owner of Carlisle House, in his venture,but the negotiations broke down. This is where a Miss Ellice, who knew Cornelys, stepped in. She had âconversations with some of the Nobilityâ as to whether a winter evening entertainment venue would be popular, and Turst asked her to be a shareholder with him. The estimated cost of the building was £15,000 (£955,000 in todayâs money), which was to be raised by the sale of shares at £300 each. Ellice â who may have entertained hopes of marrying Turst after the death of his wife, although if so she was to be disappointed â bought thirty, and building began on 5 June 1769. When rumours started circulating that the project was over-ambitious, Ellice lost her nerve (or possibly her hopes of marriage) and sold back nineteen of her shares to Turst.
The building costs now rose to £25,000 and Turst proceeded to sell fifty more shares at £500 each. It is recorded that John Donellan paid £600 (£38,000 in todayâs money) for his share, and the list of his fellow shareholders both in 1771 and again in 1774 reveals the tradesmen, artisans and minor nobility who threw in their lot with this brash new venture. The Pantheon might have been built to entertain the upper classes, but its finances were solidly rooted in trade and the professions, the rising middle class.
Among Donellanâs fellow shareholders were Albany Wallis, David Garrickâs executor and a prominent London lawyer; another lawyer, Henry Dagge, who had a quarter share in the new Covent Garden Theatre and Royal Opera House; Paul Valliant, a prominent bookseller and printer; and John Cleland, the author of
Fanny Hill
. Other shareholders who took on the 61-year lease in August 1774 were William Franks, who was responsible for building houses at the upper end of Rathbone Place; Sir Thomas Robinson, who had built Prospect Place next to the party-loving Ranelagh Gardens; and one William Hamilton. This could have been the man who had painted Elizabeth Hartley (but aged only nineteen in 1770, he was too young to have sustained a wife or mistress in Rathbone Place, thus excluding him from being the âcuckoldâ referred to in local newspapers).
Alternatively, this shareholder could have been the far more famous Sir William Hamilton (1730â1803), who joined the Society of Dilettanti before it transformed into the Hellfire Club. Otherfounder members of the society included the painter Joshua Reynolds and Charles Greville, who was the lover of Emma Lyon, later Emma Hart, later Hamiltonâs wife. In 1743 Horace Walpole said of the society, âthe nominal qualification is having been in Italy, and the real one, being drunkâ. The Hellfire Club, with the lecherous and violent Francis Dashwood at its helm, was the Bad Boys Club of Georgian England. In his younger days William Hamilton may well have raised hell with the worst of them, but by now he was far more interested in the geology of real-life fire and brimstone, in particular Vesuvius. He returned to Italy to study it and there married the one-time whore Emma. Educated, wry, forgiving and sociable, he may well have invested in the Pantheon during his brief years in London. His wives do not fit the profile for âMr Hâ, however: he was devoted to his sickly first wife Catherine Barlow, and he did not marry the lascivious Emma until 1791.
There is one final traceable âMr Hâ from the list of shareholders: Edward Hoare, Second Baronet and MP for Carlow 1768â9; but, newly married in 1771, it is unlikely that his wife Clothilda, from Ballycrenan Castle, Ireland, would have taken a lover like Donellan, even if he were a fellow countryman. Therefore it would seem that Donellanâs loverâs husband, if a shareholder as the newspaper suggested, is not on the surviving shareholders list.
Donellan was a member of the committee, convened in August 1771, that supervised the building and running of
The building costs now rose to £25,000 and Turst proceeded to sell fifty more shares at £500 each. It is recorded that John Donellan paid £600 (£38,000 in todayâs money) for his share, and the list of his fellow shareholders both in 1771 and again in 1774 reveals the tradesmen, artisans and minor nobility who threw in their lot with this brash new venture. The Pantheon might have been built to entertain the upper classes, but its finances were solidly rooted in trade and the professions, the rising middle class.
Among Donellanâs fellow shareholders were Albany Wallis, David Garrickâs executor and a prominent London lawyer; another lawyer, Henry Dagge, who had a quarter share in the new Covent Garden Theatre and Royal Opera House; Paul Valliant, a prominent bookseller and printer; and John Cleland, the author of
Fanny Hill
. Other shareholders who took on the 61-year lease in August 1774 were William Franks, who was responsible for building houses at the upper end of Rathbone Place; Sir Thomas Robinson, who had built Prospect Place next to the party-loving Ranelagh Gardens; and one William Hamilton. This could have been the man who had painted Elizabeth Hartley (but aged only nineteen in 1770, he was too young to have sustained a wife or mistress in Rathbone Place, thus excluding him from being the âcuckoldâ referred to in local newspapers).
Alternatively, this shareholder could have been the far more famous Sir William Hamilton (1730â1803), who joined the Society of Dilettanti before it transformed into the Hellfire Club. Otherfounder members of the society included the painter Joshua Reynolds and Charles Greville, who was the lover of Emma Lyon, later Emma Hart, later Hamiltonâs wife. In 1743 Horace Walpole said of the society, âthe nominal qualification is having been in Italy, and the real one, being drunkâ. The Hellfire Club, with the lecherous and violent Francis Dashwood at its helm, was the Bad Boys Club of Georgian England. In his younger days William Hamilton may well have raised hell with the worst of them, but by now he was far more interested in the geology of real-life fire and brimstone, in particular Vesuvius. He returned to Italy to study it and there married the one-time whore Emma. Educated, wry, forgiving and sociable, he may well have invested in the Pantheon during his brief years in London. His wives do not fit the profile for âMr Hâ, however: he was devoted to his sickly first wife Catherine Barlow, and he did not marry the lascivious Emma until 1791.
There is one final traceable âMr Hâ from the list of shareholders: Edward Hoare, Second Baronet and MP for Carlow 1768â9; but, newly married in 1771, it is unlikely that his wife Clothilda, from Ballycrenan Castle, Ireland, would have taken a lover like Donellan, even if he were a fellow countryman. Therefore it would seem that Donellanâs loverâs husband, if a shareholder as the newspaper suggested, is not on the surviving shareholders list.
Donellan was a member of the committee, convened in August 1771, that supervised the building and running of
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