Do you forget Mrs. Darner and Lady Dacre?
No; but I do not think that either the exquisite modelling of Lady Dacre, or the meritorious _attempts_ of Mrs. Damer, come under the head of sculpture in its grand sense. By-the-bye, when Horace Walpole said that Mrs. Damer was the first female sculptor who had attained any celebrity, he forgot the Greek girl, Lala,[15] and the Properzia Rossi of modern times.
Dannecker was born at Stuttgardt in 1758. On him descended no hereditary mantle of genius; it was the immediate gift of Heaven, and apparently heaven-directed. His father was a groom in the duke's stable, and appears to have been merely an ill-tempered, thick-headed boor. How young Dannecker picked up the rudiments of reading and writing, he does not himself remember; nor by what circumstances the bent of his fancy and genius was directed to the fine arts. Like other great men, who have been led to trace the progress of their own minds, he attributed to his mother the first promptings to the fair and good, the first softening and elevating influences which his mind acknowledged. He had neither paper nor pencils; but next door to his father there lived a stone-cutter, whose blocks of marble and free-stone were every day scrawled over with rude imitations of natural objects in chalk or charcoal--the first essays of the infant Dannecker. When he was beaten by his father for this proof of idleness, his mother interfered to protect or to encourage him. As soon as he was old enough, he assisted his father in the stable; and while running about the precincts of the palace, ragged and bare-foot, he appears to have attracted, by his vivacity and alertness, the occasional notice of the duke himself.
Duke Charles, the grandfather of the present king of Wurtemburg, had founded a military school, called the Karl Schüle, (Charles' School,) annexed to the Hunting Palace of the Solitude. At this academy, music and drawing were taught as well as military tactics. One day, when Dannecker was about thirteen, his father returned home in a very ill-humour, and informed his family that the duke intended to admit the children of his domestics into his new military school. The boy, with joyful eagerness, declared his intention of going immediately to present himself as a candidate. The father, with a stare of astonishment, desired him to remain at home, and mind his business; on his persisting, he resorted to blows, and ended by locking him up. The boy escaped by jumping out of the window; and, collecting several of his comrades, he made them a long harangue in praise of the duke's beneficence, then placing himself at their head, marched them up to the palace, where the whole court was assembled for the Easter festivities. On being asked their business, Dannecker replied as spokesman--"Tell his highness the duke we want to go to the Karl-schüle." One of the attendants, amused, perhaps, with this juvenile ardour, went and informed the duke, who had just risen from table. He came out himself and mustered the little troop before him. He first darted a rapid scrutinizing glance along the line, then selecting one from the number, placed him on his right-hand; then another, and another, till only young Dannecker and two others remained on his left. Dannecker has since acknowledged that he suffered for a few moments such exquisite pain and shame at the idea of being rejected, that his first impulse was to run away and hide himself; and that his surprise and joy, when he found that he and his two companions were the accepted candidates, had nearly overpowered him. The duke ordered them to go the next morning to the Solitude, and then dismissed them. When Dannecker returned home, his father, enraged at losing the services of his son, turned him out of the house, and forbade him ever more to enter it; but his mother (mother like) packed up his little bundle of necessaries, accompanied him for some distance on his road, and parted from him with blessings, and tears, and words of encouragement and love.