St. James’s Park (Plate XIV.). M. Grosley, a Frenchman, describes this scene in his “Tour of London,” 1772: “Agreeably to this rural simplicity, most of these cows are driven about noon and evening to the gate which leads from the park to the quarter of Whitehall. Tied to posts at the extremity of the grass plots, they swill passengers with their milk, which, being drawn from their udders upon the spot, is served, with all the cleanliness peculiar to the English, in little mugs at the rate of a penny a mug.”—A Tea Garden (Plate XV.). Bagnigge House had been the country residence of Nell Gwyn, and in 1757 the then tenant accidentally discovered a chalybeate spring in his grounds, which two years later he turned to profit. Bagnigge Wells then developed a tea garden, with arbours, ponds with fountains and gold-fish, a bun-house, music, and a reputation for the amorous rendezvous. The place was very popular, and much favoured, especially on Sundays, by the would-be fashionable wives of well-to-do city-folk. In the character of “Madam Fussock” Colman took this off in his prologue to Garrick’s Drury Lane farce, “Bon Ton; or High Life above Stairs,” 1776.—The Lass of Livingstone (Plate XVI.). A popular old Scotch song, words by Allan Ramsay. There is also an older version, “The Bonnie Lass o’ Liviston,” associated with an actual person who kept a public-house in the parish of Livingstone.
Lady Cockerell as a Gipsy Woman (Plate XIX.). One of the beautiful daughters of Sir John and Lady Rushout, whose miniatures are, perhaps, Plimer’s masterpieces.—Lady Duncannon (Plate XX.). One of the “Portraits of Four Ladies of Quality,” exhibited by Downman at the Royal Academy in 1788. There are also colour-prints of Viscountess Duncannon after Lavinia, Countess Spencer and Cosway, and, with her more famous sister, Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, after Angelica Kauffman; while they both figure, with other fashionable beauties, in J. K. Sherwin’s picture “The Finding of Moses,” also in Rowlandson’s “Vauxhall,” and two prints in which the same artist celebrated their triumphant share in the Westminster election of 1784, when it was said that “two such lovely portraits had never before appeared on a canvass.” The Countess of Bessborough, as she became, was the mother of Lady Caroline Lamb. Her distinguished grandson, Sir Spencer Ponsonby-Fane, kindly lent the print reproduced here.
Rinaldo and Armida (Plate XXII.). The enchantment of Rinaldo, the Christian Knight, by Armida, the beautiful Oriental sorceress, in Tasso’s “Gerusalemme Liberata.” Love and Beauty: Marchioness of Townshend (Plate XXIV.). One of the three beautiful daughters of Sir William Montgomery immortalised by Reynolds on the large canvas now in the National Gallery, called “The Graces decorating a terminal figure of Hymen.” She married the distinguished general who finished the battle of Quebec when Wolfe had fallen.
Two Bunches a Penny, Primroses (Plate XXV.). Knives, Scissors and Razors to Grind (Plate XXVI.). Numbers 1 and 6 of the Cries of London. The other plates are: 2, Milk below, Maids. 3, Sweet China Oranges. 4, Do you want any Matches? 5, New Mackerel. 7, Fresh Gathered Peas. 8, Duke Cherries. 9, Strawberries. 10, Old Chairs to Mend. 11, A new Love-song. 12, Hotspice Gingerbread, two plates. 13, Turnips and Carrots. There are still in existence two or three paintings of similar character by Wheatley—one depicting a man selling copper kettles—which would suggest, besides the belated publication of the thirteenth plate, that it was originally intended to issue a larger number of the “Cries” than those we know, had the public encouragement warranted it. The colour-printing of the earliest impressions was superlatively fine, and in the original pink board-wrappers these are, of course, extremely rare, and would realize to-day as much as a thousand pounds.
Mrs. Crewe (Plate XXVII.). The famous beauty, Fulke Greville’s daughter. It was to her house in Lower Grosvenor Street that the triumphant “true blues”—the Prince of Wales among them—crowded in the evening to toast Fox’s victory at Westminster. Reynolds has perpetuated Mrs. Crewe’s rare beauty on three canvasses, and Sheridan in dedicating to her “The School for Scandal” did reverence to her mind as well as her features. Fox poetised in her praise, and Fanny Burney said “She is certainly the most completely a beauty of any woman I ever saw! She uglifies everything near her.”—The Dance (Plate XXVIII.). The tradition, lately repeated in book and periodical, which gives the figures in this print as those of the Gunning sisters, is obviously absurd. When Bunbury was an infant in arms the beauty of the Gunnings first took the town by storm; next year Maria became a countess, Elizabeth a duchess, and, when this print was done the one had been dead twenty-two years, the other already widowed and “double duchessed,” as Horace Walpole put it.—Morning Employments (Plate XXIX.). The name on the harpsichord should obviously be Jacobus Kirkman; there was no Thomas. The instrument with the double keyboard is exactly like that in my own possession, which Dr. Burney selected from Jacob Kirkman’s shop in 1768. When a fashionable craze for the guitar was sending the makers of harpsichords and spinets very near to bankruptcy, Kirkman bought up all his own fine instruments, which the ladies were practically “giving away” for guitars; then he purchased a lot of cheap guitars and presented them to milliner’s girls and street-singers, so that they were twanged everywhere and became vulgar, the ladies bought harpsichords again, and he made a large fortune.
Mademoiselle Parisot (Plate XXXVII.). A noted dancer in the opera ballets at the King’s Theatre in the Haymarket. There is a beautiful mezzotint of her, dated 1797, by J. R. Smith after A. W. Devis. This is very rare, and in colours extremely so. Mdlle. Parisot also figures as one of the three dancers in Gillray’s caricature “Operatical Reform, or La Danse à l’Evêque,” published in 1798 to ridicule the Bishop of Durham’s protest against the scanty attire of the ballet-dancers.—Maria (Plate XXXVIII.). Maria of Moulines, in Sterne’s “Sentimental Journey.”
MALCOLM C. SALAMAN.
Plate I.
“Jane, Countess of Harrington,
Lord Viscount Petersham and the
Hon. Lincoln Stanhope.”
Stipple-Engraving by F. Bartolozzi, R.A., after
Sir Joshua Reynolds, P.R.A.
(Published 1789. Size 8¾″ × 11⅛″.)
From the collection of Major E. F. Coates, M.P.
