“What can the extent of his vast soul confine—
A painter, critic, engineer, divine?”
Upon which Kneller, remembering that he had been intended for a soldier, and perhaps scenting out the joke, said, “Ay, Mr. Gay, all vot you ’ave said is very faine and very true, but you ’ave forgot von theeng, my good friend. Egad, I should have been a general of an army, for ven I vos in Venice there vos a girandole, and all the Place of St. Mark vos in a smoke of gunpowder, and I did like the smell, Mr. Gay—should have been a great general, Mr. Gay.”[487]
His dream, too, was related by Pope to Spence as a good story of the German’s droll vanity. Kneller thought he had ascended by a very high hill to heaven, and there found St. Peter at the gate, dealing with a vast crowd of applicants. To one he said, “Of what sect was you?” “I was a Papist.” “Go you there.” “What was you?” “A Protestant.” “Go you there.” “And you?” “A Turk.” “Go you there.” In the meantime St. Luke had descried the painter, and asking if he was not the famous Sir Godfrey Kneller, entered into conversation with him about his beloved art, so that Sir Godfrey quite forgot about St. Peter till he heard a voice behind him—St. Peter’s—call out, “Come in, Sir Godfrey, and take whatever place you like.”[488]
Pope is said to have ridiculed his friend under the name of Helluo.[489] He certainly laughed at his justice in dismissing a soldier who had stolen a joint of meat, and blaming the butcher who had put it in the rogue’s way. Whenever he saw a constable, followed by a mob, coming up to his house at Whitton, he would call out to him, “Mr. Constable, you see that turning; go that way; you will find an ale-house, the sign of the King’s Head: go and make it up.”[490]
Jacob Tonson got pictures out of Kneller, covetous as he was, by praising him extravagantly, and sending him haunches of fat venison and dozens of cool claret. Sir Godfrey used to say to Vandergucht, “Oh, my goot man, this old Jacob loves me. He is a very goot man, for you see he loves me, he sends me goot things. The venison vos fat.” Old Geckie, the surgeon, however, got a picture or two even cheaper, for he sent no present, but then his praises were as fat as Jacob’s venison.[491]
Sir Godfrey used to get very angry if any doubt was expressed as to the legitimacy of the Pretender. “His father and mother have sat to me about thirty-six times a-piece, and I know every line and bit of their faces. Mine Gott, I could paint King James now by memory. I say the child is so like both, that there is not a feature in his face but what belongs to either father or mother—nay, the nails of his fingers are his mother’s—the queen that was. Doctor, you may be out in your letters, but I cannot be out in my lines.”[492]
Kneller had intended Hogarth’s father-in-law, Sir James Thornhill, to paint his staircase at Whitton, but hearing that Newton was sitting to him, he was in dudgeon, declared that no portrait-painter should paint his house, and employed “sprawling” Laguerre instead.
Kneller’s prices were fifteen guineas for a head, twenty if with only one hand, thirty for a half, and sixty for a whole length. He painted much too fast and flimsily, and far too much by the help of foreign assistants—in fact, avowedly to fill his kitchen. In thirty years he made a large fortune, in spite of losing £20,000 in the South Sea Bubble. His wigs, drapery, and backgrounds were all painted for him. He is said to have left at his death 500 unfinished portraits.[493] His favourite work, the portrait of a Chinese converted and brought over by Couplet, a Jesuit, is at Windsor. But Walpole preferred his Grinling Gibbons at Houghton.
Kneller left his house in Great Queen Street to his wife, and after her decease to his godson Godfrey Huckle, who took the name of Kneller. Amongst the celebrated persons painted by Kneller in his best manner were Bolingbroke, Wren, Lady Wortley Montague, Pope, Locke, Burnet, Addison, Evelyn, and the Earl of Peterborough. The brittleness of this man’s fame is another proof that he who paints merely for his time must perish with his time.
Conway House was in Great Queen Street. Lord Conway, an able soldier, brought up by Lord Vere, his uncle, was an epicure, who by his agreeable conversation was very acceptable at the court of Charles I.[494] He had the misfortune to be utterly routed by the Scotch at Newburn—a defeat which gave them Newcastle. The previous Lord Conway was that Secretary of State of whom James I. said, “Steenie has given me two proper servants—a secretary (Conway) who can neither write nor read, and a groom of the bedchamber (Mr. Clarke, a one-handed man) who cannot truss my points.”[495] It had been well for England if this sottish pedant had had no worse servants than Conway and Clarke. Raleigh might then have been spared, and Overbuy would not have been poisoned.