"Hail, Gallia's daughters! easy, brisk, and free;
Good-humour'd, _debonnaire_, and _degagée_:
Though still fantastic, frivolous, and vain,
Let not their airs and graces give us pain:
Or fair, or brown, at toilet, prayer, or play,
Their motto speaks their manners,--'_Toujours gai_.'
But for that powder'd compound of grimace,
That capering he-she thing of fringe and lace;
With sword and cane, with bag and solitaire,
Vain of the full-dress'd dwarf,--his hopeful heir,
How does our spleen and indignation rise,
When such a tinsell'd coxcomb meets our eyes,
So twisted out of God and Nature's plan,--
Yet know that coxcomb must be call'd a man!"--E.
[Illustration: NOON.]
Among the figures who are coming out of church, an affected,
flighty Frenchwoman, with her fluttering fop of an husband, and a
boy, habited _à-la-mode de Paris_, claim our first attention. In
dress, air, and manner, they have a national character. The whole
congregation, whether male or female, old or young, carry the air
of their country in countenance, dress, and deportment. Like the
three principal figures, they are all marked with some affected
peculiarity. Affectation in a woman is supportable upon no other
ground than that general indulgence we pay to the omnipotence of
beauty, which in a degree sanctifies whatever it adopts. In a boy,
when we consider that the poor fellow is attempting to copy what he
has been taught to believe praiseworthy, we laugh at it--the largest
portion of ridicule falls upon his tutors; but in a man, it is
contemptible!
The old fellow in a black periwig has a most vinegar-like aspect, and
looks with great contempt at the frippery gentlewoman immediately
before him. The woman with a demure countenance seems very piously
considering how she can contrive to pick the embroidered beau's
pocket. Two old sibyls joining their withered lips in a chaste
salute, is nauseous enough, but, being a national custom, must be
forgiven. The divine seems to have resided in this kingdom long
enough to acquire a roast-beef countenance. A little boy, whose
woollen night-cap is pressed over a most venerable flowing periwig,
and the decrepid old man, leaning upon a crutch-stick, who is walking
before him, I once considered as two vile caricatures, out of nature,
and unworthy the artist. Since I have seen the peasantry of Flanders
and the plebeian youth of France, I have in some degree changed my
opinion, but still think them rather _outré_.
Under a sign of the Baptist's Head is written, "Good Eating;" and
on each side of the inscription is a mutton chop. In opposition to
this head without a body, unaccountably displayed as a sign at an
eating-house, there is a body without a head, hanging out as the
sign of a distiller's. This, by common consent, has been quaintly
denominated "The Good Woman."[136] At a window above, one of
the _softer sex_ proves her indisputable right to the title by her
temperate conduct to her husband, with whom having had a little
disagreement, she throws their Sunday's dinner into the street.
A girl, bringing a pie from the bakehouse, is stopped in her career
by the rude embraces of a blackamoor, who eagerly rubs his sable
visage against her blooming cheek.
Good eating is carried on to the lower part of the picture. A
boy,[137] placing a baked pudding upon a post with rather too
violent an action, the dish breaks, the fragments fall to the
ground; and while he is loudly lamenting his misfortune, and with
tears anticipating his punishment, the smoking remnants are eagerly
snatched up by a poor girl. Not educated according to the system of
Jean Jacques Rousseau, she feels no qualms of conscience about the
original proprietor, and destitute of that fastidious delicacy which
destroys the relish of many a fine lady, eagerly swallows the hot and
delicious morsels with all the concomitants.
The scene is laid at the door of a French chapel in Hog Lane,--a part
of the town at that time almost wholly peopled by French refugees or
their descendants.
A kite blown from an adjacent field,[138] being entangled on the
roof of the chapel, hangs pendant on the wall. One of Mr. Hogarth's
commentators asserts, that "this is introduced only to break
the disagreeable uniformity of a wall."[139] It certainly has
that effect; but Hogarth so rarely presents any object without a
particular and pointed allusion, that I am inclined to think he had
some other meaning. May it not be designed to intimate that the good
people who compose the congregation, after being blown out of their
own country by a religious storm, found a peaceful harbour under this
roof, safely sheltered from the hurricanes of enthusiasm and the
blasts of superstition?
By the dial of St. Giles' Church, in the distance, we see that it
is only half-past eleven. At this early hour, in those good times,
there was as much good eating as there is now at six o'clock in the
evening. From twenty pewter measures, which are hung up before the
houses of different distillers, it seems that good drinking was
considered as equally worthy of their serious attention.
The dead cat and choked kennels mark the little attention shown to
the streets by the scavengers of St. Giles'. At that time noxious
effluvia was not peculiar to this parish. The neighbourhood of Fleet
Ditch, and many other parts of the city, were equally polluted.
Even at this refined period, there would be some use in a more
strict attention to the medical police of a city so crowded with
inhabitants. We ridicule the people of Paris and Edinburgh for
neglecting so essential and salutary a branch of delicacy, while the
kennels of a street in the vicinity of St. Paul's Church are floated
with the blood of slaughtered animals every market day. Moses would
have managed these things better: but in those days there was no
_physician in Israel_!