The great success of the Harlot’s Progress had naturally incited William Hogarth with a strong and almost fierce desire to accomplish some other work of the same satirical force, of the same breadth of morality with that excellent performance. He determined that there should be on record a sequel, or at least a pendant to the drama whose lamentable action his pencil had just so poignantly narrated. He felt that it was in him, that it was his vocation, his duty to follow step by step the career of human vice, to point, with unerring finger whither tend the crooked roads, to demonstrate as clearly as ever did mathematician—much more explicitly than ever did logician—that as surely as the wheels of the cart follow the hoofs of the horse, so surely will punishment follow sin. He was as yet but at the commencement of his trilogy: Clytemnestra might begin; Orestes might succeed; but the Eumenides had to come at last. He saw before him a whole ocean, seething, weltering, bubbling of pravities and impostures, and deadly lies, and evil passions. He heard the thorns crackling under the pot. He saw vice, not only stalking about with hungered looks, ragged garb and brandished bludgeon; now robbing Dr. Mead’s chariot in Holborn; now stopping the Bristol mail; now cutting Jonathan Wild’s throat on the leads before the Sessions House, and being pressed to death for it; now with sooty face and wild disguise of skins, stealing deer in the king’s forests, and rioting in caves on surreptitious venison and smuggled Nantz;[18] now being ducked for pocket-picking in the horse-pond behind the King’s Mews, Charing Cross; now cutting throats in night-cellars; now going filibustering, and suffering death for piracy, to be afterwards gibbeted at Halfway Creek and the Triptoptrees; but Vice in embroidery and Mechlin lace, with a silver-hilted sword, and a snuff-box enamelled by Rouquet, at its side; vice, painted and patched, whispering over fans, painted with Hogarth’s own “Progress” at Heidegger’s masquerade; vice punting at the “Young Man’s,” stock-jobbing in the Alley, brawling with porters and common bullies at the Rose, chaffering with horse-jockeys at Newmarket, clustered round the Cock-pit, applauding Broughton the ex-yeoman of the guard, pugilist, and lending its fine Holland shirt to Mr. Figg the prize-fighter after a bout at back or broadsword,[19] dancing attendance on the impudent and ugly German women, for whom the kings of England forsook their lawful wives, duelling in Hyde Park, and taking bribes in the very lobby of the Parliament House. William Hogarth knew that he was enjoined to mark this duplex vice, to burn it in the hand, to force it into the pillory, to pile the hundredweights of his indignation upon it in his own pressyard, to scathe and strangle it, and hang it as high as Haman, to be the loathing and the scorn of better-minded men. Between the summer lodgings at South Lambeth and other lodgings he took at Isleworth, between the portraits and conversations, and the book-plates and the benefit-tickets; odds and ends of artists’ work, done in the way of business for the lords and gentlemen who were good enough to employ him; shop-bills, “illustrating the commerce of Florence;” “breaking-up” tickets for Tiverton School; scenes from Paradise Lost; busts of Hesiod; tickets for Figg the prize-fighter, for Milward, Jemmy Spiller, Joe Miller, and other comedians; coats of arms for his friend George Lambert; caricatures of Orator Henley; benefit cards even for Harry Fielding, illustrating scenes from Pasquin and the Mock Doctor; between high jinks and suburban jaunts, and pleasant evening strolls in Vauxhall Gardens; between 1733 and 1735, he was planning, and maturing, and brooding over the Rake’s Progress. The experiment was a dangerous one. The public are averse from tolerating Paradise Regained after Paradise Lost, the Drunkard’s Children after the Bottle, the Marriage of Figaro after the Barber of Seville. And who has not yawned and rubbed his eyes over the second Faust? But William Hogarth saw his way clearly before him, and was determined to pursue it. The pictures, eight in number, were painted by the end of 1733. In 1734, the proposals of subscription to the plates were issued. The subscription ticket was the well-known etching of the Laughing Audience. The sums were one guinea and a half for nine plates; the ninth promised being The Humours of a Fair—no other than the far-famed Southwark.
Thus I sweep the stage, and sound the whistle for the curtain to draw up on the drama of The Rake’s Progress, closing this paper with the form of receipt given by Hogarth to his subscribers:
“Recd. Decr. 18th, of the Rt. Honble. Lord Biron, half a guinea, being the first payment for nine plates, eight of which represent a Rake’s Progress, and the ninth a Fair, which I promise to deliver at Michaelmas next, on receiving one guinea more. Note.—The Fair will be delivered at Christmas next, at sight of this receipt. The prints of the Rake’s Progress will be two guineas, after the subscription is over.”
“WILLIAM HOGARTH.”
FOOTNOTES
[9] I was at Bristol in the summer of 1858; but the fine old church was then in process of restoration, and the Hogarths, I heard, had been temporarily removed. Have those curious altar-pieces been since restored?
[10] There is a mania just now for giving excessive prices for steel and copper engravings. There is a millennium for artists’ proofs. The auctioneers only know what a genuine Marc Antonio Raimondi is worth; but I am told that a “Sunday” proof of the March to Finchley—the original plate was dated on a Sunday, but the dies non was subsequently erased by Hogarth—will fetch thirty guineas in the market. The price seems as exorbitant as those sometimes given for a “breeches” or a “vinegar” Bible.
[11] Dr. Misaubin lived at 96, St. Martin’s lane. Of his staircase, painted by Clermont, the Frenchman, I have already spoken. Those were the days when “Mrs. Powell, the colourman’s mother, used to make a pipe of wine every year from the vines that grew in the garden in St Martin’s Lane.” Traces of its old rurality may also be found in the name of one of its noisomest offshoots—the “Hop Gardens.” Dr. Misaubin “flourished” in 1732. He was not a Frenchman born, but of French Huguenot extraction. He was an arrant and impudent quack, but a good-natured man, and dispensed the huge fortune he amassed liberally enough. More anent him when he grows older and more wrinkled, in the Marriage à la Mode. All this man’s gold, however, turned in the end to dry leaves. His grandson, Angiband, dissipated the pill and nostrum fortune, and died of Geneva-on-the-brain in St. Martin’s Workhouse. Engraver Smith (J. T.) says that Misaunbin’s father was a Protestant clergyman, and mentions a “family picture” representing the Doctor in all his glory, with his son on his knees, and his reverend papa at a table behind, and arrayed in full canonicals.
[12] Everybody seems to have had Latin verses, eulogistic or abusive, addressed to him in those days. Thus the “Sapphics” of Mr. Loveling, a young gentleman of the university, to the rigorous Middlesex Justice:—
“Pellicum, Gonsone, animosus hostis,