I, Hogarth

by Michael Dean

  We settled on John Bowes as the least worst of this shower of cheats, charlatans, pimps and whores, shaking his stained paw on a deal that put the sale price at a decent 1s a print.

  Within days, copies appeared on sale at every one of the printers we visited, some good some bad, but all priced cheaper than my genuine ones. It was with difficulty that Felix restrained me from another perambulation round the print shops, this time armed with a cudgel.

  We were in Jane’s bedroom, I having been shown there via back-passages by the faithful Fanny-the-Maid, as Sir James was away on his travels and the Lady Judith nowhere to be found. My beloved sat at an inlaid mahogany table, watching my exertions at my news, her usually calm grey eyes shining with anticipation, her joy at my joy.

  I held her by the shoulders, looking up into her gentle, virtuous, serious face. ‘You are wonderful, you know.’

  ‘Sometimes, I feel if you left me, I would die.’

  I cried a little, but softly, not out of control, more a release like steam escaping. Then we kissed awhile, pressing our lips together, not the way the whores taught me to kiss, with open tongue.

  She broke the kiss. ‘By the way, mama and I are trying to get father to take you with him to his masonic lodge.’

  ‘Thank you!’

  ‘You need more and better contacts at this time, William. And the masons are the people to provide them. Don’t say anything to father though.’

  ‘Of course not!’

  ‘Leave it to us.’

  ‘Jane, you know I love you. You believe I am true. You are more to me than … All the rest is dross, Jane! Dross!’

  She stroked my cheek. For the first time, I touched her breast as we kissed. She allowed it.

  ‘Jane I can wait. If you would rather?’

  ‘No. I am ready, William. If you want to.’

  ‘Will you …?’ I waved with both arms.

  She understood what I meant, laughing merrily. ‘My dear, I’m afraid I can’t remove my dress without Fanny’s help.’

  ‘Aaahh!’ I nodded wisely. The whores, of whom by now I had known many, always started the evening in their shifts. ‘Shall I call Fanny?’

  She coloured. ‘I think not.’

  I took both her hands in mine; we stood on either side of the table. ‘Let me have a look,’ I said.

  I walked behind her, to be confronted by a swirl of brocaded silk and chenille in yellow and green, a myriad maze of buttons, ties and lacing, most of it half-hidden by pleats. I could not get near her for the hoops, and was anyway never more conscious of my stubby fingers, as I timidly tried to work the first pearl button I saw, just below her neck. At this rate we should still be there when Sir James returned from Hampshire.

  ‘I am not a military man, my darling, but I think the answer may lay with what soldiers call a frontal assault.’

  She was silent, unmoving, I could not see her face as I was round the back. Finally she cleared her throat. ‘As you wish.’

  I walked round the front, led her to a low settee and lifted her skirt and all her petticoats in one bunch. She sighed, cleared her throat again and laid back on the settee with one leg extended, the other on the ground like one of those Boucher odalisque drawings Frenchy Pellett delighted in showing me.

  I lowered my breeches and drawers, spoke endearments into her ear, kissed her, fondled her, as well as I could through the upper part of her dress, then completed the Platonic ideal of unity; staying in place for quite a while, and then with steady motion giving her, I had reason to believe, the pleasure I craved to.

  It was my first act of love that had the future in it.

  10

  JOHN THORNHILL was taking the class today, as he did from time to time, when the lugubrious John Vanderbank was indisposed, or perhaps simply had more pressing matters to attend to. He was a revelation as a painter, John, with extraordinary natural gifts, perhaps more so than me, but no application – even, I suspected, no interest – so he would never amount to anything: for it’s all in the energy.

  All poor John wanted to do was while away his time in suppering, wagering, then on to the pleasures of Mother Douglas and her ladies. He had few friends, so I was wary of refusing his invitations to join him; also it hardly seemed politic to alienate a Thornhill, but in any case I did not wish to, for I liked him enormously, for all his deep inner sadness. While on the subject of his character, it intrigued me that he so completely lacked his sister’s penetrating powers of intellect and analysis.

  ‘So tonight, then?’ he was saying.

  ‘Tonight, John,’ I replied. ‘I shall bring Stephen Fowler and perhaps one or two men from our class.’

  He brightened, some of the cloud lifting from his sad, pale face. ‘That’s good. Thank you.’

  We were speaking by the vestibule of the house; I was on my way out, when Sir James appeared from nowhere.

  ‘Ah! I thought I heard your voice, there, Bill.’

  At his father’s appearance, pale John drifted off like a cloud before the wind.

  ‘Hello, sir! What a pleasant surprise. I didn’t know you were back in London.’

  ‘Arrived back yesterday. From Hampshire. Just on my way to court. Try to keep my end up there.’

  His face fell to sombre lines. I knew he was losing ground to Kent’s Palladian faction, falling out of favour, even considered old-fashioned. It was wrong, wrong, wrong!

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  He spoke as if to someone standing immediately behind me, as he customarily did, also executing his half-pirouette. ‘I’ve got an invitation for you, Hogarth.’

  HO-garth? Why suddenly Ho …? But this must be the masons! I adopted a serious mien, as of one worthy of the secrets of a conspiratorial society. ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘I’m going to Newgate Prison … um … soon.’

  I cleared my throat, as Jane does, and tried to look politely enquiring. ‘Er …’

  ‘To draw the murderess, Sarah Malcolm. Why don’t you come along? Keep me company?’ His gaze shifted to a point behind my right shoulder. ‘Do a drawing yourself? Eh? No, I tell you what. Why don’t you do an oil? John thinks highly of your abilities and so do I. About time you got away from these engravings and did some proper painting.’

  ‘I should love to, sir. Thank you. Thank you for the opportunity.’

  We were in a hackney carriage on the way to Newgate, the first time I had ever been in one. My portable easel, brushes and oil paints were across my lap, as was a basket of provisions for the murderess Sarah Malcolm.

  ‘I saw your drawing of Jack Sheppard, sir,’ I said, to make conversation.

  ‘Oh? Yes? Where did you see that?’

  Jane showed it to me. ‘It’s … prints of it are everywhere, sir. A fine likeness.’ Idiot! You’ve never seen Jack Sheppard, he knows that. You’re burbling, man. I cleared my throat. ‘I mean, you can see his life of crime … in his face. The way you …’

  We arrived at Newgate. It was even nearer to where I was born than The Fleet; cut through Christ’s Hospital and you could run there in three minutes from St Botolph Churchyard, where I used to play.

  The grimy towers were familiar enough, but I’d never been inside before. However, we were treated like visiting dignitaries, which I suppose is what we were. A turnkey showed us to a cell, where Sarah Malcolm had been sat down alone at a table with a lamp, to be painted: days before she was due to be hanged.

  I thankfully put down my painting equipment then handed over the provisions, which, on arrival, I insisted on giving Sarah myself to make sure they reached her intact. In the basket were three bottles of beer, some hard boiled eggs obtained from Stout Gamble’s wife – with whom I was still on cordial terms, visiting from time to time – also some fresh-baked bread and a hunk of meat I bought from one of the stalls in Porridge Island, just off Covent Garden, on the way to Sir James’s place.

  Sarah Malcolm’s eyes opened wide at the extent of my largesse. She stood behind the table and bobbed a curtsey. ‘Thank
’ee, sir.’

  ‘You are welcome, Sarah. I would have brought more if I could carry it.’

  I looked at her keenly, already wanting to paint the woman, not the murderess. She had wrapped her head in a linen cap with wings, covering her hair, no doubt because it was greasy from prison, but this added rather than detracted from the overall proportion of her face.

  Fine features, which would have been finer had they been allowed to sharpen on a duchess: an aquiline nose, redolent of pride; the kind of narrow but shaped mouth often seen on the Irish; a heavily emphasised concave part under the arch of the brow, beneath which there was the gland in the middle of the brain, the place where the soul received the images of the passions (according to Frenchy Pellett’s instruction); the eyebrow was sloping up towards the middle of the brow, representing pain and sorrow.

  And she had much to be sorrowful about, the poor wretch. I read of her deeds in the newspapers, even before this commission. After it, I invested 2d at a printer’s shop in Henrietta Street, which bought me a second-hand copy of A full and particular Account of the barbarous Murders of Mrs Lydia Duncomb, with a Narrative of the infamous Actions of Sarah Malcolm, now in Newgate for the said Murders.

  Two old women and their maids, it seemed, found with their throats cut from ear to ear. Sarah Malcolm, formerly a servant to the old gentlewoman, was found guilty of wilful murder for the sake of forty-five guineas and a silver tankard.

  I adopted a position to the side of Sarah Malcolm, so she had to turn her face to look at me, keeping her broad shoulders in a line. Her left elbow and right hand were on the oak table, causing me to notice what lovely long fingers she had. I would paint them apart no matter what she did with them.

  My concentration on the subject was total; no snake in the spell of an eastern fakir was more at one with a single entity than me. It was only when I set up my little easel that I remembered Sir James, realising I had posed the subject, starting my work as if the Serjeant Painter to the King were not even in the room.

  Oh well, too late to worry now. My apology was stillborn. I began my work, starting with a preliminary drawing to establish proportion and shape, before quickly applying white ground and proceeding to paint in blocks of colour. After a while I became aware of Sir James, fidgeting on the edge of my vision, the man was never entirely still, but shut it out from my mind.

  After what seemed a few minutes, but was in reality a matter of hours, a turnkey knocked politely on the door to signal the end of our time with Sarah Malcolm. There could be no second visit; Sarah Malcolm was due the one-way cart ride to Tyburn in two days’ time. We would, of course, finish our work later at the studio, Sir James and I.

  Exhausted, I glanced at his piece, becoming uneasily aware that he had not said a word for a long time. His posing of Sarah was far more conventional than mine. Mind you, that might have been because I stole the most original vantage point in the small room without asking him. I took a deep breath, looking at his work with an air of casualness as he began to pack away his easel.

  I suppressed a gasp, I suppressed glee: oh, unworthy glee! BUT MINE WAS BETTER. I knew it as well as I knew my name, William Hogarth, Guilemus Hogarth, Bill Hogarth, Billy Hogarth. This man was my St Luke, my god of painting. BUT MINE WAS … I should stop it, this was getting dangerous!

  Sir James was looking at my work, now resting against the stone wall, preparatory to our departure. ‘That’s good, William. A good likeness.’

  BANAL REMARK. Oh, stop it! ‘Thank you, Sir James.’

  We bade farewell to Sarah Malcolm. Sir James lapsed into silence as the turnkey walked ahead of us through the winding corridors to the main gate, where we again hailed a hackney carriage. Inside, he suddenly resumed where he had left off before.

  ‘Perhaps you should … Have you thought of the painter’s life? Rather than doing so much engraving?’

  ‘I think of little else, Sir James.’

  ‘Well, I can help you find an outlet for your work.’

  ‘Thank you! Thank you very much, Sir James.’

  ‘No, not at all, my boy. You show talent. And you have made a good impression on my household. John sings your painterly praises quite often. You appear to have made a favourable impression on my wife, too. And she’s a good judge of a man, always was.’

  ‘Pleased to hear it, sir.’

  ‘I think even my daughter mentioned your name, and perhaps your work. Can’t remember now. Have you met Jane?’

  ‘We have exchanged … some … words, I believe.’

  Silence. The hackney trundled on. But the release of stopping work was making me garrulous, a trait I would have with me all my life. Besides, Sir James’s silence created a nothingness I felt impelled to fill with chatter, another permanent condition with me.

  ‘These places …’ I heard myself babble. ‘The way they behave in these prisons, the cruelty of it all if you don’t pay them their money.’

  Sir James looked startled. I charged on. ‘I heard the other day of a man, a man of quality at that, unable to pay the governor what he took as his due, placed shackled in a deep dungeon until he drowned in brackish water seeping into the place.’

  There was a bell in my head. It was ringing. I knew all this was wrong for me, but still the words came out. Being in a prison again had done this. My long-dead father was sitting next to me in the hackney carriage. ‘The things we do to each other, the cruelties we impose on the helpless: prisoners, children, dumb animals of every kind. Why are we such monsters? Why must we be so?’

  Sir James next spoke as the hackney slowed in traffic. ‘A subject that might interest you as a painter, William, is this committee of the House of Commons that is coming up.’

  ‘Oh! Indeed, sir?’

  ‘Yes. They are enquiring into conditions at the Fleet Prison. I can get you in, if that would be of any interest? Prisons. Interesting, at all?’

  ‘Yes, sir. Yes, indeed, it would be of interest.’

  11

  HUGGINS! John Huggins, warden of the Fleet, the man who heaped misery on my father when he was in that monster’s power, the man who sent my family into the streets to pawn its soul to protect poor father from yet worse. The newspapers were full of the case; Huggins was arraigned before men of the House of Commons. The hearing was in a panelled office in the Fleet, but I would paint him against the dripping stones of a foetid cell.

  For Huggins had made mistakes, several of them. He had let the Fleet go to rack and ruin, rather than spend any of his £5,000 patent on repairs, to the extent that parts of the building were falling down. Further, his allowing prisoners to escape to the Indies on payment of a hefty sum had occasioned scandal.

  But his biggest mistake of all was to extend his maltreatment from the poor – all as indistinguishable as clay, unless one of them happened to be your father – to the rich, notably (ho ho) Sir William Rich, Bart. Sir William was left manacled and shackled in a place named a strong-room, actually a vault over an open sewer, for refusal to cough up a second payment of ‘Baronet’s Fee’, a tax Huggins had invented, of the sum of £51.

  What a joy to see Huggins there on the first day! I ignored him, of course, now I was a famous painter (well, known at least), not a supplicant boy of a helpless prisoner. I was the official recorder for posterity of those just and vital proceedings (well, not actually official, but Sir James had obtained permission for me to be there, from Sir James Oglethorpe, the chairman of the committee).

  After self-consciously unpacking my easel, palette, maulstick and paints on the first day, then posing a while beside the same, I sketched the faces of all the committee members, close and large.

  Back in my studio I outlined the oil sketch modello, with blank faces, then asked Sir James Oglethorpe if he was interested in a copy of the finished painting. To my joy, he accepted without equivocation, whereupon five of the six others, as is the way of these things, fell into line. Six sales before I’d even put brush to finished canvas!

  I prom
ised each of the six their own individualised painting, featuring their own good selves in prominence, thus committing myself to six versions of the painting. Each of them would show the patron to advantage, yet would be a truthful record, not only of the events, but of that man Huggins’ deepest nature, caught in a moment of time. If Antonis van Dyck could do it, so could I.

  An hour into day one and I was pleased with my preliminary drawing. Half the space was for the action, the other half for the audience, shown as tronies. In the action half: the table at a sharp angle, a victim testifying before the committee, three of the committee in conversation, one standing behind them to give depth and a vertical.

  Oglethorpe himself was shown in a Choice of Hercules pose, with the evil Huggins to his right and the poor plaintiff to his left. (Everybody now recognised the Choice of Hercules dilemma from the Earl of Shaftesbury’s writings about it. It was flattering to the person who had the dilemma, which was good.)

  Over the next two or three days, as the hearing went on, I had to make changes. The committee members did not feel they were prominent enough. I had to drop the audience altogether, the prisoner was on his knees, so we could see the committee members better; more of the committee members had to be shown standing, ditto. The composition was now stilted and too linear, like the early Dutch, but six sales were six sales, and thereafter the engravings should fly off the presses, given the topicality of the subject.

  Then I came to a halt in my work, altogether. There, fastidiously taking his place in the audience in a resplendent pale green silk coat and the whitest wig I had ever seen, was Anthony (Moses) da Costa, my benefactor and that of my sisters, now ensconced so cosily in their shop, thanks to him. And where was Kate, his sometime bawd?

  KATE, KATE, KATE. Your face, your bosom. My arm felt heavy, I could not paint, falling to tinkering with blocks of dirtied lead white for the imaginary stone walls. I started to listen to the proceedings, almost for the first time. The foul Huggins was telling the committee that he sold his patent to the wardenship of the Fleet to his deputy, Thomas Bambridge, so he was not responsible for anything.