Chapter XVIII: The New Minister’s Patronage (2)

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.

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.

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.

[15] One moment ere I leave the male and female naughtinesses in this drama for good. Charteris, Hackabout, brother and sister, James Dalton, the highwayman, whose “wig-box” you see in plate iii. of the _H. P._, and Mother Needham, who continued the traditions of Dryden’s _Mother Dulake_ (“Wild Gallant”), to Foote’s _Mother Cole_, all faded into space before 1733. The colonel “Don Francisco”—as people with a snigger called Charteris—was very nearly being hanged. He was cast for death; but being immensely rich, and having, moreover, and luckily, a lord of the land, the Earl of Wemyss, for his son-in-law, he managed to escape. Not, indeed, Scot-free. He was compelled to make a handsome settlement on his victim, one Ann Bond, prosecutrix in the case for which Don Francisco had so close a riddance of “_sus per coll_” being written against his name. The sheriffs of London, and the high bailiff of Westminster, had, moreover, made a seizure of his rich goods and chattels, immediately after his conviction. He had to compound with them for the restitution of his effects, and this cost him nearly nine thousand pounds. The profligate old miser had to sell his South Sea stock, to raise the amount; a fact which the newspapers of the day record with much exultation. But Nemesis was not yet satisfied. The colonel’s wife came back from Scotland on purpose to reproach her lord. The wretched man on his part fled _to_ Scotland, and died in Edinburgh soon afterwards. Dalton, of the “wig-box,” having been “boned,” “habbled,” or “snabbled,” and confined for some time in the “Rumbo,” or “Whid,” finished his career at the “nubbing cheat,” at the top of the Edgware Road. In other words—the first are the elegant terms used by the City marshal in his controversial pamphlet the _Regulator_, written in disparagement of Mr. Jonathan Wild the great—Mr. James Dalton was arrested, and after lying some time in Newgate, was duly tried, sentenced, and hanged. “He was a thief from his cradle, and imbibed the principles of his art with his mother’s milk.” He went between his father’s legs in the cart to his fatal exit at Tyburn. _Sic itur ad astra_; and thus Plutarch in the shape of the ordinary of Newgate. As for Mother Needham, she was sentenced to stand twice in the pillory. The first ordeal she underwent close to her own house, in Park Place, St. James’. She was very ill, and lay “all along” under these Caudine forks, “thus evading the law, which required that her face should be exposed.” Two days afterwards, “complaining of the ingratitude of the publick”—the mob had pelted her pitilessly—“and dreading the second pillorying to which, in Old Palace Yard, she was doomed, she gave up the ghost.”

[16] The _Modern Midnight Conversation_ had a great vogue abroad, and is still, perhaps, one of the best known of Hogarth’s works. Copies, adaptations, paraphrases of it have been multiplied to a vast extent in Germany. There is a well-known French version, _Société nocturne, nommée communément Cotterie de Débauche en Punch_; and a collection of heads from the _Conversation_, catalogued as _Têtes des onze membres, gravées par M. Riepenhausen_. One ingenious artist even formed a gallery of small wax models of the principal figures. And finally, I have seen the French _Cotterie_ enamelled on a porcelain at Leipsic, and on a golden snuffbox in the museum of the Hermitage at St. Petersburg. There is a humorous modern lithograph, representing a party of sapient-looking bibbers, assembled in solemn conclave over a hogshead of Rhine wine in a cellar; and the hint for this—albeit, the grossness is softened down—is evidently taken from the _M. M. C._

[17] Tothall’s career was a most curious one. He was the son of an apothecary, was left an orphan, taken care of by an uncle. He ran away to sea; went to the West Indies, Newfoundland, and Honduras; was on one occasion captured by hostile Spaniards, and marched “up the country,” with no other clothing but a woollen cap and a brown waistcoat—a costume almost as primitive as that of an unhappy French governess taken prisoner by some followers of Schamyl, in a raid on the Russians, and driven before them to their mountain home, the poor lady having nothing on but a pair of blue satin corsets. Tothall had his picture painted in the brown waistcoat. Coming afterwards to England, he entered the service of a woollen draper, in Tavistock Court; who, after some time, told him he was a very honest fellow, and that as he the draper only sold cloth, Tothall might have half the shop to sell shalloons and trimmings. He lent him money to buy stock, and recommended him to his chapmen. By and bye, a relative of Tothall in the West Indies sent him a puncheon of rum as a present. The recipient was about to sell the alcohol for what it would fetch—perhaps to the landlord of the Bedford Head—when his master interposed. “I have no use for my cellar,” quoth this benevolent woollen draper. “Do you open the door to the street; tap your puncheon, and draw it off in twopennyworths.” Spirit licences were not yet known. Tothall followed the draper’s advice, speedily sold all his rum at a good profit; sent to the West Indies for more, and drove a merry trade in rum, shalloons, and trimmings, till it occurred to the woollen draper to inform him one morning that he intended to retire, that he might have all his stock at prime cost, and pay him as he could. Why are there no such woollen-drapers now-a-days? Between the shop and the cellar Tothall contrived to realize a very considerable fortune. All this time, this odd man had been assiduously collecting fossils, minerals, and shells, of which he had, at last, a handsome museum. He retired to Dover, and, true to his old adventurous habits, entered into large speculations, in what his biographer modestly calls the “smuggling branch of business.” But a “byeboat,” laden with horses, in which he was interested, having been lost between Flushing and Ostend, and some other speculations turning out disastrously, Tothall became in his later days somewhat straitened in his circumstances. Hogarth used frequently to visit him at a little village near Dover, whither he retired, and where he died four years after our painter. He left 1,500_l._ in cash, and his collection of shells, &c. sold for a handsome sum.

[18] _Vide_ the statutes at largo for the “Black Act,” by which poaching in disguise was made a felony, punishment death; and the curious relation of the gentleman who fell among a gang of “Blacks,” and was courteously entreated by them, and regaled at a rich supper, at which the solids were composed exclusively of venison, on condition, only, of never revealing the place of these sooty poachers’ retreat.

[19] Figg fought much more with the sword than with his fists.

An Austrian Employé.

Neither a gipsy nor an Austrian employé has any country. They both lead a nomadic life, without home or fixed habitation; and when the gipsy has stolen what the neighbours had to lose, and the Austrian employé has exhausted all the squeezable properties of his office, they both move off—the gipsy whither he likes best, the Austrian employé most frequently whither he likes least.

The Austrian employé seldom administers in the town or province to which he belongs. The sages of the Austrian empire had one wise axiom, on which rested the whole of the government machinery. This axiom, sowed hatred and distrust in the fertile plains of Hungary and the pleasant gardens of Italy, in the homesteads of the Tyrolese and in the cottages of the half-starved Silesians: and soon thousands of hirelings were needed to help cut the rank ears, and bring the poisonous harvest home. And what harvests did not Austria bring home in 1848 and 1849! The axiom is “_Divide et impera_;” and forms the secret of Austrian policy. Government appoints no Austrian subject to any post or office in his native place. He would have friends and relations there, with whom he would be tender in the matter of extortion; and Austria wants money, not friends. If an Italian were suffered to administer in Lombardy, where would the ducats and the spies come from? He would naturally seek to gain the love and confidence of his compatriots; but the Government who have standing armies and above 500,000 employés to pay, would rather have the ducats than the love—it wants spies, not confidence. Therefore must the Hungarian Radetsky suck the golden fluid from the veins of Lombardy, no matter what blood or tears may be shed; the Bohemian Windischgrätz must rule in Hungary; a garrison of Slavonians must hold the fortresses of Silesia; a soldier must judge civilians; a council of lords promote the interests of plebeians; and a celibatarian priest decide on causes matrimonial.

Consequent upon these regulations, the writer’s father, a native of Bohemia married to a Viennese lady, was sent to Hungary, to deal with a people of whose language he knew nothing, and of whose customs he knew worse than nothing: having scraped what little information he possessed from books which told him everything of Hungary but the truth.

An Austrian employé has no country. No sooner has he arrived at a place, than all his endeavours are bent on how to get away again. Of freedom he has less than any man in the town. He dares do nothing, however innocent, on which suspicion could by possibility fasten. He dares not visit his fellow employés: that would be plotting; he dares not openly offer a pinch of snuff to his superiors: that would be bribery; if he is in the money department, he must not have father, brother, or far-away cousin in the same office, for fear of connivance. For the Austrian Government has the worst possible opinion of its bureaucratic members; saying “_quibbet præsumitur_,” a thief—“_donec probetur_,” the contrary. If the employé is an inferior, he is condemned to starvation; if a superior, he is surrounded by a swarm of inferiors, who wait for his place, like carrion crows waiting for the carcase on which the vultures are feeding.

When such a place is vacant, what an uproar! what whisperings and shruggings of shoulders, what calculations and intrigues, hopes, energies, expectations and disappointments, among the office-seeking crowd! Early in the morning the candidate’s wife, if she is young, or his daughters, if they are pretty, go about from office to office canvassing for votes. Courtesies are proffered, promises are made, tears are shed, and family miseries related again and again; variegated, however, in pattern and direction, to suit the exigencies of the moment: sentimental with the amiable, humble with the proud, pleading poverty to the rich, and the rapid increase of a family to the bachelor, the fair petitioners always close with the same formulæ—“generous protector,” “just appreciator of the meanest merit,” “your great influence,” and “eternal gratitude.” And sometimes the candidate opens the small chest where, in spite of multitudinous christenings and many doctors’ bills, he has managed to keep a few articles of family plate or ancestral _vertù_, and, with a heavy sigh, wraps perhaps his silver candelabra in tissue paper, and sends them to the chief power among the electors—an incorruptible man, whom he does not attempt to bribe, but whose choice he seeks to enlighten. In this scramble two men only come off well—the chief elector, whom everybody propitiates, and the successful candidate: unless, indeed, his place has cost him more than it is worth: which is not a rare occurrence in bribing, money-loving Austria.

An Austrian employé, is nothing but an animated copying machine: for in Austria nothing is ever said or done; everything is written. Heaven only knows what they all write, and where those thousands of reams go to at last; but every one writes, from nine in the morning to late at night, and all the year round alike. Bent low over their desks, with black fingers, black looks, and blackest _ennui_, without hope either of an early promotion or a late dinner, there they sit and write, till their brains are muddled and their hands are weary: head, heart, and life are equally exhausted and dried up. Whole reams of foolscap are written out for Section A, and duplicates thereof made for Section B. These duplicates are copied for the Register’s Office; the copy is copied for the Chancellor; an extract of the original copy is to be sent to Section D; copy of the copy, and duplicate thereof, are to be carefully written out again on foolscap, and sent to the so-called Court Office “Hofkammer,” and there all is again written, copied, labelled, registered, and numbered; the documents are then thrust away into the proper pigeon-holes, where, for the most part, they get worm-eaten and are forgotten.

After an Austrian employé has written, from the 1st of January to the 31st of December, what no one will ever want to read, he must set a day aside whereon to fill up, in his own handwriting, the blanks left in a printed form called _Comptabilitäts Tabelle_. The following are the questions which he must answer there:—1. Name, age, birthplace? 2. Of what religion? 3. Where and what he has studied? what languages he speaks? what capabilities he possesses? 4. When he entered his Majesty’s service? what different situations he has held? and what situation he holds now while writing this abridged autobiography? 5. Is he husband, bachelor, or widower? father or childless? 6. Has he any private fortune?

This last question is answered truthfully only by the very poor; for, as the Government grants no pensions to the widows and orphans of employés who have had a private income of 20_l._ per annum, it naturally follows that very few employés are to be found who own to the fraction of a zwanziger. At the foot of the paper a broad margin is left, headed by the inoffensive title “Special Remark.” This margin is secretly filled up by the employé’s immediate superior, who there inscribes his own private opinion of the man who, throughout all the preceding answers, has sought to place himself in the best light possible. This opinion is never stated openly, but is, on the contrary, so carefully concealed that the employé never knows what his chief thinks of him, nor what report he makes to the greater chiefs above. The “special remark” is the indication which the high officials consult: it is the shadow of him who is remarked on, following him with noiseless step wherever he goes, and looming behind him, black and threatening, when he stands in the sunlighted prospect of a hoped-for promotion. An adverse remark is the stumbling-block, the _pierre d’échopment_ of every Austrian bureaucrat: he cannot get over it; unless, indeed, he is able to leap over the head of the special remarker, and so change places and functions with him.

Yet, in spite of all these disagreeables, and notwithstanding the absence of salary for the first years of service, a place in a Government office is much sought after, and very difficult to procure. The curriculum, too, leading to it, is not a light one. Neither in Hungary nor in Bohemia, neither in Croatia nor in Corinthia, can a man obtain a Government office unless he has studied Latin and philosophy, logic and the exact sciences. Not that he is ever required to make use of his knowledge; but it is decreed that the knowledge should be acquired. The “course” takes eight years—the term prescribed by Government as absolutely necessary for the completion of an employé’s polite education. And when, after these eight years of hard study—after the numberless fees and presents, flatteries, bowings, and scrapings, initiatory to an appointment—the young man has at last wormed himself into the service, what is he to the Government? Not more than a sharp lad who writes a good hand is to the grocer at the corner. Indeed not so much; for the grocer would have to pay the sharp lad for his services, while the paternal Government would not dream of such an extravagance. No young man can hope for an apprenticeship who expects anything beyond the honour of being allowed to serve for love—and the future! This paternal Government—this national huckster which deals only in paper—paper diet, paper constitution, paper money, paper reform, neutrality, or amnesty—keeps its highly-educated apprentice of twenty-five somewhat longer than Laban kept Jacob waiting for his daughter. Ten, fifteen, and even twenty-five years he may have to serve for his Rachel,—an appointment with a salary; which, however, turns out most frequently to be only a Leah after all.

But it may be asked, how does the government manage to get so much gratuitous service? In a country where a man must eat, drink, and clothe himself handsomely, how can a paternal government be served for nothing? Is all service in Austria gratuitous? Does the employé receive from the butcher and baker and tailor the equivalent of what he bestows on the state? Not quite so. A paternal government which gets its allies to fight its battles for nothing, is clever enough to secure the support of its employés by their fathers. The fathers pay their sons for the services which these render to the state. The father of an employé expectant must give a promissory note to government, undertaking to supply his son with all things needful for the young man’s maintenance, if government, in return, will be generous enough to accept his son’s time and energies, and provide him with a place on some official treadmill. And the period for such an undertaking is—“during the emperor’s pleasure.”

The mode in which this magnificent appointment is applied for is much in the following manner: “The humble undersigned, who, according to testimonial annexed _sub literâ_ A. has been born and baptized; who, according to school testimonials _sub literis_ B. C. D. E. has studied with good success, and pursued the course of philosophy, and has also _heard_ about law; who, according to medical testimonial _sub literâ_ F. has been vaccinated with equally good success; who, according to promissory note _sub literâ_ G. has a father who is willing to give him, for the duration of his (the son’s) apprenticeship, the weekly stipend of 1_l._; most humbly begs a well-born, most praiseworthy Chamber to overwhelm him with the inestimable favour of making him honorary apprentice to such and such an office. Should the undersigned be so happy as to be accepted, he will be ready to pass the usual examinations in three months’ time.”

Remark, that the writer of this request speaks of himself in the third person singular. This is one of the many peculiarities in the Austrian official style. The third person, singular, is usually employed only in contempt. The officer addresses the private, the master the servant, the magistrate the criminal, all as He. A humble petitioner, therefore, must adopt the same formula when speaking of his own unworthy self to a well-born Court Chamber. This self-denying request granted, the candidate enters, as a probationary, the bureau in which he hopes to become hereafter an integral particle. Here he learns to fawn upon his chief in the proper official manner, to write confused reports about things of which he knows nothing, to make copies—reams of copies—of worthless original compositions; and after three months of these labours he is examined by the Director, who asks him nothing, but awards him a first-class testimonial—on the recommendation of the Chief. This first-class testimonial gives the poor mean-spirited youth the privilege of writing a second request, informing the Chamber of his good success, and expressing his ardent desire to leave the list of Honoraries and become an Ordinary.

Arrived at this Chimborazo of his wishes, the youth dresses himself in full evening costume, and at nine o’clock in the morning goes to the office to take the oath of allegiance to his Imperial, Royal, Apostolic Majesty. All his colleagues assemble there, with solemn faces. A crucifix and two lighted wax tapers are on the table in the middle of the room, and the novice, going up to the table, repeats slowly after his Chief the oath of allegiance; which is, in fact, a solemn promise to be an early riser and a quick penman, never to divulge an official secret, and to be incorruptible, generally and particularly.

The first promise is easily kept. The sooner a man rises and is out of the house, the sooner he is out of the way of his duns; for an unpaid Austrian employé is continually haunted by his creditors. The second of those two promises he fulfils by habit. Who would not be a swift and expert penman when writing all day and every day? The third no one asks him to break, for no one cares what he writes during all the weary hours of the day; his official secrets, if he has any, are safe from every one’s curiosity. As for the fourth, it is not kept at all. An Austrian employé accepts everything: money and trinkets; playthings for his boy, and gifts for his wife; hams and tongues; opera tickets and theatre stalls—he takes them all; and in return he may help the donor over some slippery pass, by dragging him out of the straight road into the crooked path leading to legal safety and moral dishonesty. Government gets off with its interests somewhat sacrificed; but the gain on one side makes up for the loss on the other. “_Donis semper aperta est_,” is the invisible inscription written on the Austrian office. It is forbidden to give or to receive; and he who gives runs as great a risk as he who receives; but both giver and receiver, running swiftly and keeping time and step together, generally manage to outstrip the stumbling march of the detective.

“Do not praise the day till it is over,” says the proverb; and, following the spirit of the adage, the maxim of the employé is, Do not condemn the Austrian Government till you are rid of it: that is, till you are dead. Nay, even then the paternal government steps in, to take care, not of the widows and orphans, but of more precious things; namely, the dead employé’s goods and chattels. Widows and orphans may shift for themselves; goods and chattels must be taken care of. So government sends an officer to take a list of all the employé’s effects remaining, and specially to search for money. In the case of any being found—a case as rare as the sight of a white elephant in Europe—the widow and orphans must give government a part: for government is co-heir whenever there is an official inheritance to be had. Then this same wise and liberal government refuses to grant a pension to the widow or orphan, if a private income of twenty pounds per annum is found among the reliquiæ. If nothing is found, and if the employé has been more than ten years an official, and more than three years in matrimonial bondage, government grants a pension of ten or twenty pounds yearly. If he has served for a less term, or been married for only two years and three quarters, the pension is forfeited.

But to look on the bright side. If the employé has died insolvent, the sorrowing matron, who was bowed down to earth with grief and tears, rises consoled. She is a female pensioner. Her husband is gone, her home, her love, her independence,—all are gone; but she herself must stay. Government has bought her. She has become its property, and cannot now leave the country, unless she likes to leave her pension behind her. Austria turns her paper money into chains, by which she holds her poor pensioner, as a boy holds a bird or a cockchafer by a string. See this ward of government, clad in a rusty black dress of doubtful condition; on her head a black bonnet that has seen its best days, from which hangs a long black veil; on her arm hangs a long black reticule; on her pale lips a long tale of privation and misery. This is her picture at she goes every three months to draw her pitiful allowance—proving by the attestation of the parish rector that she is alive, that she is herself, and none other. Just the same, too, is she when she goes her new year’s rounds to her late husband’s Chiefs and colleagues, and to those members of the Imperial family most notorious for their benevolence. On these annual occasions she carries needlework and trifles to be raffled for, and thinks herself happy if she can buy an extra log for her stove, or a pound of meat for her broth, from the proceeds. Thus she drags on her weary life, barely escaping, as _pauvre honteuse_, the misery, shame, and degradation of downright beggary.

Such is the career of an Austrian employé; and this sketch is equally characteristic of every employé in the Austrian service, whether civil or military, or under whatever denomination he serves. In each and every case the salary of the officials are so utterly inadequate to their wants, that they are urged by the necessities of their position to devote all their talents and energies to make money by any means in their power. Their official rank and influence are available to extort a bribe and to screen the guilty parties. Where all are corrupt who is to denounce the offender?

This too faithful picture of an Austrian official will serve as a clue to unravel the mystery of those enormous defalcations which have recently come to light in the Austrian administration. Startling as they are to English readers, those who are acquainted with the secret practices of Austrian bureaucracy can only wonder that the late astounding frauds were discovered at all—so intricate and wide-spread is the network of chicanery and intrigue which enmeshes the Austrian system of administration.

Sir Self and Womankind.

Sir Self-Sufficient on his mule
Went ambling stiffly o’er the ground.
Quoth he: “This womankind doth rule
Where’er a fool or slave is found;
For she is full of craft and wiles,
And dresses all her looks for show,
But not her cunning nor her smiles
Shall win a heart from me, I trow.”

His way was through the stubble-field,
Where mellow fragrance filled the air;
And from the earth’s o’erflowing yield
The scattered fruits lay ripe and fair.
There women laboured in the sun,
Uncouthly clad, and sun-embrowned,
The old, the weak, the little one,
Upon the stony furrowed ground.

Sir Self laughed softly as he went.
Quoth he: “Here nature hath her way,
And shows no other ornament
Than in the air and sunshine play.
Ah! what a sorry, sordid sight
Doth Beauty thus unfashioned make!—
You, city dames, to such a plight
Would bring the binding weed and rake.”

There came one tripping to his knee,
“Wild flowers: oh! buy wild flowers,” she said,
And looked into his face to see
What answer there was to be read.
Sir Self passed on the other side,
While from his hand a pittance came.
Quoth he: “This nature hath no pride,
Nor knoweth how to blush for shame.”

Then onward through the village lane
Of hovels dark, and cribbed, and low,
Where narrow door and knotted pane
Scant light and less of air bestow:
Scared men and women rested there,
And children swarmed and gambolled by.
Quoth he: “Among so many, where
May modesty find room to lie?”

Sir Self went saddened on his road
Toward the dimly spangled town;
A girl upon a heavy load
Beside the path had sat her down:
“Will no one help you on your way?”
“I want no help,” the girl replied,
“I bear this burden day by day.”
Quoth he: “This is true labour’s pride.”

Then other women sorely bent,
Beneath their burdens passed along;
Yet spoke they gaily as they went,
Or softly hummed a quiet song:
And some bore children, some their load
A failing sister’s pack increased.
Then thought Sir Self: “With whip and goad,
These women were like laden beast!”

The shambling, reeking suburb through,
There rose a mansion broad and high,
Whence light from countless windows flew,
And flamed a meteor in the sky;
And from its gates, at clang of bell,
Came women forth, with saucy word
And cry. Quoth he: “Can this be well
When women like the cattle herd?”

He marked the motley troop; some gay
With wilful burst of mirth long pent;
Some downcast went their silent way;
Some, stolid-featured, mocked content.
But there was labour’s stain on all,
The travailed look, the ashy skin.
Quoth he: “What may this folk befall,
With crime without and want within?”

The gleaming town shone more and more,
As fell the night’s mist-laden gloom,
Till heaven’s face seemed dotted o’er
With feeble sparks, where wheel and loom
Went on their ceaseless whirl and swing,
As busy hand and eager eye,
Mid shuttle’s flight and iron’s ring,
Their still-renewing taskwork ply.

Dismounting from his bridled mule,
Afoot Sir Self pursued his way,
Where cries of mingled mirth and dule
Marked sottish rout or maddened fray;
Where on each lintel sat and croned
Old beldams, and the sluttish brood
Of girl-folk gossiped, laughed, and droned,
As drone the idle, laugh the lewd.

The city hath no solemn night
Like that which shades the dewy lawn,
But with a lurid, ghastly light,
Beshames the gloom, and mocks the dawn.
Still as the restless watches wore
Sir Self the stony footway paced,
Till morning waved the city o’er
Her filmy wings gold-interlaced.

But still through all the midnight blind,
And through the blinking of the morn,
On every side rose womankind
To move his pity—raise his scorn:
One mocked her shame, one pressed along
On some untimely taskwork bound;
One charmed the night with siren song;
One woke the day with plaintive sound.

Here fragile forms Sir Self passed by
At toils which lordly man disdains;
There rose some patient, piteous cry,
Where petty trade sought petty gains.
And in the morning’s mist there sate
With love that would not wince nor fail,
Poor womankind beside the gate
Of hospital and grated jail.

Sir Self forsook his stubborn mule,
And, sadly, homeward paced the ground;
Quoth he: “If womankind doth rule,
May be nor slave nor fool is bound.
’Tis not her beauty nor her wiles,
Nor all her looks dressed up for show,
But something more than craft or smiles
Has won a heart from me, I trow.”

WILLIAM DUTHIE.