The Sun.
London, England, 1845-10-16 00:00:00

LI ERATURE.

A BOOK FOR A RAINY DAY ; or, Recollections
of the last Siaty-six Years. By John 7 homas Smith.
Mr. John Thomas Smith is assuredly the most in-
quisitive of mortals, and therefore the most talkative.
He seems to have been "everybody's" Boswell, and fortu-
nate is it for us of the present day, that the " Notabili-
ties" of the last three-quarters of a century did not ael
on the old adage—
" Percontatorem fugito nam garrulus ideal est."

Had thi•y dune so, we sliould have been deprived of this
most amusinz specimen of auto-biography. Mr. Smith
was born, and bred, and lived in London. Be is a
Cockney iatus it in cute, and his reminiscences of old
London, of the Marylebone tea-gardens for instance,
and " the Field of the Brothers' Steps," and of Milbank,
when it was the country, in the days when the arrival in
London of some great personage from Chelsea was
thought a thing worthy to be chronicled, are exceedingly
amusing. The following entry occurs under the date

1774
" I well remember when, in my eighth year, my father's
playfellow, Mr. Joseph Nollekens, leading me by the hand
to tt,e 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, chiplain to the Princess Amelia, in Gunnehury-
lane. Rann was a smart fellow, a great favourite with a
certain description of ladies, and had been coachman to
LOrd Sandwich. 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 il7 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,
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."
What would be thought at the present day of a Royal
Academician who should take a boy, eight years of age,
the nephew of an admiral, to see an execution, by way
of a treat ? Nuus aeons change tout cela, and most as-
suredly the change has been for the better. Mr. Smith,
when drawing in Nollekens' studio, had frequent op-
portunities of seeing Dr. Johnson :
"He was tall, and must have been, when young, a power-
ful man : he stooped, with his head inclined to the right
shoulder: heavy bross s, sleepy eyes, nose ve'y narrow be-
een the eyebrows, but broad at the bottom ; lips en-
ormously thick; chin, wide and double. He wore a stock
and wristbands; his wig was what is called a 'Busby,' but
often wanted powder. His hat, a three-cornered one; coats,
one a dark mulberry, the other brown, inclining to the
colour of Scotch snuff; large brass, or gilt buttons, black
waistcoat, and small-clothes sometimes the latter were
corduroy; black stockings, large easy shoes, with buckles;
latterly he used a hooked walking stick: his gait was wide
and awkwardly sprawling.
" I once saw him follow a sturdy thief, who had stolen Isis
handkerchief in Grosvenor-square, seize him by the collar
with both hands, and shake him violently, after which he
quickly let him loose, and then, with his open hand, gave
him so powerful a smack on the face, that sent him off the
pavement staggering."
This concluding anecdote is very characteristic. This
hook contains sundry odd bits of information which we
should look in vain for elsewhere;—for instance, we
learn incidentally that Voltaire, during his stay in Lon-
don, lived in Maiden-lane—that Vandervelde painted the
sea distances in the portraits of the Hampton-court
Admirals, at present located in the Painted
Hall, Greenwich—that Hugh Honison, the late
keeper of York-terrace, was the_ original Strap of

"Roderick Random "—that Charles I. was not so liberal
a patron of Vandyke as has been commonty sup-
posed, but that he was in the constant habit of
cutting down Vandyke's charges for pictures frequently
to one-half, and that at Vandyke's death Charles owed
him large sums, which his heirs could never recover. All

these little bits of information are communicated inci•
deutally ; but as there is neither index nor table of con-
tents to the work, the reader will have " to search all

the day ere he find them." Whether, " when found, they
are worth the search," it is for him to determine. Seri-
ously speaking, an index would add greatly to the value
of this book, and we trust, that when it reaches a se-
cond edition, which no doubt it will, ere long, this hint
will not be forgotten. The following anecdote of the
marriage of Angelica Kauffmann still probably be new
to many of our readers:—
"Angelica Kauffinann was a great coquette, and pre-
tended to be in love_ with several gentlemen at the same
time. Once she professed to be enamoured of Nathaniel
Dance; to the next visitor she would divulge the great
secret that she was dying for Sir Joshua Reynolds. How-
ever, she was at last rightly served for her duplicity by
marrying a very handsome fellow personating Count Horn.
With this alliance she was so pleased, that she made her
happy conquest known to her Majesty Queen Charlotte, who
was much astonished that the Count should have been so
long in England without coming to Court. However, the
real Count's arrival was sometime afterwards announced at
Dover; and Angelica Kauffmann's husband turned out to be
no other than his valet de chambre. He was prevailed upon
subsequently to accept a separate maintenance. After this
man's death she married Zucci, and settled in Rome."
In 1803, Mr. Smith saw Belzoni, afterwards so cele-
brated as the Egyptian traveller, exhibiting in Bartho-
lomew fair as " the Young Hercules, or the Patagonian
Sampan." Various stories have been current as to the
Gary career of Belzoni. Mr. Smith gives t:le following
account of him, and, as he was personally acquainted
with that extraordinary man, there is every reason to
believe it is authentic :
" He was a native of Padua, and educated in order to be-
come a profound monk; but during the frenzy of war, being
noticed by the French army, in consequence of his command-
ing figure, to be admirably well calculated for a fugletnan,
prudently avoided seizure for so deadly a service by getting
together what few things time would permit him, and so
left Rome. I should have stated to the reader that, upon his
arrival in London, in the year 1803, he walked into Smith-
field during Bartholomew-fair time, when he was seen by
the master of a show, who. it is said, thus questioned his
Merry Andrew :—' Do you see that tall-looking fellow in the
midst of the crowd? he is looking about him over the people
as if he walked upon stilts; go and see if he's worth our
money, and ask him if he wants a job.' Away scrambled
Mr. Merryman down the monkey's post, and, 'as quick as
lightning,' conducted the stranger to his master, who, being
satisfied of his personal attractions, immediately engaged,
plumed, painted, and put him up. The reader will readily
conceive that a man like Belzoni, seriously educated for the
duties of the Church, and accustomed to 'associate with
people of good manners, could with no little reluctance en-
dure the vulgar society his pecuniary circumstances alone
compelled him to associate with. However, after the expi-
ration of nine years, in the course of which time he had
married and saved money, he and his wife were enabled to
visit Portugal, Spain, and Malta, from which place they
embarked for Egypt Fortunately for Belzoni, the wife he
had chosen more than equally shared his numerous dangers,
by spiritedly joining in ail his enterprises, which some of my
readers will recollect are most delightfully described by her-
self, in what she styles A Trifling Account,' printed at
the end of her husband's Travels in Egypt, Nubia,' " &c.
• We must now take our leave of Mr. Smith, assuring
him that we consider 'his very amusing gossip an excel-
lent " book for a rainy day."