Some Old Time Beauties | Page 6

with facility, all gradations of passion and niceties of feeling. Emma took pride and pleasure in serving Romney. He repeated to his friend, the poet Hayley, her request, that in the biography of the painter, Hayley would have much to say of her. One of his earliest classical conceptions painted from her, was a full length of Circe with her wand. Following this was a "Sensibility," which became the property of Hayley. Though we remember Romney chiefly in connection with his Lady Hamiltons, yet he had acquired his reputation and much fortune ere he met her. The great bulk of his portrayals of the nobility preceded his classical subjects, which took form from his superb model. She was Cassandra; she was Iphigenia, St. C?cilia, Bacchante, Calope, The Spinstress, Joan of Arc, The Pythian Princess Calypso, and Magdalene,--the two latter subjects painted to order for the then Prince of Wales.
Allan Cunningham has this to say in his sketch of Romney's life: "A lady in the character of a saint. This sort of flattery, once so prevalent with painters, is now nearly worn out: we have now no Lady Betty's enacting the part of Diana; no Lady Jane's tripping it barefoot among the thorns and brambles of this weary world, in the character of Hebe. We have none now who either 'sinner it or saint it' on canvas; the flattery which the painter has to pay is of a more scientific kind,--he has to trust alone to the truth of his drawing and the harmony of his colors."
Romney was a transgressor in this way at times; but Lady Hamilton's form was used to impart correct form to the conceptions of the painter,--not the theme used merely to exploit the beauty of the lady. In the exhibition of fair women in the Grafton Gallery in London this summer, she greeted us in the guise of Ariadne. In this the painter's use of the title was apt and justifiable. Here is the lady wholly clothed in the dress of the time,--a dress superb in its simplicity; but her pose and mien is indicative of the forsaken, the forlorn, despairing woman abandoned by her lover,--the fate of which the old story of the Greeks is the eternal epitome. The pathos of the pose, it may have been, as well as the classic face, allured the wanderer in the galleries, and anchored him before this canvas.
The fame of Romney has steadily risen in the several generations from the beginning to the end of the century. Though the painter of many men of fame and ladies of fashion, his work was not held in the greatest regard in his lifetime. Though often spoken of as the rival of Reynolds, he had not the president's grasp of character or his ability in giving classic grace to the dress of the period, and he was never admitted as a member to the Academy.
When Lady Hamilton commenced posing for him, he, perhaps wisely for his fame, reduced the number of his ordinary sitters, receiving none until afternoon. The picturing of what he termed "her divine beauty" became a passion with him; and the enthusiasm of the sitter was nearly as great as that of the painter, and she enacted his classic conceptions. The result is a superb series of pictures of faultless female form, and loveliness of feature. Of the model's immoral career we have naught now to do. Here is perpetual beauty, and it is ours to enjoy.

[Illustration: MRS SHERIDAN by REYNOLDS]
ST. C?CILIA
There are few names more associated with the brilliant days of Bath, the days of its social and artistic prominence, than those of Thomas Linley, the composer, and of his daughter, Eliza Anne, known abroad as "the Fair Maid of Bath." Linley was born there, in 1735; and after his studies in music on the Continent, under Paradies, he returned to the then fashionable city on the Avon. He conducted oratorios and concerts there, and became a power in the community. Delicacy, tenderness, simplicity, and taste were the characteristics of his compositions. It was said of him, that as Garrick had restored Shakspeare, so Linley has restored the sublime music of Handel. He trained his family to take part in the performances. His son Thomas, born in 1756, developed a marvellous ability in music,--playing the violin with great brilliancy and expression. He was the friend of Mozart, and took at times his father's place as conductor of the oratorios. His career was cut short by drowning, in 1778.
But it was his beautiful daughter Eliza, born in 1754, who made the sensation of the time, when she sang with her sister, afterwards Mrs. Tickell. "A nest of nightingales," the family was termed. Walpole writes, in 1773: "I was not at the ball last night, and have only been