“It’s the same thing,” rejoined Sowerby. “We all know what all that flummery means. Men in office, Mark, never do make a distinct promise,—not even to themselves of the leg of mutton which is roasting before their kitchen fires. It is so necessary in these days to be safe; is it not, Harold?”
“Most expedient,” said Harold Smith, shaking his head wisely. “Well, Robarts, who is it now?” This he said to his private secretary, who came to notice the arrival of some bigwig. “Well, yes. I will say good morning, with your leave, for I am a little hurried. And remember, Mr. Robarts, I will do what I can for you; but you must distinctly understand that there is no promise.”
“Oh, no promise at all,” said Sowerby—“of course not.” And then, as he sauntered up Whitehall towards Charing Cross, with Robarts on his arm, he again pressed upon him the sale of that invaluable hunter, who was eating his head off his shoulders in the stable at Chaldicotes.
William Hogarth:
PAINTER, ENGRAVER, AND PHILOSOPHER.
Essays on the Man, the Work, and the Time.
V.—Between London and Sheerness.
As one, Reader, who concludes haply, through hearsay, that his uncle William has left him a ten pound legacy; but, going afterwards to Doctors’ Commons, paying his shilling, and reading that said uncle’s will,—receiving letters from stately lawyers, full of congratulation, at seventy pence a piece,—being bowed and kotoued to by people who were wont to cut him, and overwhelmed with offers of unlimited credit by tradesfolk who yesterday would not trust to the extent of a pair of woollen hose—discovers that he has inherited a fine fortune; so may an author scarcely help feeling who has commenced a modest little series of papers in the hope that they would fill a gap and serve a turn, and who finds himself, now, roaming through a vast country, inexhaustible in fertility, undermined with treasure, and overstocked with game: of all which he is expected to give a faithful and accurate report. Yes, the world Hogarthian is all before me, where to choose. Facilities for “opening up” the teeming territory present themselves on every side. Authorities accumulate; microscopes and retrospective spy-glasses are obligingly lent. The Chamberlain of London politely throws open his archives. I am permitted to inspect a Hogarth-engraved silver-plate, forming part of the paraphernalia of the famous past-Overseer’s box of St. Margaret’s, Westminster. Father Prout sends me from Paris an old Hogarth etching he has picked up on the Quai Voltaire, and, withal, more humour and learning in a sheet of letter-paper than ever I shall have in my head in a lifetime. A large-minded correspondent in Cheshire insists on tearing a portrait and biography of W. H. from an old book in his possession, and sending the fragments to me. From the blue shadows of the Westmoreland Fells comes, by book-post, a copy of “Aid Hoggart’s” poems. A friend promises to make interest with the authorities of the Painters’ Company for any Hogarthian memorabilia their records may contain. Another friend advises that I should straightway memorialise the Benchers of the Honourable Society of Lincolns’ Inn, for information relative to W. H’s entertainment by the “Sages de la Ley,” A.D. 1750. I am bidden to remember that I should visit the Foundling Hospital, to see the March to Finchley; that there are original Hogarths in Sir John Soane’s Museum, and in the church of St. Mary Redclyffe, Bristol.[9] And, upon my word, I have a collection of correspondence about Hogarth that reads like an excerpt from the Clergy List. Their reverences could not be more prolific of pen and ink were I a heterodox Bampton Lecturer. How many times I have been clerically reminded of a blunder I committed (in No. I.) in assigning a wrong county as the locality of St. Bee’s College. How many times I have been enlightened as to the derivation of the hangman’s appellation of Jack Ketch. From rectories, parsonages, endowed grammar schools, such corrections, such explanations, have flowed in amain. Not to satiety, not to nausea, on the part of their recipient. To him it is very good and pleasant to think that some familiar words on an old English theme can interest cultivated and thoughtful men. It is doubly pleasant to be convinced that he was not in error when, in the first section of these essays, he alluded to the favour with which William Hogarth had ever been held by the clergy of the Church of England.
Yes, I have come into a fine fortune, and the balance at the banker’s is prodigious. But how if the cheque book be lost? if the pen sputter, if the ink turn pale and washy, or thick and muddy? Alnaschar! it is possible to kick over that basket full of vitreous ware. Rash youth of Siamese extraction, it may have pleased your imperial master to present you with a white elephant. Woe! for the tons of rice and sugar that the huge creature consumes, the sweet and fresh young greenstuff for which he unceasingly craves;—and you but a poor day labourer? You must have elephants, must you? Better to have gone about with a white mouse and a hurdy-gurdy: the charitable might have flung you coppers. Shallow, inept, and pretentious, to what a task have you not committed yourself! Thus to me have many sincere friends—mostly anonymous—hinted. These are the wholesome raps on the knuckles a man gets who attempts without being able to accomplish; who inherits, and lacks the capacity to administer. Many a fine fortune is accompanied by as fine a lawsuit—remember the legatee cobbler in Pickwick—and dire is the case of the imprudent wight who finds himself some fine morning in contempt, with Aristarchus for a Lord Chancellor! But I have begun a journey. The descent of Avernus is as facile as sliding down a Montagne Russe;—sed revocare gradum:—no, one mustn’t revoke, nor in the game of life, nor in the game of whist. We will go on, if you please; and I am your very humble servant to command.
The stir made by the publication of the set of engravings from the six pictures of the Harlot’s Progress was tremendous. Twelve hundred copies of the first impression were sold. Miniature copies of some of the scenes were engraved on fan-mounts. Even, as occurred with George Cruikshank’s Bottle, the story was dramatised, and an interlude called The Jew Decoyed; or, a Harlot’s Progress, had a most successful “run.” It is worthy of observation that the perverse and depraved taste of the town took it as rather a humorous thing that the courtezan, splendidly kept by a Hebrew money-lender, should decoy and betray her keeper. The Jew Decoyed. Ho! ho! it was a thing to laugh at. Who sympathizes with M. Géronte in the farce—the poor, feeble, old dotard—when Arlechino runs off with his daughter, and Pierrot the gracioso half cuts his nose off while he is shaving him, picking his pocket, and treading on his tenderest corns, meanwhile? The tradesmen and lodging-house keepers who are swindled and robbed by clown and pantaloon in the pantomime; the image boys, fishmongers, and greengrocers whose stock in trade is flung about the stage; the peaceable watchmaker, who tumbles over on the slide artfully prepared in front of his own door with fresh butter, by the miscreant clown; the grenadier bonneted with his own Busby; the young lady bereft of her bustle; the mother of the baby that is sate upon, swung round by the legs, and crammed into a letter-box: is any pity evoked for those innocent and ill-used persons? I am afraid there is none. I have seen a policeman in the pit roaring with laughter at the pummelling and jostling his simulated brother receives on the stage. It is remarkable to watch the keen delight with which exhibitions of petty cruelty and petty dishonesty, of a gay, lively description, are often regarded. I can understand the pickpocket detected by Charles the Second’s keen eye in annexing a snuff-box at court, laying his finger by the side of his nose, and taking the monarch into his confidence. I can understand cynic Charles keeping the rogue’s secret for the humour of the thing. And, verily, when I see children torturing animals, and senseless louts grinning and jeering, and yelling “Who shot the dog!” after a gentleman in the street, because he happens to wear the honourable uniform of a volunteer, and persons who are utter strangers to one belated runaway joining in the enlivening shout and chase of “Stop thief!” I can begin to understand the wicked wisdom of the American Diogenes who coolly indited this maxim: “If you see a drowning man, throw a rail at him.”
Hogarth’s engravings of the adventures of Kate Hackabout were extensively and grossly pirated. In those days, as in these, there were pictorial Curlls in the land. The author of the foregoing has had the honour to see some early and trifling pictorial performances of his own pirated upon pocket-handkerchiefs and shirt-fronts; but, dear me, what a legal pother would have arisen at Manchester if any one had pirated those beautiful patent cylinders on which the piracies must have been so neatly engraved! Some vile imitations of Hackabout were even cut on wood; and I should dearly like to know if any impressions of those blocks are extant. Mr. Ottley hits none in his History of Chalcography; but a series of woodcuts so long after Albert Durer and Maso Fineguerra, so long before Bewick the revivalist’s time, would be deeply interesting.[10] Hogarth smarted under this injury, as well he might. The artist had always a strong admixture of the British tradesman in his composition, and, as was his wont when injured, he bellowed lustily. He moved the Lords of the Treasury. He moved the Houses of Lords and Commons; and, at last (1735), he obtained an Act of Parliament, specially protecting his copyright in his prints. As usual, too, he celebrated the victory with a loud and jubilant cock-crow, and complimented Parliament on their recognition of the principles of truth and right, in an allegorical etching, with a flowery inscription. It is good to learn that the Legislature were tender to this artist even after his death, and that his widow, Jane Hogarth, obtained, by another special act, a renewal of his copyrights for her sole use and benefit. In this age of photography and electro-printing, do we not need a law of artistic copyright somewhat more definite and more stringent than the loose statutes that lawyers quibble about and interpret different ways?