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THE LANGHAM SERIES
AN ILLUSTRATED COLLECTION
OF ART MONOGRAPHS
EDITED BY SELWYN BRINTON, M.A.
THE LANGHAM SERIES OF ART MONOGRAPHS
EDITED BY SELWYN BRINTON, M.A.
Vol. I.--BARTOLOZZI AND HIS PUPILS IN ENGLAND. _By_ SELWYN BRINTON, M.A.
Vol. II.--COLOUR-PRINTS OF JAPAN. _By_ EDWARD F. STRANGE, Assistant
Keeper in the Victoria and Albert Museum.
Vol. III.--THE ILLUSTRATORS OF MONTMARTRE. _By_ FRANK L. EMANUEL.
Vol. IV.--AUGUSTE RODIN. _By_ RUDOLF DIRCKS, Author of "Verisimilitudes,"
"The Libretto," &c.
Vol. V.--VENICE AS AN ART CITY. _By_ ALBERT ZACHER.
Vol. VI.--LONDON AS AN ART CITY. _By_ Mrs. STEUART ERSKINE, Author of
"Lady Diana Beauclerk," &c.
Vol. VII.--NUREMBERG. _By_ H. UHDE-BERNAYS.
Vol. VIII.--THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY IN ENGLISH CARICATURE. _By_ SELWYN
BRINTON, M.A., Author of "Bartolozzi and his Pupils in
England," &c.
_In Preparation_
ROME AS AN ART CITY
AND
ITALIAN ARCHITECTURE
These volumes will be artistically presented and profusely illustrated,
both with colour plates and photogravures, and neatly bound in art
canvas. 1_s_. 6_d_. net, or in leather, 2_s_. 6_d_. net.
=RECRUITS. By H. W. Bunbury.=
THE
EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
IN
ENGLISH CARICATURE
BY
SELWYN BRINTON, M.A.,
_Author of_
"BARTOLOZZI AND HIS PUPILS IN ENGLAND,"
ETC.
A. SIEGLE
2 LANGHAM PLACE, LONDON, W.
1904
_To Friends beyond the Seas_
_this Study_
_Of a Common Heritage in_
_English Art_
_All rights reserved_
CONTENTS
_Page_
I. INTRODUCTORY 1
II. THE COMEDY OF VICE 8
III. THE COMEDY OF SOCIETY 29
IV. THE COMEDY OF POLITICS 54
V. THE COMEDY OF LIFE 74
ILLUSTRATIONS
RECRUITS. _By Henry William Bunbury_ _Frontispiece_
SHRIMPERS (Tail-piece). _By Thomas Rowlandson_ _Page_ 7
MORNING. _By William Hogarth_ _Facing page_ 10
THE DISTREST POET. _By William Hogarth_ " 12
MARRIAGE A LA MODE. _By William Hogarth_ " 20
THE FAMILY PIECE. _By H. W. Bunbury_ " 42
A FASHIONABLE SALUTATION. _By H. W. Bunbury_ " 48
LUMPS OF PUDDING. _By H. W. Bunbury_ _Page_ 53
BRITANNIA BETWEEN DEATH AND THE DOCTORS.
_By James Gillray_ _Facing page_ 64
ARMED HEROES. _By James Gillray_ " 66
BUONAPARTE AS KING-MAKER. _By James Gillray_ " 68
NELSON RECRUITING WITH HIS BRAVE TARS AFTER THE BATTLE OF THE NILE.
_By Thomas Rowlandson_ " 82
FILIAL AFFECTION(Colour-print).
_By Thomas Rowlandson_ " 86
A BALL AT THE HACKNEY ASSEMBLY ROOMS.
_By Thomas Rowlandson_ " 90
A THEATRICAL CANDIDATE. _By Thomas Rowlandson_ " 92
OLD JOSEPH NOLLEKENS AND HIS VENUS.
_By Thomas Rowlandson_ " 94
I
INTRODUCTORY
The word Caricature does not lend itself easily to precise definition.
Etymologically it connects itself with the Italian _caricare_, to load
or charge, thus corresponding precisely in derivation with its French
equivalent _Charge_; and--save a yet earlier reference in Sir Thomas
Browne--it first appears, as far as I am aware, in that phrase of No.
537 of the _Spectator_, "Those burlesque pictures which the Italians
call _caracaturas_."
Putting the dry bones of etymology from our thought the essence, the
life-blood of the thing itself, is surely this--the human creature's
amusement with itself and its environment, and its expression of that
amusement through the medium of the plastic arts. So that our
_caracatura_, our burlesque picture of life, stands on the same basis
as comedy or satire, is, in fact, but comedy or satire finding its
outlet in another form of expression. And this is so true that wherever
we find brilliant or trenchant satire of life there we may be sure, too,
that caricature is not far absent. Pauson's grotesques are the
correlative of the Comedies of Aristophanes; and when the development of
both is not correlative, not simultaneous, it is surely because one or
other has been checked by political or social conditions, which have
been inherently antagonistic to its growth.
Those conditions--favourable or antagonistic--it becomes part of our
inquiry at this point to examine. We have this to ask, even granting
that our "burlesque picture" is a natural, almost a necessary,
accompaniment of human life,--was found, we may quite safely assume, in
the cave-dwelling of primitive man, who probably satirised with a flint
upon its walls those troublesome neighbours of his, the mammoth and the
megatherium,--peers out upon us from the complex culture of the Roman
world in the clumsy _graffito_ of the Crucifixion,--emerges in the
Middle Ages in a turbulent growth of grotesque, wherein those grim
figures of Death or Devil move through a maze of imagery often quaint
and fantastic, sometimes obscene or terrible--takes a fresh start in the
_Passionals_ of Lucas Cranach, and can be traced in England through her
Rebellion and Restoration up to the very confines of the eighteenth
century. Why, we have to ask, even granting that William Hogarth's
"monster Caricatura" is thus omnivorous and omnipresent, does he tower
aloft in some countries and under some conditions to the majesty of a
new art, and in others dwindle down to puny ridicule?
Taking the special subject of this little volume, the eighteenth century
itself, we find little to interest us in French pictorial satire until
that monstrous growth of political caricature created by the Revolution.
Italy in the same period has but little to offer us, Germany as little
or less; and it is to England that we must turn for the pictorial
humour, whether social or political, of that interesting epoch. And this
because the England of that time is a self-conscious creature, emergent
from a successful struggle for freedom, and strong enough to enjoy a
hearty laugh--even at her own expense. While the Bastille still frowns
over France, the Inquisition and the Jesuits are an incubus upon Spain
and Italy, while Germany is split up into little principalities,
Dukedoms, Bishoprics, Palatinates, England has already won for herself
the great boon of freedom of thought, freedom of speech, freedom of
religious and political opinion. The satirist could here find expression
and appreciation. The birth of the pictorial satirist who is the subject
of my first chapter coincides pretty closely with the creation of that
_Tale of a Tub_, of which Dean Swift, in all the ripeness of his later
talent, exclaimed: "Good God! what genius I had when I wrote that book";
and no print from the artist's graver--even his "Stages of Cruelty," or
his "Players dressing in a Barn"--could excel in coarseness of fibre the
great satirist's _Strephon and Chloe_.
The pen of Swift and the graver of Hogarth in the early eighteenth
century found in England conditions not very dissimilar to those which
awaited Philipon and Honore Daumier[1] in Paris of the early nineteenth
century--that is, a public which had come through a period of intensely
active political existence to a complete and complex self-consciousness,
and which enjoyed (just as in Paris _La Caricature_, when suppressed,
found a speedy successor in _Le Charivari_) sufficient political freedom
to render criticism a possibility. And from Hogarth through Sandby and
Sayer and Woodward to Henry William Bunbury, and onwards to that giant
of political satire, James Gillray, and his vigorous contemporary Thomas
Rowlandson, what a feast of material is spread before us; what an
insight we may gain, not only into costume, manners, social life, but
into the detailed political development of a fertile and fascinating
period of history. In the earlier age Hogarth is ready to present the
very London of his time in the _levee_ and drawing-room, in the vice and
extravagance of the rich, in the industrious and thriving citizen, and
those lowest haunts where crime hoped to lurk undisturbed. In the
century's close Gillray's pencil notes every change of the political
kaleidoscope. In his prints we seem almost to hear the muffled roar of
the Parisian mob, clamorous for more blood in those days of Terror; or
we watch the giant forms of Pitt and Buonaparte fronting each other as
the strife comes nearer home to Britain.
To attempt within the limits of this little volume to exhaust a subject
so rich in magnificent material would be obviously impossible. All that
is permitted me here by imperative limits of space is a sketch, where my
matter tempts me sorely to a comprehensive study. Yet even the sketch
may claim for itself a place beside the finished work of art, if--while
omitting the detail which it was unable to include--it has yet secured
for us the main outlines, the swing of the figure, the balance of light
and shadow, the sweep and spacing of the horizon; just as the massed
clouds in a Constable study can give us as keen artistic pleasure as the
"Valley Farm," or his "Salisbury Cathedral." And thus I have attempted
here not so much the history of the men, the catalogue of their achieved
work--interesting or valuable though such a history or catalogue might
be--as to show the spirit of the age itself reflected most faithfully,
even when it seems most caricatured or burlesqued, by their brush or
graver or pencil; to watch the grotesque visage and ignoble form of Vice
traced by Hogarth's genius from the homes of London's luxury to her dens
of hidden crime; to study the more refined, if somewhat weaker, social
satire of Henry William Bunbury; to admire those magnificent political
cartoons of James Gillray--colossal and overwhelming, even in their
brutality or obscenity; and finally, to lose ourselves in the luxuriant
and living growth of Thomas Rowlandson's pencil, recreating for us the
features of an age that was, like himself, vigorous, buoyant, and
expansive,--that true Age of Caricature, which is also known as the
Eighteenth Century.
=(Illustration without caption) Shrimpers.=
II
THE COMEDY OF VICE
The eighteenth century, which was to witness the magnificent and, in its
own way, unequalled achievement of English art in the paintings of
Reynolds, Romney, Gainsborough, Hoppner; in the engravings of
Bartolozzi, Dalton, John Raphael Smith, and William Henry Ryland; in the
caricatures, which we have just noted, of Bunbury, Rowlandson, and
Gillray, was to open, not inappropriately, with the appearance and
speedy recognition of a very individual and very characteristic
genius--with the pictured comedies of William Hogarth.
A first survey of my subject led me for a moment to doubt how far my
title would cover the creations of that incomparable humourist. He is,
indeed, more than caricaturist in the sense in which we shall use this
term of his artistic successors. His pictured moralities teem with
portraits drawn from the very life. He is a satirist, as mordant and
merciless as Juvenal, or, in his own day, the terrible Dean of St.
Patrick's; from his house in Leicester Fields he looks out upon the
London of his day, and probes with his remorseless brush or graver to
the hidden roots of its follies, its vices, and crimes. "He may be said
to have created," says one of his early biographers,[2] "a new species
of painting, which may be termed the _moral comic_;" meaning, thereby,
that the instinctive humour of the man's art is generally (not, as we
shall see, always) directed to some moral purpose, some lesson of
conduct to be thence derived. That is just where Hogarth connects
himself, inevitably and intimately, with the Puritan England which had
preceded him. Not for nothing had that century, into whose last years he
was born, seen the great uprising of Puritan England,--the struggle for
civil and political liberty, and its achievement,--the Ironsides of
Cromwell with Bible and uplifted sword. That intensity of moral and
spiritual conviction, that earnestness about life and its issues was
yet in the nation's blood, and must find some outlet in the returning
world of art, which its own austerity had banished; but, in another
sense, mark how truly Hogarth connects himself with the later
caricaturists of the coming age.
=_By William Hogarth_ MORNING=
Beauty does not enter into his art,--most of all in that highest sense
of plastic beauty of form, which the great Italians had so intensely
felt, which the great English school, uprising in his own day, was in
some measure to recover. At most a comely buxom wench steals sometimes
slyly into his canvas or copper-plate--the two servant-maids in his
print of "Morning" at Covent Garden, whom the roysterers turning out
from Tom King's coffee-house are kissing in the Piazza; the demure and
pretty Miss West, looking over a joint hymn book with the amorous--but
industrious--apprentice; or that coy minx--most delicious of them
all--who has just dozed off amid "The Sleeping Congregation," with her
prayer-book opened at the fascinating page of Matrimony, and to whose
luxuriant charms of face and form the eyes of the fat old clerk are
stealthily directed. To Hogarth these are the incidents, not the
inspiration, of his art. Lavater, that keen observer, aimed near to
the mark when he wrote: "_Il ne faut pas attendre beaucoup de noblesse
de Hogarth. Le vrai beau n'etoit guere a la portee de ce peintre._" It
is, indeed, one of the unconscious ironies of art history that the
artist, whose work shows least of its influence or attraction, should
have devoted the one offspring of his pen to an Analysis of Beauty.
But it is when we turn to the humour of life, even in its most sordid
tragedies, that his real strength appears. "_Quelle richesse
inexprimable_"--says Lavater again, and no less justly--"_dans les
scenes comiques ou morales de la vie_." None like Hogarth has
characterised "the lowest types of modern humanity, has better depicted
the drunken habits of the dregs of the people, the follies of life, and
the horrors of vice." And it is just here, as I have hinted, that
Hogarth connects himself with the later caricaturists.
It were quite possible to treat a purely moral story, such as that of
"The Industrious and the Idle Apprentice," in a purely moral sentiment;
but this is just what our artist cannot bring himself to do. He must
have that touch of nature, and of humour, which makes the whole world
kin. He must introduce the quarrelling cat and dog into the office
scene between West and Goodchild, or the feline visitant whose
apparition through the chimney disturbs Thomas Idle's unhallowed
slumbers; he must accentuate the gormandising guests in the Sheriff's
banquet, and the humours of the crowd even in a Tyburn execution. And in
other subjects--where the moral lesson is either absent or less
intrusive--the man's fancy runs absolutely riot in humorous observation.
"The Distressed Poet," with the baby squalling in his bed, the poor wife
stitching at his solitary pair of breeches, and a strapping milkmaid
clamouring for payment of her account; "The Enraged Musician," with
every conceivable pandemonium of noise congregated beneath his window;
above all, "The Sleeping Congregation," collected in a conventicle of
very early Georgian design, and unanimously occupied in carrying out the
precept of their reverend pastor's text, "Come unto me ... and I will
give Rest"--save only those two vigilant old ladies, perhaps pillars of
the edifice, and the clerk to whose interest in the sleeping nymph of
the next pew I have already alluded--are studies in pure humour.
=_By William Hogarth_ THE DISTREST POET=
But to multiply examples of Hogarth's humour would come very near to
cataloguing his every work. Let us turn now from that work to the man
himself, and study something of those conditions of life of which his
genius gives us our most vivid impress.
William Hogarth was born in 1697 or 1698, in London, but of a
Westmorland family (Hoggard would seem to have been the earlier
spelling), one member of which, the artist's father, after working as a
schoolmaster in Westmorland, had settled in London as corrector of the
Press.
He must have been a man of some education, since we hear of a
Latin-English Dictionary of his composition, though there seems some
uncertainty as to whether it ever got beyond the initial stage of MS.;
and his son William was early in life bound 'prentice to a silversmith
named Gamble, his business being to learn the graving of arms and
ciphers upon plate. His marvellous gift for caricature soon showed
itself; and a tavern quarrel at Highgate seems to have afforded subject
for an early manifestation of his talent in this direction. As the
period of his 'prenticeship came to its close he entered an Academy of
drawing in St. Martin's Lane, where he may have come under Sir James
Thornhill's notice; but seems to have failed to show any exceptional
proficiency in his life studies. Form, we have seen already, lay
outside--in certain manifestations entirely outside--the peculiar limits
of his temperament. Shop-bills and coats-of-arms were probably the
mainstay of his livelihood at this period, though plates for books were
beginning, little by little, to come in his way; but when in 1730 he
clandestinely married the daughter of Sir James Thornhill, the Court
painter was so incensed at this _mesalliance_ that he refused the young
couple any acknowledgment. It was at this very time that Hogarth created
his first work of individual genius in that superb series of plates to
which he gave the name of "The Harlot's Progress"; and it is said that
Lady Thornhill designedly placed one of the plates in her husband's way,
only to elicit the grudging praise of: "The man who can produce these
can also maintain a wife without a portion."
But the ice was broken, and the ensuing thaw led to a complete
reconciliation. Sir James Thornhill treated his daughter and son-in-law
more generously, and lived with them in future till his death in 1733.
At the same time the Series which had brought about domestic
reconciliation, had also brought fame and fortune to the artist. The
third scene of the Progress, in which the erring girl is arrested,
contained, it would seem, a clever portrait of Sir James Gonson, a
magistrate whose energies were famous in this direction. The print is
passed around at a meeting of the Board of Treasury, at which Sir James
is present; every Lord must repair to the print-shop, to obtain for
himself a copy; the vogue was started, and twelve hundred subscribers
entered their names for the Series, the price of each set being one
guinea.
William Hogarth was now well started in his career of fame; and
deservedly so, for in some respects "The Harlot's Progress" is one of
the most characteristic and the most brilliant of his creations. Its
popularity was immense and instantaneous; it was played in pantomime,
and reproduced on ladies' fans. But if he did not surpass the genius of
his first invention he certainly came very close to it, both in the
"Rake's Progress" and in his "Marriage a la Mode."
Each of these Series, as well as that of the "Industrious and Idle
'Prentices" are complete stories, worked out to their _denoument_--
tragedies, one might say, written with a burlesque pencil,
of eighteenth-century life. And if the note struck seem sometimes too
insistent, if the Industrious one be too sleek, too self-complacent, the
prodigal too immersed in sensual folly and indulgence; if the blacks
seem too black, and the whites too white, and those half-tones which
accord the values of life be generally missing; if a more refined age
demands a subtler analysis, a more artistic treatment, can we yet deny
the truth and necessity of the eternal lesson? Have we yet reached, or
shall we ever reach, an age in which ineptitude, insolence, idleness,
fail to work out their inevitable resultant? Or is it less true for us
than for those earlier ages--the message which the writer of that
magnificent thirty-eighth Psalm reiterates, as though he would drive
deep into our souls its lasting verity. "_Put thou thy trust in the Lord
and be doing good; dwell in the land and verily thou shall be fed.
Delight thou in the Lord; and he shall give thee thy heart's desire....
Yet a little while and the ungodly shall be clean gone ... the Lord
shall laugh him to scorn, for he hath seen that his day is coming._"
Just as insistent, just as certain of his concluding verdict as the
Psalmist is the eighteenth-century engraver and humorist. Even his own
day may already have seen "the ungodly" set high above men in social
position, quoted with respect in financial circles, perhaps even a
regular attendant at the local conventicle,--"flourishing," in short, to
quote that inimitable phrase of the same Psalmist, "like a green
bay-tree"; but he, at least will admit no doubt of the ultimate
conclusion. "In all his delineation," says Mr. Austin Dobson,[3] with
fine insight, "as in that famous design of Prudhon, we see Justice and
Vengeance following hard upon the criminal. He knew, no doubt, as well
as we, that not seldom (humanly speaking) the innocent are punished and
the guilty go at large. What matter! that message should not be preached
by him at any rate. So he drew his 'Bogey' bigger ... and drove his
graver deeper in the copper."
Yet it is to be noted that from the first his genius is attracted to
social satire. The _Masquerades and Operas, Burlington Gate_, 1724
(which he calls in his own notes _The Taste of the Times_)--the first
plate which he published on his own account,--was popular enough to be
freely pirated. "The Wanstead Assembly" brings him close to the later
caricaturists; "The Burning of Rumps" shows us a London crowd beside old
Temple Bar, with its ghastly trophies of Jacobite relics; and all these
lead up to his later success in the two Progresses and the Marriage
Series. In 1733 he had settled in his house in Leicester Fields, with
its gilt sign of the Golden Head--the sign which he had fashioned and
gilded himself, in the similitude of the painter Van Dyck; and here the
most of his life was to be spent, varied by visits in later years to the
villa which he then acquired at Chiswick. He is now fairly facing his
life work, and a brief survey of this is all we can hope to attempt in
the limits of this chapter.
I have already mentioned "The Harlot's Progress," and its immediate
successor, "The Rake's Progress," the subjects of which speak for
themselves. The country maiden's arrival in London, the breakfast scene
with her Jewish admirer, and the scene in Bridewell are to be noted
among the prints of the first Series; but all are full of character and
interest. In "The Rake's Progress" the second plate introduces us to a
side of Hogarth's talent which he was to develop later on more fully in
his "Marriage a la Mode"--namely, his satire of eighteenth-century life
of fashion.
The awkward youth who in the plate before had come into his fortune is
now in the full of its enjoyment: become a fine gentleman, he holds his
morning _levee_ of those numerous parasites who minister to his vanity
or pleasure. The foreign element (which Hogarth in his heart detested)
is here to the front in the figure of the French dancing-master, trying
a new step, with the fiddle in his hand; behind him the _maitre
d'armes_, Dubois, is making a lunge with his _epee de combat_, while
Figg, a noted English prize-fighter, watches his movements with an
expression of contempt. Another portrait is Bridgman, a well-known
landscape gardener of the time, who is proposing to our young hero some
scheme for his estate; while the seated and periwigged figure who runs
his fingers over the harpsichord has been suggested as that of the great
composer Handel. But when we start forth to knock down the watch, "beat
the rounds," intrigue with the fair, and generally keep up the character
of a young blood or "macaroni," a little timely assistance is often
welcome; and is here proffered (with hope of due remuneration) by the
villainous-looking figure on the prodigal's left, whose recommendation
is seen in the letter he presents: "The Capt. is a man of honour, his
sword may serve you." Meanwhile, a jockey holds before his master the
cup he has won; and a tame poet in the corner seems to be invoking the
Muses in unmerited praise of the same patron.
=_By William Hogarth_ MARRIAGE A LA MODE PLATE II=
In his next plate Hogarth passes to a scene of indescribable orgy; but
all this satire on fashionable extravagance, which we have just noted in
detail, is still more fully developed in his masterly Series of
"Marriage a la Mode." Hogarth's oil paintings of this complete Series
are in the London National Gallery, and it is instructive to compare
these with the prints, the two first pictures of the Series being
especially attractive in treatment. The second of these, representing
the morning, when husband and wife awake to _ennui_ from a night of
dissipation, is peculiarly happy in spacing and composition, as my
illustration may show; while Plate IV. of this Series, showing a
reception of the Countess while at her toilet, gives an opening for a
clever satire by our artist of the fashionable society of his day, which
is as brilliant as any Venetian scene by Longhi, and the ensuing
plates point the sequel to a life of folly. Nor has the artist forgotten
here to give a side blow to the foreign element--which aroused his
hostility, from the French dancing-master or _perruquier_ to the great
Italian Masters--Correggio's "Jupiter and Io" finding a place on the
walls of her ladyship's bedroom, just as the "Choice of Paris" had been
included in the Rake's _levee_; and we shall note very soon that these
allusions were not incidental, but far more probably intended.
For Hogarth had now in these three series attained a reputation which he
probably increased by his delightful studies of pure humour, among which
"Modern Midnight Conversation," "The Sleeping Congregation," "Strolling
Players in a Barn," "The Laughing Audience," "The Enraged Musician," and
"The Distressed Poet" are to be especially commended, as well as that
fine series of "The Four Times of the Day," in which last "Morning" (of
which I am able to give an illustration) is certainly a masterpiece. His
estimate of his own powers had increased, and now led him to leave that
path in which his genius had already found its intimate expression, and
to seek to become that which he was not and never could be--a great
imaginative and historical painter. Without ever having really studied
the great Masters of the past, without comprehending either their merits
or demerits, he declared that it were an easy task for him to surpass
even Correggio on his own ground: the result was, if not disaster, at
least something very near to it. The "Sigismunda," which he had painted
with the above object, was returned on his hands by the purchaser. It
hangs now, indeed, in the National Gallery, but I do not imagine many
serious critics will prefer it to the marvellous _chiaroscuro_, the
refined ideal beauty of the Master of Parma. Yet that delicious "Shrimp
Girl" which hangs near it, painted with almost a Fragonard's gaiety of
palette, shows what our artist might have achieved had he gone, like
Morland, for his subjects to the common life of his own country. The
staircase paintings of St. Bartholomew's Hospital are not likely, I
think, to induce us to revise the above opinion; and Sir Joshua's
criticism is here so apposite and so just that I need no excuse for
quoting it in some detail. "After this admirable artist had spent the
greater part of his life in an active, busy, and, we may add, successful
attention to the ridicule of life; after he had invented a new species
of dramatic painting in which probably he will never be equalled; and
had stored his mind with infinite materials to explain and illustrate
the domestic and familiar scenes of common life which were generally,
and ought to have been always, the subject of his pencil,--he very
imprudently, or rather presumptuously, attempted the great historical
style, for which his previous habits had by no means prepared him: he
was indeed so unacquainted with the principles of this style that he was
not even aware that any artificial preparation was necessary. It is to
be regretted that any part of the life of such a genius should be
fruitlessly employed."
This criticism, which is all the more telling from its reticence, was
keenly felt, and probably never forgiven, by our artist; to us it is of
value critically as marking the cleavage between himself and the great
English school of the eighteenth century, which sought its inspiration
otherwise than in his comedy of life. But with a tenacity, with a
stubborn faith in his genius which we cannot but admire, he holds firm
to his own view of art. That is in the character of the man--sound,
honest, sincere even where he is mistaken or narrow--just as we see him
in his _self-portrait_ of the London Gallery, with his faithful "Trump"
sitting in front, as who should say, "This is my master, Hogarth--and
let me just see the dog who will dare bark at him." And so when his
critics barked or railed he held but the more stubbornly to his opinion;
he rated the more mercilessly those "black masters," whose faults or
whose supreme genius it needed a deeper study than he had given them to
understand; and when "Sigismunda," that was to rival Allegri, comes back
upon his hands he prices it obstinately at L400, even in his will
insisting that it should not be sold below that sum.
But now, not content with attempting to eclipse the great Italian
masters, not content with quarrelling with the critics, in the same
reckless confidence, with the same bull-dog courage and tenacity he will
descend from his artistic charger to meet these last upon their own
ground, and armed only with those weapons so dear to them, but new to
his untried hands--the goose quill and the ink bottle--will tear down
the veil that conceals Beauty, and teach them what in future to write,
what to select, what to admire!
I am treating in this chapter William Hogarth as a delineator of the
comedy of life, not as an art critic, nor as a philosopher; and it is
not my painful duty to drag the gentle reader through the verbose
Preface to a no less verbose Introduction, to find ourselves at the end
of these still in front of the author's main problem of the "Analysis of
Beauty." The work probably suffered from the presence of more than one
obliging literary--or would-be literary--friend. We hear of a Mr. Ralph,
from Chiswick, volunteering his services in this direction, of a Mr.
Nichols following him; and of the Rev. Mr. Townley being much busied on
that Preface, wherein Lomazzo rubs shoulders with Michelangelo and
Protogenes, and where the modern mortal hears with astonishment of "the
sublime part which is a real _je ne scai quoi_," and which, "being the
most important part to all connoisseurs, I shall call a harmonious
propriety, which is a touching or moving unity, or a pathetic agreement,
&c."
But it would be unfair to judge the Analysis by this preface, which
admittedly befogged even poor Hogarth himself. Suffice to say here that
he seeks to divide his elusive element, which might have defied even the
dialectic of Socrates, into its "principles of Fullness, Variety,
Uniformity, Simplicity, Intricacy, and Quantity; _all which co-operate
in the production of beauty, mutually correcting, and restraining each
other occasionally_"; and that the essay, even if entirely inadequate as
a philosophical treatment of the subject, contains many useful
suggestions and shrewd observations.
It had been enough surely for one short life-time to have been the
greatest pictorial humorist of his age, to have tried to climb above
Allegri and Titian, and to have traced in thought Beauty's self to her
hidden source; but behold our ill-judged artist plunging now, with equal
assurance and courage, into that tumultuous sea of English
eighteenth-century political strife. The result was this time fatal to
his peace, and probably even to his life. John Wilkes was not a very
safe man to attack carelessly, nor yet likely to remain quiescent under
this treatment; and Hogarth's print of the "Times," published in
September of 1762, provoked a very savage rejoinder in No. 17 of the
_North Briton_. Hogarth's reply was a caricature of the popular leader;
who then engaged one of his supporters, named Churchill, to retaliate in
an angry epistle to the artist. Hogarth again replies with the
graver--that terrible weapon in his practised hands--and draws a
portrait of "The Bruiser, once the Reverend Churchill," shown in the
form of a dancing bear, with club plastered with lies, and a tankard of
porter at his side.
"Never," says one of his earlier critics, "did two angry men with their
abilities throw mud with less dexterity; but during this period of
pictorial and poetic warfare (so virulent and disgraceful to all the
parties) Hogarth's health declined visibly." A presentiment of his end
seems to have come to him at his own table among his friends, and he
said to them: "My next undertaking shall be the 'End of all things.'"
The next day his graver was already busy with the strange plate which he
called "The Bathos," where Father Time is seen dying, his broken scythe
and hour-glass beside him, amid a chaos of ruin all around.
This was actually his last work, for a month later, on the 28th of
October, 1764, having returned in weak health from Chiswick to his house
in Leicester Fields, he died suddenly of an aneurysm on his chest. His
tomb at Chiswick, where his widow came to join him twenty-five years
later (in 1789), was adorned in relief with the mask of Comedy, the
wreath of laurel, the palette and the book on Beauty; and it was his
friend Garrick who is said to have composed those lines of his epitaph,
with which we too may take our farewell of the great artist of comedy:
"... Whose pictur'd morals charm the mind,
And through the eye correct the heart.
If genius fire thee, reader, stay;
If nature touch thee, drop a tear;
If neither move thee, turn away,
For Hogarth's honoured dust lies here."
III
THE COMEDY OF SOCIETY
In the work of Henry William Bunbury we strike an entirely different
note to that of the artist we have just studied. The contrast is, in its
way, refreshing as well as instructive. Just as Hogarth appears (b.
1698) at almost the first years of the eighteenth century, so Bunbury
dates (b. 1750) from exactly its dividing year; therefore he belongs no
longer to those days of Swift and Bolingbroke and Walpole, of Jacobite
intrigue and Hanoverian power, but to the period of the American war,
and those ominous thunderclouds preceding the French Revolution.
Again, just as William Hogarth belongs entirely to the people, and
shares profoundly both their best and worst qualities, so the artist we
are now considering belongs no less definitely to the aristocratic
class--is a member of a Suffolk family which dated its English origin to
the Conquest, which had gained its knighthood from Queen Elizabeth, and
its baronetcy from the Merry Monarch; and had himself in his younger
days made the "grand tour" of France and Italy, and later held a
commission in his Majesty's Militia, and the post of equerry to the Duke
of York.
"Something of the amateur"--I have written elsewhere[4]--"remains
through all the work of Bunbury, who left politics practically out of
his field of subjects, and whose social qualities were one of his
greatest charms. He married Catherine Horneck, whose sister Mary had
been painted--and, it is said, proposed to--by Sir Joshua Reynolds, who
had elsewhere painted these two pretty women together; and when he
settled in the country with his young wife, his circle of friends came
to include Oliver Goldsmith, the actor Garrick, Hoppner, and Sir
Joshua--the latter being godfather to his second son, Henry, and
painting his eldest as Master Bunbury in 1781--and last, but not least,
Dr. Samuel Johnson." The great Doctor had in fact presented to the
young couple their family Bible--a fact which is recorded upon the
fly-leaf in our artist's own handwriting. Of the two sons that were born
to Henry and Catherine Bunbury, their special hopes seem to have centred
on the eldest, Charles John, the lovely child for whom Sir Joshua
himself had improvised fairy tales to keep him amused while busy on his
portrait; but those hopes were not fulfilled, for his manhood did not
bear out the promise of his schooldays, and he died comparatively early.
Bunbury's caricatures commence as early as his foreign tour, though some
of the best refer to his later military life in England; especially to
the time when he was in camp at Coxheath, during the troubled days of
the American War. For we have now left far behind the days of Swift and
Bolingbroke and Oxford, of Marlborough's battles, and of the great
political settlement which marked the Hanoverian succession. Dettingen
and Fontenoy are now old soldiers' tales, and the invasion of England by
Charles Stuart, the younger Pretender--in which connection we may
remember Hogarth's print of the march of the Guards to Finchley--lies
equally behind us: we have passed through the long Ministry of Walpole
and that of the elder Pitt, we have seen the war with France, and been
stirred by Wolfe's victory and heroic death upon the Heights of Abraham.
In a word, we have turned the corner with the year of our artist's
birth, and are going downwards into the latter half of the eighteenth
century.
George III. has now taken his father's place upon the throne of England:
the Tories have returned again to be a power in political life as in the
days of Bolingbroke, and against the "King's friends," the party
subservient to Court influence, there appears in the nation a very
strong democratic movement with John Wilkes as its leader and idol.
Meanwhile the fatal policy of Grenville had led to the alienation of the
great American colonies, and the passing of the Stamp Act in 1765
brought a complete rupture. But this phase of politics enters but little
into our present subject. It is of more interest to inquire, apart from
this complex turbulent world of home or foreign politics, what were the
people themselves in their home life, their outdoor life, their tastes,
aspirations, sympathies, social surroundings? I think we shall get an
answer to some of these questions--an answer none the less valuable
because it comes to us indirectly--from the study of Henry William
Bunbury's social caricatures. These appear to commence with (or are in
some special cases even earlier than) his Grand Tour. The delightful
"Courier Francois"--published by Bretherton at 134 New Bond St.--belongs
surely to this period; and Thomas Wright, in his valuable "History of
Caricature,"[5] seems to bear this out when he says of Bunbury that his
earlier prints were etched and sold by James Bretherton, who published
also the works of James Sayer--an artist whom we shall meet in our next
chapter. In this print the "Courier" cracks a long whip as he covers the
ground, mounted upon a steed almost as long, as tough and wiry-looking
as himself. A short sword is at his side, and he wears enormous
jack-boots. In the distance rise peaked mountains, perhaps those of
Southern France or Savoy; and the inn to which he seems bound bears the
legend, _Poste Royale_, with the three _fleur-de-lys_. Our Courier
belongs evidently to the _ancien regime_, and might indeed have
stepped--or galloped--to us out of Sterne's "Sentimental Journey." The
drawing of these prints is clumsy and coarse in technique, though full
of character; and, in fact, Bunbury, who seems to have begun to publish
as early as 1771,[6] when he was only twenty-one years of age, had
little knowledge or skill in engraving, and seems, after some preliminary
efforts which were not very successful, to have entrusted
the most of his work to be engraved by other hands. Thus James
Bretherton, who was an engraver as well as a publisher, was engaged on
Bunbury's prints from 1772 onwards; though later we shall find
Rowlandson working as an engraver on Bunbury's humorous sketches, and
necessarily, from his strong individuality, imparting to them much of
his own character.
The pendant to the print just described is the "Courrier Anglois," and
this was in fact both engraved and published by Bretherton in 1774 (it
bears the inscription, _H. W. Bunbury, delineavit; J. Bretherton,
fecit_). In fine contrast to the hurry of the lean Frenchman his English
counterpart ambles leisurely along, as if time were for him a matter of
entire indifference; his horse is loaded with a heavy pack, against
which the rider comfortably leans, while he puts a long horn to his
lips. He has no sword, or any weapon of defence; but the two grisly
figures by the roadside dangling on a gibbet, and his own inimitable
expression of contented ease, seem to imply that travelling is secure
for him, and Justice prompt and keen-eyed.
To this period of the Grand Tour belong also, in my judgment, the "Tour
to Foreign Parts" (drawn by Bunbury, engraved by Bretherton, published
in 1799 by J. Harris of Cornhill), the "Cuisine de la Poste," or "The
Kitchen of a French Post House" (_H. Bunbury, invt._, published 1771 by
Harris), "The Englishman at Paris," 1767, the earliest in date of these
(_Mr. Bunbury, del.; Js. Bretherton, fecit_, published 1799 by J.
Harris), and lastly the "View on the Pont Neuf at Paris" (_H. W.
Bunbury, invt._ The engraver's name, in my example, is cut). These
prints are as precious in their detailed evidence of costume and methods
of life as they are amusing. They are snapshots caught--not with a
camera, but with an eye and pencil which were almost as quick--of the
life of that old monarchic France as it was seen by the English
traveller, posting along the great high-roads, or taking his walk
through the town. Soon, very soon, all that life was to be swept away in
the hurricane of political passion, never in any of its quainter
features to return; that is why these jottings of our artist are to the
student of this period so inestimably precious.
Our travellers, three in number, and evidently portrayed from the life,
have just descended ("A Tour in Foreign Parts") from the two-horse
chaise, which the postilion is driving into the yard. The smallest of
the three Englishmen, with "Chesterfield's Letters" under his arm,
approaches the obsequious host of the "Poste Royale" with a conciliatory
smile; the while the landlady is engaged in an assault upon her
hen-roost, and the servant-girl seems to aim at a similar result with
the domestic cats.
And now ("La Cuisine de la Poste") we are introduced to the interior.
The _pot-au-feu_ hangs in the great chimney over the blazing logs; the
village gossips are there--the postilion in his clumsy jack-boots, the
housewife, and the cure with a friend sipping his glass of red wine--and
on the walls _Louis le bien-aime_, with baton and perruque, is balanced
by _Sanctus Paulus_, with a sword much bigger than himself, or by the
"Ordonnances de Monsieur le Duc de Choiseul, Grand Maitre des Postes et
Relais de France." Or, again, our travellers have arrived at last in the
great city ("Englishman at Paris"), and take their walk in the streets
of _La Ville Lumiere_. A fat monk and a thin peasant seem both to regard
our tourist with astonishment; a dandy of the period is driving his
chariot with a lackey hanging on behind, and the indispensable
_perruquier_ is hurrying to an appointment. Or--in its way most curious
of all--we see the Pont Neuf of those old days, with the costumes and
characters which then thronged its thoroughfare. Huge muffs seem to have
been then the fashion, often combined in use with umbrellas, such as we
now should call Japanese sunshades; the _perruquier_ here, too, must
have his muff, though both hands are filled with the shaving-pot and
curling tongs; the trim abbe in his short cassock, even the
truculent-looking postilion are all provided. In the corner a poodle is
being clipped, just as we may see to-day beside the Seine, and is loudly
vociferating his complaints; and, above all, we see the quaint ensign
of the trade, which combined the shoeblack's lower art with that of the
dog-barber.
_Aux Quarante Lions
St. Louis
Decrotte a l'Anglaise
et Tond des Chiens
Proprement
Allons, Messeigneurs, Allons._
We must turn now to our artist's later prints of English
eighteenth-century social life, which are as full of humorous
observation, even though they have not the special interest of these
notes on old France. For, like Collet and Sandby, his predecessors in
English caricature, Bunbury gave but little attention to political
caricature. Sandby belongs almost (b. 1725) to the later years of
Hogarth's ascendency; and, though not a professional caricaturist, being
perhaps annoyed at that artist's depreciation of other painters, many of
his caricatures are directed against Hogarth himself. But Sandby's best
claim to our interest lies outside our present subject; for his
landscape work in steel engraving, in aquatint and oil-colour, had led
him up to the discovery of the beauty and interest of water-colour
painting, in which art he may claim to be a pioneer. He outlived John
Collet, who had been born in the same year (1725) as himself, and is
said to have been a pupil of Hogarth, though Lambert, a
landscape-painter, is mentioned as giving him his first instructions.
Certainly there is something which recalls Hogarth in his drawings,
which deal, as I have said, with social satire rather than politics. "A
Disaster" treats of a lady who has lost both hat and wig together by the
same gust of wind; her footman behind has caught one of these in each
hand, and the rustics, who have preserved nature's covering, laugh at
her plight. Collet's picture of "Father Paul in his Cups, or The Private
Devotions of a Convent," was one of a series by our artist intended to
illustrate Sheridan's comedy of "The Duenna," produced in 1775. This was
close upon the period of Lord Gordon's riots (1780), and the "No Popery"
feeling which then prevailed finds illustration in this work of
Collet's. Like Sandby, he worked also in water-colour, and two of his
sketches in this medium are mentioned by Bryan as in the Victoria and
Albert Museum.
We have now returned with Bunbury from his "grand tour" abroad, and have
to study him at his best in his sketches of English social life in town
and country. He was probably himself a good horseman, and at any rate
understood, as thoroughly as even Caran d'Ache himself, the humorous
side of the equestrian art. A whole series of his smaller prints deal
with the rider and his steed. "How to pass a carriage," "How to lose
your way," "How to travel on two legs in a frost," are among the best of
these. Another clever print shows the rider of a pulling animal with a
mouth of cast-iron just clearing an old woman's barrow; while among the
larger prints we have "Richmond Hill," "Hyde Park," "Coxheath Ho," and
"Warley Ho," and his inimitable print of a "Riding House," published by
Bretherton in 1780.
Bunbury's caricatures of military subjects naturally connect themselves
with the period when he was actively connected with the Suffolk County
Militia, more especially when, in 1778, he was in camp at Coxheath at
the time of the war in America.