusion on the whole matter is that “her father was someone of rank at Vienna, possibly one of the Starenberg family, from whom it is said she brought letters of introduction to England.”
[457] Lancelot Brown (1715-83) is generally considered the founder of modern “natural” as distinct from “formal” landscape-gardening. He laid out Kew, the grounds of Blenheim, and parts of St. James’s Park and Kensington Gardens. His conversational abilities, extolled by Hannah More, contributed to his fame. John Taylor relates that he once assisted the gouty Lord Chatham into his carriage. “Now, sir, go and adorn your country,” said the grateful statesman. To which Brown aptly replied: “Go you, my lord, and save it.”
[458] Pain’s Hill, at Cobham, Surrey, was considered a triumph of landscape gardening by Horace Walpole and other connoisseurs. Its owner, the Hon. Charles Hamilton, not content with artificial ruins and temples disposed after the pictures of Poussin and Claude, added a hermitage and engaged a hermit at £700 a year. But as the hermit had all the hardship, and Hamilton all the sentiment, the arrangement broke down.
[459] Mr. Carr’s mention of Johnson’s frequent visits recalls the answer he made to Garrick when asked how he liked the spot: “Ah, David! it is the leaving of such places that makes a death-bed terrible.” Some interesting matter relating to the Garricks at Hampton will be found in Mr. Henry Ripley’s History and Topography of Hampton-on-Thames. The existence of the villa has recently been threatened by the westward extension of London’s electric tramways, but, happily, the danger of its removal has been averted.