A Book for a Rainy Day; or, Recollections of the Events of the Years 1766-1833. John Thomas Smith

A Book for a Rainy Day; or, Recollections of the Events of the Years 1766-1833 - John Thomas Smith


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boarding-school cross the road, while the bell was chiming for sacred duties. I remember well a summer’s sun shone with full refulgence at the time, and my youthful eyes were dazzled with the various colours of the dresses of the youths, who walked two and two, some in pea-green, others sky-blue, and several in the brightest scarlet; many of them wore gold-laced hats, while the flowing locks of others, at that time allowed to remain uncut at schools, fell over their shoulders. To the best of my recollection, the scholars amounted to about one hundred. As the pleasurable and often idle scenes of my schoolboy days are pictured upon my retina whenever Crouch End, or the name of my venerable master, Norton,[72] are mentioned, and as others may feel similar delight with respect to the places at which they received their early education, I shall endeavour to gratify a few of my readers by a description of the house and playground of Mr. Fountayne’s academy. For this purpose it may not be irrelevant to notice something of the antiquity of that once splendid mansion, in which so many persons have passed their early and innocent hours.

      Topographers who mention Marylebone Park inform us that foreign ambassadors were in the time of Queen Elizabeth and James I. amused there by hunting, and that the oldest parts of this school were the remains of the palace in which they were entertained. The earliest topographical representation which I am enabled to instance, is a drawing made by Joslin, dated 1700, formerly in the possession of his Grace the Duke of Buckingham, of which I published an etching. It comprehends the field-gate and palace, its surrounding walls and adjacent buildings in Marylebone to the south-west, including a large mansion, which in all probability had been Oxford House, the grand receptacle of the Harleian Library. Fortune, I am sorry to say, has not favoured me with the power of continuing the declining history of the palace to the period at which it became an academy, nor can I discover the time in which Monsieur de la Place first occupied it.[73] A daughter of De la Place married the Rev. Mr. Fountayne,[74] whose name the school retained until its final demolition in 1791, at which period I remember seeing the large stone balls taken from the brick piers of the gates.

      Of this house, when a school, I recollect a miserably executed plate by Roberts, probably for some magazine; there is also a quarto plate displaying a knowledge in perspective, engraved by G. T. Parkyns, from a drawing by J. C. Barrow;[75] but the most interesting, and I must consider the most correct, are four drawings made by Michael Angelo Rooker,[76] formerly in my possession, but now in the illustrated copy of Pennant’s London in the British Museum.[77] These have enabled me to insert the following description of a few parts of the mansion. The first drawing is a view of the principal and original front of the palace, or manor-house, with other buildings open to the playground; it was immediately within the wall on the east side of the road, then standing upon the site of the present Devonshire Mews. This house consisted of an immense body and two wings, a projecting porch in the front, and an enormously deep dormer roof, supported by numerous cantilevers, in the centre of which there was, within a very bold pediment, a shield surmounted by foliage with labels below it. The second drawing exhibits the back, or garden front, which consisted of a flat face with a bay window at each end, glazed in quarries;[78] the wall of the back front terminated with five gables. In the midst of some shrubs stands a tall, lusty gentleman dressed in black, with a white Busby-wig and a three-cornered hat, possibly intended for the figure of the Rev. Mr. Fountayne, as he is directing the gardener to distribute some plants. The third drawing, which is taken from the hall, exhibits the grand staircase, the first flight of which consisted of sixteen steps; the hand-rails were supported with richly carved perforated foliage, from its style, probably of the period of Inigo Jones. The fourth drawing consists of the decorations of the staircase, which was tessellated. This mansion was wholly of brick, and surmounted by a large turret containing the clock and bell. Mr. Fountayne was noticed by Handel as well as Clarke, the celebrated Greek scholar.[79] These gentlemen frequently indulged in musical parties, which were attended by persons of rank and worth, as well as fashion and folly.

      LONDON BEGGARS

      ETCHED BY J. T. SMITH

      John Mac Nally … “well known about Parliament Street, and the Surrey foot of Westminster Bridge.”

      Mrs. Fountayne was a vain, dashing woman, extremely fond of appearing at Court, for which purpose, as was generally known, she borrowed Lady Harrington’s jewels.[80] Indeed, her passion for display was carried to such an extreme, that she kept her carriage, and that without the knowledge of her husband, by the following artful manœuvre. As the scholars were mostly sons of persons of title and large fortunes, she professed to have many favourites, who had behaved so well that she was often tempted to take them to the play, which so pleased the parents that they liberally reimbursed her in the coach and theatrical expenses, though she actually obtained orders upon those occasions from her friend Mrs. Yates, by which contrivance she was enabled to keep the vehicle in which they were conveyed to the theatres; Mrs. Yates,[81] however, was amply repaid for her orders by the number of tickets which Mrs. Fountayne prevailed on the parents of the scholars to take at her benefits.[82]

      Previous to a consultation of physicians respecting the doubtful case of a young gentleman boarder, one of Mr. Fountayne’s daughters overheard something like the following dialogue by placing herself behind the window hangings:—Doctor: “You look better.”—“Yes, sir; I now eat suppers, and wear a double flannel jacket.” At this time the lady behind the curtains tittered. “Hark! what noise is that?” interrogated an old member of Warwick Lane’s far-famed college.[83] “Oh,” said another of the faculty, “it’s only the sneezing of a cat.” After this, instead of saying a word about magnesia, Gaskin’s powder, or oil of sweet almonds, they resumed their conversation upon their indulgences, and finally ended with some severe philippic upon Lord North’s administration. This occupied a considerable portion of their time before the house-apothecary (who had called them in) was questioned as to what he had given the patient. His draught being perfectly consistent with the college pharmacopœia, they all agreed that he could not do better than repeat it as often as he thought proper; and thus the important consultation ended.

      In the hall of this house was a parrot, so aged that its few remaining feathers were for years confined to its wrinkled skin by a flannel jacket, which in very cold weather received an additional broadcloth covering of the brightest scarlet, so that Poll, like the Lord Mayor, had her scarlet days. Poll, who had been long accustomed to hear her mistress’s general invitation to strangers who called to inquire after the boarders, relieved her of that ceremony by uttering, as soon as they entered, “Do pray walk into the parlour and take a glass of wine!” but this she finally did with so little discrimination, that when a servant came with a letter or a card for her mistress, or a fellow with a summons from the Court of Conscience, he was greeted by the bird with equal liberality and politeness.

      In this year the houses of the north end of Newman Street commanded a view of the fields over hillocks of ground now occupied by Norfolk Street,[84] and the north and east outer sides of Middlesex Hospital garden-wall were entirely exposed. From the east end of Union Street, where Locatelli the sculptor subsequently had his studio,[85] the ground was very deep; and much about that spot, more to the east, stood a cottage with a garden before it, with its front to the south. This was kept by John Smith, one of Mr. Wilton the sculptor’s oldest labourers; immediately behind this cottage was a rope-walk, which extended north to a considerable distance under the shade of two magnificent rows of elms. Here I have often seen Richard Wilson the landscape painter and Baretti walk.[86] At the right-hand side of this rope-walk there was a pathway on a bank, commencing from the site of the foundation of the present workhouse, belonging to St. Paul’s, Covent Garden. This house was then planned out, and finished in the ensuing year, according to the date on its western front.

      The bank extended northwards to the “Farthing Pie House,” now the sign of the “Green Man,” and was kept by a person of the name of Price, a famous player on the salt-box.[87] Of this highly respectable publican there is an excellent mezzotinto engraving by Jones, after a picture by Lawranson. It commanded views of the old “Queen’s Head and Artichoke,” the old “Jew’s-Harp House,” and the distant hills of Highgate, Hampstead, Primrose, and Harrow. I was then in my eighth year, and frequently played at trap-ball between the


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