But the general impression he made on
you was that of a gentleman in a way of his own."
Blake died August 12th, 1827: he composed and uttered songs to his
Maker so sweetly to the ear of his Katherine, that when she stood
to hear him, he, looking upon her most affectionately, said: "My
beloved, they are not mine--no--they are not mine." He expired in his
sixty-ninth year, in the back room at Fountain Court, and was buried
in Bunhill Fields on the 17th of August, at the distance of about
twenty-five feet from the north wall, numbered 80.
[Illustration: Joseph Nollekens. From the _Life and Times_ by J. T.
Smith.]
Nollekens, the Sculptor.
Avarice would appear to have run in the blood of the Nollekens family.
"Old Nollekens," the father of Joseph, was "a miserably avaricious
man," and when, in the Rebellion of 1745, his house was attacked by the
mob, who thought themselves sure of finding money, the old man became
so terrified that he lingered in a state of alarm until his death.
Little Joey was described by Mrs. Scheemakers, the sculptor's wife,
as "so honest that she could always trust him to stone the raisins."
His love of modelling was his greatest pleasure, though he had an idle
propensity for bell-tolling; and whenever his master missed him, and
the dead-bell of St. James's church was tolling, he knew perfectly well
what Joey was at.
As Nollekens grew up, not unmindful of his art, he rose early
and practised carefully, and being a true son of his father, was
passionately fond of money. He was much employed as a shrewd collector
of antique fragments, some of which he bought on his own account; and
after he had dexterously restored them with heads and limbs, he stained
them with tobacco-water, and sold them for enormous sums.
When he returned from Rome, he succeeded as a smuggler of silk
stockings, gloves, and lace; all his plaster busts being hollow, he
stuffed them full of the above articles, and then spread an outside
coating of plaster at the back across the shoulders of each, so that
the busts appeared like solid casts. Pointing to the cast of Sterne,
Nollekens observed to Lord Mansfield: "There, do you know that bust,
my Lord, held my lace ruffles that I went to Court in when I came from
Rome."
His mode of living when at Rome was most filthy: he had an old woman
who was so good a cook, that she would often give him a dish for
dinner which cost him no more than threepence. "Nearly opposite to my
lodgings," he said, "there lived a pork-butcher who sold for twopence
a plateful of cuttings--bits of skin, gristle, and fat, and my old
lady dished them up with a little pepper and salt; and with a slice of
bread, and sometimes a bit of vegetable, I made a very nice dinner."
Whenever good dinners were mentioned after that, he was sure to say,
"Ay, I never tasted a better dish than my Roman cuttings."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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