The Works of William Hogarth Part 6

PLATE 1.

ENSNARED BY A PROCURESS.]

THE HARLOT'S PROGRESS.

PLATE II.

"Ah! why so vain, though blooming in thy spring, Thou shining, frail, adorn'd, but wretched thing Old age will come; disease may come before, And twenty prove as fatal as threescore!"

Entered into the path of infamy, the next scene exhibits our young heroine the mistress of a rich Jew, attended by a black boy,[1] and surrounded with the pompous parade of tasteless profusion. Her mind being now as depraved, as her person is decorated, she keeps up the spirit of her character by extravagance and inconstancy. An example of the first is exhibited in the monkey being suffered to drag her rich head-dress round the room, and of the second in the retiring gallant.

The Hebrew is represented at breakfast with his mistress; but, having come earlier than was expected, the favourite has not departed. To secure his retreat is an exercise for the invention of both mistress and maid. This is accomplished by the lady finding a pretence for quarrelling with the Jew, kicking down the tea-table, and scalding his legs, which, added to the noise of the china, so far engrosses his attention, that the paramour, a.s.sisted by the servant, escapes discovery.

The subjects of two pictures, with which the room is decorated, are David dancing before the ark, and Jonah seated under a gourd. They are placed there, not merely as circ.u.mstances which belong to Jewish story, but as a piece of covert ridicule on the old masters, who generally painted from the ideas of others, and repeated the same tale _ad infinitum_. On the toilet-table we discover a mask, which well enough intimates where she had pa.s.sed part of the preceding night, and that masquerades, then a very fashionable amus.e.m.e.nt, were much frequented by women of this description; a sufficient reason for their being avoided by those of an opposite character.

Under the protection of this disciple of Moses she could not remain long. Riches were his only attraction, and though profusely lavished on this unworthy object, her attachment was not to be obtained, nor could her constancy be secured; repeated acts of infidelity are punished by dismission; and her next situation shows, that like most of the sisterhood, she had lived without apprehension of the sunshine of life being darkened by the pa.s.sing cloud, and made no provision for the hour of adversity.

In this print the characters are marked with a master's hand. The insolent air of the harlot, the astonishment of the Jew, eagerly grasping at the falling table, the start of the black boy, the cautious trip of the ungartered and barefooted retreating gallant, and the sudden spring of the scalded monkey, are admirably expressed. To represent an object in its descent, has been said to be impossible; the attempt has seldom succeeded; but, in this print, the tea equipage really appears falling to the floor; and, in Rembrandt's Abraham's Offering, in the Houghton collection, now at Petersburg, the knife dropping from the hand of the patriarch, appears in a falling state.

Quin compared Garrick in Oth.e.l.lo to the black boy with the tea-kettle, a circ.u.mstance that by no means encouraged our Roscius to continue acting the part. Indeed, when his face was obscured, his chief power of expression was lost; and then, and not till then, was he reduced to a level with several other performers. It has been remarked, however, that Garrick said of himself, that when he appeared in Oth.e.l.lo, Quin, he supposed, would say, "Here's Pompey! where's the tea-kettle?"

FOOTNOTE:

[1] The attendant black boy gave the foundation of an ill-natured remark by Quin, when Garrick once attempted the part of Oth.e.l.lo. "He pretend to play Oth.e.l.lo!" said the surly satirist; "He pretend to play Oth.e.l.lo! He wants nothing but the tea-kettle and lamp, to qualify him for Hogarth's Pompey!"

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE HARLOT'S PROGRESS.

PLATE 2.

QUARRELS WITH HER JEW PROTECTOR.]

THE HARLOT'S PROGRESS.

PLATE III.

"Reproach, scorn, infamy, and hate, On all thy future steps shall wait; Thy furor be loath'd by every eye, And every foot thy presence fly."

We here see this child of misfortune fallen from her high estate! Her magnificent apartment is quitted for a dreary lodging in the purlieus of Drury-lane; she is at breakfast, and every object exhibits marks of the most wretched penury: her silver tea-kettle is changed for a tin pot, and her highly decorated toilet gives place to an old leaf table, strewed with the relics of the last night's revel, and ornamented with a broken looking-gla.s.s. Around the room are scattered tobacco-pipes, gin measures, and pewter pots; emblems of the habits of life into which she is initiated, and the company which she now keeps: this is farther intimated by the wig-box of James Dalton, a notorious street-robber, who was afterwards executed. In her hand she displays a watch, which might be either presented to her, or stolen from her last night's gallant. By the nostrums which ornament the broken window, we see that poverty is not her only evil.

The dreary and comfortless appearance of every object in this wretched receptacle, the bit of b.u.t.ter on a piece of paper, the candle in a bottle, the basin upon a chair, the punch-bowl and comb upon the table, and the tobacco-pipes, &c. strewed upon the unswept floor, give an admirable picture of the style in which this pride of Drury-lane ate her matin meal. The pictures which ornament the room are, Abraham offering up Isaac, and a portrait of the Virgin Mary; Dr. Sacheverell and Macheath the highwayman, are companion prints. There is some whimsicality in placing the two ladies under a canopy, formed by the unnailed valance of the bed, and characteristically crowned by the wig-box of a highwayman.

When Theodore, the unfortunate king of Corsica, was so reduced as to lodge in a garret in Dean-street, Soho, a number of gentlemen made a collection for his relief. The chairman of their committee informed him, by letter, that on the following day, at twelve o'clock, two of the society would wait upon his majesty with the money. To give his attic apartment an appearance of royalty, the poor monarch placed an arm-chair on his half-testered bed, and seating himself under the scanty canopy, gave what he thought might serve as the representation of a throne. When his two visitors entered the room, he graciously held out his right hand, that they might have the honour of--kissing it!

A magistrate, cautiously entering the room, with his attendant constables, commits her to a house of correction, where our legislators wisely suppose, that being confined to the improving conversation of her a.s.sociates in vice, must have a powerful tendency towards the reformation of her manners. Sir John Gonson, a justice of peace, very active in the suppression of brothels, is the person represented. In _a View of the Town in 1735_, by T. Gilbert, fellow of Peterhouse, Cambridge, are the following lines:

"Though laws severe to punish crimes were made, What honest man is of these laws afraid?

All felons against judges will exclaim, As harlots tremble at a Gonson's name."

Pope has noticed him in his Imitation of Dr. Donne, and Loveling, in a very elegant Latin ode. Thus, between the poets and the painter, the name of this harlot-hunting justice, is transmitted to posterity. He died on the 9th of January, 1765.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE HARLOT'S PROGRESS.

PLATE 3.

APPREHENDED BY A MAGISTRATE.]

THE HARLOT'S PROGRESS.

PLATE IV.

With pallid cheek and haggard eye, And loud laments, and heartfelt sigh, Unpitied, hopeless of relief, She drinks the bitter cup of grief.

In vain the sigh, in vain the tear, Compa.s.sion never enters here; But justice clanks her iron chain, And calls forth shame, remorse, and pain.

The situation, in which the last plate exhibited our wretched female, was sufficiently degrading, but in this, her misery is greatly aggravated. We now see her suffering the chastis.e.m.e.nt due to her follies; reduced to the wretched alternative of beating hemp, or receiving the correction of a savage task-master. Exposed to the derision of all around, even her own servant, who is well acquainted with the rules of the place, appears little disposed to show any return of grat.i.tude for recent obligations, though even her shoes, which she displays while tying up her garter, seem by their gaudy outside to have been a present from her mistress. The civil discipline of the stern keeper has all the severity of the old school. With the true spirit of tyranny, he sentences those who will not labour to the whipping-post, to a kind of picketing suspension by the wrists, or having a heavy log fastened to their leg. With the last of these punishments he at this moment threatens the heroine of our story, nor is it likely that his obduracy can be softened except by a well applied fee. How dreadful, how mortifying the situation! These acc.u.mulated evils might perhaps produce a momentary remorse, but a return to the path of virtue is not so easy as a departure from it.

To show that neither the dread, nor endurance, of the severest punishment, will deter from the perpetration of crimes, a one-eyed female, close to the keeper, is picking a pocket. The torn card may probably be dropped by the well-dressed gamester, who has exchanged the dice-box for the mallet, and whose laced hat is hung up as a companion trophy to the hoop-petticoat.

One of the girls appears scarcely in her teens. To the disgrace of our police, these unfortunate little wanderers are still suffered to take their nocturnal rambles in the most public streets of the metropolis.

What heart, so void of sensibility, as not to heave a pitying sigh at their deplorable situation? Vice is not confined to colour, for a black woman is ludicrously exhibited, as suffering the penalty of those frailties, which are imagined peculiar to the fair.

The figure chalked as dangling upon the wall, with a pipe in his mouth, is intended as a caricatured portrait of Sir John Gonson, and probably the production of some would-be artist, whom the magistrate had committed to Bridewell, as a proper academy for the pursuit of his studies. The inscription upon the pillory, "Better to work than stand thus;" and that on the whipping-post near the laced gambler, "The reward of idleness," are judiciously introduced.

In this print the composition is good: the figures in the back-ground, though properly subordinate, are sufficiently marked; the la.s.situde of the princ.i.p.al character, well contrasted by the austerity of the rigid overseer. There is a fine climax of female debas.e.m.e.nt, from the gaudy heroine of our drama, to her maid, and from thence to the still object, who is represented as destroying one of the plagues of Egypt.

Such well dressed females, as our heroine, are rarely met with in our present houses of correction; but her splendid appearance is sufficiently warranted by the following paragraph in the Grub-street Journal of September 14th, 1730.

"One Mary Moffat, a woman of great note in the hundreds of Drury, who, about a fortnight ago, was committed to hard labour in Tothill-fields Bridewell, by nine justices, brought his majesty's writ of _habeas corpus_, and was carried before the right honourable the Lord Chief Justice Raymond, expecting to have been either bailed or discharged; but her commitment appearing to be legal, his lordship thought fit to remand her back again to her former place of confinement, where she is now beating hemp in a gown very richly laced with silver."

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE HARLOT'S PROGRESS.

PLATE 4.

SCENE IN BRIDEWELL.]