Tonson, whilst secretary, caused the club meetings to be transferred to a house belonging to himself at Barn Elms, and built a handsome room for the accommodation of the members. The portrait of each member was painted by Sir Godfrey Kneller; but, the apartment not being sufficiently large to receive half-length pictures, a shorter canvas was adopted; and hence the technical term of kit-kat size. Garth wrote the verses for the toasting-glass of this club, which, as they are preserved in his works, have immortalized four of the reigning beauties at the commencement of the last century—Lady Carlisle, Lady Essex, Lady Hyde, and Lady Wharton.
In 1817, the club-room was standing, and was the property of Mr. Hoare, the London banker. Sir Richard Phillips visited it at this date, when it was sadly in decay. It was 18 feet high, and 40 feet long, by 20 wide. The mouldings and ornaments were in the most superb fashion of the last century; but the whole was falling to pieces from the effects of dry-rot. There was the faded cloth-hanging of the walls, whose red colour once set off the famous portraits of the club that hung around it. Their marks and sizes were still visible, and the numbers and names remained as written in chalk for the guidance of the hanger! “Thus,” says Sir Richard, “was I, as it were, by these still legible names, brought into personal contact with Addison, and Steele, and Congreve, and Garth, and Dryden, and with many hereditary nobles, remembered only because they were patrons of those natural nobles!—I read their names aloud!—I invoked their departed spirits!—I was appalled by the echo of my own voice! The holes in the floor, the forests of cobwebs in the windows, and a swallow’s nest in the corner of the ceiling, proclaimed that I was viewing a vision of the dreamers of a past age—that I saw realized before me the speaking vanities of the anxious career of man! The blood of the reader of sensibility will thrill as mine thrilled! It was feeling without volition, and therefore incapable of analysis!”
Not long after this the club-room was united to a barn, to form a riding-house. The kit-kat pictures were painted early in the eighteenth century, and about the year 1710, were brought to this spot; but the club-room was not built till ten or fifteen years afterwards. The paintings were forty-two in number, and were presented by the members to the elder Tonson, who died in 1736. He left them to his great nephew, also an eminent bookseller, who died in 1767. They were then removed from the building at Barn-Elms, to the house of his brother, at Water-Oakley, near Windsor; and on his death, to the house of Mr. Baker, of Hertingfordbury, where they were splendidly lodged, and in fine preservation. We are not aware if the collection has been dispersed.
COPLEY’S LARGE PICTURE.
Copley, the father of Lord Lyndhurst, painted a vast picture of the Relief afforded to the Crew of the Enemy’s Gun-boats on their taking fire at the Siege of Gibraltar. The painting was immense, and it was managed by means of a roller, so that any portion of it, at any time, might be easily seen or executed. The artist himself was raised on a platform. The picture was at length completed, and a most signal mark of royal favour was granted the painter, by his receiving permission to erect a tent in the Green Park for its exhibition. It attracted thousands. Beneath the principal subjects, in small, was painted Lord Howe’s relief of the garrison of Gibraltar; and the portraits of Lords Heathfield and Howe, (heads only,) occupied each one side of this smaller subject.
When Copley’s magnificent picture, afterwards hung up in the Egyptian darkness of the Council-room in Guildhall, was first exhibited, Dr. Dibdin one day placed himself in front of it, and was sketching the portrait of Lord Heathfield with a pencil on the last blank page of the catalogue, when some one to his right exclaimed, “Pretty well, but you give too much nose.” The Doctor turned round—it was the artist himself, who smiled, and commended his efforts.
SIR ROBERT KERR PORTER’S PANORAMA.
Mr. (subsequently Sir) Robert Kerr Porter, at the age of nineteen produced a performance at once inconceivable and unparalleled—the panorama of the Storming and Capture of Seringapatam. It was not the very first thing of its kind, because there had been a panorama of London exhibited in Leicester Fields by Mr. Barker; but it was the very first thing of its kind, if artist-like attainments be considered. The learned, (says Dr. Dibdin,) were amazed, and the unlearned were enraptured. I can never forget its impression upon my own mind. It was a thing dropt from the clouds—all fire, energy, intelligence, and animation. You looked a second time; the figures moved, and were commingled in hot and bloody fight. You saw the flash of the cannon, the glitter of the bayonet, the gleam of the falchion. You longed to be leaping from crag to crag with Sir David Baird, who is hallooing the men on to victory! Then again, you seemed to be listening to the groans of the wounded and the dying—and more than one female was carried out swooning. The oriental dress, the jewelled turban, the curved and ponderous scimitar—these were among the prime objects of favouritism with Sir Robert’s pencil: and he touched and treated them to the very spirit and letter of the truth. The colouring, too, was good and sound throughout. The accessories were strikingly characteristic—rock, earth, and water, had its peculiar and happy touch; and the accompaniments about the sally-port, half choked up with the bodies of the dead, made you look on with a shuddering awe, and retreat as you shuddered. The public poured in by hundreds and by thousands for even a transient gaze—for such a sight was altogether as marvellous as it was novel. You carried it home, and did nothing but think of it, talk of it, and dream of it. And all this by a young man of nineteen.