THE SOANE HOGARTHS
No sooner was Sir John Soane's Museum in Lincoln's Inn Fields open again, after its long closure, than I hastened there to renew acquaintance with that remarkable, almost incredible, pictorial document, Hogarth's "Election" series. Modern elections are frequent enough to add piquancy to the comparison, but apart from that it is instructive to see in what spirit our not very remote ancestors approached the ordeal of being returned to Parliament. The world may not have advanced very perceptibly in many directions, but, if Hogarth is trust-worthy, only a master of paradox could successfully maintain that no progress is to be noted in the manufacture of legislators.
Not, however, that everything here depicted is obsolete. Far from it. The groundwork is the same, and probably will always be so, but there is now less coarseness. There is also more order, more method. And one has, furthermore, to remember that Hogarth was a synthetic satirist, and a rather wicked wit to boot. He assembled his puppets rather than found them all together, and it amused him to heighten effects and to score off his pet butts when he could. All these allowances, however, being made, I fancy that the "Election" series has a good deal of old England in it.
The series begins with the entertainment given by the two candidates of the Court Party to their supporters, and even among Hogarth's works this scene is remarkable for the number of things that are occurring at once. No one excelled our English master in this crowding of incident, not even Breughel or Teniers. While one of the candidates is, doubtless for strictly political reasons, permitting himself to be caressed by an old woman, a small girl abstracts his gold ring, and a man singes his wig with a clay pipe. In the street outside the room is a procession of the rival party, throwing through the window half-bricks, one of which is seen to have just smashed a gentleman's head, while another gentleman, injured at a slightly more remote period of the campaign, is being anointed with spirits without, while he consumes spirits within. At the end of the table the mayor of the independent borough, having been reduced by too many oysters and too much liquor to a state of collapse, is being bled by a surgeon. An orchestra, including a left-handed fiddleress and the bagpipes, plays throughout; and a small boy, in spite of the mayor's condition, continues to mix punch in a mash tub. All this at once!
That was overnight. The next day the canvassing begins, and it is superfluous to state that bribery and corruption are rife. Here, again, is a wealth of synchronous occurrence. On the left are seen two gay ladies persuading one of the candidates to buy trinkets for them from a pedlar. That could hardly be done to-day, at any rate so openly; but another of the incidents is of all time: a conversation between two men, a barber and a cobbler, in which the barber explains how a certain naval engagement was won, symbolising the ships by pieces of a broken clay pipe, very much as tap-room tacticians for many years to come will be reconstructing the battle of Jutland or the retreat from Mons.
Then the polling. Here is more simultaneous confusion. In a panic the agent has collected every possible voter, including the maimed, the blind, and even the idiotic, and they are attesting before the officer, while protests against their validity as voters are being urged by the opposite party's lawyer. The candidates themselves are on the hustings, and in the distance Britannia's coach has broken down!
Finally, we see the Chairing of the Members—one of whom is depicted in the foreground, very insecure on his crazy throne, while the shadow of the other's approach is visible on a wall. That chairing has gone out should be a source of extraordinary relief at Westminster. Indeed, were it still the custom, many a modern man—and certainly all the fat ones—would decide to seek fame elsewhere than in Parliament. Hogarth's candidate was peculiarly unfortunate in his bearers, one of whom has just been hit on the head by a flail, and another has collided with an old woman who was thrown down by a runaway litter of pigs. Meanwhile, the man with the flail fights a sailor with a cudgel, the cause of the combat being apparently the presence of a performing bear and a monkey; and, overcome by the fracas, a lady faints. Elsewhere, in the inn on the left, the defeated party are consoling themselves with a banquet, a practice that has by no means died out.
Only those who have been through the agonies and excitements of an election can say how far Hogarth has ceased to be a faithful delineator of his fellow-countrymen; but one thing is certain, and that is that time has done nothing to impair the liveliness of his record.