magnificent apartment is quitted for a dreary lodging in the purlieus of
Drury-lane; she is at breakfast, and every object exhibits marks of the
most wretched penury: her silver tea-kettle is changed for a tin pot,
and her highly decorated toilet gives place to an old leaf table,
strewed with the relics of the last night's revel, and ornamented with a
broken looking-glass. Around the room are scattered tobacco-pipes, gin
measures, and pewter pots; emblems of the habits of life into which she
is initiated, and the company which she now keeps: this is farther
intimated by the wig-box of James Dalton, a notorious street-robber, who
was afterwards executed. In her hand she displays a watch, which might
be either presented to her, or stolen from her last night's gallant. By
the nostrums which ornament the broken window, we see that poverty is
not her only evil.
The dreary and comfortless appearance of every object in this wretched
receptacle, the bit of butter on a piece of paper, the candle in a
bottle, the basin upon a chair, the punch-bowl and comb upon the table,
and the tobacco-pipes, &c. strewed upon the unswept floor, give an
admirable picture of the style in which this pride of Drury-lane ate her
matin meal. The pictures which ornament the room are, Abraham offering
up Isaac, and a portrait of the Virgin Mary; Dr. Sacheverell and
Macheath the highwayman, are companion prints. There is some
whimsicality in placing the two ladies under a canopy, formed by the
unnailed valance of the bed, and characteristically crowned by the
wig-box of a highwayman.
When Theodore, the unfortunate king of Corsica, was so reduced as to
lodge in a garret in Dean-street, Soho, a number of gentlemen made a
collection for his relief. The chairman of their committee informed him,
by letter, that on the following day, at twelve o'clock, two of the
society would wait upon his majesty with the money. To give his attic
apartment an appearance of royalty, the poor monarch placed an
arm-chair on his half-testered bed, and seating himself under the
scanty canopy, gave what he thought might serve as the representation of
a throne. When his two visitors entered the room, he graciously held out
his right hand, that they might have the honour of--kissing it!
A magistrate, cautiously entering the room, with his attendant
constables, commits her to a house of correction, where our legislators
wisely suppose, that being confined to the improving conversation of her
associates in vice, must have a powerful tendency towards the
reformation of her manners. Sir John Gonson, a justice of peace, very
active in the suppression of brothels, is the person represented. In _a
View of the Town in 1735_, by T. Gilbert, fellow of Peterhouse,
Cambridge, are the following lines:
"Though laws severe to punish crimes were made,
What honest man is of these laws afraid?
All felons against judges will exclaim,
As harlots tremble at a Gonson's name."
Pope has noticed him in his Imitation of Dr. Donne, and Loveling, in a
very elegant Latin ode. Thus, between the poets and the painter, the
name of this harlot-hunting justice, is transmitted to posterity. He
died on the 9th of January, 1765.
[Illustration: THE HARLOT'S PROGRESS.
PLATE 3.
APPREHENDED BY A MAGISTRATE.]
THE HARLOT'S PROGRESS.
PLATE IV.
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.
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 task-master. 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. 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.
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 would-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 good: the figures in the back-ground,
though properly subordinate, are 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 object,
who is represented as destroying one of the plagues of Egypt.
Such well dressed females, as our heroine, are rarely met with in our
present houses of correction; but her splendid appearance is
sufficiently warranted by the following paragraph in the Grub-street
Journal of September 14th, 1730.
"One Mary Moffat, a woman of great note in the hundreds of Drury, who,
about a fortnight ago, was committed to hard labour in Tothill-fields
Bridewell, by nine justices, brought his majesty's writ of _habeas
corpus_, and was carried before the right honourable the Lord Chief
Justice Raymond, expecting to have been either bailed or discharged; but
her commitment appearing to be legal, his lordship thought fit to remand
her back again to her former place of confinement, where she is now
beating hemp in a gown very richly laced with silver."
[Illustration: THE HARLOT'S PROGRESS.
PLATE 4.
SCENE IN BRIDEWELL.]
THE HARLOT'S PROGRESS.
PLATE V.
With keen remorse, deep sighs, and trembling fears
Repentant groans, and unavailing tears,
This child of misery resigns her breath,
And sinks, despondent, in the arms of death.
Released from Bridewell, we now see this victim to her own indiscretion
breathe her last sad sigh, and expire in all the extremity of penury and
wretchedness. The two quacks, whose injudicious treatment, has probably
accelerated her death, are vociferously supporting the infallibility of
their respective medicines, and each charging the other with having
poisoned her. The meagre figure is a portrait of Dr. Misaubin, a
foreigner, at that time in considerable practice.
These disputes, it has been affirmed, sometimes happen at a consultation
of regular physicians, and a patient has been so unpolite as to die
before they could determine on the name of his disorder.
"About the symptoms how they disagree,
But how unanimous about the fee!"
While the maid servant is entreating them to cease quarrelling, and
assist her dying mistress, the nurse plunders her trunk of the few poor
remains of former grandeur. Her little boy, turning a scanty remnant of
meat hung to roast by a string; the linen hanging to dry; the coals
deposited in a corner; the candles, bellows, and gridiron hung upon
nails; the furniture of the room; and indeed every accompaniment;
exhibit a dreary display of poverty and wretchedness. Over the candles
hangs a cake of Jew's Bread, once perhaps the property of her Levitical
lover, and now used as a fly-trap. The initials of her name, M. H. are
smoked upon the ceiling as a kind of _memento mori_ to the next
inhabitant. On the floor lies a paper inscribed "anodyne necklace," at
that time deemed a sort of charm against the disorders incident to
children; and near the fire, a tobacco-pipe, and paper of pills.
A picture of general, and at this awful moment, indecent confusion, is
admirably represented. The noise of two enraged quacks disputing in bad
English; the harsh, vulgar scream of the maid servant; the table
falling, and the pot boiling over, must produce a combination of sounds
dreadful and dissonant to the ear. In this pitiable situation, without a
friend to close her dying eyes, or soften her sufferings by a tributary
tear; forlorn, destitute, and deserted, the heroine of this eventful
history expires! her premature death, brought on by a licentious life,
seven years of which had been devoted to debauchery and dissipation, and
attended by consequent infamy, misery, and disease. The whole story
affords a valuable lesson to the young and inexperienced, and proves
this great, this important truth, that A DEVIATION FROM VIRTUE IS A
DEPARTURE FROM HAPPINESS.
The emaciated appearance of the dying figure, the boy's thoughtless
inattention, and the rapacious, unfeeling eagerness of the old nurse,
are naturally and forcibly delineated.
The figures are well grouped; the curtain gives depth, and forms a good
back-ground to the doctor's head; the light is judiciously distributed,
and each accompaniment highly appropriate.
[Illustration: THE HARLOT'S PROGRESS.
PLATE 5.
EXPIRES WHILE THE DOCTORS ARE DISPUTING.]
THE HARLOT'S PROGRESS.
PLATE VI.
"No friend's complaint, no kind domestic tear,
Pleas'd thy pale ghost, or grac'd thy mournful bier:
By harlots' hands thy dying eyes were clos'd;
By harlots' hands thy decent limbs compos'd;
By harlots' hands thy humble grave adorn'd;
By harlots honour'd, and by harlots mourn'd."
The adventures of our heroine are now concluded. She is no longer an
actor in her own tragedy; and there are those who have considered this
print as a farce at the end of it: but surely such was not the author's
intention.
The ingenious writer of Tristram Shandy begins the life of his hero
before he is born; the picturesque biographer of Mary Hackabout has
found an opportunity to convey admonition, and enforce his moral, after
her death. A wish usually prevails, even among those who are most
humbled by their own indiscretion, that some respect should be paid to
their remains; that their eyes should be closed by the tender hand of a
surviving friend, and the tear of sympathy and regret shed upon the sod
which covers their grave; that those who loved them living, should
attend their last sad obsequies; and a sacred character read over them
the awful service which our religion ordains, with the solemnity it
demands. The memory of this votary of prostitution meets with no such
marks of social attention, or pious respect. The preparations for her
funeral are as licentious as the progress of her life, and the contagion
of her example seems to reach all who surround her coffin. One of them
is engaged in the double trade of seduction and thievery; a second is
contemplating her own face in a mirror. The female who is gazing at the
corpse, displays some marks of concern, and feels a momentary
compunction at viewing the melancholy scene before her: but if any other
part of the company are in a degree affected, it is a mere maudlin
sorrow, kept up by glasses of strong liquor. The depraved priest does
not seem likely to feel for the dead that hope expressed in our liturgy.
The appearance and employment of almost every one present at this
mockery of woe, is such as must raise disgust in the breast of any
female who has the least tincture of delicacy, and excite a wish that
such an exhibition may not be displayed at her own funeral.
In this plate there are some local customs which mark the manners of the
times when it was engraved, but are now generally disused, except in
some of the provinces very distant from the capital; sprigs of rosemary
were then given to each of the mourners: to appear at a funeral without
one, was as great an indecorum as to be without a white handkerchief.
This custom might probably originate at a time when the plague
depopulated the metropolis, and rosemary was deemed an antidote against
contagion. It must be acknowledged that there are also in this print
some things which, though they gave the artist an opportunity of
displaying his humour, are violations of propriety and customs: such is
her child, but a few removes from infancy, being habited as chief
mourner, to attend his parent to the grave; rings presented, and an
escutcheon hung up, in a garret, at the funeral of a needy prostitute.
The whole may be intended as a burlesque upon ostentatious and expensive
funerals, which were then more customary than they are now. Mr. Pope has
well ridiculed the same folly;
"When Hopkins dies, a thousand lights attend
The wretch who, living, sav'd a candle's end."
The figures have much characteristic discrimination; the woman looking
into the coffin has more beauty than we generally see in the works of
this artist. The undertaker's gloating stare, his companion's leer, the
internal satisfaction of the parson and his next neighbour, are
contrasted by the Irish howl of the woman at the opposite side, and
evince Mr. Hogarth's thorough knowledge of the operation of the passions
upon the features. The composition forms a good shape, has a proper
depth, and the light is well managed.
Sir James Thornhill's opinion of this series may be inferred from the
following circumstance. Mr. Hogarth had without consent married his
daughter: Sir James, considering him as an obscure artist, was much
displeased with the connexion. To give him a better opinion of his
son-in-law, a common friend, one morning, privately conveyed the six
pictures of the Harlot's Progress into his drawing-room. The veteran
painter eagerly inquired who was the artist; and being told, cried out,
"Very well! Very well indeed! The man who can paint such pictures as
these, can maintain a wife without a portion." This was the remark of
the moment; but he afterwards considered the union of his daughter with
a man of such abilities an honour to his family, was reconciled, and
generous.
When the publication was advertised, such was the expectation of the
town, that above twelve hundred names were entered in the subscription
book. When the prints appeared, they were beheld with astonishment. A
subject so novel in the idea, so marked with genius in the execution,
excited the most eager attention of the public. At a time when England
was coldly inattentive to every thing which related to the arts, so
desirous were all ranks of people of seeing how this little domestic
story was delineated, that there were eight piratical imitations,
besides two copies in a smaller size than the original, published, by
permission of the author, for Thomas Bakewell. The whole series were
copied on fan-mounts, representing the six plates, three on one side,
and three on the other. It was transferred from the copper to the stage,
in the form of a pantomime, by Theophilus Cibber; and again represented
in a ballad opera, entitled, the Jew Decoyed; or, the Harlot's
Progress.
[Illustration: THE HARLOT'S PROGRESS.
PLATE 6.
THE FUNERAL.]
THE LECTURE.
DATUR VACUUM.
"No wonder that science, and learning profound,
In Oxford and Cambridge so greatly abound,
When so many take thither a little each day,
And we see very few who bring any away."
I was once told by a fellow of a college, says Mr. Ireland, that he
disliked Hogarth, because he had in this print ridiculed one of the
Universities. I endeavoured to defend the artist, by suggesting that
this was not intended as a picture of what Oxford is now, but of what it
was in days long past: that it was that kind of general satire with
which no one should be offended, &c. &c. His reply was too memorable to
be forgotten. "Sir, the Theatre, the Bench, the College of Physicians,
and the Foot Guards, are fair objects of satire; but those venerable
characters who have devoted their whole lives to feeding the lamp of
learning with hallowed oil, are too sacred to be the sport of an
uneducated painter. Their unremitting industry embraced the whole circle
of the sciences, and in their logical disputations they displayed an
acuteness that their followers must contemplate with astonishment. The
present state of Oxford it is not necessary for me to analyze, as you
contend that the satire is not directed against that."
In answer to this observation, which was uttered with becoming gravity,
a gentleman present remarked, as follows. "For some of the ancient
customs of this seminary of learning, I have much respect, but as to
their dry treatises on logic, immaterial dissertations on materiality,
and abstruse investigations of useless subjects, they are mere literary
legerdemain. Their disputations being usually built on an undefinable
chimera, are solved by a paradox. Instead of exercising their power of
reason they exert their powers of sophistry, and divide and subdivide
every subject with such casuistical minuteness, that those who are not
convinced, are almost invariably confounded. This custom, it must be
granted, is not quite so prevalent as it once was: a general spirit of
reform is rapidly diffusing itself; and though I have heard cold-blooded
declaimers assert, that these shades of science are become the retreats
of ignorance, and the haunts of dissipation, I consider them as the
great schools of urbanity, and favourite seats of the _belles lettres_.
By the _belles lettres_, I mean history, biography, and poetry; that all
these are universally cultivated, I can exemplify by the manner in which
a highly accomplished young man, who is considered as a model by his
fellow-collegians, divides his hours.
"At breakfast I found him studying the marvellous and eventful history
of Baron Munchausen; a work whose periods are equally free from the
long-winded obscurity of Tacitus, and the asthmatic terseness of
Sallust. While his hair was dressing, he enlarged his imagination and
improved his morals by studying Doctor what's his name's abridgement of
Chesterfield's Principles of Politeness. To furnish himself with
biographical information, and add to his stock of useful anecdote, he
studied the Lives of the Highwaymen; in which he found many
opportunities of exercising his genius and judgment in drawing parallels
between the virtues and exploits of these modern worthies, and those
dignified, and almost deified ancient heroes whose deeds are recorded in
Plutarch and Nepos.
"With poetical studies, he is furnished by the English operas, which,
added to the prologues, epilogues, and odes of the day, afford him
higher entertainment than he could find in Homer or Virgil: he has not
stored his memory with many epigrams, but of puns has a plentiful stock,
and in _conundra_ is a wholesale dealer. At the same college I know a
most striking contrast, whose reading"--But as his opponent would hear
no more, my advocate dropped the subject; and I will follow his example.
It seems probable, that when the artist engraved this print, he had only
a general reference to an university lecture; the words _datur vacuum_
were an after-thought. Some prints are without the inscription, and in
some of the early impressions it is written with a pen.
The scene is laid at Oxford, and the person reading, universally
admitted to be a Mr. Fisher, of Jesus College, _registrat_ of the
university, with whose consent this portrait was taken, and who lived
until the 18th of March, 1761. That he should wish to have such a face
handed down to posterity, in such company, is rather extraordinary, for
all the band, except one man, have been steeped in the stream of
stupidity. This gentleman has the profile of penetration; a projecting
forehead, a Roman nose, thin lips, and a long pointed chin. His eye is
bent on vacancy: it is evidently directed to the moon-faced idiot that
crowns the pyramid, at whose round head, contrasted by a cornered cap,
he with difficulty suppresses a laugh. Three fellows on the right hand
of this fat, contented "first-born transmitter of a foolish face," have
most degraded characters, and are much fitter for the stable than the
college. If they ever read, it must be in Bracken's Farriery, or the
Country Gentleman's Recreation. Two square-capped students a little
beneath the top, one of whom is holding converse with an adjoining
profile, and the other lifting up his eyebrows, and staring without
sight, have the same misfortune that attended our first James--their
tongues are rather too large. A figure in the left-hand corner has shut
his eyes to think; and having, in his attempt to separate a syllogism,
placed the forefinger of his right hand upon his forehead, has fallen
asleep. The professor, a little above the book, endeavours by a
projection of his under lip to assume importance; such characters are
not uncommon: they are more solicitous to look wise, than to be so. Of
Mr. Fisher it is not necessary to say much: he sat for his portrait, for
the express purpose of having it inserted in the Lecture!--We want no
other testimony of his talents.
[Illustration: THE LECTURE.]
THE CHORUS.
REHEARSAL OF THE ORATORIO OF JUDITH.
"O _cara, cara!_ silence all that train,
Joy to great _chaos!_ let division reign."
The Oratorio of Judith, Mr. Ireland observes, was written by Esquire
William Huggins, honoured by the music of William de Fesch, aided by new
painted scenery and _magnifique_ decoration, and in the year 1733
brought upon the stage. As De Fesch[2] was a German and a genius, we may
fairly presume it was well set; and there was at that time, as at this,
a sort of musical mania, that paid much greater attention to sounds than
to sense; notwithstanding all these points in her favour, when the
Jewish heroine had made her theatrical _debut_, and so effectually smote
Holofernes,
----"As to sever
His head from his great trunk for ever and for ever."
the audience compelled her to make her exit. To set aside this partial
and unjust decree, Mr. Huggins appealed to the public, and printed his
oratorio. Though it was adorned with a frontispiece designed by Hogarth,
and engraved by Vandergucht, the world could not be compelled to read,
and the unhappy writer had no other resource than the consolatory
reflection, that his work was superlatively excellent, but unluckily
printed in a tasteless age; a comfortable and solacing self-consciousness,
which hath, I verily believe, prevented many a great genius from becoming
his own executioner.
To paint a sound is impossible; but as far as art can go towards it,
Hogarth has gone in this print. The tenor, treble, and bass of these
ear-piercing choristers are so decisively discriminated, that we all but
hear them.
The principal figure, whose head, hands, and feet are in equal
agitation, has very properly tied on his spectacles; it would have been
prudent to have tied on his periwig also, for by the energy of his
action he has shaken it from his head, and, absorbed in an eager
attention to true time, is totally unconscious of his loss.
A gentleman--pardon me, I meant a singer--in a bag wig, immediately
beneath his uplifted hand, I suspect to be of foreign growth. It has the
engaging air of an importation from Italy.