Читать книгу The Fatal Cup: Thomas Griffiths Wainewright and the strange deaths of his relations - John Price Williams - Страница 42

There was an unsubstantiated tale, put forward by Barry Cornwall, that Wainewright had acquired expensive prints which contained Colnaghi’s pricing on their cardboard mounts, then substituted much cheaper prints and sold them on for great profit. The Colnaghi archive, which is held at Waddesdon Manor, the home of the Rothschilds, is, alas, incomplete, and contains no record of Wainewright’s dealings.

John Scott, the writer and critic who had revived the London Magazine in 1820, had married Colnaghi’s daughter Caroline in 1807. The London rapidly gained ascendancy in the literary world by publishing the works of Wordsworth, Charles Lamb, Carlyle and John Clare among others. Notable contributions were Thomas de Quincey’s Confessions of an English Opium Eater and William Hazlitt’s essay in 1822 on the Elgin Marbles.

It is probably through the Colnaghi connection that Wainewright was commissioned to write for the London, as Scott had noted his artistic enthusiasm. He recalled in one of the essays:

It struck me as something ridiculous that I, who had never authorized a line, save in Orderly and Guard reports (and letters for money of course) should be considered competent to appear in a new double-good Magazine!

I actually laughed outright to the consternation of my cat and dog, who wondered, I believe, what a plague ailed me.

Contributors to magazines in the 19th century usually adopted noms-de-plume. Wainewright used a telling one, Janus Weathercock, the two-faced

THE FATAL CUP

42