Chapter XVIII: The New Minister’s Patronage (1)

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]