In the month of June this year, the late Atkinson Bush,[325] then of Great Ormond Street, brought to my house Mr. Parton, vestry-clerk of St. Giles’s-in-the-Fields, with a view to obtain such particulars of that parish as I was acquainted with, he being then busily engaged in collecting materials for its history. In the course of conversation, I was astonished to find that it was his intention to have a plan of the parish engraved for his work, purporting to have been taken between the years twelve and thirteen hundred, a period more than two centuries and a half earlier than Aggas’s plan of London, and from which I could not help observing that in my opinion he had most glaringly borrowed. When he assured me he had not, my request was then to know his authority for producing such a plan, but for that question he was not provided with an answer, nor did he appear to be willing to be probed by further interrogatories. To my great astonishment, when Mr. Parton’s book made its appearance, I not only found this plan professing to be between the years twelve and thirteen hundred so minutely made out, with every man’s possession in the parish most distinctly attributed, but every plot of garden so neatly delineated, with the greatest variety of parterres, walks with cut borders, as if the gardener of William III. or Queen Anne had then been living. As Mr. Parton omitted to give any authority for the introduction of so wonderfully early a piece of ichnography, I applied to several leading men in the parish of St. Giles, but could gain no intelligence whatever respecting it: so much for this plan of St. Giles’s parish, as produced by Mr. Parton.[326]
“The Townley Marbles.”
1807.
On the 7th of November of this year, aged 65, died at Rome the celebrated Angelica Kauffmann, who was appointed a member of the Royal Academy by King George III. at its foundation.[327] That she was a great favourite with the admirers of art may be inferred by the numerous engravings from her productions by Bartolozzi and the late William Wynn Ryland.[328] Her pictures are always tasteful, and often well composed, clearly and harmoniously coloured, and extremely finished with a most delicate but spirited pencil. Indeed, her talents were so approved by her brother Academicians, that those gentlemen allotted her compartments of the ceiling in their council-chamber at Somerset Place for decoration, in which most honourable and pleasing task she so well acquitted herself, that her performances are the admiration of every visitor, but more particularly those who possess the organ of colour. She etched numerous subjects; the best impressions are those before the plates were aqua-tinted.
When I was a boy, my father frequently took me to Golden Square to see her pictures, where she and her father had for many years resided in the centre house on the south side. There are several portraits of her, but none so well-looking as that painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds, of which there is an engraving by Bartolozzi.
Angelica Kauffmann was a great coquette, and pretended to be in love with several gentlemen at the same time.[329] Once she professed to be enamoured of Nathaniel Dance;[330] to the next visitor she would divulge the great secret that she was dying for Sir Joshua Reynolds. However, she was at last rightly served for her duplicity by marrying a very handsome fellow personating Count de Horn. With this alliance she was so pleased, that she made her happy conquest known to her Majesty Queen Charlotte, who was much astonished that the Count should have been so long in England without coming to Court. However, the real Count’s arrival was some time afterwards announced at Dover; and Angelica Kauffmann’s husband turned out to be no other than his valet de chambre. He was prevailed upon subsequently to accept a separate maintenance.[331] After this man’s death she married Zucchi, and settled in Rome. During her residence there, she was solicited by the artists in general, but more particularly by the English, to join them in an application to this country for permission to bring their property to England duty free; and as I possess the original letter which that lady wrote to Lord Camelford[332] upon the subject, I cannot refrain from inserting it.
“My Lord,—I do not know, if by having lived several years in England, and having the honour to be a R.A., I may be sufficiently entitled to join with the artists of Great Britain in their request, or better to say, in returning thanks to your Lordship for patronising them in a point so very essential, which is to assist them in obtaining the free importation of their own studies, models, or designs, collected for their improvement during their own stay abroad.
“The heavy duty set upon articles of that nature causes that the artist, whose circumstances do not permit him to pay perhaps a considerable sum, must either be deprived of what he keeps most valuable, or buy his own works at the public sale at the Custom House. This I have myself experienced on my coming to England,—and I mention it here, in consequence of the opinion of some of my friends, who think that my assertion, added to what other artists may have reported to that purpose, may be of some use to obtain their object.