FullReads

After these come the advertisements of the Quack Doctors. Of the account of belles-lettres in 1754, two years after Amelia and in the actual year of Sir Charles Grandison, M. Rouquet’s report is not flattering:–“The presses of England, made celebrated by so many masterpieces of wit and science, now scarcely print anything but miserable and insipid romances, repulsive volumes, frigid and tedious letters, where the most tasteless puerility passes for wit and genius, and an inflamed imagination exerts itself under the pretext of forming manners.” It is possible that the last lines are aimed at Richardson; certainly they describe the post-Richardsonian novel. But that the passage does not in any part refer to Fielding is clear from the fact that the writer presently praises Joseph Andrews, coupling it with Gil Blas.

Mezzotint, Gem-cutting, Chasing (which serves to bring in M. Rouquet’s countryman, Moser), Jewelry, China, ( i.e. Chelsea ware) are all successfully treated with more or less minuteness, while, under Architecture, are described the eighteenth-century house, and the new bridge at Westminster of another Swiss, Labelye, who is not named: “The architect is a foreigner,” says Rouquet, who considered he had been inadequately rewarded. “It must be confessed (he adds drily) that in England this is a lifelong disqualification.” From Architecture the writer passes to the oratory of the Senate, the Pulpit and the Stage. In the last case exception is made for ” le celebre M. Garic,” whose only teacher is declared to be Nature. As regards the rest, M. Rouquet thus describes the prevailing style:–“The declamation of the English stage is turgid, full of affectation, and perpetually pompous. Among other peculiarities, it frequently admits a sort of dolorous exclamation,–a certain long-drawn tone of voice, so woeful and so lugubrious that it is impossible not to be depressed by it.” This reads like a recollection of Quin in the Horatio of Rowe’s Fair Penitent.

Upon Cookery M. Rouquet is edifying; and concerning the eighteenth-century physician, with his tye-wig and gilt-head cane, sprightly and not unmalicious. But we must now confine ourselves to quoting a few detached passages from this discursive chronicle. The description of Ranelagh (in the chapter on Music) is too lengthy to reproduce. Here is that of the older Vauxhall:–“The Vauxhall concert takes place in a garden singularly decorated. The Director of Amusements in this garden [Jonathan Tyers] gains and spends successively considerable annual sums. He was born for such enterprises. At once spirited and tasteful, he shrinks from no expense where the amusement of the public is concerned, and the public, in its turn, repays him liberally. Every year he adds some fresh decoration, some new and exceptional scene. Sculpture, Painting, Music, bestir themselves periodically to render this resort more agreeable by the variety of their different productions: in this way opportunities of relaxation are infinite in England, above all at London; and thus Music plays a prominent part. The English take their pleasure without amusing themselves, or amuse themselves without enjoyment, except at table, and there only up to the point when sleep supervenes to the fumes of wine and tobacco.”

Elsewhere M. Rouquet, like M. le Blanc before him, is loud in his denunciation of the pitiful practices of Vails-giving, which blocks the vestibule of every English house with an army of servants “ranged in line, according to their rank,” and ready “to receive, or rather exact, the contribution of every guest.” The excellent Jonas Hanway wrote a pamphlet reprehending this objectionable custom. Hogarth steadily set his face against it; but Reynolds is reported to have given his man L100 a year for the door. Here, from another place, is a description of one of those popular auctions, at which, in the Marriage A-la-Mode, my Lady Squanderfieid purchases the bric-a-brac of Sir Timothy Babyhouse, The scene is probably Cock’s in the Piazza at Covent Garden:–“Nothing is so diverting as this kind of sale–the number of those assembled, the diverse passions which animate them, the pictures, the auctioneer himself, his very rostrum, all contribute to the variety of the spectacle. There you see the faithless broker purchasing in secret what he openly depreciates; or–to spread a dangerous snare–pretending to secure with avidity a picture which already belongs to him. There, some are tempted to buy; and some repent of having bought. There, out of pique and bravado, another shall pay fifty louis for an article which he would not have thought worth five and twenty, had he not been ashamed to draw back when the eyes of a crowded company were upon him. There, you may see a woman of condition turn pale at the mere thought of losing a paltry pagoda which she does not want, and, in any other circumstances, would never have desired.”

A closing word as to M. Rouquet himself. The Etat des Arts was duly noticed by the critics–contemptuously by the Monthly Review, and sympathetically by the Gentleman’s and the Scots Magazine. In 1755, the year to which it belongs, its author put forth another work– L’Art Nouveau de la Peinture en Fromage ou en Ramequin [toasted cheese], invente pour suivre le louable projet de trouver graduellement des facons de peindre inferieures a celles qui existent. This, as its title imports, is a skit, levelled at the recent Histoire et Secret de la Peinture en Cire of Diderot, who nevertheless refers to Rouquet under Email, in the Dictionnaire Encyclapedique, as ” un homme habile.” He seems, however (like ” la peinture a l’huile ),” to have been somewhat ” difficile “; and as we have said, his discoveries (for he had that useful element in enamel-work, considerable chemical knowledge), like Zincke’s, perished with him. Several of his portraits, notably those of Cochin and Marigny, were exhibited at the Paris Salons. Whether he was overparted, or overworked, in the Pompadour atmosphere; or whether he succumbed to the “continual headache” of which he speaks in his letter to Hogarth, his health gradually declined. In the last year of his life, his reason gave way; and when he died in 1759, it was as an inmate of Charenton.