Some Distinguished Victims of the Scaffold

Third Series, v. 404, 442, 500; vi. 35, 96, 176, 254.Fourth Series, viii. 548; ix. 99, 130, 197.Fifth Series, v. 20.Eighth Series, vii. 267; x. 196, 242, 426; xi. 32.

Although both words and music may have been plagiarised from old Irish ballad and old Irish melody, it is probable that the story of Surgeon Robert Adair and Lady Caroline Keppel suggested the later version of John Braham, December 17, 1811.

Note. – We are indebted to Sir Thomas Frankland for one of the most charming mezzotints by Wm. Ward, after Hoppner – a picture of his two daughters.

THE KING’S ENGRAVER

THE CASE OF WILLIAM WYNNE RYLAND, 1783

About the time that Miss Blandy was commencing her ill-fated amour with Captain Cranstoun, a dark-eyed boy with earnest, clear-cut features, often carrying a portfolio of drawings under his arm, might have been met by any one who strolled along Fleet Street or the Strand in the early morning between Charing Cross and the Old Bailey. From his home beneath the grim shadow of Newgate prison, where his father, Edward Ryland, prints and engraves in a house next door to that in which thief-taker Wild levied blackmail, the young artist trudges each day to the St Martin’s Lane Academy. And should one meet him in the autumn of 1749, he will be wearing a suit of solemn black; and his grave, eager face will seem more sombre than wont, for his patron and godfather, the good and kind Sir Watkin Williams-Wynne, has been killed by a fall from his horse, to the unspeakable grief of every son of gallant little Wales.

Around the school of drawing where young Ryland is learning his craft, a new world is springing into life – a world of fancy, grace, and colour, destined to free old London from the sable sway of dulness. It is the world of art, over which the deep black deluge has rested for so long, soon to be peopled with the bright creations of genius. William Wynne Ryland will see some of these great ones ere he leaves St Martin’s Lane for the studio of a new master. Often, as he passes the coffee-tavern of Old Slaughter, he must catch sight of a placid, round-faced young man, with a mild pair of eyes that seem to need the aid of glasses, hurrying down Long Acre, while he envies Mr Reynolds, the portrait-painter, who has the entry to the Club that meets beneath the roof where Pope has held his court. Or, when he looks up at the house where the elegant Thornhill lived and worked, now the residence of Beau Hayman, more at home with the bottle than the brush, he may observe a tall, sentimental youth springing through the door, whose thoughts are far away amidst the woods and dales of Sudbury, where dwells a pretty miss called Peggy. And possibly, a little later, he will listen to the romantic fable that Tom Gainsborough has married a princess in disguise. Sometimes he may meet a middle-aged compatriot, named Richard Wilson, whose glowing scenes from Nature are to wrest the guerdon from France, and to found the incomparable school of British landscape.

Frequently a smile will steal over Wynne Ryland’s grave, nervous lips, as a small boy with a big head and a long, Punch-like body scampers down the lane, whirling his crooked legs, and he will hail the truant with the cry: “What, little Joey, have you been tolling for a funeral?” But the breathless lad, who has wasted too much time in his favourite game of assisting his friend the sexton at St James’s Church, scuttles back to his casts and models. Perhaps, one day, this little Joey Nollekens, who in good time produces many a beautiful bust and statue, will be allowed to take his friend into the studio of the great good-natured Roubiliac. “Hush, hush!” we can hear the volatile master cry, as he drags his young admirer before the figure which his deft chisel has caressed for a last time; “look, he vil speak in a minute!” And as the youth gazes upon the noble work, his quick Welsh blood, warmed by the infection of genius, glows with like ambition to do and dare. Soon, also, he becomes a pupil of the sculptor in St Peter’s Court, from whom, whatever else he learns, he must acquire a boundless self-confidence.

Shortly after the death of his godfather, young Wynne Ryland, now about seventeen years old, is bound apprentice to engraver Ravenet, who came over from France to help Hogarth with his plates, and who has set up a school south of the river in Lambeth Marsh. As the crows flies, it is a short journey from the Old Bailey, but one must turn up Ludgate Hill, wind round Black Friars through Water Lane, holding one’s nose if the wind comes north-west down the grimy Fleet, and from the steps take wherry to the Surrey side. Across the Thames, the wide, deep ditches, bordered by their fringes of willows, have changed the moss into a fertile plain.

Old Ryland is careful to conciliate the French artist now and then by a judicious commission, which takes the form of woolly book-plates after Sam Wale – classic pictures according to Queen Anne traditions, filled with urns and hose-pipe torches, wooden scrolls of parchment, and busts on pillar-boxes, gentlemen in cotton dressing-gowns, with stony beards, and demure ladies in flowing nightshirts. We meet these curious plates in a rare copy of the Book of Common Prayer, with the sign of Edward Ryland of the Old Bailey, and similar ones in Sir John Hawkins’ interpretation of Old Isaac. Young Wynne takes his part in the work, and though Master François gives him the lead, aided by fellow-countrymen Canot and Scotin, while the senior prentices, Grignion and Walker, also ply their gravers, a glance at ‘Luke the Physician,’ or ‘St Matthew at the Receipt of Custom’ will show that the youthful Welshman already is the equal of the best of them. Thus for five years he works under Ravenet.

It must have been a happy home in that dingy, sunless house in the Old Bailey, where Wynne Ryland’s early days were spent. The father, busy and prosperous, devoted to his wife, eager to encourage the talents of his boys, and observing proudly, with expert eye, the amazing genius of his third son. Yet over all there broods the sad shadow of the grim prison. Often in the night the silence is broken by the hoarse voice of the bellman chanting this refrain: —

“You prisoners that are within,
Who for wickedness and sin,

“After many Mercies shown you, are now appointed to Dye to Morrow in the Forenoon: Give Ear and understand that to-morrow the Greatest Bell of St Sepulchre’s shall toll for you, in Form and Manner of a Passing Bell, as used to be tolled for those that are at the Point of Death…”

It is the loathly knell of the unhappy wretches within the deep black walls. And in the morning the awful boom of St Sepulchre rolls over the housetops, while a ribald, drunken mob chokes the street. Then comes the clank and clatter of sheriffs officers, and, as the procession moves from the iron portals of Newgate, there follows an open cart, driven by a gruesome creature astride a coffin, and in which, bound and quaking, lie the poor passengers to Tyburn. Such scenes are a portion of the boyhood of William Wynne Ryland, the great engraver.

But, after the long years of his apprenticeship have rolled away, a brighter and more glittering life than dingy old London, or even the whole world, can show, comes to the young genius. Since his youth Paris has been whispering to him her enticing summons – Paris, the Cyprus of art, where beauty, love, and colour walk hand in hand, and where he whose fingers can fashion their charms may become mightiest of the mighty. Two friends and old school-fellows are eager to make the same pilgrimage, and the indulgent parent, whose foresight perceives whither the talents of his gifted son will lead him, gives his consent. Although he knows that if the lowering storm-clouds shall burst, a visit to France may mean exile until the close of the war, he resolves that the young man shall pursue his art in the studios of the great French masters. So, early one morning the three enthusiasts mount Christopher Shaw’s stage-coach at the sign of the ‘Golden Cross’ and resting at Canterbury over night, reach Dover in good time the next day. With a fair wind, a stout smack will touch the opposite coast in a few hours, where they must tolerate a much less speedy team and a more shaky vehicle along the road to Paris.

It is the eve before the deluge, and a sunset, having no part in the morrow, most brilliant and gorgeous of aspect. To the eye of the poet or painter there is no blemish in the fair landscape. His vision rests only upon graceful palace or shining gardens. Around the fountains, over the lawns, glide the creatures of Arcadia – beautiful gentlemen in dazzling frocks and scented ruffles, toying with bejewelled sword or flicking the lid of a golden snuff-box, moving their satin limbs in obeisance to their fair partners. Sweet ladies with snowy ringlets falling upon bare shoulders, the bloom of roses in their cheeks, and the sheen of pearls on their round breasts, fluttering like butterflies amidst the flower-beds, clad in shimmering draperies, flashing in a blaze of colour. Or, in the twinkling of an eye, the picture may dissolve, to become more entrancing. My lord now trips the mead a dainty Strephon, tuning his pipes, and shaking the ribbands at his knees, while his highborn Phyllis, still wearing her powdered hair and disdainful patches, twirls her silken ankles in the graceful freedom of short frocks. What though these scenes dwell only on the canvas of the painter of Valenciennes! They are as real as were visions of angels to the dreamer Blake! In the eyes of the artist the whole of laughing France must be a fairy Arcadia such as this, for the witching Pompadour, who fulfils the thoughts of prescient Watteau, directs the dance.

Then from the thicket comes the tinkle of silvery laughter, where the paths wind beneath the branches to lonely dells, through which the sunlight streams in floods of amber between the leaves. Here, amidst the gold and olive shadows, which chase each other in flickering play round some graven image of goat-faced Pan, flits a wanton lady, flying from her persistent lover, but laughing, tripping, and calling to him still, as she draws him onward. Or, in the cool grove, crowned by a wealth of ivy-tinged greenery, a sylph-like figure sweeps through the air in her velvet swing, and her shining arms, raised to grasp the ropes, throw the contours of her form into shapely pose. From the bushes beneath sounds a burst of raillery, as her swain rises to his feet, gazing with rapture as the pretty girl flies past him and returns, adoring the tiny slippers, and the silken hose that vanish in dainty curves beneath a fluttering screen of drapery. The fancy of Fragonard has painted the spirit of his age – a world full of leaves, and flowers, and sunshine, where life moves with the rhythmic cadence of the swing, where every breath is pleasure, recking naught of pain or death.

Each palace that crowns these fairy gardens, wherein the splendour of man reaches its highest goal, is a sanctuary dedicated to the worship of feminine beauty. From every wall glows her picture, majestic in opulent lines of dazzling flesh – Cytherea draped in creamy foam, or languishing upon her couch with robes of gossamer, the divinity of the shrine. All the fair throng of lords and ladies, flashing with brilliants, shining in silk attire, are her votaries, who bow in idolatry beneath the spell. More than human are these worshippers, for they have tasted the honey-dew upon her lips, and have drunk the milk of Paradise. Yet only half their life-story has been told by François Boucher. As semi-divinities he has limned them, sporting as children around their Venus-mother, grovelling as satyrs before the throne of their queen. We must turn to other pictures to view their destiny. Their fate is that of all mortals who seek to share the pleasures of the gods. Duped by the alluring smile of the deity, they spread their tiny wings to invade her home, and the outraged divinity turns upon them in her wrath and smites them with death.

Not one of those who immortalise the romance of that fairy age can read the writing on the wall. Boucher, Fragonard, and their gay school, who are as blind to the future as the dead painter of Valenciennes, depict only what they see. The squalid little leech of Boudry is still in his country home, or wandering, an enthusiastic boy, in greedy pursuit of science to the sunny south; the sea-green avocat of Arras has not yet looked upon the light; the lion-hearted tamer of the Gironde also is unborn. Even the surly, pock-fretten features of giant Mirabeau have never passed through the streets of Paris. A long, brilliant night is still before the giddy capital.

None of the ominous hungry growls from squalid purlieus can arrest the ears of young Wynne Ryland, who has come to Paris to shake off the memory of sad Old Bailey, who sees naught but the colour and romance. Thus he breathes into his soul, with strong, eager lungs, the perfume-scented air. With the enthusiasm of genius he plunges into work at the seductive studio of the inspector of the Gobelins. Sieur Boucher is at the summit of his fame, petted by Madame de Pompadour, commissioned by King Pan. Surely the handsome, dark-faced Welshman, who can trace on copper the gallant compositions of his master as finely as any pupil of Le Bas, must have won the love of the gay, profligate painter. And, should it be his humour, what a strange world Monsieur Boucher can reveal to the pupil’s eyes! One day, perhaps, he may hold before him a jewelled fan, glowing with luscious pictures, which he has just created for la belle Marquise. Or it will be a fancy sketch of some lacquered tabouret that he has designed for her private room at Versailles. Sometimes he may grasp the young man’s arm, and, drawing him a little aside, will open a secret portfolio, whispering, with a smile upon his pleasure-worn face, and drooping his dissolute eyelids, “Pour le boudoir de Madame dans l’Hôtel de l’Arsenal.” Then, while Wynne Ryland gazes upon the beautiful Anacreontic pictures, which no scene within the cities of the plains can have excelled, his black, thoughtful eyes will flash with admiration, and his white teeth glitter between his parted lips. It is no place for innocence, nor for narrow virtue, this glowing, gilded salon of Sieur Boucher the incomparable.

Yet the young Welshman does not neglect his proper craft. As the work of later years bears eloquent testimony, none of the gifted pupils of Le Bas have profited more from the instruction of that famous school. Jacques Philippe, as might be expected, turns him on to the plates of his Fables choisies, designs after Oudry-interpretations of La Fontaine parables, spread over four mighty tomes, beloved of the amateur who collects the estampes galantes. Volume II., bearing date 1755, contains a couple of these – with signature in Gallic orthography, ‘G. Riland’ – portraits of peacock-feathered jay and boastful mule, humanised in the text, though strangely wooden in the picture.

Still, the line-engraver, with all his splendid art, is not the master that moulds the destiny of William Wynne. Among the numerous pupils of Le Bas is an ingenious person named Gilles Demarteau, who is practising a new method of working his copper plate with tiny dots which make the finished print as smooth and soft as a drawing in chalk. Out of this arises a vehement artistic causerie, for it is a sure fact that a man of forty, one Jean Charles François, has received a pension of 600 francs for this same invention, which, some say, another before him invented after all. Ryland, no doubt, learns everything he can from both pioneers, without troubling to ascertain the original discoverer, and, as this ‘stipple’ manner takes his fancy, he soon becomes as dexterous as those who teach him. Further, he finds that this same dotted plate may be tinted by the engraver’s brush, giving an almost perfect illusion of a picture in water-colours.

At last the young Welshman makes up his mind to complete the grand tour, without which the education of an artist is incomplete. Some say that the medal he gained at the Académie Royale entitles him to free tuition at Rome. At all events, he flies south to blunt his pencil upon the gnarled contours of Michael Angelo, and to shade the tender lines of Raphael – for the immortals of Leyden and Seville have not yet thrown these high priests from their altar. This same enterprise proves of much service to him when, in a year or two, the great lords at home wish him to transcribe, in the novel ‘Demarteau-after-Boucher’ fashion, their collections of the great masters. Hitherto he has been true to his first love, the line-engraving, in the dainty fashion of Le Bas, and the Parisian connoisseurs of ’57, who glue their glasses upon the rounded limbs of Leda toying with her swan – a print after Boucher which Ryland has pulled from his plate – acknowledge that some good has come from Angleterre at last.

With this same work the Welsh engraver first woos the British public, showing it at the Exhibition of the Society of Artists in Spring Gardens in the May of ’61. About this date, after an absence of five summers, when he is in his twenty-ninth year, he returns home to England. Chance has much in store for him. For a long time the canny Prime Minister, known to most of his fellow-countrymen as the Boot – an opprobrious, not a popular term, – has been looking out for a cheap line in engravings. Some time ago, courtly fellow-Scot Allan Ramsay had painted wonderful portraits of the noble favourite and royal Prince George; so, when the first was Premier and the other Defender of the Faith, it became necessary for the welfare of the nation that their lineaments should be scattered broadcast through the medium of a copper-plate.

“Robie Strange is my man,” thinks painter Allan, and makes the mistake of telling his illustrious ex-sitters before he has caught his engraver. There is a dreadful contretemps. Stout-hearted Robie is acquainted with Scottish truck – he will have none of them. “Off to Rome to copy great masters,” is the excuse. “Cannot waste four years over your pictures!” But in stout Robie’s heart of hearts there may lurk another motive; for Robie has whirled his claymore at Prestonpans, and Charlie is his darling. Indeed, he might have gone the way of wry-necked old Lovat had not a devoted damsel allowed him to hide beneath her hoop – to whose skirts, very properly, he remained attached ever after. Robie snorts at the canny price they offer him. A hundred pounds to engrave the cod-fish features of royal George! when Rome and the great masters are calling loudly, where he will kiss hands with his own King James III. “No, thank you!” says Robie, and, packing up chalks and drawing-board, takes himself off on his travels.

In this dilemma Mæcenas Bute, who, to do him justice, keeps his eyes open for budding genius, hears of the young Welsh engraver, the beater of Frenchmen on their own soil. Being an art-collector, probably he has seen an assortment of the fleshy prints after Boucher. So, as Robie is with Charlie over the water, Bute secures Ryland to copy his likeness by the polite Allan, and, in due course, “the handsomest legs in England” – legs literally fit for a boot – appear in a very creditable line-engraving, emblazoned with a coat of arms. Thus in this month of February 1763 William Wynne has reached the top of the tree, happy and smiling, at Ye Red Lamp, Russell Street, Covent Garden, close to Button’s and Will’s. The portrait of the beautiful legs, along with his red-chalk imitations – employed industriously ever since his return from the Continent in several sketches from the old masters, – convinces ‘Modern Mæcenas’ that Robie’s room is better than his company. A word whispered in the ear of the royal mother would be enough to persuade apron-string George that the clever Welshman is the artist for his features. At all events the great honour is offered, and Taffy, very shrewdly keeping his head, takes care that, from his point of view, it is a good deal. It is a most amazing deal – £100 down for the drawings, £50 a quarter as long as the work lasts, and the proceeds of the copyright. However, thus it stands – Wynne Ryland blazons himself with the fearsome title, ‘Calcographus Regis Britanniæ’ and, setting up in the true manner of a master, begins to take pupils. One of these, worthy James Strutt, who comes to him the year after his achievement with the beautiful legs, remains a trusted friend through life, and the tutor, in turn, of his eldest son, who, alas, meets an early death.

During the next four years, being paid for time, Ryland, like a true British workman, continues to pick out slowly the salmon-lips and Gillray stare of his royal master. A large number of the red-chalk engravings from pictures of the great painters in the possession of noble patrons belong to this period; and when George is finished, he goes on to copy Cotes’ picture of the Queen with the infant Princess Royal in her arms. While he is basking in smiles from the throne, he is employed in other ways, visiting Paris in the middle of his work to collect engravings for the royal connoisseur, which prints, we are told by the festive Wille, are “magnifiques épreuves … fourniés comme pour un roi.”

These are the halcyon times of the artist’s life – these are the days when we catch a glimpse of him swaggering along Bow Street, with silver-hilted sword and ample ruffles, by the side of a heavy-jowled brawler of handsome person and agile, spiteful tongue, listening with black, eager eyes and flashing teeth to the jibes and sallies of his friend. Or, beneath the arm of this same aggressive Charles Churchill, he turns into Will’s coffee-house, and sits in easy deference on the fringe of a little ring, while he hears a torrent of charming, vicious diatribe, at the expense of poor patron Bute, pouring from the wine-stained lips of the cross-eyed apostle of liberty. Or perhaps poet Charles, who wields the Twickenham rapier in the fashion of a butcher with his cleaver, may take up this Dunciad of peers, roaring out a gruesome fable – how poor John Ayliffe was strung up at Tyburn to shut his lips concerning the crimes of peculator Fox. Then, while they talk of the forged deed that brought the luckless agent to the gallows, a shudder may pass through the graceful limbs of artist William as he thinks what a small matter may take a man to the triple tree.

At other times two chairs will halt in Russell Street, and Ryland and architect John Gwynn, gorgeous in brocade frocks, satin knee-breeches, and silk stockings, will step out gaily, giving the order to their bearers in two significant monosyllables – ‘Carlisle House’ And among all the dazzling throng that crowds the salons of fair Therese Imer, alas for the worth of poor human nature! the one we know best – better, even, than the old maid in knickerbockers from Strawberry Hill – is a broad-limbed Italian, with frizzy hair and fierce nigger eyes; which same African-tinged gentleman moves through the company with much self-conscious play of robust leg, and a truculent stare, ogling such a one as half-draped Iphigenia Chudleigh, or making obeisance to buxom Caroline Harrington, while the whisper follows, keeping company the almost filial glance of pretty Sophy Cornelys – “The famous Casanova – it is the Chevalier de Seingalt.” Then, should Wynne Ryland draw close while the splendid blackguard babbles French to Milord Pembroke or Milord Baltimore, he will hear a dreadful tale of a certain Mademoiselle la Charpillon, who, to the eternal honour of her frail fame, has humiliated the sooty rascal to his native gutter. Wynne Ryland and companion John are very fond of these light and airy assemblies in Soho Square.

For the clever engraver his connoisseur Majesty seems to foster a great regard. Possibly, the proof prints of Wille – ‘fit for a king’ – have been picked up for an old song, and tickle his thrifty soul. At all events, he is pleased to grant to the artist a most amazing royal boon; for, at his intercession, he – the third George, by the grace of God – actually pardons a capital felon. A ne’er-do-weel rascal this same poor felon, so tradition relates, but all the same he is Wynne Ryland’s own brother. Near Brentford, or upon breezy Hounslow Heath, or some such fashionable highwayman resort, in a drunken frolic – after the fashion of Silas Told’s respited friend David Morgan – he calls upon two unprotected females to stand and deliver. And for this same daring frolic the rash Richard Ryland is taken, tried, and handed over to Jack Ketch. And Jack soon would have made short work of Richard if the favourite engraver to the King had not moved the royal bowels to compassion. For, incredible though it may seem, his Majesty does turn his thumb to the side of mercy, and brother Richard receives pardon; after which exertion the royal bowels remain obdurate for all time.

At last the regal portrait is finished, hanging in state upon the walls of the ‘Great Room’ belonging to the excellent Incorporated Society, when it opens its exhibition on the 22nd of April 1767. The artist is now a resident in Stafford Row, close to the Green Park, or, rather, as he prefers to particularise his address, ‘near the Queen’s Palace,’ upon whose picture, with the slumbering baby Princess in her arms, he is engaged. His portrait by Pierre Falconet, drawn during the next year, shows him a man in the prime of life, with clean-cut, delicate profile and a neat bob-wig tied by black ribbon, published by a dutiful pupil who trades as Bryer & Co. in Cornhill. This kind of trade, unhappily, has much allurement for Wynne Ryland, who, with his splendid monopoly of plates – the royal George, her maternal Majesty, the Modern Mæcenas with his shapely legs – seems to scent appetising profits. So Bryer & Co. becomes Ryland & Co., and any of the royal public who desire these regal portraits must purchase them from the proprietors at No. 27 Cornhill, near the Royal Exchange. Unhappily for this same No. 27, the public – enamoured of the Wilkes squint and disdaining the regal stare – do not treat these prints in the manner of hot cakes, and upon a fateful day in December 1771, No. 27 is in the hands of the broker’s men.

Early in the same year a strange thing happens in Ryland’s studio. A proud father brings along his fourteen-year-old son, a boy of splendid and weird genius, as the sequel shows – a sequel prolific in pictures of the immortal sheik struggling against his environment of sands and storms and improvidence, which, like his interpreter Blake, sheik Job, overwhelmed by tree-trunk legs and half a gale of beard, regards as the judgment of his God. But this weird boy with the large head and amazing eyes objects to the parental scheme of making him a pupil of the great engraver. “Father, I do not like the man’s face,” murmurs boy Blake, when the pair have left Ryland’s studio. “It looks as if he will live to be hanged!” “Prescience, intuition – all the things not dreamt of in thy philosophy,” babble his legatee mystics, bowing the knee to jaundiced mind as rapturously as to portraits of human abortions, aping verbal harmony of empty sound, plastering deformities with giraffe necks and swollen limbs in a wealth of muddy hair and a saffron skin – good and sedulous disciples. Boy Blake can have heard nothing of the brother Richard hanging-escape! Such a small affair has never been breathed by fond parents who go to entrust a weird son to brother Wynne! Prescience, intuition, are more potent physical instincts than the throb of suggestion or empiric thought. Thus clamour legatee mystics, spurning the simple mental machinery put into motion by the association of ideas.

It has been reserved for a lady of our own times, whose graceful pen has been devoted to the radiant prints of fair women of olden days, to tell the romantic story of poor, crushed, bankrupt Ryland and sweet feminine charity in the person of dove-eyed ‘Miss Angel’ A scene, alluring as any of the glowing old-world engravings, is this dainty-coloured picture painted by Mrs Frankau. Within the oak-panelled studio, through which the winter twilight is stealing in flickering shadows, the two ardent souls are wrapt in the communion of art. And while coy, diaphanous Angelica listens to the fascinating tongue of the virile, dark-skinned Welshman, her quick southern fancy whispers that this man is the knight-errant who shall write her fame amidst the stars. Ryland has come with a heart of lead; he goes away with a heart of gold. For one of the most famous of unions in the annals of painting has been sealed, and in a little while the prints after Kauffman will have captured the imagination of the whole world.

In a house in Queen’s Row, Knightsbridge, the great engraver commences one of those life-and-death struggles that genius alone can wage successfully against malicious fate. Gradually – for he is young and strong and brave, while the trust of a sweet woman warms his courage – he emerges from the choking atmosphere of debt. One by one his creditors are paid, and at last, free from his bankrupt chains, he is his own master. It is a fine work, this proud, independent cancelling of obligations – merely moral claims – a fair tribute to the lady who has been his tutelar divinity. For it is through his engravings of Miss Angel’s pictures, to which he applies the ‘stipple method’ which he learnt in France, that he wins his way back to fame and fortune. Soon he is a contributor to the newly-formed Royal Academy exhibition, sending very properly as his first works a couple of drawings copied from the canvas of the sylph Kauffman. Thus pass three sober years, while he perfects his new art, living with his young wife far from the delights of town and the old seductive companionship, first at Knightsbridge, and then moving a couple of miles further out into rural Hammersmith.

At last he resolves to tempt the grimy god of trade once more. Better assets are in his store than a salmon-profile king or maternal majesty, and he knows that the marketing bourgeois will not be hindered by squint of Wilkes from clamouring for his many pictures of Venus, beaming with the soft, dove-like eyes of pretty Miss Angel. So, in the third year after his bankruptcy, he hangs out his sign once more as an honest print-seller at No. 159 in the Strand, near Somerset House, by the corner of Strand Lane, trading as William Wynne Ryland, engraver to his Majesty. From the first the enterprise flourishes. Angelica’s plump little Cupids, drawn in rosy chalk, appeal in their suggestive resemblance to the heart of the British matron; the dainty Angelica Venus, with her large haunting eyes, becomes a pattern of female loveliness; Angelica’s mild and chaste interpretations of classic romance push aside all previous readings. More than all, the Kauffman pinks and yellows, transformed by the deft fingers of the wonderful Welshman into soft, rainbow-tinged impressions – like a delicate painting in water-colours – capture the public fancy. Such engravings never have been seen before, and never will be seen again. It is not strange that No. 159 in the Strand becomes one of the most popular print-shops in London.

During those nine years, from 1774 until the spring of 1783, the trade venture of the engraver to his Majesty continues to enjoy great prosperity. Profits reach the sum of two thousand a year, while stock and plant swell to a total of five figures. Few well-fobbed merchants, no chair-sporting City dame, can resist the temptations of that seductive window. A pleasant sight for Miss Angel, that little knot of open-mouthed shop-gazers with burning pockets, as she passes in hackney coach, a vision of clinging drapery in her white Irish polonese. While, if at that moment the happy proprietor steps out, bound for the counting-house of Sir Charles Asgill and his friend Mr Nightingale, with whom he is having some considerable bill of exchange transactions – a glimpse of those large eyes and crest of feathers at the coach window will bring down his laced hat in a sweep of obeisance, as he bows to the knees. Then, after the bankers have discounted all he wants, he will hurry off to Golden Square to show his Miss Angel the last impressions of some of her pictures, glowing in colours, or copied in the popular shade of red. Perhaps, one of these days, as he comes near the studio, a chair may stop as he passes, from which glides a beautiful lady, wearing a crown of glorious hair, brushed from her forehead, who rests her starry eyes upon him for a moment with a slight motion of her tiny rosebud lips. And his heart will beat more quickly as he recognises the woman whose radiant face has brought poor Daniel Perreau and his brother to a shameful death.

For Wynne Ryland’s conscience is becoming a heavy burden. In spite of his princely income, artistic improvidence is beginning to weigh him down. Over his soul the like spirit that swayed Sieur Boucher the incomparable reigns absolute. Gilded rooms, where the Eo. tables pave the road to ruin, swallow his guineas in their rapacious maw. His open hand scatters gold amidst his friends. Miss Angel, his patron saint, returns to her native land. Although he remains the kind husband and devoted father, the shadow of sin creeps over his roof-tree. A pretty girl, whose fresh young beauty has stolen his heart from the mother of his children, becomes a mistress who squanders his earnings faster than they are reaped. Those bill of exchange transactions with bankers Asgill and Nightingale grow more considerable. Friends and accommodators Ransome and Moreland often receive him in their counting-house, with his pockets full of crisp notes drawn upon the Honourable the East India Company of Leadenhall Street; for this clean, easy paper-credit is always welcomed as deposit for current coin.

At last comes the fatal crash, bursting over the town in a thunderclap, striking sorrow into the hearts of thousands. On the 3rd of April 1783, when the London merchant opens his newspaper —Morning Chronicle or Daily Advertiser– he reads there that William Wynne Ryland stands charged before the Right Hon. the Lord Mayor on suspicion of forging the acceptance of two bills of exchange for payment of £7114, with intent to defraud the United East India Company. Kind John Gwynn throws aside his plans of stately edifices, walking the streets with streaming eyes, sorrowing for his friend. Statuesque Domenico Angelo hurries to condole with poor Mary Ryland, and the sight of the agonised wife and children robs the good-hearted Italian swordsman of sleep. But the engraver had left his home at Knightsbridge on the first of the month, and although the City Marshal searches for him in the Old Bailey and in the Minories, nothing is heard of him for fourteen days.

On the morning of the 15th of April, a drunken woman reels into the ‘Brown Bear’ Bow Street, hiccupping an exciting story that entices the runners even from their pewter pots. She is the wife of a Stepney cobbler, who for many days has been harbouring a strange lodger – a man garbed in an old rusty coat, with green apron and worsted nightcap, who poses as invalid Mr Jackson who needs the country air; which same delicate invalid rests indoors all day, only venturing out after nightfall to enjoy the health-giving April east winds. But he is not Mr Jackson at all, babbles tipsy Mrs Cobbler Freeman, for, when taking one of his shoes to her husband to mend, she noticed a bit of paper pasted on the inside, and, tearing it away, she has seen written his real name – William Wynne Ryland. This is great news for the ‘Brown Bear’ runners, and Chief-officer Daly, accompanied by a fellow robin-redbreast, takes coach with Mrs Cobbler Freeman to Stepney Green.

From his garret window the guilty engraver beholds the coming of the bloodhounds. With a brief prayer for pardon he flies to his razor, and when the constables burst through the door they find him stretched upon the boards with a gash across his throat. Still, he has not cheated cruel fate. A surgeon staunches his wound, and watchers surround his bed lest he should seek to meet death once more. In the agony of that long night, while physical torture conquers even the deep, black pain of unutterable despair, the wretched sufferer atones for the sins of a lifetime. Yet on the morrow they take him rudely from his couch, and while the foul cobbler goes clamouring to the India House for his blood-money, Ryland is brought before Sir Sampson Wright, who sits in the place of blind John Fielding in the office at Bow Street. There he is given over to Governor Smith, who carries him to the Bridewell at Tothill Fields, where he lies for weeks sick almost unto death.

Newspaper canards spring up in wonted manner like mushrooms from a dunghill. Mr Ryland, who cannot recover – so they say – has confessed his crime to Sheriff Robert Taylor, naming also a pair of accomplices, and hints a third. As he cannot recover – so they say – Keeper Smith has a couple of men to watch him always, lest he should kill himself. Newspaper reason uses these odd arguments and more. Among the feasts of scandal crammed down the public gullet one fact is readily digested – Ryland is guilty beyond all refutation! Forged E.I.C. bills have been found in shoals – none but the great engraver could have been their author – he attempted self-murder because he was certain of conviction. All true, possibly; nay, probably, but where is the proof?

The trial of the poor sick artist skips a session. In tender mercy those in power do not shut him up in fetid, overcrowded Newgate, but allow him to remain under the watchful care of good Keeper Smith. His kind jailor does everything in his power to lighten his dreary lot, making him a trusted friend, allowing him to take walks with him in the open street, confident that he will not break his parole. It is not until the eve of the session that they drive him to the Old Bailey, around whose bloodstained walls he used to play with his brothers as a child.

On Saturday, the 26th of July, he is brought to face his accusers. Not until the last moment do Crown lawyers intimate the terms of indictment, for there are several forged bills laid to his charge, and, conviction appearing a matter of doubt, the Honourable E.I.C. wishes to be certain of its prey. So Crown lawyers select a minor charge – a small bill for £210 – which they assert Ryland has copied and engraved from a true document, uttering it knowing it to be forged. Both bills have been lately in the prisoner’s possession – this is made clear – but which is the counterfeit? A hard nut for Crown lawyers, since both are like as two peas. Unless they show that the first which Ryland had received is the true one, their case falls to the ground, for no man can copy what he has not seen. A breathless crowd, whose hearts are all for the man in the dock, watch the ghastly duel of keen wits, for it is death to one if he is vanquished. Witnesses come and go, but tierce and parry keep the defendant unscathed. Witnesses advance and retire, but Crown lawyers find them weak reeds. Banker Ammersley swears to his signature on the first bill, but this proves nothing, as Banker Ammersley’s autograph is not the seal of Company John. One Holt, late E.I.C. secretary, whose brain is not so clear as it was, makes a dismal display in the box, while the courage of Ryland’s friends mounts high. One Omer, E.I.C. clerk, tries to spot the true bill, but counsel Peckham involves him in a maze of legerdemain. All the gallant little host of well-wishers, who have drunk deeply of newspaper canards, and still more insidious City gossip, are amazed that Hicks’s Hall should have deemed such evidence worthy of a true bill – amazed, moreover, that their friend seems to have a chance of escape.

Suddenly the quick shadow of despair flits across the face of the prisoner. For a moment the brave, easy self-confidence leaves him naked to his enemies. Crown counsel Sylvester – who lives in fame as the judge of maiden Fenning – has played his last card, calling to the witness-box a calm, unemotional man of commerce, Mr Waterman of Maidstone, papermaker for twenty years. Then the reason of the Hicks’s Hall opinion is made clear. Papermaker Waterman brushes aside all doubts – he made the sheet upon which one of the bills is printed, recognising the marks of his moulds, distinguishable only by expert eye. Since this Maidstone Waterman is positive that the paper on which one of the E.I.C. acceptances is stamped did not reach London till May 1783, it is certain that the first bill which came into the possession of Ryland was the true one accepted by the Company. Thus two counts of the indictment are decided – the last bill is the spurious one, and it was uttered by the prisoner.

Yet what is the whole significance of this carefully accumulated evidence! Merely that an amazing forgery has been wrought, and that Ryland alone, who had the motive and the skill, possessed also the opportunity. Every heart within the crowded court is filled with pity for the accused man. Bankers Moreland and Ammersley, though called by the Crown, have striven to assist the defence. Prosecutors Sylvester, Rous, and Graham have shown no vindictive spirit. Even stripping Judge Buller – he who drew up a specification of rod for the benefit of wife-beaters – strives to find a “chasm in the evidence,” endeavouring to prove that the honourable servants of the E.I.C. have made a mistake. Finally, when this big-brained lady-whipping Buller comes to instruct the jury, he specially commends the prisoner’s defence – read by the clerk of arraigns, as poor Ryland’s throat is too sore for the effort – for its matter and good sense.

Then mercy hides her face, for the youthful judge lays down calmly the most astounding of eighteenth-century judicial dogmas. “It stands prisoner,” declares this Buller, “to show how he came by the bill in order to prove he did not know it to be forged.” So – musty old twiners of red tape – they cannot fasten the guilt upon the man, thus with impotent tu quoque they demand that he shall prove his innocence. Since they cannot rip him open in the witness-box, they shift their own burden upon his shoulders. Since he cannot prove his innocence, they deem him guilty, forgetting the good British legal converse of this proposition. Bewildered by judicial hair-splitting, the jury at last withdraw. No direct evidence convicts him – circumstances, prejudice rather, the whispered stories of numerous E.I.C. bills (forgeries all) that have passed through the hands of the engraver. If one indictment does not draw, others will follow – he had the motive, means, and opportunity, and he flew to his razor when the runners came to take him. Half an hour of such reasoning kneads the brains of jury into proper hanging shape, and they decide that to Tyburn the prisoner must go.

Quiet and brave, as he has been through his long trial, the man in the dock rises to his feet when his judges return. Courage is stamped on the strong, deep lines of his face, though the face is white as his soft ruffles, or as the snowy vest that lies beneath his russet coat. Coming forward, he listens calmly while they declare him guilty, bowing to the Bench. A thrill runs through the court when the foreman pronounces the dread word, but, though all hearts are throbbing with pain, one fond hope rises in every breast – that the power of a gracious king will rescue this erring genius from a shameful death. Also, the poor servant himself thinks first of his royal master; for as he is conducted back to loathsome Newgate, he tells the friends around him that, although he has been the victim of persecution, he can perceive a beam of mercy. Alas, he could not know his sovereign!

A week later the dreary session draws to a close, and Ryland is brought up again, and alone, before the rest of the convicts, to hear his sentence. Calmly and bravely he bears this ordeal like the last. Already two petitions have been presented at Windsor – one the day after he was condemned, the other on the thirtieth of the month. It is supposed that he will be kept alive for a while, since he has begged that his life may be preserved a little longer, not for his own sake, but that he may finish some plates for the benefit of his wife and children. Even the heart of royal George may have been touched by the piteous request. So the prisoner spends the gloomy days in toiling at his task, scraping the copper sheets with his stipple-graver, literally dying in harness. Nor is it inadequate work, for when his printer is allowed to bring him the proofs he is able to murmur with satisfaction, “Mr Haddrill, my task is finished!” Yet two pictures after all are left incomplete, one of which Bartolozzi, to whom he sends to beg the favour, and who owes him as a master of his craft so much, promises to take in hand, while jovial William Sharp polishes the other. For King George, when pressed once more to spare the poor artist because of his great genius, replies sternly – “No; a man with such ample means of providing for his wants could not reasonably plead necessity as an excuse for his crime.” Material logic, worthy of the man!

On Friday, the 29th of August, dawns the fatal morning. Before nine o’clock the outer Press Yard is overflowing with sight-seers; but because of Governor Akerman’s humane order, none are allowed within the smaller court to disturb the last moments of the unhappy sufferers. Presently the iron-studded door of the lodge is flung open, and Sheriff Taylor, bearing his wand of office, enters the prison to demand the bodies of his victims. Then through the expectant crowd the turnkeys slowly force a path, and down this narrow lane the malefactors walk one by one with hideous clank of fetters. On his knees beside a block of stone a creature with punch and hammer deftly rids them of their chains. Five times the strident blows echo through the vaulted walls, while as many unhappy wretches pass into the hands of the hangman’s lacqueys, busy with their bonds and cords. Last of all comes a slim, graceful figure, clad in a suit of mourning with white ruffles and silver shoe-buckles, unencumbered by chains, walking as unconcernedly as though he were a spectator of the scene. A shudder runs through the throng as all eyes rest upon the gifted artist, who, as he passes on, quietly salutes those friends whom he chances to recognise. With a respectful bow the Sheriff advances and leads the prisoner to the lodge, away from the crowded quadrangle.