The Works of William Hogarth Part 10

Keen blows the blast, and eager is the air; With flakes of feather'd snow the ground is spread; To step, with mincing pace, to early prayer, Our clay-cold vestal leaves her downy bed.

And here the reeling sons of riot see, After a night of senseless revelry.

Poor, trembling, old, her suit the beggar plies; But frozen chast.i.ty the little boon denies.

This withered representative of Miss Bridget Alworthy, with a shivering foot-boy carrying her prayer-book, never fails in her attendance at morning service. She is a symbol of the season.--

-------------Chaste as the icicle That's curdled by the frost from purest snow, And hangs on Dian's temple

she looks with scowling eye, and all the conscious pride of severe and stubborn virginity, on the poor girls who are suffering the embraces of two drunken beaux that are just staggered out of Tom King's Coffee-house. One of them, from the basket on her arm, I conjecture to be an orange girl: she shows no displeasure at the boisterous salute of her Hibernian lover. That the hero in a laced hat is from the banks of the Shannon, is apparent in his countenance. The female whose face is partly concealed, and whose neck has a more easy turn than we always see in the works of this artist, is not formed of the most inflexible materials.

An old woman, seated upon a basket; the girl, warming her hands by a few withered sticks that are blazing on the ground, and a wretched mendicant,[3] wrapped in a tattered and parti-coloured blanket, entreating charity from the rosy-fingered vestal who is going to church, complete the group. Behind them, at the door of Tom King's Coffee-house, are a party engaged in a fray, likely to create business for both surgeon and magistrate: we discover swords and cudgels in the combatants' hands.

On the opposite side of the print are two little schoolboys. That they have shining morning faces we cannot positively a.s.sert, but each has a satchel at his back, and according with the description given by the poet of nature, is

Creeping, like snail, unwillingly to school.

The lantern appended to the woman who has a basket on her head, proves that these dispensers of the riches of Pomona rise before the sun, and do part of their business by an artificial light. Near her, that immediate descendant of Paracelsus, Dr. Rock, is expatiating to an admiring audience, on the never-failing virtues of his wonder-working medicines. One hand holds a bottle of his miraculous panacea, and the other supports a board, on which is the king's arms, to indicate that his practice is sanctioned by royal letters patent. Two porringers and a spoon, placed on the bottom of an inverted basket, intimate that the woman seated near them, is a vender of rice-milk, which was at that time brought into the market every morning.

A fatigued porter leans on a rail; and a blind beggar is going towards the church: but whether he will become one of the congregation, or take his stand at the door, in the hope that religion may have warmed the hearts of its votaries to "Pity the sorrows of a poor blind man," is uncertain.

Snow on the ground, and icicles hanging from the penthouse, exhibit a very chilling prospect; but, to dissipate the cold, there is happily a shop where spirituous liquors are sold _pro bono publico_, at a very little distance. A large pewter measure is placed upon a post before the door, and three of a smaller size hang over the window of the house.

The character of the princ.i.p.al figure is admirably delineated. She is marked with that prim and awkward formality which generally accompanies her order, and is an exact type of a hard winter; for every part of her dress, except the flying lappets and ap.r.o.n, ruffled by the wind, is as rigidly precise as if it were frozen. It has been said that this incomparable figure was designed as the representative of either a particular friend, or a relation. Individual satire may be very gratifying to the public, but is frequently fatal to the satirist.

Churchill, by the lines,

----------------Fam'd Vine-street, Where Heaven, the kindest wish of man to grant, Gave me an old house, and an older aunt,

lost a considerable legacy; and it is related that Hogarth, by the introduction of this withered votary of Diana into this print, induced her to alter a will which had been made considerably in his favour: she was at first well enough satisfied with her resemblance, but some designing people taught her to be angry.

Extreme cold is very well expressed in the slip-shod footboy, and the girl who is warming her hands. The group of which she is a part, is well formed, but not sufficiently balanced on the opposite side.

The church dial, a few minutes before seven; marks of little shoes and pattens in the snow, and various productions of the season in the market, are an additional proof of that minute accuracy with which this artist inspected and represented objects, which painters in general have neglected.

Govent Garden is the scene, but in the print every building is reversed.

This was a common error with Hogarth; not from his being ignorant of the use of the mirror, but from his considering it as a matter of little consequence.

FOOTNOTE:

[3] "What signifies," says some one to Dr. Johnson, "giving halfpence to common beggars? they only lay them out in gin or tobacco." "And why,"

replied the doctor, "should they be denied such sweeteners of their existence? It is surely very savage to shut out from them every possible avenue to those pleasures reckoned too coa.r.s.e for our own acceptance.

Life is a pill which none of us can swallow without gilding, yet for the poor we delight in stripping it still more bare, and are not ashamed to show even visible marks of displeasure, if even the bitter taste is taken from their mouths."

[Ill.u.s.tration: MORNING.]

NOON.

Hail, Gallia's daughters! easy, brisk, and free; Good humour'd, _debonnaire_, and _degagee_: Though still fantastic, frivolous, and vain, Let not their airs and graces give us pain: Or fair, or brown, at toilet, prayer, or play, Their motto speaks their manners--TOUJOURS GAI.

But for that powder'd compound of grimace, That capering he-she thing of fringe and lace; With sword and cane, with bag and solitaire, Vain of the full-dress'd dwarf, his hopeful heir, How does our spleen and indignation rise, When such a tinsell'd c.o.xcomb meets our eyes,

Among the figures who are coming out of church, an affected, flighty Frenchwoman, with her fluttering fop of a husband, and a boy, habited _a-la-mode de Paris_, claim our first attention. In dress, air, and manner, they have a national character. The whole congregation, whether male or female, old or young, carry the air of their country in countenance, dress, and deportment. Like the three princ.i.p.al figures, they are all marked with some affected peculiarity. Affectation, in a woman, is supportable upon no other ground than that general indulgence we pay to the omnipotence of beauty, which in a degree sanctifies whatever it adopts. In a boy, when we consider that the poor fellow is attempting to copy what he has been taught to believe praiseworthy, we laugh at it; the largest portion of ridicule falls upon his tutors; but in a man, it is contemptible!

The old fellow, in a black periwig, has a most vinegar-like aspect, and looks with great contempt at the frippery gentlewoman immediately before him. The woman, with a demure countenance, seems very piously considering how she can contrive to pick the embroidered beau's pocket.

Two old sybils joining their withered lips in a chaste salute, is nauseous enough, but, being a national custom, must be forgiven. The divine seems to have resided in this kingdom long enough to acquire a roast-beef countenance. A little boy, whose woollen nightcap is pressed over a most venerable flowing periwig, and the decrepit old man, leaning upon a crutch-stick, who is walking before him, "I once considered,"

says Mr. Ireland, "as two vile caricatures, out of nature, and unworthy the artist. Since I have seen the peasantry of Flanders, and the plebeian youth of France, I have in some degree changed my opinion, but still think them rather _outre_."

Under a sign of the Baptist's Head is written, Good Eating; and on each side of the inscription is a mutton chop. In opposition to this head without a body, unaccountably displayed as a sign at an eating-house, there is a body without a head, hanging out as the sign of a distiller's. This, by common consent, has been quaintly denominated the good woman. At a window above, one of the softer s.e.x proves her indisputable right to the t.i.tle by her temperate conduct to her husband, with whom having had a little disagreement, she throws their Sunday's dinner into the street.

A girl, bringing a pie from the bakehouse, is stopped in her career by the rude embraces of a blackamoor, who eagerly rubs his sable visage against her blooming cheek.

Good eating is carried on to the lower part of the picture. A boy, placing a baked pudding upon a post, with rather too violent an action, the dish breaks, the fragments fall to the ground, and while he is loudly lamenting his misfortune, and with tears antic.i.p.ating his punishment, the smoking remnants are eagerly s.n.a.t.c.hed up by a poor girl.

Not educated according to the system of Jean Jacques Rousseau, she feels no qualms of conscience about the original proprietor, and, dest.i.tute of that fastidious delicacy which destroys the relish of many a fine lady, eagerly swallows the hot and delicious morsels, with all the concomitants.

The scene is laid at the door of a French chapel in Hog-lane; a part of the town at that time almost wholly peopled by French refugees, or their descendants.

By the dial of St. Giles's church, in the distance, we see that it is only half past eleven. At this early hour, in those good times, there was as much good eating as there is now at six o'clock in the evening.

From twenty pewter measures, which are hung up before the houses of different distillers, it seems that good drinking was considered as equally worthy of their serious attention.

The dead cat, and choked kennels, mark the little attention shown to the streets by the scavengers of St. Giles's. At that time noxious effluvia was not peculiar to this parish. The neighbourhood of Fleet-ditch, and many other parts of the city, were equally polluted.

Even at this refined period, there would be some use in a more strict attention to the medical police of a city so crowded with inhabitants.

We ridicule the people of Paris and Edinburgh for neglecting so essential and salutary a branch of delicacy, while the kennels of a street in the vicinity of St. Paul's church are floated with the blood of slaughtered animals every market-day. Moses would have managed these things better: but in those days there was no physician in Israel!

[Ill.u.s.tration: NOON.]

EVENING.

One sultry Sunday, when no cooling breeze Was borne on zephyr's wing, to fan the trees; One sultry Sunday, when the torrid ray O'er nature beam'd intolerable day; When raging Sirius warn'd us not to roam, And Galen's sons prescrib'd cool draughts at home; One sultry Sunday, near those fields of fame Where weavers dwell, and Spital is their name, A sober wight, of reputation high For tints that emulate the Tyrian dye, Wishing to take his afternoon's repose, In easy chair had just began to doze, When, in a voice that sleep's soft slumbers broke, His oily helpmate thus her wishes spoke: "Why, spouse, for shame! my stars, what's this about?

You's ever sleeping; come, we'll all go out; At that there garden, pr'ythee, do not stare!

We'll take a mouthful of the country air; In the yew bower an hour or two we'll kill; There you may smoke, and drink what punch you will.

Sophy and Billy each shall walk with me, And you must carry little Emily.

Veny is sick, and pants, and loathes her food; The gra.s.s will do the pretty creature good.

Hot rolls are ready as the clock strikes five-- And now 'tis after four, as I'm alive!"

The mandate issued, see the tour begun, And all the flock set out for Islington.

Now the broad sun, refulgent lamp of day, To rest with Thetis, slopes his western way; O'er every tree embrowning dust is spread, And tipt with gold is Hampstead's lofty head.

The pa.s.sive husband, in his nature mild, To wife consigns his hat, and takes the child; But she a day like this hath never felt, "Oh! that this too, too solid flesh would melt, Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew."

Such monstrous heat! dear me! she never knew.

Adown her innocent and beauteous face, The big, round, pearly drops each other chase; Thence trickling to those hills, erst white as snow, That now like aetna's mighty mountains glow, They hang like dewdrops on the full blown rose, And to the ambient air their sweets disclose.

Fever'd with pleasure, thus she drags along; Nor dares her antler'd husband say 'tis wrong.