Chapter Three - Cultivated Circles

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Widening circles in finance, philanthropy and the arts. A study of the life of John Julius Angerstein 1735-1823

Twist, A.F.

Publication date 2002

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Citation for published version (APA): Twist, A. F. (2002). Widening circles in finance, philanthropy and the arts. A study of the life of John Julius Angerstein 1735-1823.

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Download date:07 Oct 2021 CHAPTER THREE - CULTIVATED CIRCLES

I FAMILY PORTRAITS AND FAMILY CHANGES

William Lock bought works of art during his travels and the double impetus of his inheritance and his marriage to the daughter of a picture collector doubtless spurred him to buy more. An account dating from 1772 recorded that: Mr Lock of London...among a goodly number of original models by several notable old masters, owns many in wax and terra cotta by Giambologna [a celebrated Florentine sculptor who died in 1608]...The said gentleman also possesses a bronze horse made and finished by the said artist... which is as perfect and diligent a work of its kind as one could possibly wish for1. Other notable acquisitions that he made were 'two of the most beautiful and largest Claudes', one of which was The Embarkation of St Ursula, as well as marble statues of the Discobolos and the Torso of Venus. John Landseer, who was a painter, engraver, and author (and the father of Sir Edwin) wrote: Many years ago - half a century ago it must be, at the least - I well remember the lively pleasure I enjoyed in seeing this delightful picture [St Ursula] at Mr Lock's in Portman Square. I have never passed the door since without thinking of it. It was the first Claude I had ever seen and perhaps it may still be the best...2 Lock was acquiring works of art of the highest quality and he also backed living painters. He was particularly generous to Giovanni Battista Cipriani: in 1772 Francesco Bartolozzi published a circular stippled engraving from a drawing by Cipriani which was dedicated to Lock by 'his most Obliged and Devoted Servant F Bartolozzi'3. Lock was also prepared to help struggling artists, and James Northcote, who went to London in 1771, recorded a story told to him at that time by a would-be painter named Brunton: By means of an old woman-servant, he got admission into the house of Mr Lock, a man of large fortune, who has a vast collection of paintings and sculpture, and a great judge of both. Here he copied some of the best pictures without the knowledge of Mr Lock, apprehending his displeasure; but so much to the contrary did it turn out, that when Mr Lock discovered it he immediately invited him to his house to copy any picture he chose... and very soon placed him with Mr Cipriani, whom Mr Lock had brought over from Italy, and who is one of the greatest history-painters in England; he also allows pocket-money to the young man...4 In March 1773, Angerstein went back to Sir Joshua Reynolds for a picture of his wife Anna, who is shown wearing a pink dress and a blue scarf: she has the infant Julia nestling against her and there is a crib in the background. After sittings in April and May 70 guineas was paid in October, but Anna's name is struck through and there were two more appointments later that month; after the latter there is a note in Sir Joshua's ledgers 'Mrs Angerstein to be sent home'. Presumably Reynolds was making some alterations to the portrait that the Angersteins wanted: their son John was christened on 24lh November 1773 so that Anna was probably pregnant with him while being painted. The ledgers record another payment of 100 guineas by September 1775 but no picture is associated with it5. In 1823 the picture of Anna and Julia was described as having been exhibited at the Royal Academy 'about fifty years since'6: it is now in a private collection and has been engraved twice. Angerstein's taste for family portraits was not at this time shared by William Lock, though a picture of Lock himself, engraved by James Basire from a drawing by Cipriani, had been shown at the Free Society of Artists in 17687. In July 1782 Angerstein planned to have a further picture painted of Anna and Julia8, but again there seem to have been problems since nothing is known of such a portrait, and it may have been put off because Anna was ill. However the artist's account book shows that in June 1783 Angerstein paid £200 for a portrait of Julia and her young brother John: this was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1783 and is the well-known picture now at Kenwood9. These details give the only surviving clues to what may have been happening at this time in the Angerstein family, but matters came to a climax on 19th June 1783 when Anna died at Woodlands and was buried six days later in St Alfege's Church,

45 Greenwich, where John Julius would join her forty years later. He was left responsible for his stepson and new partner Henry, the latter's brother James (by this time in India) and their two sisters Anna Peterella and Emilia, as well as his own two children. Anna was gone, but Angerstein did not remain a widower for very long as a result of the death in September 1784 of Thomas Lucas, of Lee Manor House, whose property adjoined the Boones house at Lee Place. Lucas had been a sugar factor - an agent in London for plantation owners living in the West Indies - and had also owned property there, possibly because he had foreclosed on mortgages or perhaps through a family connection. Lucas had no children, but was survived by his third wife Eliza whom he had married in May 1778. As well as being a merchant, Lucas was MP for Grampound from 1780 to 1784. He was a director of the Union Fire Office from 1758 to 1781 and a director of the South Sea Company from 1763 to 1780. His business address in the City was Cullum Street (a quarter of a mile from the Royal Exchange); but as an alternative he gave Guy's Hospital where he had become Treasurer in 1774, and had served as President from 1775 until his death10. On 1st October 1785, Eliza Lucas married John Julius Angerstein at St George's, Hanover Square, the witnesses being Angerstein's stepdaughter Emilia and Thomas Lucas Wheeler, Lucas's residuary legatee". Lucas's will made several small bequests and left a life interest in the rest of his estate to Eliza. She was one of the executors, as were the brothers John and William Beach (respectively of London and St Christopher's) and Joseph Paice who was an old family friend. On 12lh March 1789, Eliza, John Beach and Joseph Paice let land in St Christopher's for a year, and the next day they signed a deed which was a 'release of plantations etc of the late Mr Lucas and assignment of Mr Lucas's personal estate from the same to Oliver Cromwell Esq in trust'12. By these transactions the Angersteins had, it appears, disposed of Eliza's life interest in her late husband's plantations. Lee Manor House was let to Sir John Call, Bart, who was an MP and City banker, and Treasurer of the Board of Agriculture: his rent plus the rest of the inheritance produced a useful addition to the Angersteins' income. Eliza also had a surprising web of influential family connections for the daughter of a country clergyman: her father was Rev. Joseph Payne, vicar of Buckland Newton, Dorset, who, like his father, Rev. Thomas Payne, was educated at Christ Church, Oxford. Joseph Payne had a brother (also Thomas, and also a parson) and four sisters, Frances, Mary, Sarah and Catherine: Frances married George Compton, Earl of Northampton, in 1748; and in 1761, three years after the Earl's death, she married again, her second husband being Claudius Amyand, who was an MP and the son of the principal surgeon to George II. Amyand's brother George, who was created a baronet in 1764, was connected with both the Russia Company and the East India Company (of which he was a Director) and had two daughters, one who married the Earl of Minto and the other the Earl of Malmesbury. Mary Payne married another clergyman, and Sarah Payne was the fourth wife of Lewis Way, who was a barrister, a Director of the South Sea Company and President of Guy's Hospital from 1759 to 1771. The youngest of Joseph Payne's sisters, Catherine, married Very Rev Lord Francis Seymour, Dean of Wells, in 1749: he was a younger son of the 8th Duke of Somerset, and brother of the 9'h and 10th Dukes. Unlike the Countess of Northampton, who had no children, the Seymours had three daughters and two sons, one of whom was the ancestor of the twentieth century 16th Duke. In addition to her uncles and aunts, Eliza Angerstein had two sisters, Anne, who married William Arnold, and Polly Amelia who became the first wife of Anthony Hamond of Westacre, Norfolk13. By his marriage into the Payne family, the immigrant John Julius had moved into the outer reaches of the aristocracy - perhaps on to social parity with the Boones - and although many of his new relationships were distant, some were significant. Anna née Muilman had been the daughter of a member of the Anglo-Dutch merchant community, and as such a man of standing in that narrow circle. Angerstein's second marriage was to a wealthy woman fourteen years younger than himself; and though her first husband had been a merchant she also had connections in both Houses of Parliament as well as among the large City companies. Following his second marriage Angerstein seems to have become more self-assertive in the City while simultaneously ceasing to live there, in 1787 leasing the house in Pall Mall, where the Veterinary College metings would later be held and which was to be his London home for the rest of his life14. Pall Mall has changed out of recognition since Angerstein's time. Then the street was dominated by Carlton House, where the Prince of Wales lived, which occupied an enormous site on the southern side of Pall Mall at the Regent Street end. On the same side of the street and a dozen houses towards St James's was Angerstein's house: it was numbered 99 in the Office of Works records and was on the corner of Pall Mall and a narrow way called Pall Mall Court. By 1820 the numbering in Pall Mall had changed and 99 had become 102, and two years later another change, perhaps related to the widening of Pall Mall Court to create Carlton House Gardens, caused the number to become 100. It was a three storey house with a frontage to

46 Pall Mall of 33 feet and a depth of 46 feet15, and the garden backed on to the grounds of Carlton House: presumably, like other properties in the area, it was on a lease from the Crown Estate. In November 1790 London was hit by a violent storm, and a chimney stack in the middle of the roof of the Angersteins' house was blown down, falling right through the centre of the house and leaving the hall open to the sky. Eliza was breakfasting in her dressing-room and was left behind on her floor with her maid: the men-servants had just left the hall, and a possibly fatal accident was fortunately avoided16. The construction of the house does not seem to have been very robust; and in 1809 the valuable contents were threatened by a fire in a house in Pall Mall Court, while in 1834 the whole structure began to collapse when the foundations of the Reform Club, now numbered 104-5, were being dug17.

II BUYING AND SELLING PICTURES

It is not clear when Angerstein first began to collect pictures beyond the family portraits he had commissioned from Sir Joshua Reynolds; but it is probable that among his earliest acquisitions was one of Sir Joshua's most celebrated works Garrick between Tragedy and Comedy, which was painted in 1761 and had been bought from the artist by the second Earl of Halifax. Lock and Angerstein may well have seen the picture when it was exhibited in 1762 at the Society of Artists in Spring Gardens. David Garrick, who was the foremost figure in the eighteenth century theatre, is shown standing between two girls, Comedy, who is smiling and pulling him in one direction while Tragedy, with a knife in her belt, is pulling him in the other. In 1771 the Earl died, and Angerstein, who was a keen theatre-goer, probably bought the picture from the Earl's estate as a result of his admiration for both the subject and the artist18. The picture has been exhibited a number of times, a recent occasion being Reynolds at the Royal Academy in 1986: the catalogue contains a colour reproduction and the text gives details of the literature. The picture was sold by Angerstein's grandson William after it had been in the family for a century and it is now in a private collection19. Angerstein's stepbrother-in-law Charles Boone's titled friend and patron Lord Orford was the grandson of Sir Robert Walpole, the builder of Houghton Hall20 in Norfolk, and the celebrated Prime Minister who had been made an earl on his retirement: Orford inherited the Earldom in 1751 and soon took on the usual responsibilities of a man in his position, including becoming Lord Lieutenant of Norfolk, Colonel of the Norfolk Militia and Ranger of St James's Park. However he was also extravagant and eccentric, and descended from time to time into extended spells of madness from which, like his monarch, he eventually recovered. Early in 1773 he was taken seriously ill; and his uncle Horace Walpole took charge of his affairs, soon becoming horrified at the condition of Houghton Hall, which he described as 'half a ruin' and occupied by Lord Orford's hangers-on, whom he described as a 'crew of banditti'. The two great staircases were 'exposed to all weathers' and every room in the wings were 'rotting with wet', but 'the pictures, the glorious pictures' which formed the great collection amassed by Sir Robert Walpole were 'in general admirably well preserved'21. By the summer of 1774 Lord Orford was fully recovered and made an extended journey by water through the Fens, accompanied by his mistress and two young friends, one being George Farington, who was a painter employed to make drawings (later to be engraved and published) of the pictures at Houghton. In April 1777 he had another serious attack: at this time Horace Walpole called Charles Boone 'the single friend' that showed 'gratitude to him [Lord Orford] when he was deemed no longer capable of serving anybody'22, that is to say when he was mad. Two months later Horace Walpole said he had no time to do anything he liked and must: Write to Charles Boone about a gentleman that is to reside with and have care of my nephew, who is calm and does not alarm me... On this occasion the bout lasted almost a year, and soon after he had recovered Lord Orford announced that he intended to pay off his grandfather's debts, which had been a burden on the estate for more than thirty years: given their relationship it seems certain that Boone was aware of what was being planned. Much earlier there had been three sales of Sir Robert Walpole's pictures, the last in 1751, and it had long been accepted that the Houghton collection was a very valuable asset: Horace Walpole had even done some calculations in 1758 in the light of the prices realised by Sir Luke Schaub's pictures, but he was nevertheless horrified to learn at the end of 1778 that Lord Orford planned to sell almost the whole of Sir Robert's collection to Catherine the Great. Horace Walpole called his nephew 'the mad master'24, and the situation was made worse by the fact that Lord Orford had compounded for his grandfather's debts for a much lesser sum than the amount raised by the pictures25.

47 If Charles Boone was party to the negotiations for the sale, it seems reasonable to guess that Angerstein might have been as well, plus the latter's close friend William Lock, whose artistic expertise would have been invaluable. Perhaps Angerstein visited Houghton and became fired with the ambition to build up a major collection himself one day. Just how the sale to the Empress was negotiated is not entirely clear: Lord Orford had an agent and attorney in King's Lynn named Carlos Cony who had been told in November 1778 that Catherine was not buying 'any pictures, medals &c', but nevertheless in the same month Lord Orford had a discussion with the Russian Ambassador Count Musin-Pushkin and as a result James Christie was appointed to value the collection. Christie went to Houghton with a 'competent', who was apparently the painter and picture dealer Philip Tassaert, and produced a detailed valuation, which for some reason did not reach Lord Orford. When Christie wrote including another copy on 29th November he said that he was sorry to hear that there was likely to 'be a negative put on the expected treaty with the Empress', and went on to compromise his independence by writing (with or without any justification or authority) If the Minister had a mind to immortalise himself I coud put him in the way to do it effectually by causing this collection to be purchas'd at the expense of the publiek and Building a Room at the British Museum for their reception.. ,26 This was an idea John Wilkes had canvassed in April 1777, but nothing had come of it. Three days after Christie sent his letter Lord Orford replied, thanking him for his 'diligence and dispatch' and asked him to call on the Russian Ambassador 'with the particulars of your valuation fairly written' plus two bound catalogues, a letter which he enclosed and his 'particular compliments27'. Lord Orford was also in touch with the painter Cipriani, the choice of whom again suggests that William Lock might have been involved; and Cipriani seems to have invited Benjamin West (who would one day succeed Sir Joshua Reynolds as President of the Royal Academy) to help him make another valuation of the Houghton collection, or perhaps to agree one with Christie. Eventually a deal was struck with the Empress, but probably not until the summer of 1779: there is some doubt whether the price that was finally agreed was £36,000 or £40,000 for what was said to be 178 pictures28. By December rumours were appearing in the newspapers that the collection had been lost at sea because the ship carrying them had foundered, but the story was entirely false: in fact according to Joan Haslip's biography of Catherine the Great a frigate was sent - Lord Orford had suggested a Russian ship would be the safest - and the pictures are in the Hermitage in St Petersburg to this day. The extent of Angerstein's role in the Houghton sale is speculative, but he must at least have been an interested observer, and what he saw may have affected his thinking when the future of his own collection was being considered many years later.

Ill MORE CONNECTIONS

If Andrew Thomson did have other natural children as well as Angerstein, nothing is known of them; but those that he had with his wife Harriet would, without being precise about relationships, have been, in effect, younger siblings of John Julius, and through their associations would have widened the circle of his connections: Harriet Boone could indeed have introduced Angerstein to Eliza. John Thomson, who was Andrew and Harriet's only son and, perhaps, Angerstein's half-brother, was born in 1757 and christened, like all his sisters, at St Peter Ie Poer, Old Broad Street, the church where John Julius married Anna and where their daughter Julia was christened. John Thomson joined his father in the Russia trade and married Charlotte Jacob, daughter of John Jacob MD of Salisbury and his wife Margaret daughter of the Dean of Salisbury. John Jacob was by no means a simple country doctor, having gone from Eton as a scholar to King's College, Cambridge, where he spent ten years as a fellow, presumably resigning in order to be able to marry. The printed pedigrees give no hint of the marital problems that came to be faced by John Thomson's eldest sister Elizabeth, who was born in 1751. She made what her father would have regarded as a highly desirable match - to John, son of Sir Thomas Hankey. Sir Thomas was a City alderman and his wife Sarah was daughter of Sir John Barnard, merchant, MP, Lord Mayor, expert on government finance and the dominant figure in the City for many years. John and Elizabeth Hankey married in 1769 and had three surviving sons, one who would become the father of a Victorian Governor of the Bank of England; but the marriage went wrong and Elizabeth fell in love with another man, as she confided to her sister Agnes, who was later blamed for keeping the secret29. The man was Lieutenant Colonel Marwood Turner van Straubenzee: he was of Dutch extraction and his father (a soldier, not a merchant like the Muilmans) had

48 been naturalised in 1759. In 1824 a man named James Gatliff, who served for some time with Straubenzee, wrote a possibly unreliable autobiography in which he gave his version of what happened: ...When very young she was married to a man twenty years her senior. Fortune on her part was, probably, the temptation: on his, the possession of a young lady of family and fashion. For some years they lived comfortably together until the usual concomitants of age came upon him. His infirmity then wanted more attention than her affections inclined to give, and leaving Mr Hankey, she became the companion of the Colonel. Straubengie [sic] who was, strictly, what the world terms an honourable man, therefore he never forsook her, but rather was he subserviant to her will... (In fact the age gap between the Hankeys was only ten years). It appears that Elizabeth used the name of Mrs StrpiihpnZPP and rpfprrpH tr» thp Pnlnnpl a« hpr hnchsnrl hilt her frilP «OQitinn u"w wf»11 lrnnwri smH t^>a officers' wives would not meet her socially. She went with Straubenzee to India, where they eventually learnt that John Hankey's divorce suit against her for what was then described as crim. con. - criminal conversation, or, more robustly, adultery - had been granted, and that damages of £1,500 (against the ruinous £10,000 originally demanded) had been agreed. In September 1783 the couple were finally married, but little more than two years later Elizabeth and their infant son were dead30. In 1777 John Thomson's second sister Maria, who was christened in 1752, made what was, from a business point of view, the most prestigious marriage of all - to Joshua van Neck. The first members of that family to settle in London were Gerard in 1718 and Joshua the elder in 1722: to an even greater extent than the Muilmans they were active in placing Dutch capital in British Funds, and became the chief underwriters of new Government issues. They were also involved in the East India trade and in tobacco, and were the most eminent members of the Anglo-Dutch community in London31. Gerard died childless in 1750, leaving over £100,000 to his brother Joshua, who was made a baronet in 1751. Sir Joshua had two sons, also named Gerard and Joshua, and died in 1777, six months before his younger son's marriage to Maria Thomson. Sir Gerard inherited the Suffolk estate his father had bought in 1752, and, surprisingly for a bachelor, set about building Heveningham Hall: the architect was Sir Robert Taylor, the interior was designed by James Wyatt and the gardens were laid out by Capability Brown. Sir Gerard, who was MP for Dunwich from 1768 to 1790, died in 1791 and was succeeded in both the parliamentary seat and the baronetcy by Joshua, who five years later was created Baron Huntingfield. Maria thus became Lady Huntingfield, mother of the second Baron, and mistress of 'without doubt the grandest Georgian mansion in Suffolk'32 plus a very extensive landed estate. The third of the Thomson sisters, Anne, christened in 1754, was the only one to marry a Scot - her cousin Thomson Bonar, who was the son of John Bonar and Andrew Thomson's sister. Like his brother-in-law he went into the family business, which eventually became Thomson, Bonar & Co and as such survived well into the twentieth century. Thomson Bonar was made free of the Russia Company in January 1767 when he was at St Petersburg, and was frequently associated with Angerstein in charitable ventures. Three of John Thomson's sisters thus married into the City of London business community, but the youngest, Agnes, who was born in 1757 and died in 1823, had a very different life, though it began conventionally enough. She attended a finishing school and her early life was 'devoted to gaiety, frivolity, and dissipation, devoid of every idea of scientific or literary attainment'. In 1793 she married a barrister named James Ibbetson, whom, according to Farington, she had met at Bath: From whence they run up to London and were married at St Clements Church. Ibbetson was very much attached to Her; but she did not like him, and she went to Lisbon under pretence of bad health, but in fact it was believed, because she thought He wd not follow her there. Being pressed by accts of his dying state she did come to England, and arrived in London the day after He was buried33. Ibbetson, who was the son of the Archdeacon of St Albans died in 1790 after a long illness, and some time thereafter Agnes went to live in the country near Exeter and turned to 'severer pursuits', which included good works such as 'contriving for my Poor people, settling their Coals for the winter'. She lived on a comfortable annuity, at one point sharing a house with a sister (probably in fact a sister-in-law), and her 'usual morning employments' included mineralogy, experiments in galvanic electricity and botany. In the latter field she became sufficiently expert to take on the (wholly male) botanical establishment on equal terms in a way which no other woman of her period did. Over fifty papers of her papers appeared in scientific journals including the Philosophical Magazine - no other women published any at all - on subjects such as the microscopic structure of plants, accompanied with her own meticulous engravings. She was honoured by having a genus of South African plants named Ibbetsonia34 (now Cyclopia) after her, but ultimately was disappointed when Sir James Edward Smith - the leading botanist of the day - failed to

49 support the publishing of her Phytology or having her researches included in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society. She lived far away from London, and as a woman could not be part of a botanical community through membership of the Linnean Society, let alone the Royal Society, and probably had a feeling of rejection when she died in 1823 , though it may be hoped that her interest in plants stimulated Angerstein and that it was through her that he secured some of the rarities that he grew at Woodlands. Through his wives and through the Thomsons, John Julius had, by the mid-1780's, a positively bewildering number of associations, which would extend even further in later years when one of John Thomson's daughters married one of Sir Francis Baring's sons, and another married William Lock's son George. If ever he had been an outsider, that phase of Angerstein's life was long past. The Locks were another source of friends and connections, and among them was the Burney family, of which the head was Charles36: he was a talented musician who had made many theatrical, literary and aristocratic associations through his playing, teaching and composing. He was a few years older than Angerstein and William Lock, and his children included James, born in 1750; Frances (invariably known as Fanny), born in 1752; and Susanna Elizabeth, born in 1755. Burney was an early subscriber to the Society of Arts, though there is no reason to believe that Lock and Angerstein knew him then; and there was certainly no trace of the friendships that would develop later, chiefly among the younger members of the families. Many years later, in 1801, Burney seems to have tried to interest Angerstein in some project, and the former's daughter wrote: Mr Angerstein says he shall certainly be glad to know Dr Charles Burney but only personally, as he is fatigued out of all health for any new business of any sort...37 No offence was given and a few months later Fanny wrote: ...my dear father was at Mr Angerstein's, looking, as usual, all animation, & in charming spirits, & full of entertainment... In 1760, at the age often, James Burney59 joined the navy as a Captain's servant. His father was friendly with the Earl of Sandwich, and in September 1771, when the Earl had just started his second spell as First Lord of the Admiralty, Charles and James Burney were invited to Hinchingbrooke to meet Sir Joseph Banks and Captain James Cook, who were planning the latter's second great voyage. In February 1772 Cook dined with Burney at his London home, and later that year set sail as Captain of the Resolution, among the crew of which was James Burney, who was soon appointed the Second Lieutenant. On his third voyage, when James was First Lieutenant of the Discovery, Captain Cook again sailed in the Resolution, which on this occasion carried a contingent of marines under the command of Lieutenant Molesworth Phillips41. The Resolution set sail for the Cape of Good Hope in July 1776, a month before Phillips's 21s' birthday. He was the son of John Phillips of Swords, County Dublin (a natural son of the first Viscount Molesworth) and had initially joined the army, transferring to the marines early in 1776 on the advice of Sir Joseph Banks. On 14th February 1779 Captain Cook was killed at what is now called Kealakekua, Hawaii. He had gone ashore accompanied by Molesworth Phillips and a sergeant and seven privates of the Marines, and precisely what happened, and who was to blame, has been the subject of endless historical argument. Cook and four of the Marines were killed, the sergeant was slightly injured, another marine was struck in the face by a stone and had his life saved by the injured Phillips who jumped back into the water to save him. Many accounts make Phillips a hero but some recent historians challenge his tactics and claim that his marines were ill-trained. However it is notable that Cook had chosen the twenty-three year old marine as the only officer to accompany him on the difficult mission he was undertaking; and it is also notable that Phillips was promoted captain within days of his return to England in October 1780. James Burney, safely back and also newly promoted, was soon reunited with his family, and the sad circumstances of the return of the expedition would have made him a tragic and heroic figure as well. At an early stage he took his friend Molesworth Phillips to meet his family: within a few weeks Phillips and Susan Burney were engaged, and on 10th January 1782 they married at St Martin-in-the-Fields. A family friend commented that Phillips was 'a fine made, tall, stout, active, manly-looking young fellow as you shall see' and said that he thought that 'Susan has great luck'41. Soon after the honeymoon Molesworth Phillips was posted to Ipswich, but by the spring of 1784 he and Susan and their daughter had moved to Mickleham, having taken a cottage just outside the boundaries of Norbury Park. William and Frederica Lock must soon have become aware of the arrival of the heroic Phillips and his family in the neighbourhood. In July 1783 Fanny Burney recorded meeting 'Lady Shaub (sic), mother to Mrs Lock, and Miss Shaub, her sister'42 at a London dinner party; and Frederica Lock had clearly met both Fanny in London and Susan in Surrey before April 1784 when Fanny wrote:

50 The sweet and most bewitching Mrs Lock called upon me in the evening, with her son George...she came but to take leave, for she was going to Norbury the very next morning. I was quite heavy all the evening. She does truly interest both head and heart. I love her already. And she was so kind, so caressing, so soft; pressed me so much to fix a time for going to Norbury; said such sweet things of Mrs Phillips; and kissed me so affectionately in quitting me, that I was quite melted by her43. Surviving letters, diaries, journals, and manuscripts produced by the extended Burney clan run into many thousands, but Fanny was the most prolific writer and the most celebrated member of the family. In 1778 she had published her novel Evelina anonymously, and when her name became known, she was lionised by the members of the literary circle in which her father moved, which included among others Dr Johnson, Burke, Reynolds, Sheridan, Garrick and several of the group of ladies known as 'bluestockings*. After an abortive attempt at playwriting, Fanny was encouraged to try and repeat her earlier success by writing another novel, and Cecilia appeared in June 1782: it sold so rapidly that booksellers could not keep up with demand, but she found producing it such a strain that she did not write another book for many years. The friendship between Fanny and Frederica Lock, who were the same age, and with the latter's daughter Amelia, blossomed almost at once into an intimacy which lasted for the rest of their lives, and there are copious references to the Locks and to a lesser extent the Angersteins in Fanny's diaries and journals. William Lock was more of a father-figure to Fanny, and also to Susan Phillips who called him: One of the most superior of men in knowledge, taste, & understanding...the most excellent, upright, & perfect of moral characters...and the pleasantest, most chearful & even tempered companion that can be conceived44. In November 1784 Fanny wrote to Susan, who was abroad: Nothing can be more truly pleasant than our present lives..Mr Lock is gayer and more sportive than I ever have seen him; his Fredy seems made up of happiness; and the two dear little girls are in spirits almost ecstatic; and all from that internal contentment which Norbury Park seems to have gathered from all corners of the world...45 Late in 1785 a crisis was narrowly averted when Susan Phillips, back from a stay in Boulogne, went into labour while visiting Norbury. Susan duly had a boy, and he was christened Norbury in honour of the place where he was born. By this time Fanny had become friendly with the elderly bluestocking Mrs Delany, and she in turn introduced Fanny to the King and Queen, who were very interested to meet the author of Evelina and Cecilia. In December 1785 the Queen asked Fanny about the birth of Norbury Phillips. The Queen: 'It was [at Norbury Park], at Mr Lock's, your sister laid in?' 'How was it' said the King...'Could she not get home?' 'It was so sudden, Sir, and so unexpected, there was no time'. 'I dare say' said the Queen 'Mrs Lock was only very happy to have it at her house'. 'Indeed Ma'am' cried I Tier kindness, and Mr Lock's would make anyone think so! But they are all kindness and goodness'. 'I have heard indeed' said the Queen ' that they are all sensible, and amiable, and ingenuous, in that family'. 'They are indeed' cried I 'and as exemplary as they are accomplished'. 'I have never seen Mrs Lock' said the King 'since she was that high' pointing to little Miss Dewes [who was about seven years old]. 'And I' said the Queen 'I have never seen her in my life; but for all that, from what I hear of her, I cannot help feeling interested whenever I only hear her name'4. Paradoxically it was Mrs Delany who was the cause of an interruption in the blossoming relationship between the Locks and the Burneys, since it was through her that Fanny was invited to become Second Keeper of the Robes to the Queen, which was a permanent full-time residential post at Court (with a salary of £200 a year, a footman and a maid). This was a considerable honour, but Fanny felt harshly treated by Mrs Schwellenberg who was in authority over her, and her social and family life was greatly curtailed. She became very fond of the members of the royal family, particularly the young princesses; and wrote about them in her letters, which were often jointly addressed to Susan Phillips and Frederica Lock. In 1788 the King became seriously ill, and the crisis point was on 5th November, on the evening of which Fanny was with a group of courtiers who gradually left the room until she was alone with Colonel Stephen Digby; but she could not bring herself to ask him what had happened. She described the situation to Susan and Frederica:

51 I worked -1 had begun a hassock for my Fredy. A long and serious pause made me almost turn sick with anxious wonder and fear...He kindly saved me any questions and related to me the whole of the mysterious horror! O my dear friends, what a history! The King, at dinner, had broken forth into positive delirium, which long had been menacing all who saw him most closely; and the Queen was so overpowered as to fall into violent hysterics. All the Princesses were in misery, and the Prince of Wales had burst into tears. No one knew what was to follow - no one could conjecture the event47. Fortunately the King's illness lessened from then on, and by March 1789 he was so much better that he was able to receive the congratulations of the Houses of Lords and Commons on his recovery. While Fanny was in royal service she was able to have few visitors, though Frederica Lock called from time to time, on one occasion bringing with her 'a decanter of barley-water and a bright tin saucepan under her hoop'48. It was made clear that to 'keep all things smooth' when having visitors that the rule was to have 'no men - none!'49 though exceptions were made for her father and William Lock. Susan seldom seems to have been able to visit Fanny at court but wrote to her extensively. Many of Susan's letters are concerned with the trivia of family life, but they also refer to her visits to Norbury Park50, where like Fanny she was on very affectionate terms with Frederica and William Lock, though very jealous of any other callers. On one occasion in June 1785 when she arrived Frederica and Augusta Lock were practicing Dr Burney's duet in A which Augusta was planning to play for the Angersteins at Woodlands. Then Augusta told Susan 'a great many laughable habits of Mr and Madame Hartsinck' (Angerstein's stepdaughter Anna Peterella Crokatt having by now married Jan Casper Hartsinck) who were expected the next week with Anna Peterella's sister Emilia. But in the end the visitors were put off because William Lock became ill with fever and a 'great oppression of his stomach'. The local doctor was anxious about having 'so precious a life in his hands' and the Locks' old friend Dr John Moore was sent for: he saw nothing alarming and correctly said that William Lock would be quite well in a few days. A little later Susan and Molesworth Phillips had a visit from Augusta and Charles Lock and Julia Angerstein, who was staying with the family at Norbury: Amelia Lock had a sore throat, and Dr Moore, who was also visiting Norbury, said she should keep to her room. Soon afterwards Julia called on the Phillipses again, this time with Augusta and William Lock father and son; and James Burney and his wife came to stay while they looked for a house in the area. In August 1787, the Hartsincks, Emilia Crokatt and Eliza Angerstein all arrived for a stay at Norbury, joining Julia Angerstein who was already there. Two days later Susan went to Norbury to find that Amelia was downstairs with her friends the Upton girls. She told Fanny: Mr and Mrs Hartsinck were riding out with Mr Lock. Mrs Angerstein whom I had never seen was with Mrs Lock, Miss Crokatt, and Miss Angerstein. The former I should suspect to be near 50. She has been handsome, and continues to intend being so - her head dress, and indeed every other part of her dress was perfectly in the same style as Miss Crokatt's - if anything more showy. In her manner she is very vulgar, which is what I would have expected, but she appears, and is said to be perfectly good humoured...Mr and Mrs Hartsinck came in with our dear Mr Lock just before dinner. He is a little man who seems to be a very great F~l. I was near laughing two or three times at his silly manner of playing with Frederic [the Lock's year-old baby]...Mrs H is thinner than she was: much the same in other respects - something less restless and turbulent indeed - but...quite fulsome with fondness for her fond husband - there are most curious scenes going on now and then I am informed by Augusta - but there was whispering and tendresse enough going forwards when I was there to make everybody generally afraid of looking their way. Tis most abominable behaviour? - and at Norbury too - that seat of innocence and purity and pudens... Susan had also shown how she felt when she told Fanny: I observed in Mrs Hartsinck such a jealous propensity to watching every word and look that passed between Mrs Lock and myself that it made me feel unpleasantly..."'1 The intensity of her friendship for Frederica made Susan Phillips jealous of all the Locks' other relationships. In fact Eliza Angerstein, 'vulgar' or not, was probably dressed in the latest fashion and would certainly have been regarded as the social superior of the Burneys, while the Crokatts had known the Locks long before they became Angerstein's stepchildren. What Fanny and Susan did not know was the aversion the Muilmans - Anna Peterella's mother's family - had for Jan Casper Hartsinck: they had failed to prevent the marriage, but, according to a family letter, were 'great rich merchants' whereas he was 'the son of a younger son of an equestrian family without a farthing'52. This remark shows the standing (or the snobbishness) of the Muilmans: whatever his origins, Hartsinck was a Sheriff of Amsterdam by May 1785

52 when he was admitted as a partner in Hope & Co, the largest and most eminent of the Dutch merchant houses (and as such perhaps the Muilmans' deadliest rivals). He resigned in November 1789 'on account of accepting senior government posts' and received 500,000 guilders in compensation (some £50,000)53. The letter quoted above says 'I see he earned a sum of money afterwards by loans which he negotiated for the Hopes'. The Muilmans would have had no such inhibitions about the engagement between Anna Peterella's younger sister Emilia, who was Angerstein's particular favourite, and Ayscoghe Boucherett. The Boucheretts were a Lincolnshire family of Huguenot origin, and the family home would soon be Wiliingham House, outside Market Rasen, a fine neo-classical mansion built in 1790 to replace an earlier one nearer North Wiliingham. Both Angerstein and Frederica Lock were present at the wedding at St George's, Hanover Square on 17th March 178954. The Boucheretts owned land at Stallingborough, not far from Grimsby where William Lock's father had once been the local MP, and the Locks were probably the link between the families. Within six months of the wedding Ayscoghe's father was dead and the young man inherited the house and the estate. In the course of the next decade they had four children and Ayscoghe gradually took on the responsibilities of a country landowner: he was at various times MP for Great Grimsby, High Steward of the town, Sheriff of Lincolnshire (as his father and grandfather had been), and a Yeomanry captain. But these activities left scope for plenty of time in London, and Angerstein paid extended annual visits to Wiliingham Hall, where he had plenty of scope to indulge his love of riding. It was said that He hunts almost daily, beginning with 2 or 3 hours, & increasing to 4 or 5 hours; but his Hunting is for air & exercise & not to perform feats55. The Boucherett estates at North Wiliingham and at Stallingborough, together with much of the land Angerstein would later acquire, lay within the country hunted by the Brocklesby Hounds, and it was with that pack that Angerstein no doubt took his 'air and exercise'. When he was at Woodlands he spent an hour and a half or two hours riding each day before going to the City even when he was over 7056.

In the summer of 1781 Hon. William Hervey visited the Locks at Norbury Park again and commented on the younger William's 'drawings wonderful at 13 years, the nightmare drawing excellent'57. The artist Henry Fuseli had settled in London in 1779 and soon established a 'constant friendly intercourse' with William CO Lock and his eldest son . Dr Moore was another admirer and asked James Northcote if the young William would make a great painter: I said 'No, never!' 'Why not' 'Because he has six thousand a year'. No one would throw away the advantages and indulgences this ensured him, to shut himself up in a garret to pore over that which after all may expose him to contempt and ridicule.. ,59 But it was William Gilpin who tried hardest to develop the boy's talents: Carl Paul Barbier, the biographer of Gilpin, says that: From a very early age [William Lock] showed an astonishing gift for drawing, and his precociousness may be judged from the portraits of two schoolfellows he etched in 1780, when only a schoolboy of thirteen at Cheam. The two friends were Nicholas Vansittart, who remained a friend for life and with whom Angerstein would deal when Vansittart became Chancellor of the Exchequer; and Samuel Man Godschall who was a distant cousin of the Thomsons. Gilpin did all he could to foster William's talents but perceived his instability and in 1782 wrote to the elder Lock: What shall we call his genius?... I dare say, if you would watch him narrowly when the fit is on him, you would see the signs of it.. .When he is not under this influence he can do nothing... Four years later Gilpin made a despairing effort to shake William out of his indolence by writing a mock obituary: ...He was born with the full genius of a painter. His ideas, & conceptions were sublime and energetic in a great degree; & classically pure...But all this variety of knowledge , to which he added a great accuracy in execution, did little more than to his own thoughts...To study the arrangement of a whole picture, was an exertion, he could not easily prevail on himself to make...If his father had been so kind as to have disinherited him; & bequeathed him only a pot of oil - a few bladders of paint - a pallet, & a dozen brushes, it is thought he would have made one of the greatest masters in the art of painting, the world ever saw.

53 Even this approach failed, and matters were made worse by a continental tour William set out upon in 1789. He compared his own talents unfavourably with those of the great Italian masters and his faith in his artistic abilities ebbed away60 to the point where it seemed likely that his future would proceed on conventional lines - the usual amusements for a young man of his class, followed by a suitable marriage, children and, in due course, the inheritance of Norbury, with no suggestion that he should work for his living, or even become a Member of Parliament. George Lock's future was fitted to a younger son of the day - Oxford, ordination and a curacy at St Michael's, Mickleham where the family worshipped. Charles Lock had neither an estate nor a living to anticipate and in 1791 he caused some alarm in Susan Phillips' mind by falling in love with Julia Angerstein: Mr Charles...and Miss Angerstein! That I fear is a decided matter. Mr William, who used evidently to hold her in great contempt for her vulgarity, bad English and silly giggling, is now amazingly softened to her, and, I am inwardly convinced, seeks to like her and show her regard on his brother's account...She is, I believe, thoroughly good narured and that makes amends for a world of deficiencies. But in this family I cannot bear to see her as daughter, wife, and sister. I wonder Mr Charles's taste is not too good to admit of his thinking of her61. Fanny Burney was more balanced, writing: Mr Charles Lock...is going to be married to Miss Angerstein. She is an amiable girl, & intimately has been connected with his sisters & family from her Birth. I hope they will be happy, as they have, d'avance, every knowledge of the character and disposition of each other62. In Susan's eyes, however, no one was worthy of the Locks, though she did unbend a little and enjoy the occasion when Julia persuaded William and Charles to put on women's dresses and appear in the drawing room at Norbury, followed in the evening by a play acted by Amelia and Augusta, their nurse, two Uptons and Julia6'1. The romance between Charles and Julia in the event did not blossom, but their association was either the cause or the effect of Charles's living in London, where he worked in a counting house, either in, or being prepared for a partnership with Angerstein. Henry Crokatt only lasted with Angerstein for some two years; and then, after another year when the firm was just Angerstein and Lewis, the two men were joined by Peter Warren. He had been apprenticed to an insurance broker about 1760 and would be Angerstein's partner until 179964. By 1792 Lewis had retired and the firm had become Angerstein, Warren and Lock, which means that Charles became a partner when he was 21: before that would certainly have needed a spell of training, just as Angerstein himself had worked in Andrew Thomson's counting house prior to becoming Alexander Dick's junior partner in 1756. It was perhaps already clear that John Angerstein did not want to follow his father in business and the prospect, in the event doubly unrealised, of having his old friend's son both as his son-in-law and his successor would have been a very satisfactory alternative for Angerstein. Charles Lock seems to have settled to the office routine: he did not have to be at work until 9am and finished at 8pm, and returned to Norbury each weekend using the Dorking stage coach65. In January 1792 Fanny was staying with her father in London and described an evening to Susan: We then set off for the Play; just as I got out of the Chair I was recognized by Mr Charles Lock, to my great pleasure, & he named me to Miss Angerstein, who looked very good and amiable. Mr Angerstein I saw next, & then a lady who spoke to me, but whom I did not recollect till afterwards for Mrs Hartsinck. In truth I had thought her confined to her Room, which led me from any such expectation of a meeting. I hope she knows me to be near-sighted, & pardons its consequences66.

Angerstein had a business associate named Godschall Johnson who was connected by marriage with the Thomsons, and in that way both families were related to Viscount Palmerston. Johnson had four children by his first wife and in 1792 married for a second time to Mary, daughter of Philip Francis: on that occasion Mary's sister Harriet told her that there had been visits and not simply cards of congratulation from 'Thomson, Palmerstons...Angersteins and many others'67. Godschall and Mary had two children, Mary Elizabeth, to whom Eliza Angerstein was a godmother, and Catherine, whose godparents included John Julius Angerstein and Lady Palmerston68. The picture was further complicated by Philip Francis's son (also Philip) marrying a Johnson; and the mesh of relationships helps to explain the long association between the various families. Philip Francis the elder was born in Dublin in 1740, the son of a clergyman with enough influence to get the his son a clerical post in the Secretary of State's office. In 1763 he was promoted to be First Clerk in the War Office, where he served for a further nine years. Between 1767 and 1772 a series of anonymous letters appeared in the press, and from 1769 onwards they were signed Junius. According to The Reign of George III 1760-1815:

54 Junius wrote as a member of the inner ring of the political and fashionable world. In balanced but hysterical prose he savaged those in authority...His aim was to catch the attention of a sophisticated audience by removing the polite shams screening public men; he thus aroused the curiosity of his readers and then gratified their malice. He used the gossip of the offices to embarrass ministers and the details of their private lives to discredit their policies. In his world all men were venal and degraded. The fascination of his attacks is that they are couched in the artificial style of the time and yet strip away all conventional decency from their victims69. It is highly likely (if not quite certain) that Philip Francis was Junius; and if he was not it is the more remarkable that he was suddenly plucked from near-obscurity to become in 1774 a member of the Council of Bengal and thus one of the most important men in India. During his seven years there he was at daggers drawn with Warren Hastings, at one stage literally since they fought a duel in which Francis was wounded. On his return to London he helped Burke prepare evidence against Hastings, who was impeached but ultimately found not guilty by the House of Lords after a trial which lasted for seven years. Francis was an MP from 1784 to 1796 and again from 1802 to 1807. He seems to have confined his vendettas to his political enemies and to have had a pleasanter side which he showed to his friends and his family, retaining his wife's loyalty even though he had been caught in flagrante delicto with the wife of a Swiss officer named Grand. Later Madame Grand became the mistress, and in 1803 the wife, of Talleyrand70. In 1791 Philip Francis wrote to Elizabeth, another of his daughters, saying that the previous evening he had been 'at Thomson's with Mrs Fitzherbert'71; and although the name is not an unusual one, it seems from the context that the Thomsons referred to were John and his wife; and it is thus possible that Angerstein too also might have known the Prince of Wales's favourite - and possibly even the Prince himself - by this time.

IV LAWRENCE AND FARINGTON

In 1830 John Angerstein would write: Our intercourse for forty years from his first appearance in London, was more that of Brother than any other character I can give it72. The man to whom he was referring was Sir Thomas Lawrence PRA73, who was born in Bristol in April 1769 and thus was about eight years younger that Emilia Boucherett and five years older than her step-brother John Angerstein. Before he moved to London, Lawrence's father was landlord of the Black Bear in Devizes, and Thomas, the youngest son of the family, began shewing his talents as a small child. After various moves, the prodigy arrived in London about 1787 and was admitted as a student at the Royal Academy Schools the same year. His success as a portrait-painter was instantaneous, and his talent was quickly recognized, both by having entries accepted for the Royal Academy Exhibition as early as 1788 and by being summoned to Windsor to paint the Queen the next year. From then on, and for the rest of his career, Lawrence was never short of sitters however much he increased his fees. But whatever his income he was always extravagant and unbusiness-like74; and he died as he lived, leaving about one hundred and fifty unfinished portraits in his studio, some that had been started twenty or thirty years before. But Lawrence was both charming and talented, and got to know William Lock and John Julius Angerstein soon after he settled in London. At about the time in February 1792 when Lawrence was appointed Painter in Ordinary to the King: We now find him intimate with the Kemble family, and with those of Mr Angerstein, Mr Lock, Lord Abercorn, the Templetowns, Sir Francis Baring and the highest persons in the country, who were distinguished for any love of literature or the arts75. At one time or another Lawrence painted almost every member of the Angerstein/Lock circle, some of them several times. The earliest was William Lock, whose portrait was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1790. The picture looks to some extent unfinished, which is not surprising since, according to a contemporary press report, it was completed in a single sitting. In 1827, Lawrence wrote to Frederica Lock: ...You may remember that the Work which first gave me reputation in the public Exhibition, was the Portrait of dear revered Mr Lock!76 A picture of the younger William Lock was in the Academy in 1791, and was described as 'the best portrait in the exhibition' and a portrait of Dr John Moore was shown the same year.

55 Lawrence twice painted Angerstein's step-daughter Emilia Boucherett at about this time, and included among his ten exhibits at the 1792 Academy was a grand full-length portrait of Angerstein and his wife Eliza in which she is seated and he is standing with one hand proudly on the back of her chair. The picture, which measures more that 8 foot by 5 foot, is now in the Louvre. The National Gallery has a half length portrait of Angerstein which was probably painted a little later, and Lawrence also made numerous drawings of the family , using the same skills which enabled him to make rapid likenesses in the days when his father kept the Black Bear. In 1795 Angerstein made a spur of the moment purchase at an auction sale - a Rembrandt, which cost him 100 guineas, and which he gave as a present to Lawrence79. This was a notable mark of Angerstein's affectionate patronage, and could also be a commentary on the chaotic state of Lawrences's finances, which needed urgent attention: ...Mr Angerstein, combining the liberality of an enlarged mind and a kind heart with habits of business, and a penetration into character, made a very considerable advance of money to Lawrence, but upon a plan most likely to be permanently useful, and best adapted to his disposition. The sum advanced was sufficiently large to relieve Mr Lawrence of all interruptions to business; and the arrangement was that he should pay, until the debt was liquidated, into Mr Angerstein's bankers, and to the account of that gentleman, the whole of his professional receipts. In the mean time, Mr Farington, Lawrence's friend, was to be allowed to draw every week to the extent of £20 for his household expenses80. Joseph Farington was an artist, a dominant figure in the politics of the Royal Academy and later a diarist whose writings provide an invaluable insight into the lives of both Lawrence and Angerstein. Much earlier Joseph had worked alongside his brother George at copying the Houghton Collection; and although there are scattered references to Angerstein's doings from shortly after the start of Farington's diaries in 1793, the relationship between the two men only became a personal one from 1803 onwards. An early diary reference was in September 1794: ...Made a view of Greenwich Hospital & London from the open ground before Vanbrugh House. Looked into the grounds of Mr Petre adjoining, then those of Mr Angerstein, a succession of bold undulating ground from Greenwich to Woolwich, with a flat bottom towards the Thames. No views for me.. .though very pleasant81.

V FRENCH EXILES

Angerstein had already been concerned with the welfare of one impoverished immigrant group - the black poor - and now he was concerned with another. Like the Veterinary College the initiative came from an aristocratic group, again demonstrating the social circles into which Angerstein was now being drawn. In September 1792 it was reported that: Great numbers of priests and other emigrants have got across to the English coast within this last fortnight; they have been seen on the roads from Dover, Hastings, Eastbourne, and Brighthelmstone, coming up to London in all possible ways, on coaches, waggons, fishcarts, &c. Some came walking, attended by a cart, which they ascended by turns as they were over-fatigued. The streets of London now swarm with them; and as many of them are in absolute distress, subscriptions have been opened by our benevolent countrymen for their relief82. The man who took the lead in organizing relief was John Eardley Wilmot MP, the son of the Lord Chief Justice, who called a meeting on 20th September 'to take into consideration some means of affording relief to their Christian brethren'. This had been preceded by a private gathering a few days before, and Edmund Burke wrote on 16lh September: ...Surely our statement ought to be published at length in the Papers, particularly the Evening Papers. The expense is to be considered as nothing, indeed as so much gain: for, as Mr Angerstein well observed today, in things of this kind proper advertising is everything83. At the public meeting, which was very well-attended, those present included the Duke of Portland, the Marquis of Buckingham, Earl Fitzwilliam, the Bishops of London and Durham, the Lord Mayor, the Earl of Radnor, Lord Onslow, Lord Sheffield, Burke, Wilberforce and Angerstein. A committee was formed, including many of the peers and the three commoners84. In the rather confusing way that things happened from time to time, two more subscriptions were opened: one headed by Sir George Thomas (whose first wife

56 had been French), which was for the support of 'French exiles, particularly the aged laity, women and children who have sought refuge in England' was announced on 26lh September and had Angerstein on the committee; and a third fund, which soon amalgamated with Wilmot's, was started by the Lord Mayor8'. There was also a collection at Lloyd's for 'French refugees both laity and clergy' to which Angerstein contributed. Charles Burney was closely involved and Fanny, having written nothing of significance for a decade, took up her pen again and produced a pamphlet 'earnestly submitted to the humane consideration of the Ladies of Great Britain'86. But in spite of a generous public response to the various appeals resources proved inadequate87, even after the remarkable agreement by the King to a request that collections should be taken in church, so that: The world was thus presented with the astonishing spectacle of Church of England Protestant clergy, headed by their Archbishop, preaching sermons in every parish of England with the aim of collecting funds for Roman Catholic priests88.

Meanwhile in Surrey there was a more privileged group of emigres. In September 1792 Susan Phillips sent Fanny a momentous letter: We shall shortly, I believe, have a little colony of unfortunate (or rather fortunate, since here they are safe) French noblesse in our neighbourhood. Sunday evening Ravely informed Mr Lock that two or three families had joined to take Jenkinson's house, Juniper Hall, and that another family had taken another house at Westhumble, which the people very reluctantly let, upon the Christian-like supposition that, being nothing but French papishes, they would never pay89. William Lock, perhaps persuaded by Frederica, who was, of course, Swiss/French by birth, offered to be answerable for the rent of the property, though as it turned out the matter had already been settled. Juniper Hall is about a mile from Mickleham, where Susan Phillips lived, and from there it is a further mile up the hill to Norbury Park. Not all of the emigres would have been at Juniper Hall or Westhumble at any one time, but the members of the colony included Madame de Staël, the authoress, daughter of a former Finance Minister and wife of the Swedish Ambassador to France; Comte de Narbonne, a former Minister of War; Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand, bishop, politician and later Napoleon's Foreign Minister; Comte de Jaucourt and Marquis de Lally Tolendal, both formerly Deputies; and several others including General Alexandre d'Arblay, who had been Lafayette's Adjutant-General and who was a particular friend of Narbonne's90. Fanny soon visited Surrey and met the newcomers. Almost immediately she and General d'Arblay fell in love. Charles Burney was strongly opposed to the match because d'Arblay was penniless as a result of the Convention's decree, unemployable, French - the war had just begun - and a Roman Catholic. Fanny had no more than a £100 royal pension (which might be withdrawn) and an annuity of £20 a year; and doors now open to her, including those of the Palace, might in future be closed. When it became clear that the couple were determined to marry, Charles Burney reluctantly gave his consent but could not be persuaded to be present; and as a result the wedding took place at Mickleham Church on 28lh July 1793 attended by only six people - William and Frederica Lock, Molesworth and Susan Phillips, Louis de Narbonne and Fanny's brother James, who gave her away. William Lock was described as 'father' to Alexandre d'Arblay and signed the register with James Burney91. Of all the visitors to Juniper Hall, the one with the highest profile was Talleyrand. However the Government decided in January 1794 that he could no longer be permitted to stay in Britain, and he was given five days' notice to leave. An appeal to Pitt resulted in his being allowed a further three weeks in which to put his affairs in order. His first need was for money: he resolved to go to America, where he thought there would be scope to rebuild his finances, but he had to get there and survive for the time being. Narbonne wrote to William Lock to tell him of the proposal that Talleyrand, accompanied by Bon-Albert Brios de Beaumez, should leave on 15th February. He continued: They will then go to America for nearly a year, taking with them only just enough not to die of hunger. This cruel perspective forces me to beg you insistently to let me have Mr Angerstein's answer as soon as possible, M de T counts on it for enabling him to have something to live on for a few months92. What happened, it appears, is that Angerstein made a loan on the security of Narbonne's property in Saint Domingue (the French part of what is now Haiti) which Narbonne in turn used, at least in part, to provide funds for Talleyrand and Beaumez93, though Talleyrand's chief source of funds appears to have been a man named John Baker Church. But in March 1794 Madame de Staël wrote from Switzerland to her lover Narbonne, still in England, rebuking him because:

57 Mr Engestnn vous donne de 1 anient sur 1 emprunt et vous preferez toute cette dependance ...a etre • -94 1C1 . Angerstein's loan is perhaps of particular note because slavery had been abolished in Santo Domingo in August 1793; and in February 1794 French citizenship had been conferred on every former slave in all the territories of the French Republic. The motives behind the French move may have been political - to stir up trouble in the British West Indies - rather than humanitarian, but nonetheless Angerstein was either making a gift, wrapped up as a loan to spare Narbonne's pride, or he was, in effect, backing a post-slavery economy. Talleyrand must have taken a cynical view about the security which had been given for the loan from which he benefited, since he wrote to a correspondent in London in January 1795: The system of freeing the blacks, adopted by the French power in all the islands of the Antilles of which it retains possession, is a system in which a step once taken it is very difficult to draw back, a plan which nullifies commercially all the sugar islands subject to that regime95. Whether Talleyrand repaid Church, or Narbonne repaid Angerstein, is unrecorded.