And, last of all, we must mention Nathanael Smith, the engraver, and Mr. Rawle, the accoutrement maker in the Strand, and the inseparable companion of Captain Grose, the great antiquary, on whom Burns wrote poems—a learned, fat, jovial Falstaff of a man, who compiled an indecorous but clever slang dictionary. It was at Rawle’s sale that Dickey Suett bought Charles II.’s black wig, which he wore for years in “Tom Thumb.”
Nos. 76 and 77 St. Martin’s Lane were originally one house, built by Payne, the architect of Salisbury Street and the original Lyceum. He built two small houses in his garden for his friends Gwynn, the competitor for Blackfriars Bridge, and Wale, the Royal Academy lecturer on perspective, and well-known book-illustrator. The entrances were in Little Court, Castle Street. In old times the street on this side, from Beard’s Court, to St. Martin’s Court, was called the Pavement; but the road has since been heightened three feet.
Below Payne’s, in Hogarth’s time, lived a bookseller named Harding, a seller of old prints, and author of a little book on the Monograms of Old Engravers. It was to this shop that Wilson, the sergeant painter, took an etching of his own, which was sold to Hudson as a genuine Rembrandt. That same night, by agreement, Wilson invited Hogarth and Hudson to supper. When the cold sirloin came in, Scott, the marine-painter, called out, “A sail, a sail!” for the beef was stuck with skewers bearing impressions of the new Rembrandt, of which Hudson was so proud.[460]
Nos. 88 and 89 were built on the site of a large mansion, the staircase of which was adorned with allegorical figures. It was here that Hogarth’s particular friend, John Pine, lived. Pine was the engraver and publisher of the scenes from the Armada tapestry in the House of Lords, now destroyed. He was a round, fat, oily man; and Hogarth drew him, much to his annoyance, as the fat friar eyeing the beef at the “Gate of Calais.” His son Robert, who painted one of the best portraits of Garrick, and carried off the hundred guinea prize of the Society of Arts for his picture of the “Siege of Calais,” also lived here, and, after him, Dr. Gartshore.
The house No. 96, on the west side, was Powell the colourman’s in 1828; it had then a Queen Anne door-frame, with spread-eagle and carved foliage and flowers, like the houses in Carey Street and Great Ormond Street, and a shutter sliding in grooves in the old-fashioned way. Mr. Powell’s mother made for many years annually a pipe of wine from the produce of a vine nearly a hundred feet long.[461] This house had a large staircase, painted with figures in procession, by a French artist named Clermont, who claimed one thousand guineas for his work, and received five hundred. Behind the house was the room which Hogarth has painted in “Marriage à la Mode.” The quack is Dr. Misaubin, whose vile portrait the satirist has given. The savage fat woman is his Irish wife. Dr. Misaubin, who lived in this house, was the son of a pastor of the Spitalfields French Church. The quack realised a great fortune by a famous pill. His son was murdered; his grandson squandered his money, and died in St. Martin’s Workhouse.
No. 104 was at one time the residence of Sir James Thornhill, Hogarth’s august father-in-law, a poor yet pretentious painter, who decorated St. Paul’s. He painted the staircase wall with allegories that were existing some years since in good condition. The junior Van Nost, the sculptor, afterwards lived here—the same artist who took that mask of Garrick’s face which afterwards belonged to the elder Mathews. After him, before 1768, came Hogarth’s convivial artist-friend, Francis Hayman, who decorated Vauxhall and illustrated countless books. Perhaps it was here that the Marquis of Granby, before sitting to the painter, had a round or two of sparring. Sir Joshua Reynolds, too, a graver and colder man, came to live here before he went to Great Newport Street.
New Slaughter’s, at No. 82 in 1828, was established about 1760, and was demolished in 1843-44, when the new avenue of Garrick Street was made between Long Acre and Leicester Square. It was much frequented by artists who wished cheap fare and good society. Roubilliac was often to be found here. Wilkie long after enjoyed his frugal dinners here at a small cost. He was always the last dropper-in, and was never seen to dine in the house before dark. The fact is, the patient young Scotchman always slaved at his art till the last glimpse of daylight had disappeared below the red roofs.
Upon the site of the present Quakers’ Meeting-house in St. Peter’s Court, St. Martin’s Lane, stood Roubilliac’s first studio after he left Cheere. Here he executed, with ecstatic raptures at his own genius, his great statue of Handel for Vauxhall. Here afterwards a drawing academy was started, Mr. Michael Moser being chosen the keeper. Reynolds, Mortimer, Nollekens, and M’Ardell were among the earliest members. Hogarth presented to it some of his father-in-law’s casts, but opposed the principle of cheap education to young artists, declaring that every foolish father would send his boy there to keep him out of the streets, and so the profession would be overstocked. In this academy the students sat to each other for drapery, and had also male and female models—sometimes in groups.
Amongst the early members of the St. Martin’s Lane Academy were the following:—Moser, afterwards keeper of the Academy; Hayman, Hogarth’s friend; Wale, the book-illustrator; Cipriani, famous for his book-prints; Allan Ramsay, Reynolds’s rival; F. M. Newton; Charles Catton, the prince of coach-painters; Zoffany, the dramatic portrait-painter; Collins, the sculptor, who modelled Hayman’s “Don Quixote;” Jeremy Meyer; William Woollett, the great engraver; Anthony Walker, also an engraver; Linnel, a carver in wood; John Mortimer, the Salvator Rosa of that day; Rubinstein, a drapery-painter and drudge to the portrait-painters; James Paine, son of the architect of the Lyceum; Tilly Kettle, who went to the East, painted several rajahs, and then died near Aleppo; William Pars, who was sent to Greece by the Dilettanti Society; Vandergutch, a painter who turned picture-dealer; Charles Grignon, the engraver; C. Norton, Charles Sherlock, and Charles Bibb, also engravers; Richmond, Keeble, Evans, Roper, Parsons, and Black, now forgotten; Russell, the crayon-painter; Richmond Cosway, the miniature-painter, a fop and a mystic; W. Marlowe, a landscape-painter; Messrs. Griggs, Rowe, Dubourg, Taylor, Dance, and Ratcliffe, pupils of gay Frank Hayman; Richard Earlom, engraver of the “Liber Veritatis” of Claude for the Duke of Richmond; J. A. Gresse, a fat artist who taught the queen and princesses drawing; Giuseppe Marchi, an assistant of Reynolds; Thomas Beech; Lambert, a sculptor, and pupil of Roubilliac; Reed, another pupil of the same great artist, who aided in executing the skeleton on Mrs. Nightingale’s monument, and was famous for his pancake clouds; Biaggio Rebecca, the decorator; Richard Wilson, the great landscape-painter; Terry, Lewis Lattifere, John Seton, David Martin, Burgess; Burch, the medallist; John Collett, an imitator of Hogarth; Nollekens, the sculptor; Reynolds, and, of course, Hogarth himself, the primum mobile.[462]
No. 112 was in old times one of those apothecaries’ shops with bottled snakes in the windows. It was kept by Leake, the inventor of a “diet-drink” once as famous as Lockyer’s pill.