DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.68074#0149
THE SECOND MARRIAGE 85
Why were they not married at the parish church of either ? Why was the
marriage announced as having taken place ‘ a few days since before it was
actually celebrated ? The lady was of age, and her fortune was clearly at her
own disposal; yet the misleading notice was sent to the press. Everything points
to opposition on the part of the Crosby family. The choice of church may per-
haps be accounted for by the fact that the then Vicar of St. Mary’s, the Rev.
Stephen Light Mott, who died on 22nd September of the same year, had been
appointed by Bishop Hough, on whose monument Roubiliac had lately been
engaged and with whose family he had been in touch; and as Roubiliac had
been obliged to borrow twenty pounds from Jonathan Tyers only eighteen
months before,1 and was always in money difficulties, the family opposition
which the facts seem to imply may have had more justification than a mere
dislike to the heiress marrying a professional man. The classic case of Mr.
Piozzi thirty years later may throw some light upon the way in which Roubi-
liac’s marriage with the beautiful Miss Crosby was probably regarded by her
family at a period when class distinctions were more rigid still.
And this is all we know of Elizabeth Roubiliac, who, like Catherine Magdalen
before her and Nicole Celeste after, fell in love with the Phidias of his age. But
his descendant, who had never heard of the earlier marriages, told me in 1923
that the Britannia of the Warren monument was a portrait of Roubiliac’s wife;
the features do not agree with the portrait of the third Mme. Roubiliac (Plate
xxn); and the date of the Warren monument is shortly after the mar-
riage with the beautiful Miss Crosby. The evidence therefore overwhelm-
ingly suggests that in the Britannia we have a portrait of Elizabeth
Roubiliac, and the fact gives that work a singular and touching interest. ‘ I
wish I could tell ’, says Allen Cunningham, ‘ where he found the original [of
this figure]; it is finely imagined and far more exquisitely handled.’ Its loveli-
ness is explained by the tradition that the original was Roubiliac’s second wife,
‘ a celebrated Beauty ’.
Whether she even survived her marriage more than a short time is very
doubtful. Her husband went to Italy in or about the end of September
of the same year, and she was alive in 1753 (p. 194); if she died that year
the Britannia, which cannot have been begun till after his return, since the
Admiral only died on 29th July, need be no difficulty, since the sculptor’s
1 The IOU was extant a century ago: Noll ekens, ii, p. 31.
‘June the gth 1750.
‘ I promise to pay Jona. Tyers, or order twenty pounds on demand, value received
£20. 00s. L. F. Roubiliac.’
Why were they not married at the parish church of either ? Why was the
marriage announced as having taken place ‘ a few days since before it was
actually celebrated ? The lady was of age, and her fortune was clearly at her
own disposal; yet the misleading notice was sent to the press. Everything points
to opposition on the part of the Crosby family. The choice of church may per-
haps be accounted for by the fact that the then Vicar of St. Mary’s, the Rev.
Stephen Light Mott, who died on 22nd September of the same year, had been
appointed by Bishop Hough, on whose monument Roubiliac had lately been
engaged and with whose family he had been in touch; and as Roubiliac had
been obliged to borrow twenty pounds from Jonathan Tyers only eighteen
months before,1 and was always in money difficulties, the family opposition
which the facts seem to imply may have had more justification than a mere
dislike to the heiress marrying a professional man. The classic case of Mr.
Piozzi thirty years later may throw some light upon the way in which Roubi-
liac’s marriage with the beautiful Miss Crosby was probably regarded by her
family at a period when class distinctions were more rigid still.
And this is all we know of Elizabeth Roubiliac, who, like Catherine Magdalen
before her and Nicole Celeste after, fell in love with the Phidias of his age. But
his descendant, who had never heard of the earlier marriages, told me in 1923
that the Britannia of the Warren monument was a portrait of Roubiliac’s wife;
the features do not agree with the portrait of the third Mme. Roubiliac (Plate
xxn); and the date of the Warren monument is shortly after the mar-
riage with the beautiful Miss Crosby. The evidence therefore overwhelm-
ingly suggests that in the Britannia we have a portrait of Elizabeth
Roubiliac, and the fact gives that work a singular and touching interest. ‘ I
wish I could tell ’, says Allen Cunningham, ‘ where he found the original [of
this figure]; it is finely imagined and far more exquisitely handled.’ Its loveli-
ness is explained by the tradition that the original was Roubiliac’s second wife,
‘ a celebrated Beauty ’.
Whether she even survived her marriage more than a short time is very
doubtful. Her husband went to Italy in or about the end of September
of the same year, and she was alive in 1753 (p. 194); if she died that year
the Britannia, which cannot have been begun till after his return, since the
Admiral only died on 29th July, need be no difficulty, since the sculptor’s
1 The IOU was extant a century ago: Noll ekens, ii, p. 31.
‘June the gth 1750.
‘ I promise to pay Jona. Tyers, or order twenty pounds on demand, value received
£20. 00s. L. F. Roubiliac.’