CHANTREY'S WOODCOCKS.
[TO THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR.") Sin,—In your review of the "Personal Recollections of Mrs. Somer- ville "you quote an anecdote about Chantrey which is singularly infected with errors, and illustrates the truth, so common in the history of anecdotage, that after a lapse of years, undoubted facts become readily associated with wrong names and places. It was at Holkham that Chantrey performed his celebrated feat of killing two woodcocks at one shot, and the circumstance was specially noted in the Holkham game-book. Subsequently he sculptured them in marble, and presented the group to his host. Since then innumer- able visitors, more or less distinguished, to Holkham have exercised their wits in the composition of inscriptions and epigrams on these celebrated birds, which are duly preserved in a book kept for the purpose. Some years ago they were collected and published in a small volume, agreeably illustrated, edited, if my memory serves me right, by a Mr. Muirhead, and entitled "Winged Words on Chantrey's Woodcocks." Some of these ;ma. TVEpoiurce are "pretty enough, and some are poor indeed." One, by the late Bishop Wilberforce, is particularly neat in its execution, but on the whole, they convey the impression that Englishmen of the upper classes have no great aptitude for epigram. The obvious contrast between the death inflicted by the gun of the sportsman, and the life conferred by the chisel of the sculptor, is wearisomely harped on by a majority of the contributors ; occasionally, however, contrasts more suited to the epigrammatist—for instance, the carving on toast and the carving in marble—are happily hit off.—I am, Sir, &c., MAURICE PURCELL FITZGERALD. Boscombe, Bournemouth, February 1.
Previous page
