DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.68074#0248
XII
THE THIRD MARRIAGE, AND A NEW MEDIUM
‘ Madame Roubiliac ... a woman of superior cultivation and generous impulses.’—
Eliza Meteyard’s Life of Wedgwood.
IT is a signal instance of the irony of history that we know the dates of Roubi-
liac’s earlier marriages and nothing of his wives, and a great deal of his third
wife, Nicole Celeste Reignier, but nothing of his marriage. It must have taken
place before the early spring of 1760, since his second daughter was born in the
November of that year, probably in 1758 or 1759, since the birth of one child
was speedily followed by the expectation of another.
Reigniers and Regniers abound in the St. Martin’s Registers and Rate
Books, and Madame Roubiliac, as we learn from her husband’s will, kept on
her print-shop in Great Newport Street after their marriage, but I can find no
record of that marriage either in the Huguenot Registers or those of St.Martin’s-
in-the-Fields or St. Anne’s, Soho,1 nor did Roubiliac apply for an Archbishop’s
Licence, so that there is no Marriage Allegation to assist us. Probably they
were married at a Huguenot church whose records have been lost, that in
Berwick Street, Soho, perhaps, or that in Spring Gardens, to which her hus-
band went in 1744.
Be this as it may, with Nicole Celeste Reignier—the name is spelt Regnier
by the illiterate writer of her husband’s will, as by Lord Chesterfield and others,
but the double i has been retained by her descendants—we come to a real and
vivid personality, thanks to her portrait by Vispre (Plate xlv«), to family
tradition, and to the glimpse we get of her through Wedgwood’s visit in 1767.
The lithe and lively Gascon—the phrase is applied by Mrs. Raine Ellis to
Garrick, but is equally true of his friend Roubiliac—was extraordinarily
fortunate in his third wife, a woman of cultivation, of marked artistic tastes,
proud of her family history, and a devout Huguenot to the point of defying
English conventions, since her strong and shapely hands, covered by black
lace mittens, wear in her portrait no wedding ring. Such a pair of mittens,
found folded in a workbox belonging to Nicole Celeste’s grand-daughter, was
shown me by her descendant in 1923.
1 The Vicar, the Rev. G. C. Wilton, kindly had Marriage Allegations at Doctors’ Commons, I
them searched for me; the St. Martin’s Registers, have myself examined.
like those of the Huguenot churches, and the
THE THIRD MARRIAGE, AND A NEW MEDIUM
‘ Madame Roubiliac ... a woman of superior cultivation and generous impulses.’—
Eliza Meteyard’s Life of Wedgwood.
IT is a signal instance of the irony of history that we know the dates of Roubi-
liac’s earlier marriages and nothing of his wives, and a great deal of his third
wife, Nicole Celeste Reignier, but nothing of his marriage. It must have taken
place before the early spring of 1760, since his second daughter was born in the
November of that year, probably in 1758 or 1759, since the birth of one child
was speedily followed by the expectation of another.
Reigniers and Regniers abound in the St. Martin’s Registers and Rate
Books, and Madame Roubiliac, as we learn from her husband’s will, kept on
her print-shop in Great Newport Street after their marriage, but I can find no
record of that marriage either in the Huguenot Registers or those of St.Martin’s-
in-the-Fields or St. Anne’s, Soho,1 nor did Roubiliac apply for an Archbishop’s
Licence, so that there is no Marriage Allegation to assist us. Probably they
were married at a Huguenot church whose records have been lost, that in
Berwick Street, Soho, perhaps, or that in Spring Gardens, to which her hus-
band went in 1744.
Be this as it may, with Nicole Celeste Reignier—the name is spelt Regnier
by the illiterate writer of her husband’s will, as by Lord Chesterfield and others,
but the double i has been retained by her descendants—we come to a real and
vivid personality, thanks to her portrait by Vispre (Plate xlv«), to family
tradition, and to the glimpse we get of her through Wedgwood’s visit in 1767.
The lithe and lively Gascon—the phrase is applied by Mrs. Raine Ellis to
Garrick, but is equally true of his friend Roubiliac—was extraordinarily
fortunate in his third wife, a woman of cultivation, of marked artistic tastes,
proud of her family history, and a devout Huguenot to the point of defying
English conventions, since her strong and shapely hands, covered by black
lace mittens, wear in her portrait no wedding ring. Such a pair of mittens,
found folded in a workbox belonging to Nicole Celeste’s grand-daughter, was
shown me by her descendant in 1923.
1 The Vicar, the Rev. G. C. Wilton, kindly had Marriage Allegations at Doctors’ Commons, I
them searched for me; the St. Martin’s Registers, have myself examined.
like those of the Huguenot churches, and the