THE NEW MINISTER’S PATRONAGE.
At that time, just as Lady Lufton was about to leave Framley for London,
Mark Robarts received a pressing letter, inviting him also to go up to
the metropolis for a day or two—not for pleasure, but on business. The
letter was from his indefatigable friend Sowerby.
“My dear Robarts,” the letter ran:—
“I have just heard that poor little Burslem, the Barsetshire
prebendary, is dead. We must all die some day, you know,—as you
have told your parishioners from the Framley pulpit more than
once, no doubt. The stall must be filled up, and why should not
you have it as well as another? It is six hundred a year and
a house. Little Burslem had nine, but the good old times are
gone. Whether the house is letable or not under the present
ecclesiastical régime, I do not know. It used to be so, for I
remember Mrs. Wiggins, the tallow-chandler’s widow, living in
old Stanhope’s House.
“Harold Smith has just joined the Government as Lord Petty Bag,
and could, I think, at the present moment get this for asking.
He cannot well refuse me, and, if you will say the word, I will
speak to him. You had better come up yourself; but say the word
‘Yes,’ or ‘No,’ by the wires.
“If you say ‘Yes,’ as of course you will, do not fail to come
up. You will find me at the ‘Travellers,’ or at the House. The
stall will just suit you,—will give you no trouble, improve
your position, and give some little assistance towards bed and
board, and rack and manger.
“Yours ever faithfully,
“N. SOWERBY.
“Singularly enough, I hear that your brother is private
secretary to the new Lord Petty Bag. I am told that his chief
duty will consist in desiring the servants to call my sister’s
carriage. I have only seen Harold once since he accepted
office; but my Lady Petty Bag says that he has certainly grown
an inch since that occurrence.”
This was certainly very good-natured on the part of Mr. Sowerby, and
showed that he had a feeling within his bosom that he owed something
to his friend the parson for the injury he had done him. And such was
in truth the case. A more reckless being than the member for West
Barsetshire could not exist. He was reckless for himself, and reckless
for all others with whom he might be concerned. He could ruin his friends
with as little remorse as he had ruined himself. All was fair game that
came in the way of his net. But, nevertheless, he was good-natured, and
willing to move heaven and earth to do a friend a good turn, if it came
in his way to do so.
He did really love Mark Robarts as much as it was given him to love any
among his acquaintance. He knew that he had already done him an almost
irreparable injury, and might very probably injure him still deeper
before he had done with him. That he would undoubtedly do so, if it came
in his way, was very certain. But then, if it also came in his way to
repay his friend by any side blow, he would also undoubtedly do that.
Such an occasion had now come, and he had desired his sister to give the
new Lord Petty Bag no rest till he should have promised to use all his
influence in getting the vacant prebend for Mark Robarts.
This letter of Sowerby’s Mark immediately showed to his wife. How
lucky, thought he to himself, that not a word was said in it about
those accursed money transactions! Had he understood Sowerby better he
would have known that that gentleman never said anything about money
transactions until it became absolutely necessary. “I know you don’t like
Mr. Sowerby,” he said; “but you must own that this is very good-natured.”
“It is the character I hear of him that I don’t like,” said Mrs. Robarts.
“But what shall I do now, Fanny? As he says, why should not I have the
stall as well as another?”
“I suppose it would not interfere with your parish?” she asked.
“Not in the least, at the distance at which we are. I did think of giving
up old Jones; but if I take this, of course I must keep a curate.”
His wife could not find it in her heart to dissuade him from accepting
promotion when it came in his way—what vicar’s wife would have so
persuaded her husband? But yet she did not altogether like it. She feared
that Greek from Chaldicotes, even when he came with the present of a
prebendal stall in his hands. And then what would Lady Lufton say?
“And do you think that you must go up to London, Mark?”
“Oh, certainly; that is, if I intend to accept Harold Smith’s kind
offices in the matter.”
“I suppose it will be better to accept them,” said Fanny, feeling perhaps
that it would be useless in her to hope that they should not be accepted.
“Prebendal stalls, Fanny, don’t generally go begging long among parish
clergymen. How could I reconcile it to the duty I owe to my children to
refuse such an increase to my income?” And so it was settled that he
should at once drive to Silverbridge and send off a message by telegraph,
and that he should himself proceed to London on the following day. “But
you must see Lady Lufton first, of course,” said Fanny, as soon as all
this was settled.
Mark would have avoided this if he could have decently done so, but he
felt that it would be impolitic, as well as indecent. And why should he
be afraid to tell Lady Lufton that he hoped to receive this piece of
promotion from the present government? There was nothing disgraceful in
a clergyman becoming a prebendary of Barchester. Lady Lufton herself
had always been very civil to the prebendaries, and especially to little
Dr. Burslem, the meagre little man who had just now paid the debt of
nature. She had always been very fond of the chapter, and her original
dislike to Bishop Proudie had been chiefly founded on his interference
with the cathedral clergy,—on his interference, or on that of his wife
or chaplain. Considering these things Mark Robarts tried to make himself
believe that Lady Lufton would be delighted at his good fortune. But yet
he did not believe it. She at any rate would revolt from the gift of the
Greek of Chaldicotes.
“Oh, indeed,” she said, when the vicar had with some difficulty explained
to her all the circumstances of the case. “Well, I congratulate you, Mr.
Robarts, on your powerful new patron.”
“You will probably feel with me, Lady Lufton, that the benefice is one
which I can hold without any detriment to me in my position here at
Framley,” said he, prudently resolving to let the slur upon his friends
pass by unheeded.
“Well, I hope so. Of course, you are a very young man, Mr. Robarts, and
these things have generally been given to clergymen more advanced in
life.”
“But you do not mean to say that you think I ought to refuse it?”
“What my advice to you might be if you really came to me for advice, I am
hardly prepared to say at so very short a notice. You seem to have made
up your mind, and therefore I need not consider it. As it is, I wish you
joy, and hope that it may turn out to your advantage in every way.”
“You understand, Lady Lufton, that I have by no means got it as yet.”
“Oh, I thought it had been offered to you: I thought you spoke of this
new minister as having all that in his own hand.”
“Oh, dear, no. What may be the amount of his influence in that respect, I
do not at all know. But my correspondent assures me——”
“Mr. Sowerby, you mean. Why don’t you call him by his name?”
“Mr. Sowerby assures me that Mr. Smith will ask for it; and thinks it
most probable that his request will be successful.”
“Oh, of course. Mr. Sowerby and Mr. Harold Smith together would no doubt
be successful in anything. They are the sort of men who are successful
nowadays. Well, Mr. Robarts, I wish you joy.” And she gave him her hand
in token of her sincerity.
Mark took her hand, resolving to say nothing further on that occasion.
That Lady Lufton was not now cordial with him, as she used to be, he was
well aware; and sooner or later he was determined to have the matter
out with her. He would ask her why she now so constantly met him with a
taunt, and so seldom greeted him with that kind old affectionate smile
which he knew and appreciated so well. That she was honest and true, he
was quite sure. If he asked her the question plainly, she would answer
him openly. And if he could induce her to say that she would return to
her old ways, return to them she would in a hearty manner. But he could
not do this just at present. It was but a day or two since Mr. Crawley
had been with him; and was it not probable that Mr. Crawley had been
sent thither by Lady Lufton? His own hands were not clean enough for a
remonstrance at the present moment He would cleanse them, and then he
would remonstrate.
“Would you like to live part of the year in Barchester?” he said to his
wife and sister that evening.
“I think that two houses are only a trouble,” said his wife. “And we have
been very happy here.”
“I have always liked a cathedral town,” said Lucy; “and I am particularly
fond of the close.”
“And Barchester-close is the closest of all closes,” said Mark. “There
is not a single house within the gateways that does not belong to the
chapter.”
“But if we are to keep up two houses, the additional income will soon be
wasted,” said Fanny prudently.
“The thing would be, to let the house furnished every summer,” said Lucy.
“But I must take my residence as the terms come,” said the vicar; “and
I certainly should not like to be away from Framley all the winter; I
should never see anything of Lufton.” And perhaps he thought of his
hunting, and then thought again of that cleansing of his hands.
“I should not a bit mind being away during the winter,” said Lucy,
thinking of what the last winter had done for her.
“But where on earth should we find money to furnish one of those large,
old-fashioned houses? Pray, Mark, do not do anything rash.” And the wife
laid her hand affectionately on her husband’s arm. In this manner the
question of the prebend was discussed between them on the evening before
he started for London.
Success had at last crowned the earnest effort with which Harold Smith
had carried on the political battle of his life for the last ten years.
The late Lord Petty Bag had resigned in disgust, having been unable to
digest the Prime Minister’s ideas on Indian Reform, and Mr. Harold Smith,
after sundry hitches in the business, was installed in his place. It was
said that Harold Smith was not exactly the man whom the Premier would
himself have chosen for that high office; but the Premier’s hands were
a good deal tied by circumstances. The last great appointment he had
made had been terribly unpopular,—so much so as to subject him, popular
as he undoubtedly was himself, to a screech from the whole nation. The
_Jupiter_, with withering scorn, had asked whether vice of every kind
was to be considered, in these days of Queen Victoria, as a passport to
the cabinet. Adverse members of both Houses had arrayed themselves in a
pure panoply of morality, and thundered forth their sarcasms with the
indignant virtue and keen discontent of political Juvenals; and even his
own friends had held up their hands in dismay. Under these circumstances
he had thought himself obliged in the present instance to select a man
who would not be especially objectionable to any party. Now Harold Smith
lived with his wife, and his circumstances were not more than ordinarily
embarrassed. He kept no race-horses; and, as Lord Brock now heard for the
first time, gave lectures in provincial towns on popular subjects. He had
a seat which was tolerably secure, and could talk to the House by the
yard if required to do so. Moreover, Lord Brock had a great idea that the
whole machinery of his own ministry would break to pieces very speedily.
His own reputation was not bad, but it was insufficient for himself
and that lately selected friend of his. Under all these circumstances
combined, he chose Harold Smith to fill the vacant office of Lord Petty
Bag.
And very proud the Lord Petty Bag was. For the last three or four months,
he and Mr. Supplehouse had been agreeing to consign the ministry to
speedy perdition. “This sort of dictatorship will never do,” Harold
Smith had himself said, justifying that future vote of his as to want
of confidence in the Queen’s government. And Mr. Supplehouse in this
matter had fully agreed with him. He was a Juno whose form that wicked
old Paris had utterly despised, and he, too, had quite made up his mind
as to the lobby in which he would be found when that day of vengeance
should arrive. But now things were much altered in Harold Smith’s views.
The Premier had shown his wisdom in seeking for new strength where
strength ought to be sought, and introducing new blood into the body of
his ministry. The people would now feel fresh confidence, and probably
the House also. As to Mr. Supplehouse—he would use all his influence on
Supplehouse. But, after all, Mr. Supplehouse was not everything.
On the morning after our vicar’s arrival in London he attended at the
Petty Bag office. It was situated in the close neighbourhood of Downing
Street and the higher governmental gods; and though the building itself
was not much, seeing that it was shored up on one side, that it bulged
out in the front, was foul with smoke, dingy with dirt, and was devoid
of any single architectural grace or modern scientific improvement,
nevertheless its position gave it a status in the world which made the
clerks in the Lord Petty Bag’s office quite respectable in their walk
in life. Mark had seen his friend Sowerby on the previous evening, and
had then made an appointment with him for the following morning at the
new Minister’s office. And now he was there a little before his time, in
order that he might have a few moments’ chat with his brother.
When Mark found himself in the private secretary’s room he was quite
astonished to see the change in his brother’s appearance which the change
in his official rank had produced. Jack Robarts had been a well-built,
straight-legged, lissome young fellow, pleasant to the eye because of his
natural advantages, but rather given to a harum-skarum style of gait,
and occasionally careless, not to say slovenly, in his dress. But now
he was the very pink of perfection. His jaunty frock-coat fitted him
to perfection; not a hair of his head was out of place; his waistcoat
and trousers were glossy and new, and his umbrella, which stood in the
umbrella-stand in the corner, was tight, and neat, and small, and natty.
“Well, John, you’ve become quite a great man,” said his brother.
“I don’t know much about that,” said John; “but I find that I have an
enormous deal of fagging to go through.”
“Do you mean work? I thought you had about the easiest berth in the whole
Civil Service.”
“Ah! that’s just the mistake that people make. Because we don’t cover
whole reams of foolscap paper at the rate of fifteen lines to a page, and
five words to a line, people think that we, private secretaries, have got
nothing to do. Look here,” and he tossed over scornfully a dozen or so of
little notes. “I tell you what, Mark; it is no easy matter to manage the
patronage of a cabinet minister. Now I am bound to write to every one of
these fellows a letter that will please him; and yet I shall refuse to
every one of them the request which he asks.”
“That must be difficult.”
“Difficult is no word for it. But, after all, it consists chiefly in the
knack of the thing. One must have the wit ‘from such a sharp and waspish
word as No to pluck the sting.’ I do it every day, and I really think
that the people like it.”
“Perhaps your refusals are better than other people’s acquiescences.”
“I don’t mean that at all. We, private secretaries, have all to do the
same thing. Now, would you believe it? I have used up three lifts of
notepaper already in telling people that there is no vacancy for a lobby
messenger in the Petty Bag office. Seven peeresses have asked for it for
their favourite footmen. But there—there’s the Lord Petty Bag!”
A bell rang and the private secretary, jumping up from his notepaper,
tripped away quickly to the great man’s room.
“He’ll see you at once,” said he, returning. “Buggins, show the Reverend
Mr. Robarts to the Lord Petty Bag.”
Buggins was the messenger for whose not vacant place all the peeresses
were striving with so much animation. And then Mark, following Buggins
for two steps, was ushered into the next room.
If a man be altered by becoming a private secretary, he is much more
altered by being made a cabinet minister. Robarts, as he entered the
room, could hardly believe that this was the same Harold Smith whom Mrs.
Proudie bothered so cruelly in the lecture-room at Barchester. Then he
was cross, and touchy, and uneasy, and insignificant. Now, as he stood
smiling on the hearthrug of his official fireplace, it was quite pleasant
to see the kind, patronizing smile which lighted up his features. He
delighted to stand there, with his hands in his trousers’ pocket, the
great man of the place, conscious of his lordship, and feeling himself
every inch a minister. Sowerby had come with him, and was standing a
little in the background, from which position he winked occasionally at
the parson over the minister’s shoulder.
“Ah, Robarts, delighted to see you. How odd, by-the-by, that your brother
should be my private secretary!”
Mark said that it was a singular coincidence.
“A very smart young fellow, and, if he minds himself, he’ll do well.”
“I’m quite sure he’ll do well,” said Mark.
“Ah! well, yes; I think he will. And now, what can I do for you, Robarts?”
Hereupon Mr. Sowerby struck in, making it apparent by his explanation
that Mr. Robarts himself by no means intended to ask for anything; but
that, as his friends had thought that this stall at Barchester might be
put into his hands with more fitness than in those of any other clergyman
of the day, he was willing to accept the piece of preferment from a man
whom he respected so much as he did the new Lord Petty Bag.
The minister did not quite like this, as it restricted him from much of
his condescension, and robbed him of the incense of a petition which he
had expected Mark Robarts would make to him. But, nevertheless, he was
very gracious.
“He could not take upon himself to declare,” he said, “what might be
Lord Brock’s pleasure with reference to the preferment at Barchester
which was vacant. He had certainly already spoken to his lordship on the
subject, and had perhaps some reason to believe that his own wishes would
be consulted. No distinct promise had been made, but he might perhaps go
so far as to say that he expected such result. If so, it would give him
the greatest pleasure in the world to congratulate Mr. Robarts on the
possession of the stall—a stall which he was sure Mr. Robarts would fill
with dignity, piety, and brotherly love.” And then, when he had finished,
Mr. Sowerby gave a final wink, and said that he regarded the matter as
settled.
“No, not settled, Nathaniel,” said the cautious minister.
“It’s the same thing,” rejoined Sowerby. “We all know what all
that flummery means. Men in office, Mark, never do make a distinct
promise,—not even to themselves of the leg of mutton which is roasting
before their kitchen fires. It is so necessary in these days to be safe;
is it not, Harold?”
“Most expedient,” said Harold Smith, shaking his head wisely. “Well,
Robarts, who is it now?” This he said to his private secretary, who
came to notice the arrival of some bigwig. “Well, yes. I will say good
morning, with your leave, for I am a little hurried. And remember, Mr.
Robarts, I will do what I can for you; but you must distinctly understand
that there is no promise.”
“Oh, no promise at all,” said Sowerby—“of course not.” And then, as he
sauntered up Whitehall towards Charing Cross, with Robarts on his arm, he
again pressed upon him the sale of that invaluable hunter, who was eating
his head off his shoulders in the stable at Chaldicotes.
William Hogarth:
PAINTER, ENGRAVER, AND PHILOSOPHER.
_Essays on the Man, the Work, and the Time._
V.—BETWEEN LONDON AND SHEERNESS.
As one, Reader, who concludes haply, through hearsay, that his uncle
William has left him a ten pound legacy; but, going afterwards to
Doctors’ Commons, paying his shilling, and reading that said uncle’s
will,—receiving letters from stately lawyers, full of congratulation,
at seventy pence a piece,—being bowed and kotoued to by people who
were wont to cut him, and overwhelmed with offers of unlimited credit
by tradesfolk who yesterday would not trust to the extent of a pair of
woollen hose—discovers that he has inherited a fine fortune; so may an
author scarcely help feeling who has commenced a modest little series
of papers in the hope that they would fill a gap and serve a turn, and
who finds himself, now, roaming through a vast country, inexhaustible
in fertility, undermined with treasure, and overstocked with game: of
all which he is expected to give a faithful and accurate report. Yes,
the world Hogarthian is all before me, where to choose. Facilities for
“opening up” the teeming territory present themselves on every side.
Authorities accumulate; microscopes and retrospective spy-glasses are
obligingly lent. The Chamberlain of London politely throws open his
archives. I am permitted to inspect a Hogarth-engraved silver-plate,
forming part of the paraphernalia of the famous past-Overseer’s box of
St. Margaret’s, Westminster. Father Prout sends me from Paris an old
Hogarth etching he has picked up on the Quai Voltaire, and, withal, more
humour and learning in a sheet of letter-paper than ever I shall have in
my head in a lifetime. A large-minded correspondent in Cheshire insists
on tearing a portrait and biography of W. H. from an old book in his
possession, and sending the fragments to me. From the blue shadows of the
Westmoreland Fells comes, by book-post, a copy of “Aid Hoggart’s” poems.
A friend promises to make interest with the authorities of the Painters’
Company for any Hogarthian memorabilia their records may contain. Another
friend advises that I should straightway memorialise the Benchers of
the Honourable Society of Lincolns’ Inn, for information relative to W.
H’s entertainment by the “Sages de la Ley,” A.D. 1750. I am bidden to
remember that I should visit the Foundling Hospital, to see the _March to
Finchley_; that there are original Hogarths in Sir John Soane’s Museum,
and in the church of St. Mary Redclyffe, Bristol.[9] And, upon my word,
I have a collection of correspondence about Hogarth that reads like
an excerpt from the _Clergy List_. Their reverences could not be more
prolific of pen and ink were I a heterodox Bampton Lecturer. How many
times I have been clerically reminded of a blunder I committed (in No.
I.) in assigning a wrong county as the locality of St. Bee’s College. How
many times I have been enlightened as to the derivation of the hangman’s
appellation of Jack Ketch. From rectories, parsonages, endowed grammar
schools, such corrections, such explanations, have flowed in amain. Not
to satiety, not to nausea, on the part of their recipient. To him it
is very good and pleasant to think that some familiar words on an old
English theme can interest cultivated and thoughtful men. It is doubly
pleasant to be convinced that he was not in error when, in the first
section of these essays, he alluded to the favour with which William
Hogarth had ever been held by the clergy of the Church of England.
Yes, I have come into a fine fortune, and the balance at the banker’s
is prodigious. But how if the cheque book be lost? if the pen sputter,
if the ink turn pale and washy, or thick and muddy? Alnaschar! it is
possible to kick over that basket full of vitreous ware. Rash youth of
Siamese extraction, it may have pleased your imperial master to present
you with a white elephant. Woe! for the tons of rice and sugar that the
huge creature consumes, the sweet and fresh young greenstuff for which
he unceasingly craves;—and you but a poor day labourer? You must have
elephants, must you? Better to have gone about with a white mouse and
a hurdy-gurdy: the charitable might have flung you coppers. Shallow,
inept, and pretentious, to what a task have you not committed yourself!
Thus to me have many sincere friends—mostly anonymous—hinted. These are
the wholesome raps on the knuckles a man gets who attempts without being
able to accomplish; who inherits, and lacks the capacity to administer.
Many a fine fortune is accompanied by as fine a lawsuit—remember the
legatee cobbler in _Pickwick_—and dire is the case of the imprudent wight
who finds himself some fine morning in contempt, with Aristarchus for a
Lord Chancellor! But I have begun a journey. The descent of Avernus is
as facile as sliding down a _Montagne Russe_;—_sed revocare gradum_:—no,
one mustn’t revoke, nor in the game of life, nor in the game of whist. We
will go on, if you please; and I am your very humble servant to command.
The stir made by the publication of the set of engravings from the six
pictures of the _Harlot’s Progress_ was tremendous. Twelve hundred copies
of the first impression were sold. Miniature copies of some of the scenes
were engraved on fan-mounts. Even, as occurred with George Cruikshank’s
_Bottle_, the story was dramatised, and an interlude called _The Jew
Decoyed; or, a Harlot’s Progress_, had a most successful “run.” It is
worthy of observation that the perverse and depraved taste of the town
took it as rather a humorous thing that the courtezan, splendidly kept
by a Hebrew money-lender, should decoy and betray her keeper. _The Jew
Decoyed_. Ho! ho! it was a thing to laugh at. Who sympathizes with M.
Géronte in the farce—the poor, feeble, old dotard—when Arlechino runs
off with his daughter, and Pierrot the _gracioso_ half cuts his nose
off while he is shaving him, picking his pocket, and treading on his
tenderest corns, meanwhile? The tradesmen and lodging-house keepers
who are swindled and robbed by clown and pantaloon in the pantomime;
the image boys, fishmongers, and greengrocers whose stock in trade is
flung about the stage; the peaceable watchmaker, who tumbles over on
the slide artfully prepared in front of his own door with fresh butter,
by the miscreant clown; the grenadier bonneted with his own Busby; the
young lady bereft of her bustle; the mother of the baby that is sate
upon, swung round by the legs, and crammed into a letter-box: is any
pity evoked for those innocent and ill-used persons? I am afraid there
is none. I have seen a policeman in the pit roaring with laughter at the
pummelling and jostling his simulated brother receives on the stage.
It is remarkable to watch the keen delight with which exhibitions of
petty cruelty and petty dishonesty, of a gay, lively description, are
often regarded. I can understand the pickpocket detected by Charles the
Second’s keen eye in annexing a snuff-box at court, laying his finger
by the side of his nose, and taking the monarch into his confidence. I
can understand cynic Charles keeping the rogue’s secret for the humour
of the thing. And, verily, when I see children torturing animals,
and senseless louts grinning and jeering, and yelling “Who shot the
dog!” after a gentleman in the street, because he happens to wear the
honourable uniform of a volunteer, and persons who are utter strangers to
one belated runaway joining in the enlivening shout and chase of “Stop
thief!” I can begin to understand the wicked wisdom of the American
Diogenes who coolly indited this maxim: “If you see a drowning man, throw
a rail at him.”
Hogarth’s engravings of the adventures of Kate Hackabout were extensively
and grossly pirated. In those days, as in these, there were pictorial
Curlls in the land. The author of the foregoing has had the honour to
see some early and trifling pictorial performances of his own pirated
upon pocket-handkerchiefs and shirt-fronts; but, dear me, what a legal
pother would have arisen at Manchester if any one had pirated those
beautiful patent cylinders on which the piracies must have been so neatly
engraved! Some vile imitations of Hackabout were even cut on wood; and I
should dearly like to know if any impressions of those blocks are extant.
Mr. Ottley hits none in his _History of Chalcography_; but a series of
woodcuts so long after Albert Durer and Maso Fineguerra, so long before
Bewick the revivalist’s time, would be deeply interesting.[10] Hogarth
smarted under this injury, as well he might. The artist had always a
strong admixture of the British tradesman in his composition, and, as was
his wont when injured, he bellowed lustily. He moved the Lords of the
Treasury. He moved the Houses of Lords and Commons; and, at last (1735),
he obtained an Act of Parliament, specially protecting his copyright in
his prints. As usual, too, he celebrated the victory with a loud and
jubilant cock-crow, and complimented Parliament on their recognition of
the principles of truth and right, in an allegorical etching, with a
flowery inscription. It is good to learn that the Legislature were tender
to this artist even after his death, and that his widow, Jane Hogarth,
obtained, by another special act, a renewal of his copyrights for her
sole use and benefit. In this age of photography and electro-printing,
do we not need a law of artistic copyright somewhat more definite and
more stringent than the loose statutes that lawyers quibble about and
interpret different ways?
Ere I quit the subject of the _Harlot’s Progress_, it is meet to advert
to a little dictum of good Mr. Fuseli, the ambidextrous Anglo-Swiss,
who painted the _Lazar-house_ and other horrifying subjects, who used
to swear so dreadfully at the clerks in Coutt’s banking-house, and who
called for his umbrella when he went to see Mr. Constable’s showery
pictures. “The characteristic discrimination and humorous exuberance,”
says Fuseli, in a lecture, “which we admire in Hogarth, but which,
like the fleeting passion of a day, every hour contributes something
to obliterate, will soon be unintelligible by time or degenerate into
caricature: the chronicle of scandal, and the history book of the
vulgar.” I have the highest respect for the learning and acumen of
Fuseli; but I think he is wholly wrong in assuming that Hogarth’s humour
or discrimination will _ever_ become “unintelligible by time,” or will
“degenerate into caricature.” Look at this _Harlot’s Progress_. Who cares
to know, now, that Charteris continues to rot; that he was guilty of
every vice but prodigality and hypocrisy—being a monster of avarice and
a paragon of impudence; that he was condemned to death for a dreadful
crime, and only escaped the halter by the interest of aristocratic
friends; that he was a liar, a cheat, a gambler, a usurer, and a
profligate; that he amassed an estate of ten thousand a year; that he was
accused while living, and that the populace almost tore his body from his
remote grave in Scotland? Who cares to know how many times Mother Needham
was carted—although you may be sure they were not half so frequent as she
deserved. Is it important to know exactly whether the Caucasian financier
was intended for Sir Henry Furnese, or for Rafael Mendez, or Israel
Vanderplank. The quack Misaubin[11] and his opponent are forgotten.
Stern Sir John Gonson[12] and his anti-Cyprian crusades are forgotten.
For aught we can tell, the Bridewell gaoler, the Irish servant, the
thievish harridan, the Fleet parson, the glowering undertaker, may all be
faithful portraits of real personages long since gone to dust. It boots
little even to know if Kate were really Kate or Mary Hackabout, or Laïs,
or Phryne, or Doll Common. She is dead, and will sin and suffer stripes
no more. But the humour and discrimination of the painter yet live,
the types he pourtrayed endure to this hour. I saw Charteris the day
before yesterday, tottering about in shiny boots beneath the Haymarket
Colonnade. The quacks live and prosper, drive mail-phætons, and enter
horses for the Derby. The Jew financier calls himself Mr. Montmorenci
de Levyson, and lends money at sixty per cent., or as Julius McHabeas,
Gent., one of her Majesty’s attorneys-at-law, issues a writ at the suit
of his friend and father-in-law Levyson. And Kate decoys and cozens the
financier every day in a cottage _ornée_ at Brompton or St. John’s Wood.
Kate! there is her “miniature brougham” gliding through Albert Gate.
There is her barouche on the hill at Epsom. There she is at the play, or
in the garden, flaunting among the coloured lamps. There she is in the
Haymarket, in the Strand, in the New Cut, in the workhouse, in the police
cell, in the hospital. There she is on Waterloo Bridge, and there—God
help her!—in the cold, black river, having accomplished her “progress.”
Take away the whipping-post from Bridewell; and for the boudoir paid for
by the Jew, substitute the garish little sitting-room that Mr. Holman
Hunt painted in his wonderful picture of the _Awakened Conscience_, and
one can realize the “humour” and “discrimination” of Hogarth in a tale as
sad that progresses around us every day.
Every one who has the most superficial acquaintance with a Hogarthian
biography has heard the story of how Mrs. Hogarth, or her mamma, Dame
Alice Thornhill, placed the six pictures of the _Harlot’s Progress_ in
Sir James’s breakfast-parlour one morning, ready for the knight on his
coming down. “Very well, very well,” cried the king’s sergeant painter,
rubbing his hands, and well nigh pacified: “the man who can paint like
this wants no dowry with my daughter.” I am glad to believe the story;
but I don’t believe, as some malevolent commentators have insinuated,
that Sir James Thornhill made his son-in-law’s talent an excuse for
behaving parsimoniously to the young couple after he had forgiven
them. There is nothing to prove that Sir James Thornhill was a stingy
man. He had a son who was a great crony of Hogarth, accompanied him on
the famous journey to Rochester and Sheerness, and afterwards became
sergeant-painter to the navy. I fancy that he was a wild young man,
and cost his father large sums. It is certain, however, that Sir James
frequently and generously assisted his daughter and son-in-law. He set
them up in their house in Leicester Fields; and he appears to have left
Hogarth a considerable interest in his house at 104, St. Martin’s Lane,
whither he had removed from Covent Garden, and the staircase of which he
had painted, according to his incorrigible custom, with “allegories.”
The great artists of those days used to employ one another to paint the
walls and ceilings of each other’s rooms. Thus Kneller gave commissions
to the elder Laguerre, and Thornhill himself employed Robert Brown, the
painter who was so famous for “crimson curtains,” and who justified
having painted two signs for the Paul’s Head Tavern, in Cateaton Street,
on the ground that Correggio had painted the sign of the “Muleteer.”
Be it mentioned likewise, to Thornhill’s honour, that he fruitlessly
endeavoured to persuade Lord Halifax to found a Royal Academy in the
King’s Mews, Charing Cross. It would be better, perhaps, in this place
to make an end of goodman Thornhill. Besides Worlidge’s portrait, there
is one by Hogarth, in oil, of which a vigorous etching was executed by
Samuel Ireland. The portrait was purchased of Mrs. Hogarth, in 1781, and
was deemed by her an excellent likeness. Thornhill died at his seat,
“Thornhill,” near Weymouth, in 1734.[13] He had transferred his academy
or drawing-school, call it what you will, from Covent Garden to St.
Martin’s Lane; and to Hogarth he bequeathed all his casts and bustos,
all his easels and drawing-stools, all the paraphernalia of his studio.
These William ultimately presented to the academy held in St. Peter’s
Court St. Martin’s Lane, in premises that had formerly been the studio of
Roubiliac the sculptor.
I told you that at about the time of his marriage our artist took summer
lodgings at Vauxhall, and first made the acquaintance of Mr. Jonathan
Tyers, the “enterprizing” lessee of the once famous “Royal Property.”
With Tyers he ever maintained a fast friendship, and he materially and
generously assisted him in the decoration of the gardens; for, frugal
tradesman as Hogarth was, and sturdily determined to have the rights he
had bargained for, he was continually giving away something. We have
noticed his donation to the Petro-Roubiliac Academy; to St. Bartholomew’s
Hospital, of which he was a governor, he gave the picture of the _Pool
of Bethesda_; and the governors of the Foundling Hospital know how
nobly munificent was this honest Christian man to the nascent charity.
He gave them handsome pictures; he gave them a large proportion in the
shares of other picture-auctions—shares as good as money: he painted a
splendid portrait of Thomas Coram, the grand old sea-captain, who spent
his fortune in cherishing deserted children, and in his old age was not
ashamed to confess that he had spent his all in doing good; that his
fortune was funded in Heaven—let us trust he is drawing his dividends
now; and that here below he was destitute.[14] His example incited many
more notable artists to contribute pictures to the charity: and the
halls of the Foundling became the chief art-lounge in London. The Royal
Academy Exhibition, even, with its annual revenue of infinite shillings,
sprang from this odd germ. The Foundling Hospital, I have heard, has
wandered from its original purpose; and few of its first attributes are
now recognizable in its constitution; but I hope they still teach every
little boy and girl foundling to murmur a prayer for Thomas Coram and
William Hogarth.
For the embellishment of the supper-boxes at Vauxhall, William made
several designs; but there is not much evidence to prove that he
_painted_ any of them with his own hand. The paintings were mostly
executed by Hogarth’s fast friend, Frank Hayman, and perhaps by
Lanscroon, singer and scene-painter, son of old Lanscroon, Riario’s
condisciple with Laguerre’s son-in-law Tijou, and the author of a
meritorious set of prints illustrating _Hob at the Well_. For Vauxhall,
Hogarth made the designs of the _Four Parts of the Day_, which he
afterwards himself engraved, and which had great success.
Most of us have seen a very ugly, tasteless mezzotinto engraving
representing Henry VIII. in an impossible attitude, leering at a coarse
Anne Boleyn. I am always sorry to see the words “_Hogarth, pinxit_,”
in the left-hand corner of this inelegant performance, and sorrier to
know that he did indeed achieve that daub; and that the picture was hung
in the “old great room at the right hand of entry into the gardens.”
Indeed it is a barbarous thing. The background is, I suppose, intended
to represent an apartment in Cardinal Wolsey’s sumptuous mansion at York
Place; but it would do better for a chamber at the “Rose,” or at the
“Three Tuns,” in Chandos Street. I can speak of it no more with patience.
Why paint it, William? Yet it had all the honours of the mezzotint
scraper; it is engraved likewise in line; and Allan Ramsay—“Gentle
Shepherd” Ramsay—who should have known better, wrote some eulogistic
verses by way of epigraph. Nor did Jonathan Tyers of Vauxhall look the
gift horse in the mouth. He was glad to hang the sorry canvas in his
old great room; and in testimony of many kindnesses received from the
painter, who had “summer lodgings at South Lambeth,” presented him with
a perpetual ticket of admission to the gardens for himself and friends.
Fancy being on the free-list of Vauxhall for ever! The ticket was of
gold, and bore this inscription:—
In perpetuam beneficii memoriam.
Hogarth was a frequent visitor at the “Spring Gardens,” Vauxhall. There,
I will be bound, he and his pretty young wife frequently indulged in that
cool summer evening’s stroll which the French call _prendre le frais_.
There he may have had many a bowl of arrack punch with Harry Fielding—he
was to live to be firm friends with the tremendous author of “_Tom
Jones_;” there I think he may have met a certain Ferdinand Count Fathom,
and a Somersetshire gentleman of a good estate but an indifferent temper
and conversation, by name Western, together with my Lady Bellaston (in a
mask and a cramoisy grogram sack, laced with silver), and, once in a way,
perhaps, Mr. Abraham Adams, clerk. There is an authentic anecdote, too,
of Hogarth standing one evening at Vauxhall listening to the band, and
of a countryman pointing to the roll of paper with which the conductor
was beating time, and asking what musical instrument “that white thing
was?” “Friend,” answered William, “_it is a single handed drum_”—not a
very bright joke, certainly; but then, as has been pertinently observed,
a quibble can be excused to Hogarth, if a conundrum can be pardoned to
Swift.
We would paint our pictures and our progresses in 1730-1-2-3. We
were gaining fame. The Lords of the Treasury, as related by old
under-Secretary Christopher Tilson, could examine and laugh over our
plates even at the august council board, in the cockpit, and, adjourning,
forthwith proceed to purchase impressions at Bakewell’s shop, near
Johnson’s Court, in Fleet Street. “Frances Lady Byron”—more of her
lord hereafter—was sitting to us for her portrait. Theophilus Cibber
had pantomimised us. “Joseph Gay”—the wretched pseudonym of some Grub
Street, gutter-blood rag-galloper—had parodied in “creaking couplets”
the picture-poem of _Kate Hackabout_.[15] Vinny Bourne had headed his
“hendecasyllables,” _ad Gulielmum Hogarth_ Παραινετικον. Somerville,
author of the _Chase_ had dedicated his _Hobbinol_ to us; we were
son-in-law to a knight and M.P., but we were not yet quite emancipated
from struggles, and hardship and poverty. As yet we were very badly paid,
and our small earnings were gnawed away by the villanous pirates soon to
succumb to the protective act of Parliament which Huggins was to draw—how
strangely and frequently that detested name turns up—and draw not too
efficiently on the model of the old literary copyright statute of Queen
Anne. Morris had paid us the thirty pounds adjudged for the _Element
of Earth_: but no munificent, eccentric old maid had as yet arisen to
gratify us with sixty guineas for a single comic design: _Taste in High
Life_. We were poor, albeit not lowly. The wolf was not exactly at the
door. He didn’t howl from morning to night; but, half-tamed, he built
himself a kennel in the porch, and snarled sometimes over the threshold.
Let it be told again that we, William, were “a punctual paymaster.” So
it behoved us to paint as many portraits and conversations as we could
get commissions for, and do an occasional stroke of work on copper-plate
for the booksellers. Coypel and Vandergucht, both approved high Dutch
draughtsmen of the time, shared the patronage of the better class of
booksellers with us; but none of us worked for the polecat Edmund Curll.
One of us, however, made a smart onslaught about this time on Edmund
Curll’s most rancorous foe, Alexander Pope. Many pages ago I hinted at
this attack, as almost the only one that could be traced directly to
Hogarth; although many claim to discern little portraits in disparagement
of Pope Alexander in the print of the _Lottery_, in _Rich’s Triumphal
Entry to Covent Garden_ (in which a suppositious Pope beneath the piazza
is maltreating a copy of the _Beggars’ Opera_—why? had he not a hand
in it?), and in the _Characters at Button’s Coffee-house_. There can
be no mistake, however, about the Pope in the print known as _False
Taste_, or the second _Burlington Gate_. There is no need that I should
trench on the province of Mr. Carruthers, who, in his edition of Pope,
has so admirably narrated the ins and outs of the quarrel between the
poet and the magnificent Duke of Chandos, further than to express an
opinion that the duke had treated the little man of Twickenham with, at
least, courtesy; and that Pope’s description of “Timon’s villa,” was at
best somewhat lacking in courtesy. Hogarth took the Chandos side in the
squabble—the malevolent still hint in deference to Sir James Thornhill
and his old grudge against Kent, the Corinthian petticoat man, and
_protégé_ of Lord Burlington. In the print you see Pope perched on a
scaffolding, and, as he whitewashes Burlington Gate, bespattering the
passing coach of the Duke of Chandos. It would have been well for William
to have avoided these partisan personalities. They never brought him
anything but grief. He should have remembered Vinny Bourne’s allocution—
“Qui mores hominum improbos, ineptos,
Incidis....”
Rogues, and rakes, and misers, and fanatics, and quacks, were his quarry.
It was his to scourge the vices of the great; aye, and to laugh at their
foibles. He has, indeed, well generalized the mansion and villa building
mania in the courtyard perspective of the _Marriage à la Mode_, but he
should have had nothing directly to do with Burlington Gate or with
Canons.
The real scope and bent of his genius were to be triumphantly manifested
at this very period by his wonderful composition _The Modern Midnight
Conversation_. I don’t think there is a single artistic design extant
which exemplifies to the spectator so forcibly and so rapidly the vices
of a coarse and sensual epoch. Most of us have seen that grand picture
in the Luxembourg at Paris, the _Décadence des Romains_ of Coutuse, with
those stern citizens of the old Brutus stamp gazing in moody sorrow
on the enervated patricians, crowned with flowers, golden-sandalled,
purple-robed, rouged, and perfumed, lapped in feasting and luxury, and
the false smiles of meretricious women; listening to dulcet music;
sipping the Chian and the Falernian, babbling the scandal of the bath
to their freedmen, or lisping sophisms in emasculated Greek to their
hireling philosophers. One has but to glance at that picture to know
that the empire is in a bad way; that certain Germanic barbarians are
sharpening short swords or whittling clubs into shape far away, and that
the Roman greatness is in the Valley of the Shadow of Death. I remember
once seeing in an old curiosity shop of the Rue Lafitte a water-colour
drawing, probably limned by some rapin for some Sophie Arnould of the
quarter, and sold at one of her periodical boudoir-and-alcove auctions—a
drawing almost as eloquent and as suggestive as the _Décadence_. A group
of ragged little boys, in the peasant costume of Louis the Well-Beloved’s
time, have lifted up a heavy curtain. You see, beyond, the interior of a
_petite maison_. Farmers general, marquises, abbés, are junketing with
the Sophie Arnoulds of the epoch. The uplifted table-cloth shows the keys
of a harpsichord beneath, on which one of the fair dames is tinkling.
There are no servants to disturb the company; the dainty dishes rise
through noiseless traps. Artificial flowers, champagne, wax candles,
Sèvres china and _vermeil_ plate, diamonds, and embroidery: of all these
there is an abundance. Outside, where the little ragged hungry boys are,
you see snow and naked trees, and a little dead baby in a dead mother’s
arms. A fanciful performance, and too violently strained, perhaps; yet
one that tells, undeniably, that the age is going _wrong_; that this
champagne will one day turn red as blood; that these wax candles will
light a flame not to be put out, but that will burn the _petite maison_
about the ears of Farmers general, Sophie Arnoulds, and company; that
the strumming of yonder harpsichord will be inaudible when the dreadful
tocain begins to boom. I need but allude to the Dutch Kermesses of
Teniers, and Ostade, and Jan Steen, and the camp-life pictures of
Wouvermans and Dick Stoop, for those acquainted with those masters to
understand the marvellous and instantaneous concentration of all the low,
sordid, brutal passions and pastimes of the epoch; the daily life and
sports and duties of the boor who swigs the beer and smokes the pipe;
of the vraw, who peels the carrots, swaddles the child, and beats the
servant maid with a broomstick; of the ruffian soldier, rubbing down
his eternal white horse, braying away with his trumpet, gambling under
the tilt of his tent, or brabbling with the baggage-waggon woman, who
reclines yonder among her pots and kettles. These things come upon us
at once; and we are seized and possessed with the life of the time; but
the force and suggestiveness of the works I have named become weak and
ambiguous when compared with this _Modern Midnight Conversation_, this
picture paraphrase of the immortal “_Prospos des Buveurs_” of Francois
Rabelais. You see an epoch of dull, brutish, besotted revelry: an epoch
when my lord duke was taken home drunk in his sedan from the Rose to his
mansion in Great Queen Street, Lincoln’s Inn Fields; his chair-men and
flambeau-men very probably as drunk as he; and his chaplain and groom of
the chambers receiving him with bloodshot eyes and hiccuping speech;—when
Jemmy Twitcher lay in the kennel as drunk as my lord duke; only, there
was nobody to take him home; when there were four thousand ginshops in
London; and a grave publicist issued a broadsheet, giving “two hundred
and sixty plain and practical reasons” for the legislative suppression of
the trade in “the dreadful liquor called Geneva.” I wish I could persuade
the temperance societies that this is in comparison a sober age; and that
130 years ago, not only did wine and punch slay their thousands among the
upper classes, but gin and brandy—both of which were horribly cheap—slew
their tens of thousands among the populace. Wait till we come to the
Hogarthian tableaux of Beer Street and Gin Lane. In this _Modern Midnight
Conversation_, everybody is tipsy. The parson, the doctor, the soldier,
the gambler, and the bully—the very drawer himself—are all intoxicated.
Few of the company can see out of more than one eye. Pipes are lighted,
and go out again for want of sober puffing. Songs are commenced, and
the second couplet forgotten. Wigs are pushed awry, or quite fall off.
The furniture is overturned; rivulets of punch flow over the table,
and on to the puddled ground. Men, losing the reins of reason, not
only see, but think double; take their own cracked voices for those of
interlocutors; quarrel with themselves; give each other the lie, and vow
they will draw upon themselves if they, themselves, say something—they
know not what—again. This is the drunkenness that cankered, and bloated,
and corrupted Church and State, in the debased reigns of the two first
Brunswickers; that sent the king fuddled to Heidegger’s masquerade, and
the minister reeling in his blue ribbon to the House, and made tavern
roysterers of the young nobles of Britain. When one has had to wade
through the minor chronicles of this time, it becomes distressingly easy
to recognize the terrible truth of the _Modern Midnight Conversation_.[16]
Now, although William Hogarth, now in his thirty-fifth year, was
passably virtuous, and I have heard no instance of his indulging in
any modern conversation at midnight or other times, to the extent of
becoming overtaken in strong drinks—there were plenty of cakes and ale
in the Hogarthian philosophy. He was a brisk man, liberal and hospitable
in his own house, and not averse from moderate conviviality abroad,
sometimes partaking of the nature of the hilarious gambols known as
“High Jinks.” Brother, we must die. It needs not the digging Trappist to
tell us so. It needs not the moralist with “_Disce mori!_” It needs not
the looking-glass that shows us the wrinkled brow and grizzled locks.
We must die; and we are gravelled, and worn, and sick, and sorry; and
in the night we pray for morning, and in the morning cry out that it
were night. But they need not be grim ghosts, those memories of the old
pleasant follies and “High Jinks.” They did not all belong to the folly
and recklessness of wayward youth. They were jovial and exuberant, and
merry and light-hearted; trivial, certainly, and, maybe, undignified
as when you, John Kemble, rode the hippopotamus at early dawn among
the cabbages in Covent Garden; as when you, grave senator and reverend
seignior, danced the Irish jig over the crossed broomsticks; as when you,
now stately dowager, then sprightly maid of honour, disguised yourself
as a buy-a-broom girl; as when you, grave philosopher, condescended,
“on that occasion only,” to lead the donkey that was the Rosinante of a
fifth of November “Guy.” But you didn’t do any harm. You didn’t exactly
bring your parents’ grey hair with sorrow to the grave when you broke
the half-crown’s worth of crockeryware; nor were you ever brought to the
pass of biting your mamma’s ear off on the Place de Grève, because she
didn’t flay you alive for partaking of apples which you had not precisely
acquired according to the “vendors and purchasers” doctrines of wise
Lord St. Leonards. I say, that I hope we shall not _all_ be brought to
judgment for _all_ the rejoicings of our youth; for the assize would
surely be too black, and shuddering Mercy would tear the calendar.
In 1732 there must have been “high jinks” on foot from time to time at
the Bedford Coffee House, Covent Garden. Now, where was the Bedford
Coffee House? Was it at that Bedford Hotel, under the piazza, so
unceremoniously elbowed by that monstrous glasshouse called the “Floral
Hall”—the Bedford of which Mrs. Warner is so urbane a hostess? Or was it
the “Bedford Head,” in Maiden Lane, Covent Garden, a hostelry, where to
this day a club of bookworm men meet to lay the dust of ancient lore with
frugal libations, and talk about Hogarth, and Fielding, and Johnson, and
the brave deeds and the brave men of the days that shall be no more? I
confess that I incline to the “Bedford Head,” and that I have purposely
avoided taking counsel of London antiquaries more learned than myself
on the point, lest I should be undeceived. Moreover, Tothall lived at
the corner of Tavistock Court, Tavistock Street, which, as everybody
knows, is over against Maiden Lane. It was nearer to Leicester Fields,
where Hogarth dwelt, than the Bedford under the piazza, and HOGARTH and
TOTHALL, with THORNHILL, FORREST, and SCOTT, were the immortal FIVE who,
on the morning of Saturday, the 27th of May, 1732, set out on a Kentish
pilgrimage, of which the aim and end were “High Jinks.”
A word as to the Pilgrims. A famous English writer in some lectures
on the “English Humourists,” familiar to us all, has described the
pilgrimage as that of a “jolly party of tradesmen engaged at high jinks.”
Now with the exception of Tothall, who had been pretty nearly everything,
and a woollen draper, among multifarious other callings,[17] the party
were all professional men. What Hogarth was, you know. He had come to the
days when he could wear his sword and bag. Thornhill was Sir James’s son
and heir. He was afterwards sergeant-painter to the navy, and preserved
a good estate in the west. Scott was a marine painter, said by Lord
Orford to be second only to Vandevelde; and Forrest’s poetic narrative
of the Tour, in “Hudibrastic verse,” is so fluent, and often so witty,
as to show a capacity and a facility very uncommon in those days among
tradesmen. The curiosity is that these five accomplished men should have
taken delight in diversions of the plainest and most inelegant kind.
As my author quoted above justly remarks, this was indeed a “jolly
party of tradesmen,” at least, of merrymakers who behaved as we should
expect tradesmen to do; but I suspect that the real London tradesman
of the time would have been frightened out of his life at such wild
doings; and that these jovial Kentish jinks were engaged in by the five
Bedfordians through sheer humorous eccentricity, tinged by that inherent
coarseness and love of horseplay of the age, which we discover, not only
in such holiday jaunts, but in such almost inconceivable frolics as
that of George the Second, the Duke of Montague, with Heidegger at the
masquerade; the escapade of Lord Middlesex and his friends of the Calves’
Head Club, and the hideous practical joke played off by Pope on Curll.
Educated men seemed to share in those days the yearning of the French
actress—the _besoin de s’encanailler_—the desire to disport themselves
in a pigsty, more or less Epicurean; and but for the knowledge of this
prevalent low tone in cultivated society it is difficult to realize
the fact of Hogarth going back to his lady wife, and Thornhill to the
powdered and bewigged grandee, his papa.
Forrest’s narrative of the tour, which began, as I have said, on the
twenty-seventh, and finished on the thirty-first of May, is far too
elaborate for me to give anything beyond a very brief reflex of it here.
I will quote, however, the opening lines:—
“’Twas first of morn on Saturday
The seven and twentieth of May,
When Hogarth, Thornhill, Tothall, Scott,
And Forrest, who this journal wrote,
From Covent Garden took departure,
To see the world by land and water.”
It appears that their hearts were light, and those nether garments, now
fallen almost into desuetude, save among grooms, footmen, blackrods,
and members of the diplomatic service, were thin. They started, singing
after a carouse, during the small hours of the morning, and went down
the river to Billingsgate. At the noted “Dark-house” they met the same
sort of company as Mr. Edward Ward introduces us to in the _London Spy_,
and Hogarth took a portrait, unfortunately not preserved, of a waterside
humorist, known as the “Duke of Puddledock.”
“Of Puddledock a porter grim,
Whose portrait Hogarth in a whim
Presented him in caricature,
He pasted on the cellar door.”
Thence they went to Gravesend in the tilt-boat with a “mackrel gale,”
chanting lustily, and regaling on “biscuit, beef, and gin.” At Gravesend
they put up at “Mrs. Bramble’s.” They had previously seen at Purfleet
three men-of-war, the Dursley Galley, the Gibraltar, and the Tartar Pink,
the pilot of which last vessel begged them to “lend him a cast.” Thence
they walked to Rochester, and saw in the cathedral “th’ unknown person’s
monument.” _Pendente lite_, they drank six pots of ale. They saw “Watt’s
Charity,” and eulogized its hospitality, remarking only
“But the contagiously affected,
And rogues and proctors are rejected,”
marvelling much as to the origin of the distaste conceived by Master
Watts against “proctors.” For dinner at the Crown at Strood they had
“soles and flounders, with crab sauce;” a stuffed and roasted calf’s head
“with purt’nance minced and liver fried;” and by way of a second course,
roast leg of mutton and green peas. Peas were early, alas! in May, ’32.
“The cook was much commended for’t,
Fresh was the beer, and sound the port.”
At Chatham they went aboard two men-of-war, the Royal Sovereign and the
Marlborough. In the churchyard at Hoo they found a curious epitaph,
written by a “servant maid turned poetaster,” in honour of her master,
who had left her all his money, and which Forrest thus, literally,
transcribed——
“And. wHen. he. Died. you. plainly. see.
Hee. freely. gave. al. to Sara. passaWee.
And. in. Doing. so. it. DoTh. prevail.
that. Ion. him. can. well. besTowthis. Rayel
on. Year. sarved. him. it. is well. none
But. Thanks. beto. God. it. is. all. my One.”
How they lay two in a bed, drawing lots who should be the fifth,
fortunate enough to sleep “without a chum;” how they were tormented with
gnats, and tossed and tumbled, and, waking up in the morning, told their
dreams, and could make nothing of them; how Hogarth and Scott played at
“Scotch-hop” in the Town Hall, Rochester; how they pelted and bemired
one another in country lanes and churchyards; how they perambulated
the “Isle of Greane” and the “Isle of Shepey,” and came upon a party
of men-’o-war’s men, who had been left without provisions by their
midshipman, and learnt how the same midshipman had afterwards got into
dire disgrace for philandering with a married lady of Queensborough; how
they ate cockles with the sailors, and sent to the alehouse for beer to
regale them; and treated a loquacious man of Queensborough to “t’other
pot,” whereat the loquacious man began to abuse the mayor of that mighty
borough as a mere custom-house officer; how they found the Market-place
“Just big enough to hold the stocks
And one if not two butchers’ blocks.”
how they abode at the “Swans,” and the landlady threatened to have Scott
up before the mayor; how they heard the famous Isle of Sheppey legend of
“Horse Church” and the wicked Lord of Shorland, so graphically narrated
in our own days by Thomas Ingoldsby in the story beginning “‘He won’t,’
said the Baron. ‘Then bring me my boots.’” How at last they got back to
Gravesend, put up at Mrs. Bramble’s again, and returned per tilt-boat
very tired and jovial to London. All these notable incidents are set down
with a charming simplicity, and an unflagging humour and good nature.
Forrest, as I have said, kept the journal. Hogarth and Scott illustrated
it. Thornhill made the map, and Tothall was the treasurer. The original
drawings, done with a pen and washed with indian ink, and not unlike some
of old Rowlandson’s rough sketches, are now in the Print Room of the
British Museum. I believe this very interesting memorial of an English
artist, this homely _Liber Veritatis_, was secured for our National
Collection at the cost of a hundred pounds. Some of the drawings are
capital; though all are of the very slightest. These boon companions were
too much bent on enjoying themselves to work very hard. There is a view
of Queensborough Market-place and Hôtel de Ville, the manner of taking
the draught of which is thus described:—
“Then to our Swans returning, there
Was borrowed a great wooden chair,
And plac’d it in the open street
Where in much state did Hogarth sit
To draw the townhouse, church and steeple,
Surrounded by a crowd of people.
Tagrag and bobtail stood quite thick there
And cried ‘What a sweet pretty picture!’”
There is certainly nothing very elevated in good Mr. Forrest’s
Hudibrastics; yet the jingle of his verse is by no means disagreeable;
and from his simple description it is easy to form a definite notion of
sturdy little Will Hogarth “sitting in much state” in the great wooden
chair borrowed from the “Swans” at Queensborough, and gravely sketching
with the tagrag and bobtail staring open-mouthed around him.
[Illustration: BREAKFASTING &c.
A. _The Fisherman Shaving._
B. _Mr Thornhill._
C. _Mr Tothall shaving himself._
D. _Mr Hogarth drawing this Drawing._
E. _Mr Forrest at Breakfast._
F. _Mr Scott finishing a Drawing._]
A still better word-picture by Forrest illustrates Hogarth’s drawing of
_Shaving in the Isle of Sheppey_:
“Till six o’clock we quiet lay
And then got out for the whole day;
To fetch a barber out we send;
Stripp’d and in boots he doth attend,
For he’s a fisherman by trade;
Tann’d was his face, and shock his head;
He flours our heads and trims our faces,
And the top barber of the place is;
A bowl of milk and toasted bread
Are brought, of which, while Forrest eats,
To draw our pictures Hogarth sits;
Thornhill is in the barber’s hands;
Shaving himself, Will Tothall stands;
While Scott is in a corner sitting,
And an unfinished sketch completing.”
There is also a very droll tailpiece of Hogarth’s design, and freely,
vigorously and racily touched.
[Illustration]
The “Hudibrastics,” when the accounts were duly audited—and a rare
chronicle these accounts are of pots of ale, cans of flip, bowls of
punch, lobsters and tobacco—were handsomely bound to be preserved as a
perpetual memorial of this famous expedition. By way of motto, Forrest
prefixed to his poem a quotation of the inscription over Dulwich college
porch, _Abi tu, et fac similiter_.
The great success of the _Harlot’s Progress_ had naturally incited
William Hogarth with a strong and almost fierce desire to accomplish some
other work of the same satirical force, of the same breadth of morality
with that excellent performance. He determined that there should be on
record a sequel, or at least a pendant to the drama whose lamentable
action his pencil had just so poignantly narrated. He felt that it was
in him, that it was his vocation, his duty to follow step by step the
career of human vice, to point, with unerring finger whither tend the
crooked roads, to demonstrate as clearly as ever did mathematician—much
more explicitly than ever did logician—that as surely as the wheels of
the cart follow the hoofs of the horse, so surely will punishment follow
sin. He was as yet but at the commencement of his trilogy: Clytemnestra
might begin; Orestes might succeed; but the Eumenides had to come at
last. He saw before him a whole ocean, seething, weltering, bubbling of
pravities and impostures, and deadly lies, and evil passions. He heard
the thorns crackling under the pot. He saw vice, not only stalking
about with hungered looks, ragged garb and brandished bludgeon; now
robbing Dr. Mead’s chariot in Holborn; now stopping the Bristol mail;
now cutting Jonathan Wild’s throat on the leads before the Sessions
House, and being pressed to death for it; now with sooty face and wild
disguise of skins, stealing deer in the king’s forests, and rioting in
caves on surreptitious venison and smuggled Nantz;[18] now being ducked
for pocket-picking in the horse-pond behind the King’s Mews, Charing
Cross; now cutting throats in night-cellars; now going filibustering,
and suffering death for piracy, to be afterwards gibbeted at Halfway
Creek and the Triptoptrees; but Vice in embroidery and Mechlin lace,
with a silver-hilted sword, and a snuff-box enamelled by Rouquet, at
its side; vice, painted and patched, whispering over fans, painted with
Hogarth’s own “Progress” at Heidegger’s masquerade; vice punting at the
“Young Man’s,” stock-jobbing in the Alley, brawling with porters and
common bullies at the Rose, chaffering with horse-jockeys at Newmarket,
clustered round the Cock-pit, applauding Broughton the ex-yeoman of the
guard, pugilist, and lending its fine Holland shirt to Mr. Figg the
prize-fighter after a bout at back or broadsword,[19] dancing attendance
on the impudent and ugly German women, for whom the kings of England
forsook their lawful wives, duelling in Hyde Park, and taking bribes in
the very lobby of the Parliament House. William Hogarth knew that he was
enjoined to mark this duplex vice, to burn it in the hand, to force it
into the pillory, to pile the hundredweights of his indignation upon it
in his own pressyard, to scathe and strangle it, and hang it as high as
Haman, to be the loathing and the scorn of better-minded men. Between
the summer lodgings at South Lambeth and other lodgings he took at
Isleworth, between the portraits and conversations, and the book-plates
and the benefit-tickets; odds and ends of artists’ work, done in the way
of business for the lords and gentlemen who were good enough to employ
him; shop-bills, “illustrating the commerce of Florence;” “breaking-up”
tickets for Tiverton School; scenes from _Paradise Lost_; busts of
Hesiod; tickets for Figg the prize-fighter, for Milward, Jemmy Spiller,
Joe Miller, and other comedians; coats of arms for his friend George
Lambert; caricatures of Orator Henley; benefit cards even for Harry
Fielding, illustrating scenes from _Pasquin_ and the _Mock Doctor_;
between high jinks and suburban jaunts, and pleasant evening strolls in
Vauxhall Gardens; between 1733 and 1735, he was planning, and maturing,
and brooding over the _Rake’s Progress_. The experiment was a dangerous
one. The public are averse from tolerating _Paradise Regained_ after
_Paradise Lost_, the _Drunkard’s Children_ after the _Bottle_, the
_Marriage of Figaro_ after the _Barber of Seville_. And who has not
yawned and rubbed his eyes over the second _Faust_? But William Hogarth
saw his way clearly before him, and was determined to pursue it. The
pictures, eight in number, were painted by the end of 1733. In 1734, the
proposals of subscription to the plates were issued. The subscription
ticket was the well-known etching of the _Laughing Audience_. The sums
were one guinea and a half for nine plates; the ninth promised being _The
Humours of a Fair_—no other than the far-famed _Southwark_.
Thus I sweep the stage, and sound the whistle for the curtain to draw up
on the drama of _The Rake’s Progress_, closing this paper with the form
of receipt given by Hogarth to his subscribers:
“Recd. Decr. 18th, of the Rt. Honble. Lord Biron, half a
guinea, being the first payment for nine plates, eight of which
represent a _Rake’s Progress_, and the ninth a _Fair_, which I
promise to deliver at Michaelmas next, on receiving one guinea
more. _Note._—The _Fair_ will be delivered at Christmas next,
at sight of this receipt. The prints of the _Rake’s Progress_
will be two guineas, after the subscription is over.”
“WILLIAM HOGARTH.”
FOOTNOTES
[9] I was at Bristol in the summer of 1858; but the fine old church was
then in process of restoration, and the Hogarths, I heard, had been
temporarily removed. Have those curious altar-pieces been since restored?
[10] There is a mania just now for giving excessive prices for steel
and copper engravings. There is a millennium for artists’ proofs. The
auctioneers only know what a genuine Marc Antonio Raimondi is worth; but
I am told that a “Sunday” proof of the _March to Finchley_—the original
plate was dated on a Sunday, but the _dies non_ was subsequently erased
by Hogarth—will fetch thirty guineas in the market. The price seems as
exorbitant as those sometimes given for a “breeches” or a “vinegar” Bible.
[11] Dr. Misaubin lived at 96, St. Martin’s lane. Of his staircase,
painted by Clermont, the Frenchman, I have already spoken. Those were
the days when “Mrs. Powell, the colourman’s mother, used to make a
pipe of wine every year from the vines that grew in the garden in St
Martin’s Lane.” Traces of its old rurality may also be found in the
name of one of its noisomest offshoots—the “Hop Gardens.” Dr. Misaubin
“flourished” in 1732. He was not a Frenchman born, but of French Huguenot
extraction. He was an arrant and impudent quack, but a good-natured
man, and dispensed the huge fortune he amassed liberally enough. More
anent him when he grows older and more wrinkled, in the _Marriage à la
Mode_. All this man’s gold, however, turned in the end to dry leaves. His
grandson, Angiband, dissipated the pill and nostrum fortune, and died of
Geneva-on-the-brain in St. Martin’s Workhouse. Engraver Smith (J. T.)
says that Misaunbin’s father was a Protestant clergyman, and mentions a
“family picture” representing the Doctor in all his glory, with his son
on his knees, and his reverend papa at a table behind, and arrayed in
full canonicals.
[12] Everybody seems to have had Latin verses, eulogistic or abusive,
addressed to him in those days. Thus the “Sapphics” of Mr. Loveling, a
young gentleman of the university, to the rigorous Middlesex Justice:—
“Pellicum, Gonsone, animosus hostis,
Per minus castus Druriæ tabernas
Lenis incedens, abeas Diones
Æquus Alumnis!”
And so forth.
[13] He sat for Melcombe Regis in the two last parliaments of George
the First. The borough was then a mere pocket one, in the gift of the
backstairs. Thornhill’s “employments” were continued to him for some
time by George the Second; but, like his predecessor, Sir Christopher
Wren, he was removed to make way for place-men who, without any very
high attainments, could be useful to the Ministry. Thenceforth, the
“goodman” amused himself by painting easel-pictures. He was taken for
death in an access of gout, and died in his chair on the 4th of May,
and was buried at Stalbridge on the 13th. He had greatly beautified the
ancestral mansion and estate, and had erected, on an adjacent hill, an
obelisk to the memory of George the First, which was visible to all the
country side. Hogarth himself records the death of his father-in-law, in
Sylvanus Urban’s obituary in the _Gentleman’s Magazine_—then a very young
publication, indeed. He says that he was “the greatest history painter
this age has seen;” and states, that as king’s sergeant painter he had to
decorate all his majesty’s coaches, barges, and “the royal navy.” Are we
to understand from this that Thornhill was expected to carve and gild the
figure heads of three-deckers!
[14] Thomas Coram was born in 1668. He had amassed a competence in
following the sea, and lived at Rotherhithe, like Captain Lemuel
Gulliver, and that greater mariner, Captain Cuttle. In his way to and
from the maritime districts of the town, his honest heart was frequently
afflicted by the sight of destitute and abandoned children. Probably he
had never heard of St. Vincent de Paul—this rough tarry-breeks of the
Benbow and Cloudesley Shovel era—but he set about doing the selfsame
work as that for which the foreign philanthropist was canonized. Coram
had already effected much good by procuring an Act granting a bounty on
naval stores imported to Georgia—where the colonists were frequently left
destitute—and by devising an admirable scheme for the education of Indian
girls. The Foundling Hospital was, however, his great work. He obtained
the charter of incorporation for it, A.D. 1739. These were the words, of
which I have given the sense above:—“I have not wasted the little wealth
of which I was formerly possessed in self-indulgence or vain expense;
and am not ashamed to confess, that in this, my old age, I am poor.”
They raised a pension of a hundred a year for the benevolent veteran;
Sir Sampson Gideon and Dr. Brocklesby being chief managers of the fund.
Captain Coram did not live long to enjoy the pension; and at his death,
it was continued to poor old Leveridge, to whose volume of songs William
Hogarth contributed a frontispiece.