The picture, which has Fuseli’s dark notes of the supernatural, is based on a German fairy tale in which Undine, a water spirit, meets the knight, Huldebrand in the fisherman’s house and marries him so that she can gain a soul. The tale also fascinated Wainewright, two of the pictures he exhibited at the Academy - in 1821 and 1823 - were based upon the story.
Fuseli also produced highly-erotic drawings, as did other Regency artists, including J M W Turner.2 Wainewright’s own sepia line and wash Lady passing two lovers on a bank embracing is
2. The prissy art critic John Ruskin, Turner’s executor, going through the artist’s effects in 1858, was horrified to discover a large number of highly erotic paintings and drawings. He maintained that he had made a bonfire of them as Turner was obviously insane when he did them. However in 2005 large numbers of them were identified in the Tate Britain archive.
JOHN PRICE WILLIAMS
47
in the Print Room of the British Museum.3 The Dictionary of National Biography refers to it sniffily as “coarse and indelicate, but by no means lacking in technical skill”.
It probably formed part of a portfolio he had of such drawings, done for the benefit of his friends. Lamb’s biographer Talfourd reported that these sketches “trembled on the borders of indelicate”. Carew Hazlitt called them exquisite delineations of the female form, which, regarded from an unprofessional point of view, might have been characterised as decidedly erotic and reminded him of the “famous leg-comparing episode” in the memoirs of the Duc de Grammont.4
Wainewright was a passionate collector of rare books, prints and objets d’art, which he itemised at length in one of his essays as “Janus’s Jumble”. “My tables groan with the weight of volumes of Raffaëlle, Michel Angelo, Rubens, Poussin, Parmegiano, Giulio &c. &c. and the massive portfolio cases open wide their doors, disclosing yet fresh treasures within”. The binding of one of the books alone cost him 12 guineas (nearly £1.500). There was a small Book of Hours, a Christian devotional book said to have belonged to Anne Boleyn, studded with brilliants
3. Period VI, vol 79
4. The French King Charles II and his court, having little else to do, were discussing the short and thick legs of Lady Chesterfield, when the King persuaded a Miss Stuart to raise her skirt above the knee for comparison purposes, “which she did with the greatest imaginable ease “. Most were ready to prostrate themselves to adore their beauty, Grammont reported. Hamilton, A. Memoirs of the Court of Charles the Second. Bohn, London, 1846.
THE FATAL CUP
48
and rubies. There are lists of other precious objects, bronzes, prints and fine furniture.
But where had all the money come from for this treasure trove?
JOHN PRICE WILLIAMS
49
CHAPTER 5
THE BANK OF ENGLAND SWINDLED!
An income of £250 a year from the trust fund allowed for a fairly expansive lifestyle, compared with the wages of less than a fifth of that on which artisans and manual workers were bringing up families. But for Wainewright and Eliza, grandfather Ralph’s grudging benison was never going to be enough. Money was to be begged, borrowed and stolen to fund their huge expenses.
In 1821, they had moved to one of central London’s most fashionable addresses, Great Marlborough Street, laid out in the early 18th Century, “inhabited all by fine Quality” and “one of the finest streets in Europe”1. At No.49, where they took an apartment, had lived the both the Earls of Sutherland and of Bute, and the actress Sarah Siddons.
It was a large four-storey building divided into apartments around a square central well around which rose an elegant staircase. The Wainewrights appear to have rented the apartment on the top floor, for he talks in one of his essays of “Janus’s
1. Survey of London. London County Council, 1963. Vol xxxxi, p.24. The area became known for its artists. At No. 49 In 1834, was another painter and exhibitor at the Academy, one A. Morton, followed by Charles Hullmandel, artist and print-maker. Later it became the Fine Arts Institute Nos. 49 and 50 were demolished in 1884 to make way for the church of St John the Baptist which itself was demolished in 1937. There is now an office block on the site.
THE FATAL CUP
50
boudoir”, an octagon of 13 feet in diameter into which the light streams though rosy panes in the dome above, there being no other windows. Not a sound from the street reaches it. The walls are covered with very rich crimson French paper, formed into panels with gold mouldings and the oak floor is spread with a glowing Persian carpet on which rests a pomona-green Morocco chaise-longue. In this room are all his treasures.
Was Wainewright in these descriptions exaggerating his sybaritic lifestyle and striving for effect? Possibly, but there was no doubt about his extravagance. “Far from being prudent and thrifty, he loved carriages, majolica, rare prints, wines of unusual vintages, servants in livery and other sweet impoverishments”, wrote Carew Hazlitt disapprovingly.
It was at Great Marlborough Street that he entertained lavishly his literary and artistic friends and lived the life of a London dilettante which he related in one of his essays:
I enter with great gusto into the amusements of town. I see all new exhibitions; hear all new singers; frequent the sacred Argyll, the Cyder Cellar, the Opera, Long’s, Colnaghi’s and the Coal Hole. I rummage carefully the catalogue...for old bokes (sic), write articles and inspect one magazine (the London).
But the cost of high living in a lavish apartment in the heart of London’s West End and his magpie acquisition of expensive objets d’art was leading to crushing debts. Wainewright’s only income other
JOHN PRICE WILLIAMS
51
than the interest from his grandfather’s will was and whatever pittance he got for his occasional writings and articles in the London Magazine. His last article had appeared in January 1823.
To pay off his debts and to continue funding his extraordinary lifestyle he took the first step in an audacious fraud that was to lead to his banishment to the other end of the world.
On May 12, 1823, he went into the Bank of England with a power of attorney that entitled him to withdraw a lump sum of £2,250 in New 4% annuities from the trust fund left by his grandfather. The annuities had been converted only ten days previously from the original Navy 5% of £5,000 and were now worth £5,250.
But the power of attorney was completely bogus and the signatures of the three trustees - all his relations - were forged by Wainewright, as were the made-up names and signatures of the witnesses to the signing of the power of attorney.
The document2 said that Robert Wainewright of Grays Inn, Edward Smith Foss of Essex Street, Strand and Edward Foss of Russell Square “all in Middlesex, Esquires” had appointed Thomas Griffiths Wainewright of Great Marlborough Street, Artist, as their attorney to sell, assign and transfer all or any part of the £2,250. One of the Bank’s clerks, a Mr Catteron, witnessed the transfer and half of his grandfather’s bequest was handed over.
Wainewright was to argue later, quite speciously, that it was his money after all and he was entitled
2. National Archives. Crim4/64
THE