CHAPTER IV
HOGARTH
Before he took up residence at the Twickenham villa, Pope lived for some time with his father in one of the houses of Mawson’s Buildings (now Mawson Row), Chiswick. So far it has been impossible to decide which of these five red-brick houses is the one that was theirs, for the only evidence of their tenancy consists of certain letters preserved at the British Museum, which are addressed to “Alexr. Pope, Esquire, Mawson’s Buildings, in Chiswick,” and on the backs of these are written portions of the original drafts of Pope’s translation of the Iliad. James Ralph, the unfortunate poetaster whom Pope satirised in his Dunciad, was also a native of Chiswick, and lies buried in the parish churchyard. One other link Pope has with Chiswick—he wrote a rather poor epigram on Thomas Wood, who resided there, and who seems to have been connected with the Church, for according to the poet—
“Tom Wood of Chiswick, deep divine,
To painter Kent gave all his coin;
’Tis the first coin, I’m bold to say,
That ever churchman gave away.”
This Kent, I take it, was the man of the same name who likewise lived at Chiswick in Pope’s day, and was more notable as a landscape gardener than as a painter.
POPE. MAWSON’S ROW CHISWICK.
But, to say nothing of William Morris’s more recent association with the district, the most interesting house in Chiswick is Hogarth’s. It is a red-brick villa of the Queen Anne style, with a quaint, overhanging bay window, and stands in a large, walled garden, not far from the parish church. For many years this was Hogarth’s summer residence—his “villakin,” as he called it. His workshop, or studio, that used to be at the foot of the garden, has been demolished; otherwise the house remains very much as it was when he occupied it.
Hogarth was essentially a town man; he was almost, if not quite, as good a Londoner as Lamb. He was born in Bartholomew Close, West Smithfield, that storied place where Milton had lived before, and Washington Irving went to live after, him; and he spent nearly all his life in the neighbourhood of Leicester Square. He was rarely absent from London at all, and never for long; even when he was supposed to be passing his summers at his Chiswick villa, he made frequent excursions into town, and would put up for a few days at his house in Leicester Square—or Leicester Fields, as it then was.