Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Nicholls, Norton
NICHOLLS, NORTON (1742?–1809), friend of Gray the poet, born about 1742, was son of Norton Nicholls, who married, at Somerset House Chapel, London, in 1741, Jane Floyer, daughter of Lieutenant-colonel Charles Floyer (d. 1731). The elder Nicholls died young, but his widow survived him for many years, and was an object of the tenderest solicitude to her son. He was educated at Eton, where he was much indebted to the care of Dr. Barnard and the voluntary private instruction of Dr. Sumner, and at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, graduating LL.B. in 1766. When taking tea in the rooms of Lobb, a fellow of Peterhouse, he was introduced, though but a student of the hall, and not yet aged 19, to the poet Gray. Even at that age he was well acquainted with the best Italian poets, as well as with the best classical writers; and his chance illustration of a remark ‘by an apposite citation from Dante’ attracted the attention of Gray, who turned and said to the youth, ‘Right, sir, but have you read Dante?’ The modest answer was, ‘I have endeavoured to understand him.’ This incident cemented a friendship which, with the single exception of that with West, was warmer than any other ever entered into by Gray, who for the future directed the youth's studies.
In the summer of 1770 he accompanied Gray on a journey through the midland counties, and wrote a journal of their proceedings, which the poet kept in his possession. Next year, at the beginning of June, on the poet's advice, he visited France, Switzerland, and Italy, and is said to have printed for gifts to his friends an account of his travels. The journey was made more interesting through his friendship with Count Firmian, the Austrian minister at Milan, by whom he was introduced to the best social circles in those countries. Mason, however, in writing to Horace Walpole, says that he was bored with the ‘eternalities of the foreign tour’ of Nicholls.
By the death of his uncle, Charles Floyer, on 7 Sept. 1766, the means of Nicholls had been much reduced, and Gray had urged him to find some work at Trinity Hall, or to obtain some duty in the church. In the next year (1767) he was presented, through the purchase of his uncle, William Turner, to the rectory of Lound and Bradwell, near Lowestoft, and kept the living until his death. As there was no rectory, he fixed his dwelling, with his mother, at Blundeston House, in an adjoining parish, and devoted his spare time to the improvement of its lawns, its trees, and the ornamental lake, making it, in the language of Mathias, an ‘oasis.’ For many years he spent, except when abroad, the greater part of his time at this place, and here he entertained in 1799 ‘Admiral Duncan soon after his return to Yarmouth, crowned with the laurels won at Camperdown’ (Suckling, Suffolk, i. 315–16, 327).
By the death of a ‘very old uncle,’ probably William Turner, who died at Richmond 11 Nov. 1790, Nicholls and his mother came into much money (Gent. Mag. 1790, pt. ii. p. 1057; Miss Berry, Journals, i. 260).
Nicholls died at Blundeston from the sudden bursting of a blood-vessel, on 22 Nov. 1809, in his sixty-eighth year. He was buried in a vault on the south side of Richmond Church, and an epitaph to his memory was placed on a marble slab on the south wall of the chancel.
Nicholls was well informed in history, and accurately acquainted with the chief ancient and modern writers. He knew French and Italian as if he had been born on the Loire or the Arno, had studied with especial care the Italian pictures, and had been trained in music under the best masters. Even so late as 1790 Horace Walpole expressed the hope of hearing him sing. Some of the letters addressed to him by Gray were included in Mason's life of the poet. At the suggestion of Samuel Rogers the full correspondence, then the property of Dawson Turner, was included in the fifth volume of Mitford's edition of Gray, together with his ‘Reminiscences of Gray,’ his letters to Barrett, and the letters of Dr. James Brown, and the volume was also issued, with a distinct title-page, as ‘The Correspondence of Thomas Gray and the Rev. Norton Nichols [sic],’ 1843. The ‘Reminiscences of Gray’ were praised by John Forster as ‘one of the most charming papers, at once for fulness and brevity, ever contributed to our knowledge of a celebrated man’ (Life and Times of Goldsmith, ii. 151). In 1884 the autograph letters of Gray and the ‘Reminiscences’ by Nicholls belonged to Mr. John Morris of 13 Park Street, Grosvenor Square (Gray, Works, ed. Gosse, iii. 179, iv. 339–43). The anecdotes of Gray, which were printed by Mathias, were all derived from Nicholls. When Boswell's correspondence with Temple was discovered at Boulogne, several letters from Nicholls were contained in the collection, and a letter from him to Lord Sheffield is in Gibbon's ‘Miscellaneous Works,’ ii. 500.
Brydges called him ‘a very clever man, with a great deal of erudition, but, it must be confessed, a supreme coxcomb’ (Autobiography, ii. 88). Parr found in him ‘some venial irregularities, mingled with much ingenuity, much taste, much politeness, and much good nature;’ Mason told Walpole that Nicholls ‘drinks like any fish.’ Nicholls left his books to Mathias and a large sum of money in the event, which did not take place, of his surviving one of his own near relatives. He is supposed to have been described in the ‘Pursuits of Literature’ as Octavius, and Mathias wrote a letter on his death privately printed in 1809 and often reprinted since [see under Mathias, Thomas James].
[Correspondence of Gray and Mason, 1853, p. 323, and Additional Notes, pp. 521–2; Bibl. Parriana, p. 412; Gent. Mag. 1809, pt. ii. p. 1180; Correspondence of Walpole and Mason, ed. Mitford, i. 392, 397, ii. 1; Lysons's Environs, v. 429; Manning and Bray's Surrey, i. 428–9; Sir T. Phillipps's Registers of Somerset House Chapel, p. 8.]