In the autumn of this year I passed a most agreeable day with the Hon. Hussey Delaval,[293] at his house near Parliament Stairs.[294] This learned and communicative gentleman, among whose works that on Colours is generally considered the most interesting, was as friendly to me, as the jealousy of that well-known odd compound of nature, my antagonist, John Carter,[295] who was of our party, would allow; for with that artist’s opinions as to Gothic architecture, Mr. Delaval so entirely coincided, that he employed him to provide the ornamental decorations of his house, which were mostly in putty mixed with sand, and in some instances cast from the decorations of several Gothic structures, particularly Westminster Abbey. This house was originally fire-proof, the floors being of stone or composition, and the window-sashes of cast iron, but since the death of Mr. Delaval, wood has been substituted for the sashes and other parts.
The apartments are ten in number, besides small offices. The lower rooms consist of two halls: in the north wall of the first are three pretty Gothic recesses for seats, for servants or persons in waiting; the second hall is filled with Gothic figures placed upon brackets under canopies. The chimney-piece and other parts of the dining-parlour looking over the Thames, are decorated in a similar manner; the kitchen is on the same floor towards the north. The staircase leading to the first-floor is a truly tasteful little specimen, not equalled by anything at Strawberry Hill, which, by reason of Mr. Bentley’s[296] fancy mouldings interfering so often with parts which are really chaste, must be considered a mule building. The drawing-room and library also look over the water. On the same floor are two bed-chambers towards the west; above which are two attics, with a door opening upon the embattled leads over the drawing-room. Upon these leads we took our wine—attended by female servants only, as Mr. Delaval never would allow a man-servant to enter the house, but with messages—and here enjoyed the glowing, Cuyp-like effect of the sun upon west-country barges laden either with blocks of stone or fresh-cut timber, objects ever picturesque on the water. Mr. Delaval was so pleased with this scenery, and the pencil of my friend G. Arnald, Associate of the Royal Academy, that he bespoke two pictures of him, Views up and down the River, the figures in which, by the order of Mr. Delaval, were painted by his friend G. F. Joseph, A.R.A. They were exhibited at Somerset House.[297]
1802.
How often do we find peculiar attachments and propensities in the minds of persons of reported good understanding. Within my time, many men have indulged most ridiculously in their eccentricities. I have known one who had made a pretty large fortune in business, get up at four o’clock in the morning and walk the streets to pick up horseshoes which had been slipped in the course of the night, with no other motive than to see how many he could accumulate in a year. I also remember a rich soap-boiler who never missed an opportunity of pocketing nails, pieces of iron hoops, and bits of leather, in his daily walks; and these he would spread upon a large walnut-tree three-flapped dining-table, with a similar view to that of the above-mentioned gentleman. This wealthy citizen would often put on a red woollen cap, in shape like those worn by slaughter-house men, and a waggoner’s frock, in order to stoke his own furnace; after which, he would dress, get into his coach, and, attended by tall servants in bright blue liveries, drive to his villa, where his hungry friends were waiting his arrival.
The allusion to these peculiarities, which certainly are harmless, will serve by way of prelude to a more extraordinary one. The late Duke of Roxburgh,[298] whose wonderful library will ever be spoken of with the highest delight by bibliomaniacs, had an attachment to the portraits of malefactors as closely as Rowland Hill to his petted toad. I made many drawings of such characters for his Grace during their trials or confinement; that which I made this year, was of Governor Wall, whose trial produced much discussion.[299] Having been deprived of admission at the Old Bailey on the day of his trial, I went to the Duke, and he immediately wrote to a nobleman high in power, for an order to admit me to see the unfortunate criminal in the condemned cell, which application was firmly, and, in my humble opinion, very properly, refused. I walked home, where I found Isaac Solomon waiting to show me some of his improved black-lead pencils. Isaac, upon hearing me relate to my family the disappointment I had experienced, assured me that he could procure me a sight of the Governor, if I would only accompany him in the evening to Hatton Garden, and smoke a pipe with Dr. Forde, the Ordinary of Newgate,[300] with whom he said he was particularly intimate. Away we trudged; and, upon entering the club-room of a public-house, we found the said Doctor most pompously seated in a superb masonic chair, under a stately crimson canopy placed between the windows. The room was clouded with smoke, whiffed to the ceiling, which gave me a better idea of what I had heard of the Black Hole of Calcutta than any place I had seen. There were present at least a hundred associates of every denomination; of this number, my Jew, being a favoured man, was admitted to a whispering audience with the Doctor, which soon produced my introduction to him.
“Man’s life is all a mist, and in the dark our fortunes meet us.” Standing beneath a masonic lustre, the Doctor immediately recognised me as a friend of John Ireland, but more particularly of his older crony, Atkinson Bush; he requested me to take a pipe, to me a most detestable preliminary. He then whispered, “Meet me at the felon’s door at the break of day.” There I punctually applied, but, notwithstanding the order of the Doctor, I found it absolutely necessary, to protect myself from an increasing mob, to show the turnkey half-a-crown, who soon closed his hand and let me in. I was then introduced to a most diabolical-looking little wretch, denominated “the Yeoman of the Halter,” Jack Ketch’s head man. The Doctor soon arrived in his canonicals, and with his head as stiffly erect as a sheriff’s coachman when he is going to Court, with an enormous nosegay under his chin, gravely uttered, “Come this way, Mr. Smith.”
As we crossed the Press-yard a cock crew; and the solitary clanking of a restless chain was dreadfully horrible. The prisoners had not risen. Upon our entering a stone-cold room, a most sickly stench of green twigs, with which an old round-shouldered, goggle-eyed man was endeavouring to kindle a fire, annoyed me almost as much as the canaster fumigation of the Doctor’s Hatton Garden friends.
NEWGATE CHAPEL ON THE EVE OF SEVERAL EXECUTIONS