A sterner subject, the prologue to a dismal drama of human life, was now to engross the pencil of this painter, who was now making his presence known and felt among his contemporaries. I speak of the strange solemn picture of the Committee of the House of Commons taking evidence of the enormities wreaked on the wretched prisoners in the Fleet by Huggins and Bambridge. Let us drag these mouldering scoundrels from their dishonoured graves, and hang them up here on Cornhill, for all the world to gaze at, even as the government of the Restoration (but with less reason) hung the carcases of Cromwell and Bradshaw on Tyburn gibbet. Huggins—save the mark!—was of gentle birth, and wrote himself “Armiger.” He had bought the patent of the wardenship of the Fleet from a great court lord, and when the trade of torturing began, through usance, to tend towards satiety, he sold his right to one Bambridge, a twin demon. The atrocities committed by the pair may very rapidly be glanced at. Huggins’s chief delight was to starve his prisoners, unless they were rich enough to bribe him. Bambridge’s genius lay more towards confining his victims charged with fetters in underground dungeons, with the occasional recreation of attempting to pistol and stab them. The moneyed debtors both rascals smiled upon. Smugglers were let out through a yard in which dogs were kept; ran their cargoes; defrauded the revenue, and came back to “college.” One, who owed 10,000l. to the crown, was permitted to make his escape altogether. A certain T. Dumay went several times to France, being all the time in the “custody,” as the sham was facetiously termed, of the Warden of the Fleet. What was such a fraud in an age when the highest legal authorities (who would not take the fetters off Christopher Layer) gravely doubted whether the rules of the King’s Bench might not extend to Bombay, in the East Indies?[6] These surreptitiously enlarged prisoners were called “pigeons.” They had bill transactions with the tipstaves; they drew on Huggins, and then pleaded their insolvency. On the other hand, the poor debtors were very differently treated. A broken-down baronet, Sir William Rich, on refusing to pay the “baronet’s fee,” or “garnish,” of five pounds, was heavily fettered, kept for months in a species of subterranean dog-kennel; the vivacious Bambridge sometimes enlivening his captivity by threatening to run a red-hot poker through his body. This cheerful philanthropist, who was wont to range about the prison with a select gang of turnkeys, armed with halberts and firelocks, ordered one of his myrmidons to fire on “Captain Mackpheadris”—(what a name for a captain in difficulties! Lieutenant Lismahago is nothing to it). As, however, even these callous bravoes hesitated to obey so savage a behest, and as there was absolutely nothing to be squeezed in the way of garnish out of this lackpenny Captain Mackpheadris, Bambridge locked the poor wretch out of his room, and turned him out to starve in an open yard called the “Bare.” Here, Mack, who was seemingly an old campaigner, built himself out of broken tiles and other rubbish, a little hovel in an angle of the wall, just as the evicted Irish peasantry in famine and fever times were wont to build little kraals of turf-sods and wattles over dying men in ditches; but Bambridge soon heard of the bivouac, and ordered it to be pulled down. J. Mendez Sola, a Portuguese, was by the same kind guardian fettered with a hundredweight of iron, and incarcerated in a deadhouse, with dead people in it, moreover! Others languished in dens called “Julius Cæsar’s chapel,” the upper and lower “Ease,” and the “Lyon’s Den,” where they were stapled to the floor. Attached to the prison itself was an auxiliary inferno in the shape of a spunging-house kept by Corbett, a creature of Bambridge. The orthodox process seemed to be, first to fleece you in the spunging-house, and then to flay you alive in the gaol. Of course, Mr. Bambridge went snacks with Mr. Corbett. Very few scruples were felt in getting fish for this net. In one flagrant instance, a total stranger was seized as he was giving charity at the grate for poor prisoners, dragged into Corbett’s, and only released on paying “garnish,” and undertaking not to institute any proceedings against his kidnappers. When a prisoner had money to pay the debt for which he had been arrested, he often lay months longer in hold for his “fees.” The caption fee was 5l. 16s. 4d.; the “Philazer”—who ever that functionary may have been, but his was a patent place in the Exchequer—the judge’s clerk, the tipstaves, the warden, all claimed their fees. Fees had to be paid for the favour of lighter irons, and every fresh bird in the spunging-house cage paid his “footing,” in the shape of a six shilling bowl of punch. When, as from time to time, and to the credit of human nature, occurred, a person visited the gaol, “on behalf of an unknown lady,” to discharge all claims against persons who lay in prison for their fees only, Bambridge often sequestered his prisoners till the messenger of mercy had departed. But he was always open to pecuniary conviction, and from the wife of one prisoner he took, as a bribe, forty guineas and a “toy,” being the model of a “Chinese Jonque in amber set with silver,” for which the poor woman had been offered eighty broadpieces. In these our days, Bambridge would have discounted bills, and given one-fourth cash, one-fourth wine, one-fourth camels’ bridles, and one-fourth ivory frigates. When an Insolvent Act was passed, Bambridge demanded three guineas a piece from those desirous of availing themselves of the relief extended by the law: else he would not allow them to be “listed,” or inserted in the schedule of Insolvents. And by a stroke of perfectly infernal cunning this gaoler-devil hit upon a plan of preventing his victims from taking proceedings against him by taking proceedings against them. After some outrage of more than usual enormity, he would slip round to the Old Bailey and prefer a bill of indictment against the prisoners he had maltreated, for riot, or an attempt to break prison. He had always plenty of understrappers ready to swear for him; and the poor, penniless, friendless gaol-bird was glad to compromise with his tormentor by uncomplaining silence.[7]
Already had these things been censured by highest legal authorities; at least the judges had occasionally shaken their wise heads and declared the abuses in the Fleet to be highly improper: “You may raise your walls higher,” quoth Lord King; “but there must be no prison within a prison.” An excellent dictum if only acted upon. At last, the prisoners began to die of ill-usage, of starvation and disease, or rather, it began to be known, that they were so dying, and died every year of our Lord. A great public outcry arose. Humane men bestirred themselves. The legislature was besieged with petitions. Parliamentary commissioners visited the gaol, and a committee of the House of Commons sat to hear those harrowing details of evidence of which I have given you a summary. Bambridge was removed from his post, but the vindicte publique was not appeased. First, Huggins, the retired esquire, and Barnes, his assistant, were tried at the Old Bailey for the murder of Edward Arne, a prisoner. Page, the hanging judge, presided, but from that stern fount there flowed waters of mercy for the monster of the Fleet. Owing chiefly to his summing up, a special verdict was returned, and Huggins and the minor villain were acquitted. Huggins’s son was a well-to-do gentleman of Headley Park, Hants, had a taste for the fine arts, translated Ariosto, and collected Hogarthian drawings! It was as though Sanson should have collected miniatures of Louis the Sixteenth, or Simon the cobbler statuettes of the poor little captive Capet of the Temple.
Next, the coarser scoundrels, Bambridge and Corbett, were tried for the murder of a Mr. Castell, who had been thrust into Corbett’s spunging-house while the small-pox was raging there, and died. Bambridge, too, was acquitted through some legal quibble; but the widow of the murdered man had another quibble, by which she hoped to obtain redress. She retained the famous casuist Lee, the sage who in a single action once pleaded seventy-seven pleas. She sued out an appeal of murder against the warden and his man. This involved the “wager of battle,” which you remember in the strange Yorkshire case some forty years ago, and which was at last put an end to by statute. The appellee could either fight the appellant à la dog of Montargis, or throw himself on his country, i.e. submit to be tried again. Bambridge and Corbett chose the latter course, were again tried, and again escaped. They were, however, very near being torn to pieces by the populace. Lord Campbell says, I venture to think unjustly, that Mrs. Castell was incited to the appeal by a “mobbish confederation.”[8] Good heaven! was anything but a confederation of the feelings of common humanity necessary to incite all honest men to bring these wretches to justice? I suppose that it was by a “mobbish confederation” that the villanous Austin, of Birmingham gaol, was tried, and that after all his atrocities of gagging, “jacketing,” and cramming salt down his prisoners’ throats, he, too, escaped with an almost nominal punishment. Lee, the casuist (he was afterwards Chief Justice), was so disgusted with the result of the trial, that he vowed he would never have aught to do with facts again, but henceforth would stick to law alone. I am not lawyer enough to know why the case against Bambridge and Corbett broke down; I only know that these men were guilty of murder most foul and most unnatural, and that one of our most ancient legal maxims is explicit as to their culpability.[9]
A committee of gentlemen in large wigs, sitting round a table in a gloomy apartment, and examining witnesses likewise in wigs, is not a very inspiring theme for a painter; but I have always considered Hogarth’s rendering of the proceedings to be one of the most masterly of Hogarth’s tableaux. The plate was a great favourite with Horace Walpole, who described with much discrimination the various emotions of pity, horror, and indignation on the countenances of the spectators; the mutely eloquent testimony of the shackles and manacles on the table; the pitiable appearance of the half-starved prisoner who is giving evidence; and, especially, the Judas-like appearance of Bambridge (who was present), his yellow cheeks and livid lips, his fingers clutching at the button-holes in his coat, and his face advanced, “as if eager to lie.” There was a large sale for the engraving taken from this picture, and Hogarth gained largely in reputation from its production.
He had need of reputation, and of money too. A very serious crisis in his life was approaching. He had found more favour in the eyes of Jane Thornhill. “On n’épouse pas les filles de grande maison avec des coquilles de noix,” writes a wise Frenchman, and William Hogarth’s fortune might decidedly at this time have been comfortably “put into a wine-glass and covered over with a gooseberry leaf,” as was suggested of the immortal Mr. Bob Sawyer’s profits from his druggist’s shop. Sir James Thornhill was a greater don in art than Sir Godfrey, or than Richardson, or Jervas. He hated Sir Godfrey, and strove to outshine him. If extent of area is to be taken as a test of ability, Thornhill certainly beat Kneller hollow. To a Lombard Street of allegory and fable in halls and on staircases the German could only show a china orange of portraiture. Thornhill was a gentleman. His father was poor enough; but he was clearly descended from Ralph de Thornhill (12 Henry III. 1228).[10] When he became prosperous, he bought back the paternal acres, and built a grand house at Thornhill, hard by Weymouth. He had been a favourite with Queen Anne. He had succeeded Sir Christopher Wren in the representation of Melcombe Regis, his native place. His gains were enormous. Though he received but two guineas a yard for St. Paul’s, and twenty-five shillings a yard for painting the staircase of the South Sea House (with bubbles, or with an allegory of Mercury putting the world in his pocket?), instead of 1,500l. which he demanded, he had a magnificent wage for painting the hall at Blenheim, and from the noted Styles, who is said to have spent 150,000l. in the embellishments of Moor Park, he received, after a lawsuit and an arbitration, 4,000l. To be sure Lafosse got nearly 3,000l. for the staircase and saloons of Montagu House (the old British Museum). Look at the etching of Sir James Thornhill, by Worlidge. He is painting in an elaborately-laced coat with brocaded sleeves; and his wig is as so many curds in a whey of horsehair, and no one but a Don could have such a double chin.
With the daughter of this grandee of easeldom, this favourite of monarchs, this Greenwich and Hampton Court Velasquez, William Hogarth, painter, engraver, and philosopher, but as yet penniless, had the inconceivable impudence not only to fall in love, but to run away. I rather think that Lady Thornhill connived at the surreptitious courtship, and was not inexorably angry when the stolen match took place; but as for the knight, he would very probably just as soon have thought of Mars, Bacchus, Apollo and Virorum coming down from an allegorical staircase, and dancing a saraband to the tune of “Green Sleeves” on the north side of Covent Garden Piazza, as of his young protégé and humble friend Willy Hogarth presuming to court or to marry his daughter. Oh! it is terrible to think of this rich man, this father of a disobedient Dinah, walking his studio all round, vowing vengeance against that rascally Villikins, and declaring that of his large fortune she shan’t reap the benefit of one single pin! Oh! cruel “parient,” outraged papa, Lear of genteel life! He frets, he fumes, he dashes his wig to the ground. He remembers him, perchance, of sundry small moneys he has lent to Hogarth, and vows he will have him laid by the heels in a spunging-house ere the day be out. Send for a capias, send for a mittimus! Send for the foot-guards, the tipstaves, and the train-bands, for Jane Thornhill has levanted with William Hogarth!
They were married at old Paddington Church on the 23rd of March, 1729. Thus runs the parish register: “William Hogarth, Esq. and Jane Thornhill, of St. Paul’s, Covent Garden.” Marriage and hanging go together they say, and William and Jane went by Tyburn to have their noose adjusted. In the Historical Chronicle for 1729, the bridegroom is described as “an eminent designer and engraver;” but in Hogarth’s own family Bible, a worn, squat, red-ink-interlined little volume, printed early in the reign of Charles the First, and now reverentially preserved by Mr. Graves, the eminent print-publisher of Pall Mall, there is a certain flyleaf, which I have seen, and which to me is of infinitely greater value than Historical Chronicle or Paddington Parish Register, for there, in the painter’s own handwriting, I read—“W. Hogarth married Sir James Thornhill’s daughter, March 23rd, 1729.”
Papa-in-law was in a fury, set his face and wig against the young couple, would not see them, would not give them any money, cast them out of the grand piazza mansion to starve, if they so chose, among the cabbage-stumps of the adjacent market. It behoved William to work hard. I don’t think he ever resided with his wife in Cranbourn Alley. He had given that messuage up to his sisters. What agonies the member for Melcombe Regis, the scion of Henry the Third’s Thornhills, must have endured at the thought of that abhorred “old frock-shop!” There is reason to believe that for some time previous to his marriage Hogarth had resided in Thornhill’s own house, and had so found opportunities for his courtship of the knight’s daughter. Of young Thornhill, Sir James’s son, he was the intimate friend and comrade. Where he spent his honeymoon is doubtful; but it was either in 1729 or 1730 that he began to take lodgings at South Lambeth, and to form the acquaintance of Mr. Jonathan Tyers, the lessee of Vauxhall Gardens.
In the tranquillity and sobriety of a happy married life, Hogarth began for the first time deeply to philosophize. He had eaten his cake. He had sown his wild-oats. He was to beat the town no more in mere indifference of carousal; he was to pluck the moralist’s flower from the strange wild nettles he had handled. In this age have been found critics stupid and malevolent enough to accuse every author who writes with a purpose, and who endeavours to draw attention to social vices, of imposture and of hypocrisy. He should be content, these critics hold, to describe the things he sees; he is a humbug if he moralize upon them. It is not unlikely that the vicious Fribbles of Hogarth’s time held similar opinions, and took Hogarth to be a reckless painter of riotous scenes, and who just infused sufficient morality into them “to make the thing go off.” It was otherwise with him I hope and believe. I am firmly convinced that the sin and shame of the evils he depicted were as deeply as they were vividly impressed on Hogarth’s mind—that he was as zealous as any subscriber to a Refuge, a Reformatory, or a Home can be now, to abate a dreadful social evil; that his hatred for the wickedness of dissolute men, his sympathy for women fallen and betrayed; his utter loathing for those wretched scandals to their sex, the women whose trade it is to decoy women, was intense and sincere. I do not believe in the sincerity of Fielding, who could grin and chuckle over the orgies of the Hundreds of Drury and the humours of the bagnio. I find even the gentle and pure-minded Addison simpering in the Freeholder about certain frequenters of Somerset House masquerades. But Hogarth’s satire in the Harlot’s Progress never makes you laugh. It makes you rather shudder and stagger, and turn pale. The six pictures which form this tragedy were painted immediately after his marriage. They were painted in the presence of a young, beautiful, and virtuous woman, who read her Bible, and loved her husband with unceasing tenderness; and casting to the winds the mock morality and lip-virtue that fear to speak of the things depicted in this Progress, I say that no right-minded man or woman will be the worse for studying its phases.
Some time before Hogarth painted the Harlot’s Progress, a hundred and thirty years ago, Edward Ward and Tom Brown had described in coarse, untranscribable, but yet graphic terms, the career of these unfortunates. The former, although a low-lived pottlepot at the best of times, makes some honest remarks concerning the barbarous treatment of the women in Bridewell.[11] “It’s not the way to reform ’em,” he says, plainly. But Hogarth first told the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. He first told the story of a courtesan without either ribald jesting or sickly sentimentality; and he much more than if he had been a royal duke mincingly handling trowel and mallet, laid the first stone of the Magdalen Hospital.