|TOWARD the close of the last century, the regular attendants upon the
ministrations of the Rev. James Trebeck in the picturesque old church
at the end of Chiswick Mall, must often have witnessed the arrival of a
well-known member of the congregation. Year after year had been wheeled,
in a Bath chair, from a little villa under the wing of the Duke of
Devonshire's mansion hard by, a stately old lady between seventy and
eighty years of age, whose habitual costume was a silk sacque, a raised
head-dress, and a black calash. Leaning heavily upon her crutched cane,
and aided by the arm of a portly female relative in similar attire,
she would make her way slowly and with much dignity up the nave, being
generally preceded by a bent and white-haired man-servant, who, after
carrying the prayer-books into the pew, and carefully closing the door
upon his mistress and her companion, would himself retire to a remoter
part of the building. From the frequenters of the place, the little
procession attracted no more notice than any other recognized
ceremonial, of which the intermission would alone have been remarkable;
but it seldom failed to excite the curiosity of those wayfarers who,
under the third George, already sought reverently, along the pleasant
riverside, for that house in Mawson's Buildings where the great Mr.
Pope wrote part of his 'Iliad,' or for the garden of Richard, Earl
of Burlington, where idle John Gay gorged himself with apricots and
peaches. They would be told that the elder lady was the widow of the
famous painter, William Hogarth, who lay buried under the teacaddy-like
tomb in the neighbouring churchyard; that her companion was her cousin,
Mary Lewis, in whose arms he died; and that the old servant's name was
Samuel. For five and twenty years Mrs. Hogarth survived her husband,
during all of which time she faithfully cherished his memory. Those
who visited her at her Chiswick home (for she had another in Leicester
Fields) would recall with what tenacity she was wont to combat the view
that he was a mere maker of caricatura, or, at best, 'a writer of comedy
with the pencil,' as Mr. Horace Walpole (whose overcritical book she had
not even condescended to acknowledge) had thought fit to designate
him. It was as a painter pure and simple, as a rival of the Guidos and
Correggios, that she mainly valued her William. 'They said he could not
colour!' she would cry, pointing, it may be, as a protest against the
words, to the brilliant sketch of the 'Shrimp Girl,' now in the National
Gallery, but then upon her walls. Or, turning from his merits to his
memory, she would throw a shawl about her handsome head and, stepping
out under the over-hanging bay-window into the old three-cornered garden
with its filbert avenue and its great mulberry tree, would exhibit the
little mural tablet which Hogarth had himself scratched with a nail,
in remembrance of a favourite bullfinch. 'Alass poor Dick,' ran the
faint-lined inscription, not without characteristic revelation of the
sculptor's faulty spelling. And if she happened to be in one of the more
confidential moods of old age, she would perhaps take from a drawer that
very No. 17 of the 'North Briton,' which she afterwards gave to Ireland,
and which her husband, she would tell you, had carried about in his
pocket for days to show to sympathetic friends. 'The _supposed_ author
of the _Analysis of beauty!_'--she would indignantly exclaim, quoting
from the opening lines of Wilkes's nefarious print, headed with its
rude woodcut parody of Hogarth's portrait in 'Calais Gate,' * and
then, turning the blunt-lettered page, she would point silently to the
passages relating to the much-abused 'Sigismunda,' concerning which,
if her hearers were still judiciously inquisitive, they would, in all
probability, receive a gracious invitation to test the truth of the
libel by inspecting that masterpiece itself at its home in her London
house.
* The original No. 17 of the 'North Briton,' dated Saturday,
September 25, 1762, had no portrait. The portrait was added
to a reprint of Wilkes's article issued May 21, 1763, or
immediately after the appearance of Hogarth's etching of
Wilkes. Since the above paper was first published in
America, this interesting relic of Hogarth has once more
come to light. In April, 1845, it was sold with Mr. H. P.
Standly's collection. At the sale, in February, 1892, of Dr.
J. R. Joly's Hogarth prints and books, it passed (with some
of the Standly correspondence) to Mr. James Tregaskis, the
well-known bookseller at the 'Caxton Head' in Holborn, from
whom it was acquired by the present writer. By November,
1789, however, all this had become 'portion and parcel' of
the irrevocable past.
In that month Mrs. Hogarth had been laid beside her mother and her
husband under the tomb in Chiswick churchyard; the little 'country
box' had passed to Mary Lewis; and--by direction of the same lady--the
contents of the 'Golden Head' in Leicester Fields were shortly
afterwards (April, 1790) announced for sale. In the Print Room at the
British Museum (where is also the original manuscript of the famous
'Five Days' Tour' of 1732) is a copy of the auctioneer's catalogue,
which once belonged to George Steevens. It is not a document of many
pages. At Mrs. Hogarth's death, her income from the prints, exclusive
property in which had been secured to her in 1767 by special Act of
Parliament, had greatly fallen off; and though she had received the
further aid of a small pension from the Royal Academy, it is to be
presumed that her means were considerably straitened. It is known, too,
that there had been lodgers at the 'Golden Head,' one being the engraver
Richard Livesay, another the strange Ossianic enthusiast and friend of
Fuseli, Alexander Runciman; and obviously nothing but 'strong necessity'
could justify the reception of lodgers. These circumstances must explain
the slender contents of Mr. Auctioneer Greenwood's little pamphlet. Many
of the treasures of William Hogarth's household had already become the
prey of the collector, or had passed to admiring friends; and what
remained to be finally dispersed under the hammer practically consisted
of family relics. There was Hogarth's own likeness of himself and his
dog, soon to become the property of Mr. Angerstein, from whom it passed
to the National Gallery; there was another whole-length of painting of
him; there was Roubiliac's clever _terra cotta_; there was a cast of the
faithful Trump, and one of Hogarth's hand; there were the portraits of
his sisters Mary and Ann, which now belong to Mr. R. C. Nichols. Other
items were a set of 'twelve Delft ware plates,' painted with the signs
of the zodiac by Sir James Thornhill; portraits of Sir James and his
wife; of Mrs. Hogarth herself; of Hogarth's six servants; and there were
also numerous framed examples of his prints. * But the most important
object in the sale was undoubtedly the famous 'Sigismunda.'
* By a piece of auction-room humour, 'The Bathos' appears as
'The Bathers.'
'Sigismunda Mourning over the Heart of Guiscardo' is the full title of
the picture in the National Gallery catalogue. As one looks at it now,
asylumed safely, _post tot discrimina_, in Trafalgar Square, it is
not so much its qualities as its story that it recalls. How much
heartburning, how much bitterness, would have been saved to its sturdy
little 'Author,' as he loved to style himself, if it had never been
projected! He was an unparalleled pictorial satirist; he was, and still
is, an unsurpassed story-teller upon canvas.=
```'In walks of Humour, in that cast of Style,
```Which, probing to the quick, yet makes us smile;
```In Comedy, thy nat'ral road to fame,
```Nor let me call it by a meaner name,
```Where a beginning, middle, and an end
```Are aptly joined; where parts on parts depend,
```Each made for each, as bodies for their soul,
```So as to form one true and perfect whole,
```Where a plain story to the eye is told,
```Which we conceive the moment we behold,
```Hogarth unrivall'd stands, and shall engage
```Unrivall'd praise to the most distant age.'=
Thus even his enemy and assailant, Charles Churchill. But Hogarth
had the misfortune to live in an age when Art was given over to the
bubblemongers and 'black masters;' when, to the suppression of native
talent, sham _chefs d'ouvre_ were praised extravagantly by sham
connoisseurs; and the patriotic painter of 'Marriage À-la-Mode' justly
resented the invasion of the country by the rubbish of the Roman
art-factories. Had he confined himself to the forcible indignation of
which, as an impenitent islander, he possessed unlimited command, it
would have been better for his peace of mind. But, in an unpropitious
hour, he undertook to prove his case by demonstration. Among the
pictures from Sir Luke Schaub's collection, offered for sale in 1758,
was a 'Sigismunda,' attributed to Correggio, but in reality from the
brush of the far inferior artist, Furini. It was recklessly run up by
the virtuosi, and was finally bought in for over £400. Hogarth,
whose inimitable 'Marriage' had fetched only £126 (frames included),
determined to paint the same subject. He had an open commission from
Sir Richard Grosvenor, a wealthy art-collector, who had been one of the
bidders for the Furini, and he set to work. He took unusual pains--a
thing which, in his case, was of evil augury; and he modified the
details of his design again and again, in obedience to the suggestions
of friends. When at last the picture was completed, Sir Richard, who,
perhaps not unreasonably, had looked for something more in the artist's
individual manner, took advantage of Hogarth's conventional offer to
release him from his bargain, and rather shabbily withdrew from it upon
the specious ground 'that the constantly having it [the picture] before
one's eyes would be too often occasioning melancholy ideas'--a sentiment
which the irritated painter, calling verse to his relief, afterwards
neatly paraphrased. Admitting its power to touch the heart to be the
'truest test' of a masterpiece, he says of 'Sigismunda':=
````'Nay;'tis so moving that the Knight
````Can't even bear it in his sight;
````Then who would tears so dearly buy,
````As give four hundred pounds to cry?
````I own, he chose the prudent part,
````Rather to break his word than heart;
````And yet, methinks,'tis ticklish dealing
````With one so delicate--in feeling.'=
As a result of Sir Richard Grosvenor's action, the picture remained on
the artist's hands,--a source of continual mortification to himself,
and a fruitful theme of discussion to both his friends and enemies. The
political caricaturists got hold of it, and used it as a stick to beat
the pensionary of Lord Bute; the critics employed it to continue their
assaults on the precepts of the 'Analysis.' When Wilkes retorted
to Hogarth's ill-advised print of the 'Times,' he openly described
'Sigismunda' as a portrait of Mrs. Hogarth 'in an agony of passion;' and
the fact that she had served as her husband's model was not neglected by
his meaner assailants. Finally, after various attempts had been made
to engrave it, the picture was left by the artist to his widow with
injunctions not to sell it for less than £500. After her death it was
bought at the 'Golden Head' sale for £56 by Alderman Boydell. As already
stated, it is now in the National Gallery, to which it was bequeathed by
the late Mr. Anderdon in 1879.