Born: Thomas, Earl of
Arundel, collector of ancient sculptures, 1592;
Emperor Nicolas of Russia, 1796.
Died: Edward I of
England, 1307, Burgh-on-Sands; John Huss, burned at
Constance, 1415; Dr. John Eachard, 1697, Cambridge;
Bishop Compton, 1713; Dr. Thomas Blacklock, 'the blind
poet,' 1791, Edinburgh; Richard Brinsley Sheridan,
1816, London.
Feast Day: St.
Pantaenus, father of the church, 3rd century; St.
Felix, bishop of Nantes, confessor, 584; St. Edelburga,
virgin, of Kent; St. Hedda, bishop of the West Saxons,
confessor, 705; St. Willibald, bishop of Aichstadt,
confessor, 790; St. Benedict XI, pope and confessor,
1304.
THOMAS, EARL OF ARUNDEL�THE ARUNDELIAN MARBLES
There is such a singularity in
the idea of an English nobleman of the early part of
the seventeenth century interesting himself in art and
its treasures, that this peer stands out in a
prominence much beyond what either his rank or
personal qualities would have otherwise entitled him
to. It does not seem to have been from any high
conception of the value of beautiful things, that he
busied himself so much in collecting relics of ancient
sculpture in Italy. He was travelling there�the
objects struck his fancy, and he thought of getting
them brought home to England. Clarendon speaks of him
as a rather illiterate man. More certainly, he was a
man of great formality and stateliness�unbending�even
a little austere �all of them qualities that one does
not naturally associate with a lover of the fine arts
for their own sake. From whatever motive, however, he
acted, it was undoubtedly a remarkable service he
per-formed to his country, to collect so many
sculptures, medals, &c., at the time when such things
were yet abundant, and when as yet his country-men
were so indifferent to them.
The Arundelian Marbles, as
they came to be called, were all stored in and about a
mansion which the earl possessed in the Strand, on the
river side, between Essex House and Somerset House.
His lordship's descendants acceding to the dukedom of
Norfolk, the curiosities and their mansion became in
time the property of that family. There is something
melancholy, and a good deal that is surprising, in the
ultimate history of the marbles.
An act of parliament having
been obtained, empowering the then Duke of Norfolk, to
let part of the site of the house and gardens to
builders, at a reserved ground-rent, which was to
accumulate in order to raise a fund for building a
mansion-house for the family, on that part of the
gardens which lay next the river�preparations were
made for taking down the old buildings. The Royal
Society, who had hitherto, by permission of the duke,
held their meetings in Arundel House, had removed to
Gresham College, taking with them the noble library
which the duke had liberally presented to them.
'Arundel House,' says Mr.
Theobald, 'being now about to be pulled down, great
part of the furniture was removed to Stafford House,
with the museum, &c. And as there were many fine
statues, has-relieves, and marbles, they were received
into the lower part of the gardens, and many of them
placed under a colonnade there; and the upper part of
the ground next the Strand let to builders, who
continued the street, next the Strand, from Temple Bar
towards Westminster: and also to build thereon the
several streets called Arundel, Norfolk, and Surrey
Streets, leading from the Strand towards the river, as
far as the cross-street, called Howard Street, which
ran parallel with the Strand.
When the workmen began to
build next the Strand, in order to prevent
encroachments, a cross-wall was built to separate the
ground let to builders from that reserved for the
family mansion: and many of the workmen, to save the
expense of carrying away the rubbish, threw it over
this cross-wall, where it fell upon the colonnade: and
at last, by its weight, broke it down, and falling on
the statues placed there, broke several of them. A
great part of these in that sad condition, was
purchased by Sir William Fermor, from whom the present
Earl of Pomfret is descended. He removed these down to
his seat at Easton Neston, in Northamptonshire, where
he employed some statuary to repair such as were not
too much demolished.
'Here these continued till the
year 1755, when the countess made a present of them to
the university of Oxford, for which she received their
thanks in due state: and in the year following, the
university celebrated a public act, where, in a set
oration, and a full theatre, the countess was again
complimented. Among this collection was the famous
sleeping Cupid, lying on a lion's skin, strewed with
roses, as emblems of silence and secrecy: Cupid having
presented that flower to Harpocrates, the god of
Silence, as a bribe to him to conceal the amours of
his mother. Below the foot of Cupid, on the bed, is a
lizard�by some supposed to be placed here as a known
ingredient in love-charms: by others, as a watchful
attendant to wake the sleeper on the approach of
danger: and by others imagined to be an emblem of
sleep itself, from its being torpid during great part
of the year, and placed near a statue of Somnus on a
monument at Rome. But the real design of the sculptor
was rather to perpetuate his name by this symbol,
which was Saurus, signifying a lizard.'
Some other of the broken
statues, not thought worth replacing, were begged by
Boyder Cuper, who had been gardener to the Arundel
family, and were removed by him to decorate a piece of
garden-ground, which he had taken opposite Somerset
House water-gate, in the parish of Lambeth: this being
then a place of resort for the citizens in
holiday-time: in Mr. Theobald's time, 1757, it was
still called Caper's, corruptly Cupid's gardens, and
which Mr. Theobald describes as 'much of the same
nature as Sadler's Wells and Marylebone Gardens,
called also a music-house, as they had always music
attending, and a large room for dancing, when the
company were so disposed.' However, these 'broken
statues' must have been of great merit: for Mr.
Freeman, of Fawley Court, near Henley, and Mr. Edmund
Waller, of Beaconsfield, happening to see the marbles,
were struck with their beauty, and commissioned. Mr.
Theobald to treat with Cuper for their purchase,
leaving in his hands a bank-note of �100: eventually
they were bought by Mr. Theobald for �75, and were
sent, part to Fawley Court, and part to Beaconsfield.
The remaining statues and
fragments in Arundel gardens were removed, by
permission of the crown, to a piece of waste-ground in
the manor of Kennington, belonging to the Principality
of Wales: of which piece of ground a grant was
obtained, at a small rent, for a term of years, which
was renewed. Such fragments as were thought not worth
removing, were buried in the foundations of the
buildings in the lower parts of Norfolk Street, and in
the gardens. Mr. Aislabie, who inhabited one of these
houses, as Mr. Theobald was told by the duke's
steward, found a broken statue in his cellar, which he
carried down to his seat in Yorkshire: and upon the
same authority, Mr. Theobald states, there was a
sarcophagus placed in the cellar of the corner house,
on the left hand, in the lower part of Norfolk Street.
The ground at Kennington,
whither some of the marbles had been removed, was
subsequently let for a timber-yard, and a wharf built
thereon: and when the ground was cleared for
rebuilding
St. Paul's Cathedral, great quantities of
the rubbish were taken there, to raise the ground,
which used to be overflowed every spring tide: so
that, by degrees, the statues and fragments were
buried under the rubbish, and there lay almost
forgotten for many years. About the year 1712, this
piece of ground was rented by Mr. Theobald's father,
who, in digging foundations for buildings, frequently
met with some of the fragments: of which the Earl of
Burlington hearing, his lordship went to Kennington,
to inspect the remains, and prevailed upon Mr.
Theobald to permit him to take his choice of a few
specimens: these were conveyed to Chiswick House,
where one piece of bas-relief was placed in the
pedestal of an obelisk which he erected in his
grounds. Mr Theobald next allowed Lord Petre to dig
for fragments at Kennington, when six statues, some
colossal, without heads or arms, were found lying
close to each other, and were soon after sent to
Worksop, the seat of the Duke of Norfolk, in
Nottinghamshire.
Mr. Theo bald also found
several blocks of grayish-veined marble, out of which
he cut chimney-pieces and slabs for his house, the
Belvedere, in Lambeth. He also found the fragment of a
column, which he had conveyed to his seat, Waltham
Place, in Berkshire, and there converted this fragment
of precious art into a roller for his bowling-green!
These, however, were but a
portion of the Arundel collection. The Duchess of
Norfolk, who was divorced from the seventh duke in
1700, carried with her a fine collection of cameos,
belonging to the Norfolk family, and valued at
�10,000.
In 1720, a sale was made of
another part of the collection at Stafford House. Mr.
Charles Howard, of Greystock, had a priced catalogue
of this sale, with the names of the purchasers. The
amounts were : Pictures sold for �812, 17s.: prints,
�168, 17s. 4d.: drawings, �299, 4s. 7d.:
Japan, �698, 11s.: gilt and other plate, �462, 1s. 11�
d.: crystal vases, �364, 3s.; agate cups, �163, 16s.:
jewels and other curiosities, �2467, 7s. 10d.; medals,
�50, 10s. 6d.; odd lots of plate, �170, 6s. 7d.:
cabinets and china, �1256, 19s.: household furniture,
�1199, 3s.: several other odd lots, �738, 13s.
2d.�total, �8852, Os.11�d. Besides which, there still
remained, in several branches of the Norfolk family,
many curious pieces of plate, jewels, &c. Mr. Charles
Howard possessed what was termed Archbishop
Thomas �
Becket's grace-cup, but which is really of
Elizabethan work. Mr. Howard also possessed the
high-constable's staff, which he presented to the then
Earl of Strafford.
At the revolution, in 1688,
Henry, then Duke of Norfolk, who was a Protestant,
came over with King William, and soon after obtained
an act of parliament, by which the remainder of the
Arundel garden-ground was leased for a term of
forty-one years: which he accordingly let to Mr.
Stone, of New Inn, an attorney. The design of building
a mansion was then laid aside, and the money which had
accumulated for the purpose was paid over to the then
duke: and thus disappeared Arundel House, never to be
rebuilt: while its treasures were dispersed with
little regard for their artistic value or interest.
RICHARD BRINSLEY
SHERIDAN
The remark of Buffon, that
Genius is Patience, was well illustrated in the case
of Sheridan. It fully appears from Moore's biography,
that all the brilliant passages in Sheridan's plays
were very carefully elaborated, written over and over
again, and not left till they were incapable of
further polish. So, also, the written draughts of his
speeches remain to prove that all the showy passages
were written two or three times over upon small
detached pieces of paper or cards, often without any
material change in their form. It is certain,'
says Moore, 'that even his bon mots in society were
not always to be set down to the credit of the
occasion: but that frequently, like skilful priests,
he prepared the miracle of the moment before-hand.
Nothing, indeed, could be more remarkable than the
patience and tact with which he would wait through a
whole evening for the exact moment when the shaft
which he had ready feathered, might be let fly with
effect.
'A curious instance,' adds the
biographer, 'of the care with which he treasured up
the felicities of his wit, appears in the use he made
of one of those epigrammatic passages, which the
reader may remember among the memorandums for his
comedy of Affectation, and which in its first form ran
thus:
"He certainly has a great deal of fancy and a
very good memory: but, with a perverse ingenuity, he
employs these qualities as no other person does �for
he employs his fancy in his narratives, and keeps his
recollection for his wit:�when he makes his jokes, you
applaud the accuracy of his memory, and 'tis only when
he states his facts that you admire the flights of his
imagination.' After many efforts to express this
thought more concisely, and to reduce the language of
it to that condensed and elastic state, in which alone
it gives force to the projectiles of wit, he kept the
passage by him patiently for some years�till he at
length found an opportunity of turning it to account,
in a reply, I believe, to Mr. Dundas, in the House of
Commons, when, with the most extemporaneous air, he
brought it forth, in the following compact and pointed
form:�"The right honourable gentleman is indebted to
his memory for his jests, and to his imagination for
his facts."'
SHERIDAN'S FUNERAL
The brilliant assemblage at
Westminster Abbey on the day of Sheridan's funeral
bore testimony to the estimation in which genius was
held, apart from the special merit or usefulness of
the purposes to which the genius had been applied.
Those who looked to the dramatic career of Richard
Brinsley Sheridan recognised in him the most brilliant
writer of comedy that had appeared since the days of
Congreve and Farquhar. Sheridan takes rank among those who belie their
school-day reputation by their after-career. Both at Dublin and at Harrow, where
he received his education, he was pronounced to be an 'impenetrable dunce,' with
whom neither severity nor indulgence
would avail: yet this was the 'dunce' who produced: The Rivals in 1775,
The Duenna
and St. Patrick's Day in 1776, The School for Scandal
and The Trip to Scarborough in 1777, and The Critic in 1778: and
then passed through a political career which spread over the period from 1780 to
1816.
His celebrated Begum Speech, in connection with the
trial of
Warren Hastings, is ranked among the most brilliant orations ever
known: and there can be little doubt that he might have risen to a high position
among statesmen had he been true to
himself. But his moral character was weak, even depraved. Though he sometimes
aided the Whig party by his eloquence, he gradually degenerated into a mere
amusing speaker, much enjoyed and much admired, but winning for himself very
little esteem. His life, by degrees, became
an ineffectual struggle against poverty. He borrowed from all who would lend to
him, and had neither the will nor the power to redeem the debts.
The Prince of Wales welcomed
him to Carlton House as long as his flashes of
brilliant wit were ready to enliven the assembled
guests: but when Sheridan began to fail in health and
spirits, the doors were closed against him. The like
occurred at other mansions where he had been admired
but never really esteemed. He was steeped in poverty
for some time before his death. Leigh
Hunt mentions
that Sheridan on one occasion burst into tears at the
degradation of being touched by a bailiff when
arrested: while all the time he was callous to the
moral degradation involved in that conduct which led
to the arrest. When he was dead, some of those in high
places regretted that they had deserted the brilliant
wit during his declining years of poverty: while
others, knowing that he had not really deserved their
esteem, wished, nevertheless, to honour the memory of
a man of undoubted though ill-regulated genius.
A public funeral was resolved
upon. The body was removed from Sheridan's house, in
Saville Row, to Mr. Peter Moore's residence in Great
George Street, Westminster: and on the 13th
of July, a
funeral procession walked from thence to the abbey.
Arrived at the chief entrance at the west end of the
nave, the procession was received by the dignitaries
of the abbey, who preceded it to the place of
sepulture in that celebrated nook of the abbey known
as Poet's Corner. The pall was supported by the Duke
of Argyle, the Duke of Bedford, the Earl of
Lauderdale, Lord Mulgrave, Lord Holland, and the
bishop of London. The chief mourner, as representing
the family, was Mr. Charles Sheridan: while among the
other mourners were their Royal Highnesses the Dukes
of York and Sussex, the Marquis of Anglesea, the Earl
of Rosslyn, the Earl of Harrington, the Earl of
Bessborough, Earl Gower, the Earl of Yarmouth, Lord
Sidmouth, Lord Grenville, Lord Lynedoch, Lord Erskine,
Lord George Cavendish�together with Canning,
Romilly,
and others, who belonged rather to the aristocracy of
intellect than to that of birth.
A small space was
found between the monuments of Shakspeare and Addison,
and close to the grave of
Garrick. There lies
Sheridan, under the roof of the venerable building
which contains the bones of Chatham,
Pitt,
Fox,
Canning, Chaucer, Spenser,
Ben Jensen, Congreve,
Addison, Rowe, Gay,
Betterton, Garrick, Purcell,
Handel, Newton, Johnson, Barrow, South, Camden, Usher,
and many others known to fame.
THE
MACARONIS
In all periods and countries
there have been persons, and even groups or classes of
people, who sought to attract attention by
eccentricities in dress. In England, during the last
two centuries, we have had gallants, bloods, bucks,
beaux, fribbles, macaronis, fops, monstrosities,
corinthians, dandies, exquisites, and swells. Reeves,
in his God's Plea for Niniveh, gives a curious
vocabulary of dandyism in his account of a 'gallant'
of the seventeenth century. 'He is, indeed,' says our
Puritan author, 'the buffoon and baboon of the times.
His mind is wholly set upon cuts and slashes, knots
and roses, patchings and pinkings, jaggings and
taggings, borderings and brimmings: half-shirts, half
arms, yawning breasts, gaping knees, arithmetical
middles, geometrical sides, mathematical waists,
musical heels, and logical toes.'
Amongst the
dress-eccentricities of the eighteenth century, none
was more signal than the macaronis, though their reign
was short, commencing about 1770, and coming to a
close about 1775. The year of their ascendant was
1772, and the engraving on the preceding page
represents a macaroni of that period: distinguished by
an immense knot of artificial hair behind, a very
small cocked-hat, an enormous walking-stick with long
tassels, and a jacket, waistcoat, and small-clothes
cut to fit the person as closely as possible. Their
most remarkable peculiarity was the large knot of
hair, thus celebrated in a satirical song:
'Five pounds of hair they
wear behind,
The ladies to delight, 0,
Their senses give unto the wind,
To make themselves a fright, O.
This fashion, who does e'er pursue,
I think a simple-tony:
For he's a fool, say what you will,
Who is a macaroni.'
It would appear that the
macaronis originated among a number of young men, who
had made the grand tour, and on their return, formed
themselves into a club, which, from a dish of
macaroni, then little known in England, being always
placed upon the dinner-table, was called the Macaroni
Club. A magazine writer of the time, evidently
alluding to this origin, says: 'The macaronis are the
offspring of a body, a many-headed monster in Pall
Mall, produced by a demoniac committee of depraved
taste and exaggerated fancy, conceived in the courts
of France and Italy, and brought forth in England.'
Horace
Walpole, however,
writing about the same time, gives the macaronis a
different pedigree, ascribing their origin to the
enormous wealth, lately gained by certain persons,
through Clive's conquests in India, and asserts that
their boundless extravagance soon dissipated it, and
brought them to poverty. 'Lord Chatham,' he says,
'begot the East India Company, the East India Company
begot Lord Clive, Lord Clive begot the macaronis, the
macaronis begot Poverty, and all the race are still
living.' In the following year, 1773, he writes: 'A
winter without politics�even our macaronis entertain
the town with nothing but new dresses, and the size of
their nosegays. They have lost all their money, and
exhausted their credit, and can no longer game for
�20,000 a night.'
The macaronis took the town by
storm. Nothing was fashionable that was not a in
macaroni. Even the clergy had their wigs combed, their
clothes cut, and their delivery refined d in macaroni.
The shop-windows were filled with prints of the new
tribe: there were engraved portraits of turf
macaronis, military macaronis, college macaronis, and
other varieties of the great macaroni race. At balls,
no other than macaroni music could be danced to: at
places of public amusements, macaroni songs, of which
the following is a specimen, alone were sung to divert
the company:
THE MACARONI
Ant�Nancy Dawson
Come listen all, and you
shall hear,
Of all the beauties that appear,
And move in fashion's motley sphere,
The fat, the lean, the bony:
The boast, the glory of the age,
How young and old can now engage;
Each master, miss, and parent sage,
Is now a macaroni.
Each tries the other to
outvie,
With foretops mounting to the sky,
And some you oft with tails may spy,
As thick as any pony:
Insipid gait, affected sneer,
With side-curls high above the ear,
That each may more the ass appear
Or shew the macaroni.
Each doctor's now become
a prig,
That used to look so wise and big,
With stiffened and swingeing wig,
That got him all his money:
They've all thrown off the grave disguise,
Which made each quaking owl look wise,
For wig, of Whip the coachman's size,
To shew the macaroni.
The lawyer too's become
a crop,
Instead of tail, a Tyburn top,
Alack-a-day! each barber's shop
Now looks but half so funny,
As when the windows once were graced,
Where stately wigs in rows were placed
But these are days of wit and taste,
Huzza, for macaroni!
The priest that once
with rose and baud,
With formal wig, and hat in hand,
Sagacious phiz that might demand,
A bow from any tony:
Behold him now all debonair,
With tiny hat and tortured hair,
And while he prattles to the fair,
He shews the macaroni.
The cits that used, like
Jerry Sneak,
To dress and walk out once a week,
And durst not to their betters speak,
Are all grown jolly crony;
Each sneak is now a buckish blade,
When in the Park, but talk of trade,
He thinks you mean him to degrade
Each cit's a macaroni.
Who would not live in
days like these,
In days of jollity and ease,
There 's no exception to degrees,
My lord and John are cronies.
Each order and profession claim,
An equal right, an equal fame,
For nothings equal to the name
Of modern macaronis.
The periodical literature,
such as it was, of the time is very severe on the
macaronis. 'No hand-some fellow,' we read, 'will
belong to them, because their dress is calculated to
make the handsome ugly, and the ugly ridiculous. His
hat, like his understanding, is very little, and he
wears it in direct opposition to the manly beaver of
our ancient heroes. He has generally an abundant
quantity of hair, and well he may, for his head
produces nothing else: if he has not a sufficient
quantity of his own, he borrows it from his neighbours.
His coat slouches down behind, and his shoes are
reduced to the shape of slippers, on the surface of
which appears a small circle of silver, which he tells
us is a buckle. His manners are still more strange
than his dress. He is the sworn foe of learning, and
even sets simple orthography at defiance: for all
learned fellows that can spell or write are either
queer dogs or poor rogues. If you see him at a
theatre, he will scarcely wink without his
opera-glass, which he will thrust into a lady's face,
and then simper, and be "pruddigisly enteerteen'd with
her confusion."'
After all, it is by no means
improbable that the macaronis, eccentric fops as they
certainly were, added somewhat to the progress of
national refinement. Living in the days of six-bottle
men, one grave charge brought against them was that
they hated 'all drinking, except tea, capillaire, and
posset.' In a very successful five-act drama of the
day, entitled The Macaroni, the hero of the piece �the
macaroni par excellence�is held up to ridicule,
principally because he respects female virtue, and
swears by such mild and milk-and-water oaths as, 'May
I be deaf at the opera!' We now know how to appreciate
these distinctions.