"With pallid cheek and haggard eye,
And loud laments, and heartfelt sigh,
Unpitied, hopeless of relief,
She drinks the bitter cup of grief.
In vain the sigh, in vain the tear,
Compassion never enters here;
But justice clanks her iron chain,
And calls forth shame, remorse, and pain."--E.
[Illustration: THE HARLOT'S PROGRESS, PLATE IV.]
The situation in which the last plate exhibited our wretched female
was sufficiently degrading, but in this her misery is greatly
aggravated. We now see her suffering the chastisement due to her
follies; reduced to the wretched alternative of beating hemp,
or receiving the correction of a savage taskmaster.[58] Exposed
to the derision of all around, even her own servant, who is well
acquainted with the rules of the place, appears little disposed to
show any return of gratitude for recent obligations, though even
her shoes, which she displays while tying up her garter, seem by
their gaudy outside to have been a present from her mistress. The
civil discipline of the stern keeper has all the severity of the
old school.[59] With the true spirit of tyranny, he sentences those
who will not labour to the whipping post, to a kind of picketing
suspension by the wrists, or having a heavy log fastened to their
leg. With the last of these punishments he at this moment threatens
the heroine of our story; nor is it likely that his obduracy can
be softened except by a well-applied fee. How dreadful, how
mortifying the situation! These accumulated evils might perhaps
produce a momentary remorse, but a return to the path of virtue is
not so easy as a departure from it. The Magdalen hospital has been
since instituted, and the wandering female sometimes finds it an
asylum from wretchedness, and a refuge from the reproaches of the
world.
To show that neither the dread nor endurance of the severest
punishment will deter from the perpetration of crimes, a one-eyed
female, close to the keeper, is picking a pocket. The torn card may
probably be dropped by the well-dressed gamester, who has exchanged
the dice-box for the mallet, and whose laced hat is hung up as a
companion trophy to the hoop-petticoat.
One of the girls appears scarcely in her teens. To the disgrace of
our police, these unfortunate little wanderers are still suffered
to take their nocturnal rambles in the most public streets of the
metropolis. What heart so void of sensibility as not to heave a
pitying sigh at their deplorable situation? Vice is not confined to
colour, for a _black_ woman is ludicrously exhibited as suffering the
penalty of those frailties which are imagined peculiar to the _fair_.
The figure chalked as dangling upon the wall, with a pipe in his
mouth, is intended as a caricatured portrait of Sir John Gonson,
and probably the production of some _wou'd-be artist_ whom the
magistrate had committed to Bridewell as a proper _academy_ for the
pursuit of his studies. The inscription upon the pillory, BETTER TO
WORK THAN STAND THUS, and that on the whipping-post, near the laced
gambler, THE REWARD OF IDLENESS, are judiciously introduced.
In this print the composition is tolerably good: the figures in the
background, though properly subordinate, sufficiently marked; the
lassitude of the principal character well contrasted by the austerity
of the rigid overseer. There is a fine climax of female debasement,
from the gaudy heroine of our drama to her maid, and from thence to
the still lower object who is represented as _destroying_[60] one of
the plagues of Egypt.