DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.68074#0259
THE LAST WORKS 155
the whole set in a Gothic arch, Roubiliac’s one experiment in that manner.1
Jane Austen is perfectly right, though she is speaking of fat Mrs. Musgrove
and not of fat George Frederick Handel: ‘ Fair or not fair, there are unbecom-
ing conjunctions, which reason will patronize in vain, which taste cannot
tolerate, which ridicule will seize; ’ and among these unbecoming conjunctions
are Handel and the Heavenly Choir. But this admission does not affect the
value or the quality of the portrait itself, the last, and one of the best, he exe-
cuted.
It is only fair to say that contemporary opinion was much more favourable.
‘ This is the last Monument which that eminent Statuary Rubiliac lived to
finish ’, says Newbery’s Abbey Guide in 1764: ‘ It is affirmed that he first be-
came conspicuous, and afterwards finished the Exercise of his Art, with a
figure of this extraordinary Man. The first was erected in the Gardens of
Vaux-Hall, therefore well known to the Public. This last Figure is very ele-
gant, and the Face is a strong Likeness of the Original.’ It is said indeed to
have been executed from a mask taken by Roubiliac from the dead man’s
face, which had grown sadly coarse and fat since Vauxhall days; nor did the
sculptor live to see the monument in place. A cast of the head, probably one
of the many Handels sold in 1762, is in the Fitzwilliam Museum, and another,
which, as I am informed, has always stood on one of the cases made to house
the Royal collection of music, still stands there now that the collection is
housed in the British Museum.
When Addison’s monument by Westmacott was being set up by ‘ an army
of workmen ’ in 1809,4 A True Englishman ’ wrote to the Gentleman’s Magazine
to protest against its site, immediately below the Handel, ‘ who will actually
have the effect of standing upon the head of the new effort of sculpture—to
say nothing in the way of comparison about the abilities of Roubiliac or
Westmacott ’ (p. 136). ‘ J.C. ’ rather humorously replied in the next volume
(ii, p. 626) that as ‘ Roubiliac by his chisel has expressed the character of the
divine Handel, the Addison is perhaps, after all, in its appropriate station;
he was a humble man—his Sculptor is no less so ’. The juxtaposition is un-
questionably bad for both, but though Addison’s is the more visible, Roubiliac’s
work so dominates it as still to hold the post of honour.
One curious little anecdote of Roubiliac’s care for the appropriate rather
than the accurate is recorded by J. T. Smith. ‘ About the year 1794,1 had the
1 There is an admirable engraving of the monu- includes the tablet added at the time to record the
ment by Delattre, after a drawing by E. F. Handel Festival of 1785. Its pomposity of phrase
Burney in Charles Burney’s Account of the Musical is in curious contrast to the simplicity of the epitaph
Performances in Westminster Abbey (1785), which itself.
the whole set in a Gothic arch, Roubiliac’s one experiment in that manner.1
Jane Austen is perfectly right, though she is speaking of fat Mrs. Musgrove
and not of fat George Frederick Handel: ‘ Fair or not fair, there are unbecom-
ing conjunctions, which reason will patronize in vain, which taste cannot
tolerate, which ridicule will seize; ’ and among these unbecoming conjunctions
are Handel and the Heavenly Choir. But this admission does not affect the
value or the quality of the portrait itself, the last, and one of the best, he exe-
cuted.
It is only fair to say that contemporary opinion was much more favourable.
‘ This is the last Monument which that eminent Statuary Rubiliac lived to
finish ’, says Newbery’s Abbey Guide in 1764: ‘ It is affirmed that he first be-
came conspicuous, and afterwards finished the Exercise of his Art, with a
figure of this extraordinary Man. The first was erected in the Gardens of
Vaux-Hall, therefore well known to the Public. This last Figure is very ele-
gant, and the Face is a strong Likeness of the Original.’ It is said indeed to
have been executed from a mask taken by Roubiliac from the dead man’s
face, which had grown sadly coarse and fat since Vauxhall days; nor did the
sculptor live to see the monument in place. A cast of the head, probably one
of the many Handels sold in 1762, is in the Fitzwilliam Museum, and another,
which, as I am informed, has always stood on one of the cases made to house
the Royal collection of music, still stands there now that the collection is
housed in the British Museum.
When Addison’s monument by Westmacott was being set up by ‘ an army
of workmen ’ in 1809,4 A True Englishman ’ wrote to the Gentleman’s Magazine
to protest against its site, immediately below the Handel, ‘ who will actually
have the effect of standing upon the head of the new effort of sculpture—to
say nothing in the way of comparison about the abilities of Roubiliac or
Westmacott ’ (p. 136). ‘ J.C. ’ rather humorously replied in the next volume
(ii, p. 626) that as ‘ Roubiliac by his chisel has expressed the character of the
divine Handel, the Addison is perhaps, after all, in its appropriate station;
he was a humble man—his Sculptor is no less so ’. The juxtaposition is un-
questionably bad for both, but though Addison’s is the more visible, Roubiliac’s
work so dominates it as still to hold the post of honour.
One curious little anecdote of Roubiliac’s care for the appropriate rather
than the accurate is recorded by J. T. Smith. ‘ About the year 1794,1 had the
1 There is an admirable engraving of the monu- includes the tablet added at the time to record the
ment by Delattre, after a drawing by E. F. Handel Festival of 1785. Its pomposity of phrase
Burney in Charles Burney’s Account of the Musical is in curious contrast to the simplicity of the epitaph
Performances in Westminster Abbey (1785), which itself.