On leaving this country the Chevalier St. George presented Mr. Angelo with his portrait by Mather Brown, his fencing-foil, glove, and jacket, which were hung up in the rooms rented by Angelo over the Opera portico (Haymarket).
Among the competitors in these fencing assaults, which were patronised by the Prince of Wales, and were sometimes held at Carlton House, are mentioned the names of D'Eon, M. Fabian, M. Magé (who was reckoned second to M. St. George among the amateurs of Paris), M. Sainville, Mr. Rheda, Mr. Mola, and Mr. Angelo, Sen.
1791. A Four-in-Hand.
1791. [The Inn Yard on Fire]. Drawn and etched by T. Rowlandson; aquatinted by T. Malton.—Dover, Deal, Margate, and Canterbury Coaches.—Fires at inns were by no means exceptional occurrences, if we may trust contemporary novelists; and who could have seized the changeful scenes of life flitting around them with such humour and fidelity as Fielding and the followers of his genial, life-like school have arrived at? Their fictitious personages, as Thackeray has argued, have often more vitality than those of actual history.
Everyone who was not content to live and die in one spot—the little space whereon they were born—must, at one time or another, have given way to the incentive of travel; all the world, high and low, aristocratic or mercantile, must, in the course of journeys in the pursuit of pleasure, variety, scenery, health, gain, or from necessity, from spot to spot, have encountered the humours of an inn; since the slow-going waggon, or the inevitable 'machine,' which, in a later generation, was supplanted by the flying stage-coach (itself, as judged by the present system of transport, a very tedious, insupportable affair, according to modern ideas—a serious and solitary means of travelling), and the various eccentric methods of locomotion indulged in a century back, rendered frequent 'puttings up' at posting-houses in a measure unavoidable. A traveller in the good old days when Fielding and Smollett noted down their pictures of life was almost bound to meet adventures of one sort or another. There was the excitement of the start, the difficulty of securing comfort in the article of seats, and sociability in the way of companionship; the dangers of the environs of London—the heaths, where the mail was always liable to be arrested at the wayward will of the pleasant and popular Mr. Richard Turpin, on his equally well-bred 'Black Bess,' or at the hands and holsters of less famous and ruder professional contemporaries; the risk of the roads; the digging of the great lumbering Noah's Ark from soft ways and quagmires; capsizing, or being snowed up, and such eventualities. Bad roads, disagreeable comrades, a stuffy inside place, or a moist outside 'shake-down,' were at intervals relieved by the arrival of the cortége at some hospitable hostelry, with its vast rambling galleries and its commodious courtyard, where further adventures were not unlikely to attend the voyager.
Who'er has travell'd life's dull round, Through all its various paths hath been, Must oft have wondered to have found His warmest welcome at an inn!
INN YARD ON FIRE.
The ardent house-warming prepared for the passengers at the Inn Yard on Fire barely justifies the rapture of the rhymer. From the notice-board we find the Dover, Deal, Margate, and Canterbury Coaches are advertised to set out from the caravansary in question. The strangers are rudely disturbed, while the flames are lapping the old building and serpentining their way round the inflammable wooden balconies, as the suddenly awakened inmates take to flight with such solitary articles as come first to hand. Peregrine is rescuing Emilia much as Rowlandson has drawn that worthy in his illustration to the exciting situation of the fire at an inn yard. (See The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, chapter xxvii.) A sufferer from gout is being conveyed in a wheelbarrow out of imminent danger of roasting; an old dowager has appeared on the scene with a pair of leather breeches to cover her shoulders, recalling similar episodes in La Fontaine, Boccaccio, &c.; while a corpulent old boy has simply thrown a lady's quilted petticoat round his neck. A waggon and horses are being dragged out of the dangerous vicinity. From its contiguity to the French route between Dover and Calais the house is evidently frequented by foreigners lately landed on our shores, and the unexpected warmth of their reception is too much for the excitable Gauls. One Frenchman, an officer, is making good his escape; his personal wardrobe is sacrificed, but he has secured his most precious belongings, an umbrella, a sword, his jack-boots, and his wig and solitaire—wigs being in those days somewhat costly appendages. A compatriot by his side is endeavouring to make off with his worldly possessions, and is dragging a heavy portmanteau at his heels; this salvage is endangered by the suspicions of a bulldog, who is not to be shaken off; the animal is first stopping the box, and finally arresting the fugitive by seizing his long queue in his mouth, a mode of arrest against which the terrified Parlez-vous is unequal and unable to defend himself. An antiquated husband is holding a ladder for the escape of his pretty wife; the curmudgeon is furious that the personal attractions of his better half should be thus displayed to the less privileged males around, who are assisting her delicate descent. The dangers of the fire are increased by the reckless impulse characteristic of similar casualties, in which blazing objects are hurled out of window, spreading the flames to places which have hitherto escaped ignition. Mirrors and tables, sheets and other objects, are sent flying from the upper galleries on to the heads of the scared travellers below. If the Squall in Hyde Park may be accepted as an ordeal by water, the [Inn Yard on Fire] must be acknowledged a most appropriate pendant. These plates were, it is believed, issued as a pair. Both are of one size, etched by Rowlandson, and aquatinted by T. Malton; the execution is spirited as regards outline, and the tinting is most successfully and delicately carried out. The second print, A Squall in Hyde Park, is, the Editor has reason to believe, the scarcer of the two; a copy (proof) in the National Library, Paris, and the one in his own collection, are the solitary examples with which he is acquainted. The [Inn Yard on Fire] is more familiarly known; and, although original impressions command prices which are seemingly fabulous, several impressions, of varying excellence, have come under the writer's attention.