Charlemont, James Caulfeild, 4th Viscount
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- Charlemont, James Caulfeild, 4th Viscount
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(1728 - 99), 1st surv. s. of 3rd Vct. Charlemont [I]; suc. fa. 1734 as 4th Vct.; FRS and FSA 1755; Dilettanti 1756; cr. E. of Charlemont [I] 1763; m. 1768 Mary Hickman; c.-in-c. Irish Volunteers; KP 1783.
1747 - 54 [dep.The Hague Jun. 1747] Turin (by Sep. 1747 - 27 Oct. 1748), Bologna, Rome, Naples, Leghorn (Mar. - Apr. 1749), Messina (6 May) [Greece, Constantinople, Egypt, Asia Minor] Rome (Mar. - Apr. 1750), Turin (May - Jun.), Rome (summer 1750 - May 1751), Siena, Lucca (by 26 Sep.), Rome (by Nov. 1751 - Oct. 1752), Naples (Oct. 1752 - Jun. 1753), Rome ( - Jan. 1754), Florence (Mar. - Apr. 1754), Turin (Jun.), Vicenza (by Aug. 1754), Verona [London, Jan. 1755]
On 8 August 1746 the 4th Earl of Chesterfield wrote his recommendation of 'a young Irish Nobleman of very good Estate who is or soon will be at the Hague'.1 Charlemont, with his tutor Edward Murphy, had set out from Dublin on 19 July.2 After a prolonged stay in The Hague, Charlemont was persuaded by Murphy to follow the advice of the 4th Earl of Sandwich and move on to Turin, where he enrolled at the Royal Academy in October 1747 for a year. He began to make plans for a Levantine voyage and was encouraged by his fellow student, the Crown Prince, Duke of Savoy. King Charles Emmanuel III granted leave to the court architect, G.B. Borra, to go to Constantinople with Charlemont the following year.
While he was in Turin Charlemont met David Hume who presumed to consider himself a rival in a love affair; Charlemont thought his appearance 'far better suited to communicate the idea of a turtle-eating Alderman than of a refined philosopher'. An Irish friend, Francis Pierpoint Burton, was also at Turin with his tutor Alexander Scott, and Charlemont asked him to join his proposed expedition, offering to lend him the money to do so; they agreed to meet at Leghorn in March 1749, and meanwhile Charlemont and Murphy left Turin on 27 October 1748 for Bologna, Rome and Naples. Charlemont was one of those who 'liberally subscribed'3 to Stuart and Revett's Proposal for publishing an Accurate Description of the Antiquities of Athens [1748] and the goal of Charlemont's voyage then became Athens rather than Constantinople.
In March 1749 he heard at Leghorn that Borra had withdrawn from the expedition but the King had ordered him 'to make duplicates of all plans he took for you'.4 His expedition set sail in a chartered frigate which on 6 May reached Messina. Here Charlemont studied the effects of the plague which had ravaged the city in 1743 and compared eye-witness accounts with those of Thucydides concerning the plague of Athens.5 They met Richard Dalton in Sicily and it was agreed that he should join the expedition as draughtsman. After many adventures, which included the rediscovery of the lost site of Halicarnassus and the friezes from the Mausoleum at Bodrum, as well as viewing the antiquities of Athens ahead of Stuart, Charlemont and Murphy were back in Rome in March 1750.
Now a key figure in the developing Graeco-Roman controversy, Charlemont claimed the attention of scholars and antiquarians, Benedict XIV and the Cardinals Passionei and Albani. The doors of the Roman nobility were opened to him, but it was in the company of his fellow grand tourists that he spent his time. He and Lord Bruce of Tottenham, having little better to do, decided they were in love with Eugenia Peters. Philip Stanhope was also a frequent visitor at her lodgings, but in view of her rather doubtful background it did not occur to them that he might consider marrying her (which he did nine years later). The wedding of the Duke of Savoy intervened and when Charlemont returned from Turin Eugenia and her mother had left Rome, with Stanhope travelling in the same direction.
In the summer of 1750 Charlemont made his first essays in patronage, commissioning views of Tivoli from Patch6 and giving other commissions to G.B. Maini and Simon Vierpyl. During the wet winter and spring of 1750 - 1, when the craze for caricatura was at its height, Charlemont appeared with Joseph Leeson junior in a drawing by P.L. Ghezzi (Philadelphia MA), in Reynolds's Parody of the School of Athens and in a musical group also by Reynolds, with Sir Thomas Kennedy, John Ward and Richard Phelps, each disporting their national emblems, Charlemont with a bunch of shamrock in his hat (both pictures NGI).7 Richard Phelps came to admire Charlemont ('few who have made so great & universal use of their travels') and he became 'sufficiently employed in being his Lordship's Amanuensis'.8 He also became the manager of Charlemont's musical and masquing society who planned a 'Grand Coup d'Eclat' for the Carnival. Phelps and Charlemont designed a Triumph of British Liberty - a three-decker car painted with emblems of the House of Hanover and drawn by four horses abreast, carrying nineteen figures in symbolic dress, among them Charlemont as Minerva presiding over the Arts and Sciences; Lord Bruce as Liberty, and Lord Middleton [Midleton], Ward and Kennedy as Patriotism, Virtue & Truth. Phelps himself played Brittania, 'because', he explained, 'I looked the jolliest of the Company'.8 The authorities, however, banned the exercise on the grounds that four horses abreast were dangerous in narrow streets. Charlemont was still in Rome on 12 April when Benjamin Lethieullier promised to pay him forty guineas if he were the first of the two to marry.
That summer he made a lengthy excursion with Lord Bruce, visiting near Siena the castrato Senesino who recalled his sensational success in London and showed them round his villa and gardens which were in the English taste; 'Ecce la Providenza Inglese' he crowed, and condescended to entertain them with a song.9 They were at Lucca on 26 September, when they made a wager on the longevity of acquaintances and friends. By November 1751 Charlemont was back in Rome for the celebrations of the birth of the Dauphin given by the French ambassador, the duc de Nivernois. At Easter 1752 and 1753 Charlemont was listed as lodging in the Strada della Croce with four Italian servants, his Irish valet Barney, and one 'Gio: Bacca Inglese' and with Murphy as Major Domo.(10) That April (1752) he made a wager with Sir Thomas Kennedy on a horse race to be run on the Island of Man three years later.
The Academy promoted by Charlemont for the encouragement of English students of sculpture and painting was founded in Rome on 11 May 1752. A subscription had been started, pensions were to be provided for needy students, and John Parker, Charlemont's agent, was appointed the first Director. Charlemont stayed in Rome in June while his friends went off to Naples; the Marchese Gabrielli presented him with a table cut from mosaic paving which he had excavated at Hadrian's Villa.(11) In the autumn Charlemont suffered the first attack of an illness which would periodically incapacitate him for the rest of his life; the duc de Nivernois visited the invalid, who had recovered by December. On 18 October 1752 he had been in Capua with John Parker, indicating a visit to Naples; he probably spent the winter there since he was again passing through Capua, this time with Edward Murphy and George Potter, on 14 June 175312 (although he had been listed as living at Rome at Easter that year, see above).
Charlemont then appears to have stayed in Rome for the remainder of 1753. His patronage of artists flourished; he brought Chambers into prominence with the fashionable set; he sat to Batoni for a half-length (Clark/Bowron 190; YCBA) and a whole-length portrait (untraced), finally completed in 1756; he acquired a copy of the Medici Venus from Joseph Wilton, and from Simon Vierpyl The Fighting Gladiator, bronze busts of Brutus, Pompey and Caesar, and a sculpted frame for a relief of Venus by Guglielmo della Porta. Later, in March 1754, Charlemont was permitted to export from Rome two pictures and a number of marbles (including a copy of Homer's bust in the Farnese, and a 'rittratto di signora inglese').(13) He was also buying books, medals and prints and had unspecified dealings with Borrioni, with whom he regularly fraternised. Charlemont was pleased to accept Piranesi's offer of the dedication of his Antichita Romane, then proposed as a single volume; he met the artist once and then seemed to lose interest.
In October 1753 he was again ill and he left Rome rather hurriedly in January or February 1754 in circumstances which gave rise to a rumour that he had been poisoned by a jealous woman.14 Charlemont later charged Robert Wood (who was travelling to Rome with the 3rd Duke of Bridgewater) to act as his emissary with the woman concerned.15 George Potter meanwhile wrote a whimsical letter to him at Turin from Rome (2 March 1754) declaring him 'dead', but believing he had departed 'this here world' in 'odeur de Saintete'.16 The Abb? Grant, under instructions from Charlemont, settled the debts which had hindered Potter's departure from Rome and told Charlemont that 'George will soon be beating up your Lordship's lodgings'.17 Charlemont was still at Turin in June when his stepfather, Thomas Adderley, wrote to offer him a small estate outside Dublin [later called Marino]; Charlemont accepted this gift by September and on 10 October Parker asked Luigi Vanvitelli at Caserta for designs for a 'Palazzetto abitibile' at Marino.18
Before he left he visited Vicenza and Verona. He was measuring the Villa Rotunda at Vicenza with Murphy in August,19 and it would have been at this time that he also visited the Marchese Scipione Maffei at Verona. 'I had the unmerited honour of assisting at an Academy which met there weekly under his auspices', Charlemont wrote; 'the Assembly consisted of the Principal Literati of the City, and its neighbourhood, many of whom brought with them Essays, written during the previous week, which were read to the Society'. The Marchese gave him 'a quarto edition of his Merope, together with translations of the same into French and English ... in many places corrected by his own Hand'.
Travelling by way of the south of France from N?mes to Barcelona and Bordeaux (where he visited Montesquieu at La Brede), Charlemont went to Paris and with Murphy and Potter arrived in London in January 1755.
He had left in Italy several unfinished commissions, with which Murphy dealt, owing largely to Charlemont's rheumatism which at times prevented him from lifting a pen. A letter from Piranesi, complaining of Parker's conduct in Rome and seeking money, went unanswered and there were charges that Murphy had Charlemont's seal and forged his hand. Piranesi then published his letter and defaced the dedicatory plates of his Antichita Romane. Only in March 1758 did Piranesi gave a reluctant recantation to the governor of Rome.20 Charlemont's other Roman contacts were more equable: Vierpyl came to Dublin to work at Marino, where the Casino was designed by Chambers.
1. HMC 14th Rpt., 9:149. 2. See HMC Charlemont, 1: and letters and essays in the RIA. 3. Antiquities of Athens, ed. J. Woodside, [1816], 4:xxiii. 4. Charlemont MSS, 12.R.9, 7 (C. Douglas to Charlemont, 5 Mar. 1749). 5. Ibid., 12.R.7, 463 - 85. 6. Patch 1940, 17. 7. O'Connor 1983, 5 - 22. 8. NLW, Harpton Court MSS, 2673 - 5 (Phelps, 30 Mar.[1751]). 9.
Charlemont MSS, 12.R.5, 56. 10. AVR SA, S.Lorenzo in Lucina. 11. Wicklow MSS (J. Russel, 6 Jun. 1752). 12. ASN cra 1257. 13. Bertolotti, 4:82. 14. Public Characters of 1798,
[Dublin 1799], 179 - 86. 15. Charlemont MSS, 12.r.9, 25 (Wood to Charlemont, 17 Jan. 1755). 16. Ibid., 12.r.12, 14. 17. Ibid., 15. 18. Ibid., 12.r.3, 375; 12.r.4, 353. 19. Brettingham to Jos.Smith, Vicenza, 8 Aug. 1754 (note from H. Colvin). 20. See L. Donati, English Misc., 1[1950]:231 - 42.
C. O'C.