Gardiner, William Nelson (McKechnie Section 3)

Included because he is known to have worked at various times as assistant to Abraham Jones and Mrs Beetham. Jackson (Dictionary) refers to an autobiography (1814) by Gardiner, and Foskett notes that he exhibited subject pictures and drawings (Graves lists twelve) at the Royal Academy 1787-93. The main source of information about Gardiner, however, is an article: ‘Memoir of the late William Gardiner, Book-seller’, Gentleman’s Magazine, vol. 84, pt 1, p. 622 (possibly the ‘autobiography’ noted by Jackson). This article was largely based on several letters left by Gardiner on his death by suicide on 8 May 1814 and addressed to several friends, and the following account of his life is derived from it. I have derived further details from J. A. Venn, Alumni Cantabrigieusis (London, 1947).

Gardiner was born on 11 June 1766 in Dublin, the son of John Gardiner, ‘Crier & Factotum’ to Judge Scott, and of his wife Margaret (née Nelson). At an early age he showed an aptitude for drawing, and studied in Dublin at the academy of a Mr Darling. After his mother died, his father ‘attached himself’ (probably in 1776) to Sir James Nugent, of Donore, Co. Westmeath. William was sent to study for three years at the Dublin Society Schools, where he was awarded a silver medal. In 1779, his studies completed, he left for London. Chance, he says, led him to associate with ‘Mr. Jones’ (Abraham Jones, q.v.), who at that time was making his reflecting mirrors and who cut profile shades in brass foil. (I have not seen any of these brass profiles, which must have been singular.) They seem to have been painted over, for Gardiner says, ‘my employ was to daub the portraits of any who were fools enough to sit for me.’

Soon after this time Gardiner became acquainted with a Mr Davis, one of the performers who had worked for Samuel Foote (who had died in 1777; see the reference to him under Mrs Isabella Beetham). Through this connection Gardiner worked as a scene-painter and as an actor, and it was no doubt at this stage that he became associated with Isabella and Edward Beetham, for the latter had worked in the theatre and had known Foote. Having failed as an actor, Gardiner in 1785 started to work as an assistant to Mrs Beetham at 27 Fleet Street; she ‘had at that time a prodigious run for black profile shades; my business was to give them the air of figures in shade, rather than the blank-black masses which were customary’.

Gardiner was probably employed to prepare the finger-printed bases on which Mrs Beetham painted her very transparent black profiles on glass at the time, and it is probably his finger- or thumb-prints which show clearly on some extant examples of Mrs Beetham's work. He seems to have worked for her for only a short time, possibly during the later months of 1785, and it is only on those profiles of Mrs Beetham which she painted at about this Lime that Gardiner's finger- or thumb-prints would be visible.

After this spell at 27 Fleet Street, Gardiner became the protégé of Captain Francis Grose (c. 1730-1791), a well known antiquarian who set him to learn engraving from an engraver named Godfrey. (This must have been G. Godfrey, who is recorded by Bénézit as having engraved plates for Grose's The Antiquities of England and Wales (6 vols, 1773-87). Gardiner then took up various techniques of engraving. In one of his letters he writes that he had himself produced many of Bartolozzi's inscribed engravings; he was in fact working with Bartolozzi, during the late 1780s, when he engraved for him plates for Edward Harding's Shakespeare, for Les Mémoires de Grammont and for Dryden's Fables. He also states that he considers himself, as an engraver, inferior only to Bartolozzi, Schiavonetti and Tomkins. Nevertheless, he also says, ‘gay, volatile, and lively as a lark, the process of the copper never suited me’.

After a visit to Dublin (which he visited with the intention, not realized, of taking Holy Orders, and from which he returned in poor health and in poor financial circumstances), Gardiner lodged at the house of a Mr Good, a stationer, in Bond Street, London. Here, some neighbours gave a party for the Prince of Wales and other celebrities, in a temporary building erected for the purpose, on a cold night. Gardiner watched the merry-making through a peephole, and as a result suffered for the rest of his life from an inflammation of the eye which interfered with his artistic career.

Gardiner then studied at Cambridge; first he was admitted as ‘sizar’ (a student admitted at low fees) at Emmanuel College in June 1793, then he moved to Bene't (according to the memoir); Venn states that he moved to Corpus Christi College on 11 November 1795. Having matriculated and been awarded a scholarship in 1796, he obtained a degree (‘5th Senior Optime’), but then, after waiting for five years, failed in his attempt to obtain a fellowship. This was one of the disappointments which eventually led to his suicide.

Gardiner is said to have worked for Harding, copying portraits in oil and in water-colour. In c. 1801, after the further deterioration of his eyesight, he opened a bookshop in Pall Mall: an enterprise which ended in failure after a few years.

The article in the Gentleman's Magazine, cited above, tells us that Gardiner had been ‘united’ with ‘a very respectable and interesting young woman of the name of Seckerson, much against the wishes of her friends’. This ‘union’ was no doubt by marriage, since the article refers to Gardiner's loss of his wife and child. It was apparently with Miss Seckerson's assistance, either before or after their marriage, that Gadiner opened his bookshop. Many people, we are told, repaired to his shop to benefit from his great knowledge and to be amused by his brilliant, though eccentric, conversation. His eccentricities are said to have increased with his misfortunes. At the inquest into the cause of his death, the Coroner gave a verdict of insanity.

Such was the man whose finger- or thumb-prints have been permanently recorded on some of the fine profiles by Mrs Isabella Beetham.