By the kindness of Mr. C. Fairfax Murray we are enabled to illustrate an excellent example of one of these very rare fan leaves, inscribed in ink (probably by the collector Baker), ‘Given to me by Mrs. Hogarth, 1781.’ In the centre is the quack doctor, printed in a greenish yellow, the two side scenes of ‘Bridewell’ and the ‘Funeral’ in a rich red, the fan being engraved in pure line. The scenes are inscribed respectively—‘In a high Salivation’; ‘In Bridewell beating of Hemp’; and the ‘Funeral’; with suitable explanatory verses.
| The Harlot’s Progress, after Hogarth. | Mr C. Fairfax Murray. |
Other fans were issued, these probably by another publisher, giving the various scenes grouped together, the figures slightly rearranged to suit the space, indifferently etched in outline, and printed in red on skin. Five leaves appear in the Schreiber collection; the first gives the whole composition; the second, the same, with several scenes omitted; the third, with further omissions; the fourth, with the central subject only, of the arrival of ‘Mary Hackabout in London,’ partially coloured by hand; the fifth, a spoiled, indistinct print, covered with a Chinese landscape printed in black, the evident intention being to utilise the skin mount.
The print of the Midnight Modern Conversation, 1733, copied by salt-glazed potters of the period, and appearing on snuff-boxes and punch-bowls, for the latter of which it was eminently suitable, was used also for a fan mount.
In this print, to quote Mr. Austin Dobson, a party of eleven, whose degrees of intoxication are admirably differentiated, have finished some two dozen bottles of claret; and at four in the morning are commencing a capacious bowl of punch, presided over by a rosy-gilled parson—the
‘Fortem validumque combibonem
Laetantem super amphora repleta’
of the Westminster Latinist, Vincent Bourne; but in real life identified both with the famous ‘Orator’ Henley, and the Rev. Cornelius Ford, a dissolute cousin of Dr. Johnson.