Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 12.djvu/230

 nelys called themselves, are noticed in the ‘Public Advertiser,’ 30 Dec. 1760 and 15 Jan. 1761. She showed herself well versed in the art of advertising. In February 1763 she gave a ball ‘to the upper servants of persons of fashion, as a token of the sense she had of obligations to the nobility and gentry, for their generous subscription to her assembly.’ The assembly-rooms became highly successful, and the eleventh meeting was advertised to take place on 5 May 1763. She endeavoured to preserve orderly and respectable behaviour by appropriate regulations. On Friday, 24 Feb. 1764, she first added to the inducement of a ball a ‘grand concert of vocal and instrumental music,’ and on 6 April of the same year it was announced to the ‘subscribers to the society in Soho Square that the first meeting for the morning subscription music will be held this day.’ She became involved in quarrels, and appears to have been threatened with the terrors of the Alien Act. This did not prevent her from enlarging and redecorating her apartments. ‘But,’ says Walpole, writing to George Montagu, 16 Dec. 1764, ‘Almack's room [opened February 1765], which is to be ninety feet long, proposes to swallow up both hers, as easily as Moses's rod gobbled down those of the magicians’ (Cunningham's ed. iv. 302). Bach and Abel directed her concerts in 1766, and the ‘society nights’ were so well attended that she was obliged to make a new door in Soho Square. In April 1768 her assembly included some of the royal family and the Prince of Monaco, and in the following August the King of Denmark and suite visited Carlisle House. A gallery for the dancing of ‘cotillons’ and ‘allemandes’ and a new range of rooms were opened in January 1769, and in the same year there was a festival and grand concert, under the direction of Guadagni, on 6 June, with illuminations, in honour of the king's birthday. This was the most flourishing period of Carlisle House. At a masked ball, given on 27 Feb. 1770, by the gentlemen of the ‘Tuesday Night's Club,’ the Duke of Gloucester and half the peerage were present. Miss Monckton, afterwards known as ‘Old Lady Cork,’ appeared in the character of an Indian sultana, wearing 30,000l. worth of jewellery. With a view to future opposition, a portion of the profits of the first harmonic meeting, in 1771, was devoted to the poor of the parish. The proprietors of the Italian Opera House considered the ‘harmonic meetings’ an infringement of their privileges and as forming a dangerous rival to their attractions. She and the other organisers were fined at Bow Street, and an indictment brought before the grand jury 24 Feb. 1771 for keeping ‘a common disorderly house.’ The opening of the Pantheon and the institution of ‘The Coterie,’ by certain of the members of ‘The Society of Carlisle House,’ were also fatal blows. The list of bankrupts of the ‘London Gazette’ (November 1772) includes the name of ‘Teresa Cornelys, dealer,’ and the following month Carlisle House and its contents were advertised to be sold by auction, by order of the assignees. Goldsmith's ‘Threnodia Augustalis’ for the death of the Princess Dowager of Wales, with music by Vento, was given at the rooms 20 Feb. 1772. In 1774 Mrs. Cornelys kept an hotel at Southampton; and on 20 June 1775 a grand regatta took place on the Thames, on which occasion a fête was given at Ranelagh. Mrs. Cornelys had the sole management of the decorations and supper, for which she was allowed seven hundred guineas (MALCOLM, London during the Eighteenth Century, 1808, 416–18). A Mrs. Cornelys acted in various Irish theatres between 1774 and 1781, but it is doubtful whether she can be identified with Theresa Cornelys, who was able in 1776 to reobtain temporary possession of Carlisle House. She appears to have had no further connection with Carlisle House after that date. It was pulled down in 1788 and the present houses built on the site. St. Patrick's (Roman catholic) Chapel (consecrated 1792) in Sutton Street was the old banqueting- or ball-room; the entrance for carriages and chairs was at the end of the chapel, in what is now Messrs. Crosse & Blackwell's cooperage yard. A ‘Chinese bridge’ connected the house in the square with the banqueting-room.

The notorious ‘White House,’ also in Soho Square, has frequently been confused with Carlisle House. ‘She has been the Heidegger of the age, and presided over our diversions,’ says Walpole; she ‘drew in both righteous and ungodly … and made her house a fairy palace for balls, concerts, and masquerades’ (Letter to Sir H. Mann, 22 Feb. 1771, Cunningham's ed. v. 283). Casanova, who saw her in prosperous days, refers to her as possessing a country house at Hammersmith, and, ‘outre les immeubles, trois secrétaires, trente-deux domestiques, six chevaux, une meute et une dame de compagnie’ (Mémoires, v. 426). A contemporary caricature, ‘Lady Fashion's Secretary's Office, a Peticoat recommendation the best,’ represents her as a dignified-looking, middle-aged dame, with somewhat marked features.

She remained in obscurity many years under the name of Mrs. Smith. Some time before her death she was a seller of asses' milk at Knightsbridge, and tried to get up a