GAINSBOROUGH'S LIFE IN LONDON--LAST YEARS AND DEATH Gainsborough was forty-seven years of age when he came to settle definitely in London; his genius had reached the highest point of its development. This new change of scene, great and important though it was, cannot be looked upon as being by any means so risky an experiment as his move from Ipswich to Bath. He had by this time a firmly established connection, and it must not be forgotten that in those days Bath was a highly fashionable watering-place, bearing to London very much the same relation as the French Riviera does at the present time. Everybody who was anybody socially in the capital was a more or less frequent visitor to Bath, and Gainsborough during his stay there had ample opportunities to make acquaintances which were bound to stand him in good stead when he came to London. Thicknesse, however, even after their quarrel, could not refrain from sending him forth once more under his particular patronage; he wrote to Lord Bateman, a peer of little influence or importance, asking him "for both our sakes to give him countenance and make him known, that being all which is necessary." This sort of thing was probably quite superfluous, for Gainsborough was by this time fully capable of holding his own even in London. Still it remains on record that Lord Bateman did do his best for him, and himself acquired several of his pictures. On their first arrival in London the Gainsboroughs took quarters north of the Oxford Road; a more central and more fashionable neighbourhood was, however, necessary to the painter, and he very soon removed to Schomberg House in Pall Mall. This house, which was built by the Duke of Schomberg towards the end of the seventeenth century, was at this time the property of the eccentric and mediocre painter John Astley, a fellow pupil with Reynolds under Hudson. From Astley Gainsborough rented a third of the house at £300 a year, showing that he had from the first no anxiety as to his success in the metropolis. An interesting circumstance in relation to this house is that some seven years later another portion of it was occupied by the quack Dr. Graham, who installed there his Temple of Health. In some of the strange and not very legitimate ceremonies carried on in this "Temple," the part of goddess of health was played by none other than Emma Lyon or Hart, who was destined to become so famous as the lovely Lady Hamilton. Gainsborough must have met her, and although we have no actual portrait from his hand of this wonderfully beautiful creature, it is suggested by Sir Walter Armstrong that she may have sat for the picture of "Musidora" in the National Gallery, one of the very rare attempts at the nude which Gainsborough is known to have made. PLATE VI.--THE DUCHESS OF DEVONSHIRE (In the collection of Earl Spencer, K.G.)