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Samuel Rogers: Man of Taste

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Donald Weeks
Donald Weeks*
Affiliation:
Mills College
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Extract

In the memoirs, diaries, journals, and reviews of the first half of the nineteenth century, Samuel Rogers (1763-1855) has an importance which is in sharp contrast to his present obscurity. It is no fault of the modern reader that he cannot remember one of Rogers' poems. Even before Rogers' death, his contemporaries had judged his work as essentially worthless, but they continued to speak with admiration of the “bard, beau, and banker” of St. James's Place. They remembered always the little house which he had made one of the great sights of London, of cultured society in the western world. Here above all was revealed Rogers the man of taste, arbiter elegantiarum, a rôle which he played with a curious combination of modesty, pleasure, and pride. Since his was the first small home to become a great museum, comparable to the Bache Collection today, No. 22 St. James's Place is worth reconstructing in detail and considering as an influence on its time.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 62 , Issue 2 , June 1947 , pp. 472 - 486
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1947

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References

1 Quoted in G. B., “Apropos of Samuel Rogers,” Littell's Living Age, clxxxii, Fifth Series, lxviii, September 21, 1889, p. 747.

2 Browning, Elizabeth Barrett, Letters, edited by Frederic G. Kenyon (New York: The Macmillan Co., 1897), i, 168.

3 Emerson, Ralph Waldo, Journals, edited by E. W. Emerson and W. E. Forbes (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1909), vii, 348.

4 Browning, Op. cit., i, 168.

5 Ibid.

6 Ibid.

7 Dyce, Alexander, Recollections of the Table-Talk of Samuel Rogers (New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1856), p. 287.

8 Waagen, Gustav F., Treasures of Art in Great Britain (London: John Murray, 1854), ii, 75.

9 Mitford, the Rev. John, Journal, BMMSS, Add., 32, 567, f. 58.

10 Procter, Bryan Waller, An Autobiographical Fragment and Biographical Notes (London: George Bell & Sons, 1877), p. 148.

11 Clayden, P. W., The Early Life of Samuel Rogers (Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1888), p. 248.

12 Ibid., p. 244.

13 Browning, op. cit., i, 168.

14 Newton, Mrs. G. S., “Some Old Letters,” Scribner's Monthly, x, No. 1 (May 1875), p. 87.

15 Rogers, Samuel, Catalogue of the Celebrated Collection of Works of Art and Vertû (London: J. H. Burn, 1856).

16 Mitford, op. cit., f. 106.

17 Leslie, Charles. Autobiographical Recollections (Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1860), p. 136.

18 Mackay, Charles, Forty Years' Recollections (London: Chapman and Hall, 1877), p. 209.

19 Robinson, Henry Crabb, Diary edited by Thomas Sadler (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1898), ii, 288.

20 Hamerton, Philip G., An Autogiography (Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1896), p. 139.

21 Eastlake, Lady, “The Early Life of Samuel Rogers,” Quarterly Review, clxvii, No. 334 (October, 1888), p. 509.

22 “The Late Samuel Rogers,” Illustrated London News, xxviii, No. 778 (January 5, 1856), p. 6.

23 Haydon, Benjamin, Autobiography and Memoirs edited by Tom Taylor (London: Peter Davies, 1926), ii, 666.

24 Harding, Chester, A Sketch of Chester Harding edited by Margaret E. White (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1790), p. 229.

25 Farrington, Joseph, The Fartington Diary edited by James Greig (New York: George H. Doran Co., 1923), ii, 246.

26 Whitley, William, Art in England 1800-1820 (Cambridge: The University Press, 1928), p. 180.

27 Leslie, op. cit., pp. 159-160.

28 Lowell, Amy, John Keats (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1925), i, 193.

29 Emerson, op. cit., vii, 348.

30 Hamerton, op. cit., p. 139.

31 Whitley, William T., Art in England 1820-1837 (Cambridge: The University Press, 1930), pp. 268-269.

32 Tallmadge, Thomas E., The Story of English Architecture (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1934), p. 227.

33 Great Britain, Parliamentary Papers, Commons (1836), p. 36.

34 See the various Reports of the Commissioners of Fine Arts, Great Britain, Parliamentary Papers (1842-1850).

35 Leslie, op. cit., pp. 159-160.

36 Ibid., p. 160.

37 Quoted in Forster, John, Landor (Boston: Field Osgood & Co., 1869), p. 600.