[498] This caricature was brought out on September 7, 1762, and was entitled “The Bruiser, C. Churchill (once the Reverend!) in the Character of a Russian Hercules, regaling himself after having kill’d the Monster Caricatura that so sorely galled his virtuous friend, the Heaven-born Wilkes.” Mr. Austin Dobson says: “Churchill, who had been ordained a priest and abandoned that calling, appears as a bear, grasping a club, which is inscribed ‘Lye 1, Lye 2,’ etc., and regaling himself with a quart pot of ‘British Burgundy.’”
[499] Hayman died in 1776, so that this statement has a bearing on the vexed question of the date of the “Blue Boy,” which some writers put as late as 1779. Sir Walter Armstrong is convinced that 1770 is the correct date. If so, Gainsborough could not have painted the picture, as he is said to have done, to confute a passage in Sir Joshua Reynolds’s eighth Discourse, which was not delivered until December 1778. The Blue Boy was Master Jonathan Buttall, the ironmonger’s son. The subject, history, and ownership of this famous picture have been the subjects of a controversy second only, in lengthy inconclusiveness, to that on the Letters of Junius. In all probability the original picture is the one in the possession of the Duke of Westminster.
[500] When advanced in life, and unfitted for sprightly parts, Mrs. Abington determined to appear as Scrub, the man-of-all-work to Lady Bountiful in Farquhar’s comedy, The Beaux’ Stratagem. “I was present,” says John Taylor, in his Records of My Life, “and remember nothing in her performance that might not have been expected from an actor of much inferior abilities. As a proof, too, that, like many of her profession, she thought herself capable of characters not within the scope of her powers, I once saw her play Ophelia to Mr. Garrick’s Hamlet; and, to use a simile of my old friend Dr. Monsey, she appeared like a mackerel on a gravel walk.”
[501] Hitherto, in the Rainy Day, William Chambers has appeared, another misleading slip. Sir Robert was the Indian judge, and is referred to by Johnson in a letter to Boswell, dated March 5, 1774: “Chambers is married, or almost married, to Miss Wilton, a girl of sixteen, exquisitely beautiful, whom he has, with his lawyer’s tongue, persuaded to take her chance with him in the East.” Miss Wilton was the daughter of Joseph Wilton, R.A., the sculptor.
[502] Mr. Taylor’s father was not only highly respected, but for many years held a principal situation in the Custom House (S.).
[503] They were cleaned and “restored” by John Francis Rigaud, R.A.
[504] Doubtless the letter from Mrs. Abington to Mrs. Jordan, printed under the year 1815.
[505] John Bannister (Honest Jack) left the stage on the night of June 1, 1815, when he played in Kenney’s comedy The World, and The Children in the Wood. “Your whole conscience stirred with Bannister’s performance of Walter in the Children in the Wood,” says Lamb; and Haydon, who in 1826 met Bannister by accident in Chenies Street, Bedford Square, writes: “He held out his hand just as he used to do on the stage, with the same frank native truth. As he spoke, the tones of his favourite ‘Walter’ pierced my heart. It was extraordinary, the effect. ‘Bannister,’ said I, ‘your voice recalls my early days.’—‘Ah,’ said he, ‘I had some touches, had I not?’”
[506] John Pritt Harley (1786-1858) distinguished himself as singer and actor. He appeared at Drury Lane in 1815, the year of Bannister’s retirement, and succeeded to many of that comedian’s parts. He was known as Fat Jack—from his thinness. “I have an exposition of sleep upon me,” were his last words, spoken on the stage of the Princess’s Theatre on August 20, 1858. He had hardly made his exit when he was seized with paralysis, and he died at 14 Upper Gower Street two days later. Harley was an excellent Shakespearean clown, and an ardent collector of walking-sticks.
[507] Porridge Island and another rookery called The Bermudas disappeared about 1829. These were cant names.