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Little Roubillac |
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In the year 1750 History, not prodigal in the minor details of Roubillac's life, records that Tyers lent him, twenty pounds ~ a painful reminder that even costly tributes to rich men do not always ensure opulence. In the following year he executed a monument at Oxford to Henry Chichele, the founder of All Souls. Then, at the beginning of 1752, being himself of the mature age of fifty-seven, he married. Of this fact there can be no doubt, as it was "in all the papers;" and Mr. Justice Fielding copied it from the General Advertiser, with other fashionable intelligence, into Number 4 of his own newly established Covent Garden Journal. "A Few Days since [the date of this veracious record is January 11, 1752] was married Mr. Roubillac, an eminent Statuary in St. Martin's Lane, to Miss Crosby of Deptford, a celebrated Beauty, with a Fortune of ten Thousand Pounds." Here, it should seem, in the conventional phrase at which Fielding was so fond of poking fun, were "all the Accomplishments necessary to render the Marriage State truly happy." But, unluckily, this is absolutely the only reference to the circumstancen which has survived. The" Fortune of Ten Thousand Pounds" (if it ever existed) must have vanished like fairy gold, for, ten years later, Roubillac died poor; while the charms of the lady can scarcely have been of an imperative character, since her husband, not many months after his marriage, went on a Continental tour and left his wife behind, When, in October, 1752, Reynolds was hastening homeward from Italy he met Roubillac, Arthur Pond, and his old master Hudson, on their way to Rome ~ Roubillac going for the first time. Of this belated exploration of the Ancients, accounts vary, "He staid but three days, in Rome," said Flaxman contemptuously, "and laughed at ancient sculpture." But Northcote tells a different tale. According to him Roubillac expressed himself rapturously to, Reynolds about what he had seen abroad. The key to this apparent contradiction probably lies in the fact, that what Roubillac praised to Reynolds was, not so much those time-honoured antiques that Flaxman loved, but the more modern masterpieces of a sculptor whose work appealed more directly to his own personal taste and traditions. What chiefly attracted Roubillac in the Eternal City was the transitory work of Bernini. And it was no doubt Bernini whom he had in mind when, on his return, he hurried nervously to Westminster to inspect his own efforts by the "light of his latest experiences. The result (he told Reynolds sadly) was profoundly hurniliating. All he bad dope seemed "meagre and starved, as if made of nothing but tobacco-pipes." From this date his story becomes more than ever the record, of his work, and of that work it is only necessary to specify the more successful pieces. In 1753 he completed another great sepulchral trophy, the monument to Admiral Sir Peter Warren, which includes a brawny Hercules (with thews carefully studied from the watermen and chairmen of the period) and a justly praised figure of Navigation. The Warren monument is in the North Transept of the Abbey; Five years later he executed for Garrick, and, in a measure from Gauick, who posed as his model, the well-known figure of Shakespeare, which, after long decorating its special temple in the actor's villa at Hampton, now, under his will, decorates the British Museum. For this statue Garrick gave Roubillac three hundred guineas, and he also gave him an infinity of trouble. By ill luck, the marble turned out streaked, and the actor complained that Roubillac had carved him a Shakespeare marked with mulberries, upon which the compliant sculptor removed the head, and substituted another. |
HE monument of the Duke of Argyll,
referred to in the previous article ~ with one exception the finest of Roubillac's monumental efforts ~ was followed by three others in the nave of
Westminster Abbey, conceived in the same allegoric pattern ~ that to Marshal
Wade, and those to General Fleming and General Hargrave. It is at these
last-named mural medleys, and at General Hargrave's in particular, that
Goldsmith is supposed to glance when he speaks of the memorials which dignify
their designer rather than the dead. Neither General Fleming nor General Hargrave had done anything deserving either of a sculptor or a vates sacer.
The former, indeed, had been wounded as a captain under Marlborough at
Blenheim, and had been present at Falkirk and Culloden. But to the exploits of
the 'latter, not even the all