Part 18

While Reynolds was ‘glorifying’ the Fields, that is to say, about the year 1783, John Hunter, the great anatomist, enthroned science in Leicester Square. His house, nearly opposite Reynolds’s, was next door to that once occupied by Hogarth, on the east side, but north of the painter’s dwelling. Hunter was then fifty-five years old. Like his eminent brother, William, John Hunter had a very respectable amount of self-appreciation, quite justifiably.

The governing body of St. Bartholomew’s Hospital had failed, through ignorance or favouritism, to recognise his ability and to reward his assiduity. But John Hunter was of too noble a spirit to be daunted or even depressed; and St. George’s Hospital honoured itself by bestowing on him the modest office of house-surgeon. It was thirty years after this that John Hunter settled himself in Leicester Square. There he spent three thousand pounds in the erection of a building in the rear of his house for the reception of a collection in comparative anatomy. Before this was completed he spent upon it many thousands of pounds,--it is said ninety thousand guineas! With him to work was to live. Dr. Garthshore entered the museum in the Square early one morning, and found Hunter already busily occupied. ‘Why, John,’ said the physician, ‘you are always at work!’ ‘I am,’ replied the surgeon; ‘and when I am dead you will not meet very soon with another John Hunter!’ He accused his great brother William of claiming the merit of surgical discoveries which John had made; and when a friend, talking to him, at his door in the Square, on his ‘Treatise on the Teeth,’ remarked that it would be answered by medical men simply to make their names known, Hunter rather unhandsomely observed: ‘Aye, we have all of us vermin that live upon us.’ Lavater took correct measure of the famous surgeon when he remarked, on seeing the portrait of Hunter: ‘That is the portrait of a man who thinks for himself!’

After John Hunter’s death his collection was purchased by Government for fifteen thousand pounds. It was removed from Leicester Square to Lincoln’s Inn Fields, to the College of Surgeons, where it still forms a chief portion of the anatomical and pathological museum in that institution. The site of the Hunterian Museum in Leicester Square has been swallowed up by the Alhambra, where less profitable study of comparative anatomy may now be made by all who are interested in such pursuit. A similar destiny followed the other Hunterian Museum--that established by William Hunter, in Great Windmill Street, at the top of the Haymarket, where he built an amphitheatre and museum, with a spacious dwelling-house attached. In the dwelling-house Joanna Baillie passed some of her holiday and early days in London. She came from her native Scottish heath, and the only open moor like unto it where she could snatch a semblance of fresh air was the neighbouring inclosure of Leicester Square! William Hunter left his gigantic and valuable collection to his nephew, Dr. Baillie, for thirty years, to pass then to the University of Glasgow, where William himself had studied divinity, before the results of freedom of thought (both the Hunters _would_ think for themselves) induced him to turn to the study of medicine. The Hunterian Museum in Windmill Street, after serving various purposes, became known as the Argyll Rooms, where human anatomy (it is believed) was liberally exhibited under magisterial license and the supervision of a severely moral police.

Leicester Square has been remarkable for its exhibitions. Richardson, the fire-eater, exhibited privately at Leicester House in 1672. A century later there was a public exhibition on that spot of quite another quality. The proprietor was Sir Ashton Lever, a Lancashire gentleman, educated at Oxford. As a country squire he formed and possessed the most extensive and beautiful aviary in the kingdom. Therewith, Sir Ashton collected animals and curiosities from all quarters of the world. This was the nucleus of the ‘museum’ subsequently brought to Leicester Fields. Among the curiosities was a striking likeness of George III. ‘cut in cannel coal;’ also Indian-ink drawings and portraits; baskets of flowers cut in paper, and wonderful for their accuracy; costumes of all ages and nations, and a collection of warlike weapons which disgusted a timid beholder, who describes them in the ‘Gentleman’s Magazine’ (May 1773) as ‘desperate, diabolical instruments of destruction, invented, no doubt, by the devil himself.’ Soon after this, this wonderful collection was exhibited in Leicester House. There was a burst of wonder, as Pennant calls it, for a little while after the opening; but the ill-cultivated world soon grew indifferent to being instructed; and Sir Ashton got permission, with some difficulty, from Parliament, to dispose of the whole collection by lottery. Sir William Hamilton, Baron Dimsdale, and Mr. Pennant stated to the Committee of the House of Commons that they had never seen a collection of such inestimable value. ‘Sir Ashton Lever’s lottery tickets,’ says an advertisement of January 28, 1785, ‘are now on sale at Leicester House every day (Sundays excepted), from Nine in the morning till Six in the evening, at One Guinea each; and as each ticket will admit four persons, either together or separately, to view the Museum, no one will hereafter be admitted but by the Lottery Tickets, excepting those who have already annual admission.’ It is added that the whole was to be disposed of owing ‘to the very large sum expended in making it, and not from the deficiency of the daily receipts (as is generally imagined), which have annually increased; the average amount for the last three years being 1833_l._ per annum.’ It sounds odd that a ‘concern’ is got rid of because it was yearly growing more profitable!

Thirty-six thousand guinea-tickets were offered for sale. Only eight thousand were sold. Of these Mr. Parkinson purchased two, and with one of those two acquired the whole collection, against the other purchasers and the twenty-two thousand chances held by Sir Ashton. Mr. Parkinson built an edifice for his valuable prize in Blackfriars Road, and for years, one of the things to be done was ‘to go to the Rotunda.’ In 1806, the famous museum was dispersed by auction. The Surrey Institution next occupied the premises, which subsequently became public drinking-rooms and meeting place for tippling patriots, who would fain destroy the Constitution of England as well as their own.

But ‘man or woman, good my lord,’ let whosoever may be named in connection with Leicester Square, there is one who must not be omitted, namely, Miss Linwood. Penelope worked at her needle to no valuable purpose. Miss Linwood was more like Arachne in her work, and something better in her fortune. The dyer’s daughter of Colophon chose for her subjects the various loves of Jupiter with various ladies whom poets and painters have immortalised; and grew so proud of her work that, for challenging Minerva to do better, the goddess changed her into a spider. The Birmingham lady plied her needle from the time she could hold one till the time her ancient hand lost its cunning. At thirteen she worked pictures in worsted better than some artists could paint them. No needlework, ancient or modern, ever equalled (if experts may be trusted) the work of this lady, who found time to do as much as if she had not to fulfil, as she did faithfully, the duties of a boarding-school mistress. King, Queen, Court, and ‘Quality’ generally visited Savile House, Leicester Fields, where Miss Linwood’s works were exhibited, and were profitable to the exhibitor to the very last. They were, for the most part, copies of great pictures by great masters, modern as well as ancient. Among them was a Carlo Dolci, valued at three thousand guineas. Miss Linwood, in her later days, retired to Leicester, but she used to come up annually to look at her own Exhibition. It had been open about half a century when the lady, in her ninetieth year, caught cold on her journey, and died of it at Leicester in 1844. She left her Carlo Dolci to Queen Victoria. Her other works, sold by auction, barely realised a thousand pounds; but the art of selling art by auction was not then discovered.

In 1788, a middle-aged Irishman from county Meath, named Robert Barker, got admission to Reynolds, to show him a half-circle view from the Calton Hill, near Edinburgh, which Barker had painted in water-colours on the spot. The poor but accomplished artist had been unsuccessful as a portrait-painter in Dublin and Edinburgh. But he had studied perspective closely, an idea had struck him, and he came with it to Reynolds. The latter admired, but thought it impracticable. The Irishman thought otherwise. Barker exhibited circular views from nature, in London and also in the provinces, with indifferent success. At last, in 1793, on part of the old site of Leicester House, a building arose which was called the Panorama, and in which was exhibited a view of the Russian fleet at Spithead. The spectator was on board a ship in the midst of the scene and the view was all around him. King George and Queen Charlotte led the fashionable world to this most original exhibition. For many years there was a succession of magnificent views of foreign capitals, tracts of country, ancient cities, polar regions, battles, &c., exhibited; and ‘Have you been to the new panorama?’ was as naturally a spring question as ‘Have you been to the Academy?’ or the Opera? The exhibition of the ‘Stern Realities of Waterloo’ alone realised a little fortune, and ‘Pandemonium,’ painted by Mr. Henry Selous, was one of the latest of the great successes.

At the north-east corner of Leicester Square, the Barkers, father and son, achieved what is called ‘a handsome competency.’ At the death of the latter, Robert Burford succeeded him, and, for a time, did well; but ‘Fashion’ wanted a new sensation. The panoramas in Leicester Square and the Strand, admirable as they were, ceased to draw the public; and courteous, lady-like, little Miss Burford, the proprietress, was compelled to withdraw, utterly shipwrecked. She used to receive her visitors like a true lady welcoming thorough ladies and gentlemen. The end was sad indeed, for the last heard of this aged gentlewoman was that she was enduring life by needle-work, rarely got and scantily paid, in a lodging, the modest rent of which, duly paid, kept her short of necessary food. An attempt was made to obtain her election to the ‘United Kingdom Beneficent Association,’ but with what result we are unable to record.

Shadows of old Leicester Square figures come up in crowds, demanding recognition. They must be allowed to pass--to make a ‘march past,’ as it were; as they glide by we take note of Mirabeau and Marat, Holcroft, Opie, Edmund Kean, and Mulready, with countless others, to indite the roll of whose names only would alone require a volume.

_A HUNDRED YEARS AGO._

Perusing records that are a century old is something better than listening to a centenarian, even if his memory could go back so far. The records are as fresh as first impressions, and they bring before us men and things as they were, not as after-historians supposed them to be.

The story which 1773 has left of itself is full of variety and of interest. Fashion fluttered the propriety of Scotland when the old Dowager Countess of Fife gave the first masquerade that ever took place in that country, at Duff House. In England, people and papers could talk or write of nothing so frequently as masquerades. ‘One hears so much of them,’ remarked that lively old lady, Mrs. Delany, ‘that I suppose the only method not to be tired of them is to frequent them.’ Old-fashioned loyalty in England was still more shocked when the Lord Mayor of London declined to go to St. Paul’s on the 30th of January to profess himself sad and sorry at the martyrdom of Charles I. In the minds of certain religious people there was satisfaction felt at the course taken by the University of Oxford, which refused to modify the Thirty-nine Articles, as more liberal Cambridge had done. Indeed, such Liberalism as that of the latter, prepared ultra-serious people for awful consequences; and when they heard that Moelfammo, an extinct volcano in Flintshire, had resumed business, and was beginning to pelt the air with red-hot stones, they naturally thought that the end of a wicked world was at hand. They took courage again when the Commons refused to dispense with subscription to the Thirty-nine Articles, by a vote of 150 to 64. But no sooner was joy descending on the one hand than terror advanced on the other. Quid-nuncs asked whither the world was driving, when the London livery proclaimed the reasonableness of annual parliaments. Common-sense people also were perplexed at the famous parliamentary resolution that Lord Clive had wrongfully taken to himself above a quarter of a million of money, and had rendered signal services to his country!

Again, a hundred years ago our ancestors were as glad to hear that Bruce had got safely back into Egypt from his attempt to reach the Nile sources, as we were to know that Livingstone was alive and well and in search of those still undiscovered head-waters. A century ago, too, crowds of well-wishers bade God speed to the gallant Captain Phipps, as he sailed from the Nore on his way to that North-west Passage which he did not find, and which, at the close of a hundred years, is as impracticable as ever. And, though history may or may not repeat itself, events of to-day at least remind us of those a hundred years old. The Protestant Emperor William, in politely squeezing the Jesuits out of his dominions, only modestly follows the example of Pope Clement XIV., who, in 1773, let loose a bull for the entire suppression of the order in every part of the world. Let us not forget too, that if orthodox ruffians burnt Priestley’s house over his head, and would have smashed all power of thought out of that head itself, the Royal Society conferred on the great philosopher who was the brutally treated pioneer of modern science, the Copley Medal, for his admirable treatise on different kinds of air.

But there was a little incident of the year 1773, which has had more stupendous consequences than any other with which England has been connected. England, through some of her statesmen, asserted her right to tax her colonists, without asking their consent or allowing them to be represented in the home legislature. In illustration of such right and her determination to maintain it, England sent out certain ships with cargoes of tea, on which a small duty was imposed, to be paid by the colonists. The latter declined to have the wholesome herb at such terms, but England forced it upon them. Three ships, so freighted, entered Boston Harbour. They were boarded by a mob disguised as Mohawk Indians, who tossed the tea into the river and then quietly dispersed. A similar cargo was safely landed at New York, but it was under the guns of a convoying man-of-war. When landed it could not be disposed of, except by keeping it under lock-and-key, with a strong guard over it, to preserve it from the patriots who scorned the cups that cheer, if they were unduly taxed for the luxury. That was the little seed out of which has grown that Union whose President now is more absolute and despotic than poor George III. ever was or cared to be; little seed, which is losing its first wholesomeness, and, if we may trust transatlantic papers, is grown to a baleful tree, corrupt to the core and corrupting all around it. Such at least is the American view--the view of good and patriotic Americans, who would fain work sound reform in this condition of things at the end of an eventful century, when John Bull is made to feel, by Geneva and San Juan, that he will never have any chance of having the best argument in an arbitration case, where he is opposed by a system which looks on sharpness as a virtue, and holds that nothing succeeds like success.

Let us get back from this subject to the English court of a century since. A new year’s day at court was in the last century a gala day, which made London tradesmen rejoice. There were some extraordinary figures at that of 1773, at St. James’s, but no one looked so much out of ordinary fashion as Lord Villiers. His coat was of pale purple velvet turned up with lemon colour, ‘and embroidered all over’ (says Mrs. Delany) ‘with SSes of pearl as big as peas, and in all the spaces little medallions in beaten gold--_real solid_! in various figures of Cupids _and the like_!’

The court troubles of the year were not insignificant; but the good people below stairs had their share of them. If the King continued to be vexed at the marriages of his brothers Gloucester and Cumberland with English ladies, the King’s servants had sorrows of their own. The newspapers stated that ‘the wages of his Majesty’s servants were miserably in arrear; that their families were consequently distressed, and that there was great clamour for payment.’ The court was never more bitterly satirised than in some lines put in circulation (as Colley Cibber’s) soon after Lord Chesterfield’s death, to whom they were generally ascribed. They were written before the decease of Frederick, Prince of Wales. The laureate was made to say--

Colley Cibber, right or wrong, Must celebrate this day, And tune once more his tuneless song And strum the venal lay.

Heav’n spread through all the family That broad, illustrious glare, That shines so flat in every eye And makes them all so stare!

Heav’n send the Prince of royal race A little coach and horse, A little meaning in his face, And money in his purse.

And, as I have a son like yours, May he Parnassus rule. So shall the crown and laurel too Descend from fool to fool.

Satire was, indeed, quite as rough in prose as it was sharp in song. One of the boldest paragraphs ever penned by paragraph writers of the time appeared in the ‘Public Advertiser’ in the summer of 1773. A statue of the King had been erected in Berkeley Square. The discovery was soon made that the King himself had paid for it. Accordingly, the ‘Public Advertiser’ audaciously informed him that he had paid for his statue, because he well knew that none would ever be spontaneously erected in his honour by posterity. The ‘Advertiser’ further advised George III. to build his own mausoleum for the same reason.

And what were ‘the quality’ about in 1773? There was Lord Hertford exclaiming, ‘By Jove!’ because he objected to swearing. Ladies were dancing ‘Cossack’ dances, and gentlemen figured at balls in black coats, red waistcoats, and red sashes, or quadrilled with nymphs in white satin--themselves radiant in brown silk coat, with cherry-coloured waistcoat and breeches. Beaux who could not dance took to cards, and the Duke of Northumberland lost two thousand pounds at quince before half a dancing night had come to an end. There was Sir John Dalrymple winning money more disastrously than the duke lost it. He was a man who inveighed against corruption, and who took bribes from brewers. Costume balls were in favour at court, Chesterfield was making jokes to the very door of his coffin; and he was not the only patron of the arts who bought a Claude Lorraine painted within the preceding half-year. The macaronies, having left off gaming--they had lost all their money--astonished the town by their new dresses and the size of their nosegays. Poor George III. could not look admiringly at the beautiful Miss Linley at an oratorio, without being accused of ogling her. It was at one of the King’s balls that Mrs. Hobart figured, ‘all gauze and spangles, like a spangle pudding.’ This was the expensive year when noblemen are said to have made romances instead of giving balls. The interiors of their mansions were transformed, walls were cast down, new rooms were built, the decorations were superb (three hundred pounds was the sum asked only for the loan of mirrors for a single night), and not only were the dancers in the most gorgeous of historical or fancy costumes, but the musicians wore scarlet robes, and looked like Venetian senators on the stage. It was at one of these balls that Harry Conway was so astonished at the agility of Mrs. Hobart’s bulk that he said he was sure she must be hollow.

She would not have been more effeminate than some of our young legislators in the Commons, who, one night in May, ‘because the House was very hot, and the young members thought it would melt their rouge and wither their nosegays,’ as Walpole says, all of a sudden voted against their own previously formed opinions. India and Lord Clive were the subjects, and the letter-writer remarks that the Commons ‘being so fickle, Lord Clive has reason to hope that after they have voted his head off they will vote it on again the day after he has lost it.’