The Three Graces: Portrait of the Misses Ellen, Georgiana and Maria Butler
Thomas Griffiths Wainewright’s Petition to the Governor, April 1844
To His Excellency, Sir John Eardley-Wilmot, Bart., Lieut.-Governor of Van Diemen’s Land, etc. etc.
The Humble Petition of T. Griffiths Wainewright, praying the indulgence of a ticket-of-leave.
To palliate the boldness of this application he offers the statement ensuing. That seven years past he was arrested on a charge of forging and acting on a power of attorney to sell stock thirteen years previous. Of which (though looking for little credence) he avers his entire innocence. He admits a knowledge of the actual committer, gained though some years after the fact. Such, however, were their relative positions, that to have disclosed it would have made him infamous where any human feeling is manifest. Nevertheless, by his counsel’s direction, he entered the plea NOT Guilty, to allow him to adduce the ‘circonstance attenuante,’ viz., that the money (£5,200) appropriated was, without quibble, his own, derived from his parents. An hour before his appearing to plead he was trepanned (through the just but deluded Governor of Newgate) into withdrawing his plea, by a promise, in such case, of a punishment merely nominal. The same purporting to issue from ye Bank Parlour, but in fact from the agents of certain Insurance Companies interested to a heavy amount (£16,000) in compassing his legal non-existence. He pleaded guilty—and was forthwith hurried, stunned with such ruthless perfidy, to the hulks at Portsmouth, and thence in five days aboard the Susan, sentenced to Life in a land (to him) a moral sepulchre. As a ground for your mercy he submits with great deference his foregone condition of Life during 43 years of freedom. A descent, deduced, through family tradition and Edmonson’s Heraldry, from a stock not the least honoured in Cambria. Nurtured with all appliances of ease and comfort—schooled by his relative, the well-known philologer and biliomaniac, Chas. Burney, D.D., brother to Mdme. D’Arblay, and the companion of COOKE. Lastly, such a modest competence as afforded the mental necessaries of Literature, Archæology, Music and the Plastic Arts; while his pen and brush introduced him to the notice and friendship of men whose fame is European. The Catalogues of Somerset House Exhibitions, the Literary Pocket Book, indicate his earlier pursuits, and the MS. left behind in Paris, attest at least his industry. Their titles imply the objects to which he has, to this date, directed all his energies: ‘A Philosophical Theory of Design, as concerned with the Loftier Emotions, showing its deep action on Society, drawn from the Phidean-Greek and early Florentine Schools’ (the result of seventeen years’ study), illustrated with numerous plates, executed with conscientious accuracy, in one vol. atlas folio. ‘An Æsthetic and Psychological Treatise on the Beautiful; or the Analogies of Imagination and Fancy, as exerted in Poesy, whether Verse, Painting, Sculpture, Music, or Architecture;’ to form four vols. folio, with a profusion of engravings by the first artists of Paris, Munich, Berlin, Dresden, and Wien. ‘An Art-Novel’ in three vols., and a collection of ‘Fantasie, Critical Sketches, etc., selected partly from Blackwood, the Foreign Review, and the London Magazine.’ All these were nearly ready for, one actually at press. Deign, your Excellency! to figure to yourself my actual condition during seven years; without friends, good name (the breath of life) or art (the fuel to it with me), tormented at once by memory and ideas struggling for outward form and realization, barred up from increase of knowledge, and deprived of the exercise of profitable or even of decorous speech. Take pity, your Excellency! and grant me the power to shelter my eyes from Vice in her most revolting and sordid phase, and my ears from a jargon of filth and blasphemy that would outrage the cynism [sic] of Parny himself. Perhaps this clinging to the lees of a vapid life may seem as base, unmanly, arguing rather a plebeian, than a liberal and gentle descent. But, your Excellency! the wretched Exile has a child!—and Vanity (sprung from the praise of Flaxman, Charles Lamb, Stothard, Rd. Westall, Delaroche, Cornelius, Lawrence, and the God of his worship, FUSELI) whispers that the follower of the Ideal might even yet achieve another reputation than that of a Faussaire. Seven years of steady demeanour may in some degree promise that no indulgence shall ever be abused by your Excellency’s miserable petitioner,
T. G. Wainewright
Note: In May 1844, Lt. Governor Eardley-Wilmot, after initially rejecting Wainewright’s petition, one week later granted him a 3rd Class (the highest class) Probation Pass. In December 1845, Wainewright received his Ticket of Leave.