in Rome to Garrick, by whom he was received with great cordiality. The actor commissioned him to execute a bust, for which twelve guineas ‘in gold’ were paid. This, Nollekens's maiden effort in portraiture, was so successful that Sterne, who was in Rome, also consented to sit. The result was a bust for which Nollekens himself had a great partiality. Even in his period of full development it was held to be among his best achievements, as is shown by its introduction into the sculptor's portrait by Dance. But Nollekens endeavoured to make money by other means during his sojourn in Rome. He took an active part in the traffic in, and restoration of, antiques. His first venture in this line was the purchase of some fine specimens of ancient terra-cottas from labourers employed in the gravel-pits at the Porta Latina, who had found them at the bottom of a disused well. These, which he secured for a very trifling sum, he eventually sold to the well-known collector Townley. They were included among the marbles bought by government after Townley's death, and are now in the British Museum. Other wealthy men employed him as their agent in the collection of antiques; and he is said to have bought great numbers of fragments on his own account, to have supplied them with missing heads and limbs, which he stained with tobacco-water, and then to have sold them as dubious treasures for imposing sums. By these devices Nollekens amassed the means to become a speculator on the Stock Exchange, where he was so successful that on his return to England in 1770 he was able to take the house vacated by Francis Milner Newton, R.A. [q. v.] (No. 9 Mortimer Street), and to set up a studio. He brought over a large collection of antiques, drawings, coins, and casts of his own busts. These last he characteristically turned to account by filling them with silk stockings, lace ruffles, and other articles liable to duty.
His reputation had already reached England, and his busts became almost as popular among fashionable people as Sir Joshua's portraits. In 1771 he began to contribute regularly to the Royal Academy, and in that year was elected an associate. In 1772 he became a full member, the king himself confirming the choice, on signing the diploma, by a compliment, and a commission for a bust. In the same year the sculptor married Mary, the second daughter of Saunders Welch. Welch, who succeeded Fielding as one of the justices of the peace for Westminster, was an intimate friend of Johnson, and the latter extended his regard to his friend's daughters. Mrs. Nollekens is described as having claims to be considered a beauty; her elegant figure and auburn ringlets, the pride she showed in the compliments of Dr. Johnson (who declared he would himself have been her suitor had not his friend been too prompt), her avaricious character, her petty jealousies, and the exhibitions of what Nollekens called her ‘scorney’ temper have all been noted by the pitiless biographer of her husband. Nollekens had chosen a partner who ably seconded him in his mania for sordid economies. The description of their household is almost incredible, when we consider that Nollekens was reckoning his income by thousands, and left a fortune of 200,000l. Ludicrous tales are told of his own and his wife's parsimony—how when Lord Londonderry sat for his bust on a cold day, and put coals on the scanty fire in the sculptor's momentary absence, he was reproved by Mrs. Nollekens; how Mrs. Nollekens fed her dogs by taking them to prowl round the butchers' stalls in Oxford Market; how Nollekens pocketed the nutmegs provided for the hot negus at the Academy dinners, and purloined the sweetmeats from dessert when he dined out; how he sat in the dark to save a candle, and wrangled with the cobbler for a few extra nails in his old shoes; how he owned but two shirts, two coats, and one pair of small clothes. Yet Nollekens reckoned Reynolds and Johnson among his friends; he was capable of sudden freaks of generosity, and, especially towards the close of his life, would astonish needy acquaintances with considerable gifts. In his last years, when partially paralysed, and in a state of senile imbecility, he was surrounded by parasites who hoped to benefit by his will. The Caleb Whitefoord of Goldsmith's ‘Retaliation,’ or rather, perhaps, of the spurious appendix to the poem, was among the more assiduous of these. After his wife's death in 1817 his house was managed mainly by an old female servant, known in the neighbourhood as ‘Black Bet,’ but nicknamed ‘Bronze’ by his pupils, from the darkness of her skin. In his eightieth year he made an unsuccessful offer of marriage to Mrs. Zoffany, the painter's widow. The ministrations of a kind-hearted woman named Holt, formerly his wife's companion, insured him a certain degree of comfort for the last two years of his life. He died in his house in Mortimer Street on 23 April 1823, and was buried in Paddington parish church. He had remained through life a member of the church of Rome, but was never a rigid observer of its forms. His will was a curious document, with many codicils. The bulk of his large fortune, after deducting a host of small
