CLAYTON MORDAUNT CRACHERODE.
Clayton Mordaunt Cracherode was born in 1729, took his degree at Oxford in 1753, and though he entered into orders, he never would accept Church preferment, but continued to follow his peculiar taste for antiquities, which an easy competence enabled him to do. His collection of coins and prints was most various and extensive. The whole he bequeathed to the British Museum, of which institution he was a trustee. He is thus described by one intimately acquainted with him:—“Well do I remember his mild, benevolent countenance, his sleek black suit, and his snow-white wig! He was a perfect woman-hater; retraced his steps when, in coming down stairs, he met one of the housemaids, and walked out of the room when a female entered. He was a man of the most regular habits, and of a sedentary disposition. He possessed a fine estate in Hertfordshire, and had never ventured to go so far as to look at it. He often observed that the extent of his journeys had been to Clapham and Richmond. For forty years of his life, when not prevented by indisposition, he daily went to his bookseller and printseller, Elmsley and Paine, and every Saturday he repaired to Mudge’s, to regulate his watch.” He died in 1799.
BARRY’S CONTEMPT FOR PORTRAIT PAINTING.
“Folks,” complained Barry, “come with a sessarara at the knocker of my street door and disturb my repose to ask my price as a limner. ‘I’m not a limb of that fraternity of flatterers,’ I answer; ‘go, get ye gone to the man in Leicester Fields’ [meaning Sir Joshua Reynolds]. Pshaw! the vain coxcombs! what could I see in their vacant countenances worthy of my art? The spalpeens! Such blockhead visages to be transmitted to future generations! O keep me, ye gods, clear from that offence! To be sure, and you’ll not seduce James Barry to prostitute his pencil, palette, and pigments, to such vile purposes!”
BARRY’S ECCENTRICITY.
The eccentricity of Barry is thus spoken of in Daye’s “Essays on Painting:”—“He carries his ideas of independence to such an extravagant length as always to pay for his dinner at whatever table he sits down. A year or two ago he dined with Paul Sandby, and laid down eighteenpence for his dinner, but, on recollection, paid another sixpence, for his additional quantity of grog. This instance is by no means singular. His character may be further illustrated. One evening, at Somerset Place, Peters said, on coming in, ‘How do you do, Mr. Barry? I hope you are well.’ On which he grumbled out, ‘Oh! I don’t believe a word of it.’ With all his oddities, he is, unquestionably, a man of uncommon intellect; every one must be benefited by his conversation, for, as Dr. Wolcot has justly observed, ‘Go where he will, he always leaves a pearl behind him.’”—Barry was born in 1741, and died in 1806.
THE ROYAL PRISONER.