Читать книгу A Book for a Rainy Day; or, Recollections of the Events of the Years 1766-1833 - John Thomas Smith - Страница 16

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I well remember when, in my eighth year, my father’s playfellow, Mr. Joseph Nollekens, leading me by the hand to the end of John Street, to see the notorious terror of the king’s highways, John Rann, commonly called Sixteen-string Jack, on his way to execution at Tyburn, for robbing Dr. Bell, Chaplain to the Princess Amelia, in Gunnesbury Lane. The Doctor died a Prebendary of Westminster. It was pretty generally reported that the sixteen strings worn by this freebooter at his knees were in allusion to the number of times he had been acquitted. Fortunately for the Boswell illustrators, there is an etched portrait of him; for, be it known, thief as he was, he had the honour of being recorded by Dr. Johnson.[67] Rann was a smart fellow, a great favourite with a certain description of ladies, and had been coachman to Lord Sandwich, when his Lordship resided in the south-east corner-house of Bedford Row. The malefactor’s coat was a bright pea-green; he had an immense nosegay, which he had received from the hand of one of the frail sisterhood, whose practice it was in those days to present flowers to their favourites from the steps of St. Sepulchre’s church, as the last token of what they called their attachment to the condemned,[68] whose worldly accounts were generally brought to a close at Tyburn, in consequence of their associating with abandoned characters. On our return home, Mr. Nollekens, stooping close to my ear, assured me that, had his father-in-law, Mr. Justice Welch, been high constable, we could have walked all the way to Tyburn by the side of the cart.[69]

At this time houses in High Street, Marylebone, particularly on the western side, continued to be inhabited by families who kept their coaches, and who considered themselves as living in the country, and perhaps their family affairs were as well known as they could have been had they resided at Kilburn.[70] In Marylebone, great and wealthy people of former days could hardly stir an inch without being noticed; indeed, so lately as the year 1728, the Daily Journal assured the public that “many persons arrived in London from their country-houses in Marylebone”; and the same publication, dated October 15th, conveys the following intelligence:—

“The Right Hon. Sir Robert Walpole comes to town this day from Chelsea.”

The following lines were inserted by the late Sir William Musgrave, in his Adversaria (No. 5721):—

“Sir Robert Walpole in great haste

Cryed, ‘Where’s my fellow gone?’

It was answered by a man of taste,

‘Your fellow, Sir, there’s none.’ ”

One Sunday morning my mother allowed me, before we entered the little church[71] in High Street, Marylebone, to stand to see the young gentlemen of Mr. Fountayne’s 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.