Eighteenth Century Vignettes. Dobson Austin
of a public institution in which they might find an asylum. For seventeen years, with an unconquerable tenacity, and in the face of the most obstinate obstruction, apathy, and even contempt, he continued to urge his suit upon the public, being at last rewarded by a Royal charter and the subscription of sufficient funds to commence operations. An estate of fifty-six acres was bought in Lamb's Conduit Fields for £3,500; and the building of the Hospital was begun from the plans of Theodore Jacobsen. Among its early Governors were many contemporary artists who contributed freely to its adornment, thereby, according to the received tradition, sowing the seed of the existing Royal Academy. Handel, too, was one of its noblest benefactors. For several years he regularly superintended an annual performance of the 'Messiah' in the Chapel (an act which produced no less than £7,000 to the institution), and he also presented it with an organ. Having opened informally in 1741 at a house in Hatton Garden, the Governors moved into the new building at the completion of the west wing in 1745. But already their good offices had begun to be abused. Consigning children to the Foundling was too convenient a way of disposing of them; and, even in the Hatton Garden period, the supply had been drawn, not from London alone, but from all parts of the Kingdom. It became a lucrative trade to convey infants from remote country places to the undiscriminating care of the Charity. Once a waggoner brought eight to town, seven of whom were dead when they reached their destination. On another occasion a man with five in baskets got drunk on the road, and three of his charges were suffocated. The inevitable outcome of this was that the Governors speedily discovered they were admitting far more inmates than they could possibly afford to maintain. They accordingly applied to Parliament, who voted them £10,000, but at the same time crippled them with the obligation to receive all comers. A basket was forthwith hung at the gate, with the result that on the first day of its appearance, no less than 117 infants were successively deposited in it. That this extraordinary development of the intentions of the projectors could continue to work satisfactorily was of course impossible, and great mortality ensued.
As time went on, however, a wise restriction prevailed; and the Hospital now exists solely for those unmarried mothers whose previous character has been good, and whose desire to reform is believed to be sincere. Fortunately, long before the era of what one of the accounts calls its 'frightful efflorescence' – an efflorescence which, moreover, could never have occurred under Captain Coram's original conditions – its benevolent founder had been laid to rest in its precincts. After his wife's death he fell into difficulties, and subscriptions were collected for his benefit. When this was broken to the old man – too modest himself to plead his own cause, and too proud to parade his necessity – he made, according to Hawkins, the following memorable answer to Dr. Brocklesby:
'I have not wasted the little wealth of which I was formerly possessed in self-indulgence, or vain expenses, and am not ashamed to confess, that in this my old age I am poor.'
Although the Sunday services are still well attended, Captain Coram's Charity is no longer the 'fashionable morning lounge' it was in the Georgian era, when, we are told, the grounds were crowded daily with brocaded silks, gold-headed canes, and three-cornered hats of the orthodox Egham, Staines and Windsor pattern. 9
No members of the Royal Academy now assemble periodically round the historical blue dragon punch-bowl, still religiously preserved, over which Hogarth and Lambert and Highmore and the other pictorial patrons of a place must often have chirruped 'Life a Bubble,' or 'Drink and Agree,' at their annual dinners; neither is there of our day any munificent maestro like Handel to present the institution with a new organ or the original score of an oratorio. But if you enter to the left of Mr. Calder Marshall's statue at the gate in Guildford Street, you shall still find the enclosure dotted with red-coated boys playing at cricket, and with girls in white caps; and in the quiet, unpretentious building itself are many time-honoured relics of its past. Here, for example, is one of Hogarth's contributions to his friend's enterprise, the 'March of the Guards towards Scotland, in the year 1745,' commonly called the 'March to Finchley' – that famous performance for which King George the Second of irate memory said he ought to be 'bicketed,' and which the artist, in a rage, forthwith dedicated to the King of Prusia, with one 's.' A century and a half has passed since it was executed, but it is still in excellent preservation, having of late years, for greater precaution, been placed under glass. 10
Here, too, is the already mentioned full-length of the founder – a portrait of the masterly qualities and superb colouring of which neither McArdell's mezzotint nor Nutter's stipple gives any adequate idea. Here, again, is one of Hogarth's 'failures,' the 'Moses Brought to Pharaoh's Daughter,' which is not so great a failure after all. Certainly it compares favourably with the 'Finding of Moses' by the professed history-painter, Frank Hayman, which hangs hard by, and is an utterly bald and lifeless production. On the contrary, in Hogarth's picture, the expression in the eyes of the mother, which linger on the child as her hand mechanically receives the money, is one of those touches which make the whole world kin. Among the circular paintings of similar charities is a charming little Gainsborough of the Charterhouse, while the 'Foundling' and 'St. George's Hospital' are from the brush of Richard Wilson.
There is a dignified portrait of Handel by Kneller, which makes one wonder how the caricaturists could ever have distorted him into the 'Charming Brute;' and also a bust by Roubiliac, being the original model for the statues in Westminster Abbey and Old Vauxhall Gardens. There are autographs of Hogarth and Coram and John Wilkes the demagogue; there is a copy of his 'Christmas Stories' presented by the author, Charles Dickens; there is a case in one of the windows full of the queer, forlorn 'marks or tokens' which, in the basket days, were found attached to its helpless inmates – ivory fish, silver coins of Queen Anne or James, scraps of paper with doggerel rhymes, lockets, lottery tickets, and the like. As you pass from the contemplation of these things – a contemplation not without its touch of pathos – you peep into the church, mentally filling the empty benches in the organ loft with the singing faces and pure voices of the childish choristers, and you remember that here Benjamin West painted the altar-piece, and here Laurence Sterne preached. Once more in Guildford Street, you turn instinctively towards another thoroughfare, where lived a later writer who must often have made the pilgrimage you have just accomplished. For at No. 13 Great Coram Street was the home of William Makepeace Thackeray, and from the shadow of the Foundling, in July, 1840, he sent forth his 'Paris Sketch Book.' When, seven years later, he was writing his greatest novel, Captain Coram's Charity still lingered in his memory. It is on the wall of its church that old Mr. Osborne, of 'Vanity Fair' and Russell Square, erects his pompous tablet to his dead son: it is in the same building that, sitting 'in a place whence she could see the head of the boy under his father's tombstone,' poor Emmy feasts her hungry maternal eyes on unconscious little Georgy.
V. 'THE FEMALE QUIXOTE.'
ONE evening in the spring of the year 1751, the famous St. Dunstan, or Devil Tavern, by Temple Bar, – over whose Apollo Chamber you might still read the rhymed 'Welcome' of Ben Jonson; whence Steele had scrawled hasty excuses to 'Prue' in Bury Street; and where Garth and Swift and Addison had often dined together, – was the scene of a remarkable literary celebration. A young married lady, not then so well-known as she afterwards became, had written a novel called the 'Life of Harriot Stuart,' which was either just published or upon the point of issuing from the press. It was her first effort in fiction; and, probably through William Strahan the printer, one of whose employés she married, she had sought and obtained the acquaintance of Samuel Johnson. The great man thought very highly of her abilities: so much so, that he proposed to his colleagues at the Ivy Lane Club (the predecessor of the more illustrious Literary Club) to commemorate the birth of the book by an 'all-night sitting.' Pompous Mr. Hawkins, who tells the story, says that the guests, to the number of near twenty, including Mrs. Lenox (for that was the lady's name), her husband, and a female acquaintance, assembled at the Devil at about eight o'clock in the evening. The supper is characterised as 'elegant,' a prominent feature in it being a 'magnificent hot apple-pye,' which, because, forsooth (the 'forsooth' is Hawkins's), Mrs. Lenox was also a minor poet, her literary foster-father had caused to be stuck with bay-leaves. Besides this, after invoking the Muses by certain rites of his own invention, which should have been impressive, but are not described, Johnson 'encircled her brows' with a crown of laurel specially prepared by himself. These
Egham, Staines, and Windsor form a triangle. According to J. T. Smith, Alderman Boydell was one of the last who wore a hat of this type ('Book for a Rainy Day,' 1861, p. 221).
It was disposed of in 1750 by raffle or lottery. 'Yesterday,' – says the 'General Advertiser' for May 1 in that year, – 'Mr. Hogarth's subscription was closed. 1843 chances being subscrib'd for, Mr Hogarth gave the remaining 107 chances to the Foundling Hospital. At two o'clock the Box was opened, and the fortunate chance was No. 1941, which belongs to the said Hospital; and the same night Mr Hogarth delivered the Picture to the Governors.'