Forlorn, degraded, and distrest,
The furies tear her tortur'd breast.
Remorse, with agonizing sigh,
And sullen shame with downcast eye;
Anguish,--by cold reflection fed,
And wan despair, and trembling dread,
In guise terrific hover round,
And ring the knell of thrilling sound.
Scar'd Reason totters on her throne,
And Hope is fled!--and Peace is gone.
Shuddering at phantoms ever in her sight,
Hating the garish sun, and trembling at the night;
To poison,--sad resort! she frantic flies,
And, self-destroy'd, the wretched Countess dies!--E.
[Illustration: MARRIAGE A LA MODE. PLATE VI.]
The last sad scene of our unfortunate heroine's life is in the house
of her father, to which she had returned after her husband's death.
The law could not consider her as the primary cause of his murder;
but consciousness of her own guilt was more severe punishment than
that could have inflicted. This, added to her father's reproaches,
and the taunts of those who were once her friends, renders society
hateful, and solitude insupportable. Wounded in every feeling,
tortured in every nerve, and seeing no prospect of a period to her
misery, she takes the horrid resolution of ending all her calamities
by poison.
"Dreadful deed, unbidden thus
To rush into the presence of her Judge,
And challenge vengeance. 'Tis said
Unheard-of tortures are reserved
For murderers of themselves. They herd together:
The common damn'd shun their society,
As fiends too foul for converse."
Dreadful as is this resolve, she puts it in execution by bribing the
servant of her father to procure her a dose of laudanum. Close to
the vial, which lies on the floor, Hogarth has judiciously placed
Counsellor Silvertongue's last dying speech, thus intimating that he
also has suffered the punishment he justly merited.[23] The records
of their fate being thus situated, seems to imply, that as they
were united in vice, they are companions in the consequences. These
two terrific and monitory testimonies are a kind of propitiatory
sacrifice to the manes of her injured and murdered lord.
Her avaricious father, seeing his daughter at the point of death,
and knowing the value of her diamond ring, determined to secure
this glittering gem from the depredations of the old nurse, coolly
draws it from her finger. This little circumstance shows a prominent
feature of his mind. Every sense of feeling absorbed in extreme
avarice, he seems at this moment calculating how many carats the
brilliants weigh.
From a gown hung up near the clock we know him to be an alderman;
and from his sleek appearance, we have some right to infer that
he is constant in his attendance at city feasts, for so comely a
countenance could never be supported by the scanty and meagre viands
of his own table. His domestic care is intimated by the gaunt and
hungry appearance of a dog, who, taking advantage of this general
confusion, seizes the brawn's head.[24]
A rickety child, heir to the complaints of its father, shows some
tenderness for its expiring mother; and the grievous whine of an old
nurse is most admirably described. These are the only two of the
party who exhibit any marks of sorrow for the death of our wretched
Countess. The smug apothecary, indeed, displays some symptoms of
vexation at his patient dying before she has taken his julap, the
label of which hangs out of his pocket. Her constitution, though
impaired by grief, promised to have lasted long enough for him to
have marked many additional dittos in his day-book. Pointing to the
dying speech, he threatens the terrified footboy with a punishment
similar to that of the Counsellor for having bought the laudanum. The
fellow protests his innocence, and promises never more to be guilty
of a like offence. The effects of fear on an ignorant rustic cannot
be better delineated; nor is it easy to conceive a more ludicrous
figure than this awkward retainer, dressed in an old full-trimmed
coat, which in its better days had been the property of his master.
By the physician retreating, we are led to conceive that, finding
his patient had dared to quit the world in an irregular way, neither
abiding by his prescriptions nor waiting for his permission, he cast
an indignant frown on all present, and exclaimed in style heroic,
"'Fellow, our hat!'--no more he deign'd to say,
But stern as Ajax' spectre, stalk'd away."
The leathern buckets immediately over the Doctor's head were,
previous to the introduction of fire-engines, considered as proper
furniture for a merchant's hall. Every ornament in his parlour is
highly and exactly appropriate to the man. The style of his pictures,
his clock, a cobweb over the window, repaired chair, nay, the very
form of his hat, are characteristic. A silver cup upon the table, and
jug on the floor, show us his style of living. The scantiness of his
own table is well contrasted by the plenty exhibited in the picture
over the old nurse's head, where iron pots, brass pans, cabbages,
and lanterns, are indiscriminately huddled together, with no other
meaning than to show how highly a Flemish artist could _finish_. The
_attic_ delicacy of this patient and laborious school is displayed in
the adjoining picture; and their humour, in that of a fellow wittily
lighting his tobacco-pipe by the red nose of his companion.[25]
The pipe and bottle placed under the day-book and ledger, and the
whole crowned by a broken punch-bowl, intimate that this venerable
gentleman united business with pleasure. The view through an open
window marks the situation of our plodding merchant's house to be
near London Bridge, and represents that absurd and ill-contrived
structure in its original state, loaded with houses. A clock points
the hour to be a little after eleven, which at this highly polished
and refined period would be deemed an early hour for a citizen's
breakfast; at that, it was his hour of dinner!
Thus has our moral dramatist concluded his tragedy, and brought his
heroine from dissipation and vice to misery and shame, terminating
her existence by suicide!
The drama of Shakspeare has been said to be the mirror of life, which
to-day we see lighted up with gaiety, and to-morrow clouded with
sorrow. Shakspeare had the power of exciting laughter or grief, not
only in one mind, but in one composition. That Hogarth had the same
power, and exerted it with the same disdain of the little cavils of
little minds, is evinced in this series of prints; from the study
of which, a peasant, who has never strayed beyond the precincts of
his own cottage, may calculate the consequences of dissipation; and
he who has lived secluded from society, may form an estimate of the
value of riches and high birth when abused by prodigality or degraded
by vice.
In the year 1746 was published a coarse and vulgar poem, in doggerel
verse, with the following title: "_Marriage à la Mode_, an humorous
tale in six cantos, in Hudibrastic verse, being an Explanation of the
six Prints lately published by the ingenious Mr. Hogarth. London,
printed for Weaver Bickerton, in Temple Exchange Passage, Fleet
Street. Price One Shilling."
The _Clandestine Marriage_ is professedly formed upon the model of
these prints.