I, Hogarth

by Michael Dean

  ‘German. And he’s in here somewhere. You are very gifted, William.’

  ‘Oh, thank you! Darling, thank you!’

  ‘Oh, it’s true! No idle compliment. I am the daughter of a painter, after all. It runs in my blood. My my, your harlot does get undressed a lot, does she not?’

  I shrugged with mock elaboration. ‘Well …’

  Jane sighed. ‘Harlots have it so much easier in that respect. Still, I’m sure something can be arranged. Once we’re married.’

  I stared at her in wonder. ‘Your father … His daughter and a Spitalfields boy. Hardly a surprise he reacted as he did. I wonder I had the gall to ask.’

  ‘We are of lowly stock ourselves, William. My father was the son of a grocer. You leave my father to me. Unless …? Do you not want to marry me, now that you’ve had me?’

  ‘Oh, Jane! I shall not dignify that with an answer. Except for this.’ I kissed her gently, long, only lip to lip to express the most ineffable love.

  Then there was silence between us as I met her steady grey-eyed gaze. I took a deep breath. ‘How? How are we to be married?’

  ‘We elope.’

  ‘Yes! Yes, of course!’ I hit myself on the forehead, aiming at my dent. ‘Stupid clodhopper William, not to think of that! Leave it all to me. With you in my heart I can do anything. Anything on earth.’

  ‘Do you know, I believe that to be true. And now, well, I can’t titillate the way your harlot can, but I do recall you have been quite resourceful in the past.’

  ‘Yes. And will be so again.’ We kissed, we began our love. ‘This is no ordinary love, my Jane. No ordinary love.’

  16

  MY NEXT VISITOR of note was again presaged by the appearance of the faithful maid, Fanny. By now I could read every nuance, fold and tilt of her pretty face: there was tension in her neck, her nose was narrowing, the line of the lips hard. I was with a customer who wished a salver engraved, but I bid Fanny ask the Lady Judith to come in, just as Fanny opened her mouth to announce her mistress.

  Lady Judith was discreetly dressed, even muffled for her mission; the hood of her mantua was up and remained up. I saw out my business with every appearance of calm, harnessing the discussion of lines and money to garner strength to face a woman I respected, admired this side idolatry, loved even, but who had become my enemy – as why else would she have been here?

  Finally my customer, a fool with money as so many of them were, departed the scene, satisfied that his wishes would be satisfied. Fanny, as when Jane came, was now outside, flutteringly keeping watch, like a goose outside Rome.

  ‘Lock the door. And bolt it.’

  That intelligent, piercing gaze looked through me, seeing everything. I did as she bid, indeed commanded. She was herself, only more so, as if the inner essences of her being were concentrated now, fuelling her for the fight.

  ‘Jane does not know I am here.’

  ‘I would have guessed as much.’

  ‘She does not know that I am aware of your plan.’

  I glanced towards the window, where the outline of Fanny the maid was visible at her watch.

  ‘No, not her!’ Lady Judith spoke with asperity, just a touch of impatience. ‘She is as loyal to Jane as any puppy. I had to threaten her with dismissal to change sides.’ She sniffed. ‘I reminded her who pays her wages.’

  ‘Sides? There are sides?’ I waved her to a chair, but she remained standing. I sat at my workbench, looking diagonally up at her. ‘And how do you know of our plan?’

  ‘I know my daughter, William. She is hoarding clothes. And she has stopped talking about you.’

  I smiled, feeling myself puffing up.

  ‘No, William!’ she banged a fist on my workbench like a man. Astonishing! ‘I say I know my daughter but, what is more to the point, I know my husband. William, when I was a young woman I saw a fight between a fox and a lone hound, detached from the pack. Do you know who won?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘The fox won. It killed the hound because it had nothing to lose. And because it did not fight fairly. While the dog tried to engage, head to head, nothing was out of bounds to the fox: eyes, testicles, it went for what was soft. And it ripped the dog to pieces.’

  ‘You mean Sir James …? Why do you say nothing to lose?’

  She tossed her head, imperious, impatient, just as Jane did sometimes. ‘He’s finished! He hasn’t had a decent commission in years. His enemies have undone him. All he has left is his position and his pride. Especially his pride. You take that, boy, and he’ll fight like a fox: eat the soft bits then spit them out.’

  ‘But … Lady Judith, please. I truly love Sir James, after all he’s done for me. And I take him as my master, as a painter. I am not his enemy!’

  ‘Oh, you bloody child, William! When you put your shaft in a man’s daughter, you put your shaft in the man. And James will shaft you back, believe me. You will not become a painter, William. Never! He’ll see to that. You’ll be lucky to keep what you have.’ She waved a vigorous arm round my tiny workshop. ‘Tell me you will abandon this intemperate plan, William. This idea of an elopement.’

  ‘I love your Jane, Lady Judith.’

  ‘Dear God in heaven, do you think I don’t know that? Why do you think I’m here? Do nothing, boy! Wait! Sometimes no action is the best action, even though youth finds it so hard. Leave it to me. I will find a way.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘When! There’s a real boy’s question. Look … I tell you this. James does not have long to live. His health is not robust. When he goes, you will have my blessing. And Jane is yet young. An old head on her shoulders, I grant you, except in matters concerning you. But young. So … Now. Will you wait? Leave it to me?’

  Her brilliance, her cleverness, disarmed me. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Good.’

  There was no farewell; she seemed to disappear, not leave, magically through the locked door, though when I tried it it was open. I peered down the clamorous street but there was no sign of her or Fanny. Was the visit a dream?

  I had always been able to work on more than one project at a time; indeed, I preferred to do so. So while continuing to paint my story of Moll the harlot, I locked the door again, then started work with vigour on a portrait of Jane.

  I was waiting at the corner of Covent Garden Piazza, where the hackneys stopped as they waited for trade. The Thornhill residence was in sight, on a diagonal line across the square, but I could not be seen from the windows there. At least I believed I could not.

  It was a clear day, towards the end of the month of March. Also clear were the outlines of buildings and of people as they moved, as if my eyes and mind were working extra hard to keep the scene fresh.

  The day was important, so important, but I was aware I had no fear. I also had no doubt of Jane. Yet again I wondered that she was so much younger than me; for she was older, senior, superior in so many ways. I felt lost without her, bereft when she was not there. I wanted her with me all the time.

  ‘Hiding behind the horses?’

  ‘Aaagh!’

  I jumped off the ground as shock made the world go black. One of the horses, spooked, neighed, started to rear, was pulled down by a farrier. Lady Judith Thornhill was standing among the hackneys, just behind me, with a basket covered by a chequered cloth, tiny, like a grown-up Little Red Riding Hood.

  ‘Oh, come, William! You’ll need more courage than that, if you are to elope with my daughter, further than the corner of the square.’

  I was still shocked, my breathing heavy. ‘Are you here to stop us?’ Even as I spoke I saw, with the familiar lift of the heart, Jane making her way across the Piazza, carrying a small valise.

  ‘No, I’m here to bring you some food. You’ll need some for your flight, after the ceremony.’

  ‘What made you change your mind?’

  ‘Nothing. I haven’t changed it. But, short of chaining my daughter to the wall in fetters in the wine cellar, I cannot stop her leaving with you
. At least not for long. If I stop her today, she will leave with you tomorrow. The choice then becomes whether you and she leave on an empty or a full stomach.’

  ‘Thank you. Thank you, fair lady.’

  Lady Judith handed over the surprisingly heavy basket. I felt foolish holding it, but curiosity impelled me to look under the chequered cloth: a haunch of ham, rich with fat; slices of turkey; a hunk of cheese, Cheshire by its pallor; underneath, some apples, I believe; cherries, ripe.

  ‘Thank you.’ I was limp with gratitude.

  ‘I did not do it for your thanks.’ Lady Judith waited, poised, obviously with no intention of leaving. I saw that Jane had seen her. She busied towards us; I could see that frowning line between her eyebrows even from where I stood. Lady Judith had robbed us of our embrace, kisses I would have plied her with, even in public.

  Jane confronted her; she was bigger than her mother, by some way, as well as being considerably bigger than me. ‘Are you here to stop us, mama?’

  ‘No, I am here to bring you some food. William has it.’ She nodded at the basket.

  ‘Will you tell papa?’

  ‘For what it’s worth, no. But he’ll know soon enough. I’d make that food last if I were you. I don’t know where the next lot will be coming from.’

  ‘Oh, shut your mouth, mama.’

  ‘Oh, you shut yours!’ But Lady Judith spoke it mildly, with a faint smile.

  She walked over to the leading hackney, reached up and gave the driver some money. For a second, I thought she intended to come with us, my wild eyes meeting Jane’s. But as the driver leaped down, reaching to help Jane with the valise and me with Red Riding Hood’s basket, my Lady Judith Thornhill walked off without a backward glance, back towards her home.

  It was, it remains, the most purely aristocratic, the most purely noble gesture I was ever to witness.

  17

  THE HACKNEY deposited us at the church of St Mary-le-Bone, opposite the bosky Marybone Gardens, in the parish of Marylebone, a haunt of Macheath in The Beggar’s Opera. Marylebone was where the gamblers were, gambling dens piled upon each other by the hundred, but I took no gambles this day. My Jane was a racing certainty!

  This church, St Mary-le-Bone, was London’s leading for secret marriages. The ceremonies were exciting because the building was so near collapse that every ceremony may have been its last; the happy couple, or indeed the deceased or the newly-baptised, mewling baby, might be buried under flaking plaster or tumbling masonry as the edifice finally gave up the ghost and sighed down into the ground.

  I had given the Reverend Winter two guineas for his offices to make us man and wife, but as we entered, Jane and I, the reverend, suitably outfitted in white vestments, was still occupied with the customers ahead of us. He was racing towards old age, this reverend, fuelled by wine or gin to judge by the redness of his nose: a pair of eyeglasses risking the hellfire at its tip.

  The Reverend Winter’s teeth having long ago departed his mouth, his undershot jaw delivered the marriage service with so much spluttering that it appeared to be announced by a water sprite just breaking the surface of a river.

  Jane giggled, then simpered, suddenly looking something like her own tender age, just old enough to make this stolen union legal, if truth be told. I held her hand while we embraced the scene, gathering it into us for future memory.

  The bizarrely assorted couple before us evidently still had some way to go before words spluttered by the Reverend Winter would unite their beings as one forever. And, oh, how odd they were, this couple:

  A callow youth in fashionable, yellow silk frock coat, frothing with lace at throat and cuff, his pale hauteur powdered on thinly, not to outlast the day: ladies and gentlemen, I give you the groom.

  The bride was an ancient crone in a thick ivory-white girl’s wedding dress and strange white chapeau arrangement dangling off her head, a thin-lipped smile of triumph masking a lack of teeth, and her wrinkled, flat breasts peeping out, like antique water gourds: half empty now but still strapped to the saddle after a long horse ride.

  Also, she lacked the full complement of eyes, the poor dear, having only the one. This facilitated the groom’s gazing at the crone’s pretty maid, as she adjusted the ancient’s dress, on her blind side. This damsel-bride was old enough to be the groom’s grandmother, but, I would have hazarded, rich.

  Jane was fighting down giggles as happiness let her be childlike. She nodded at the full basket of food her mother had provided. And indeed, why not eat as we watched our predecessors in the factory of holy matrimony? So we did.

  Jane carved the ham with a knife thoughtfully provided by Lady Thornhill; we stuffed ourselves with that, the turkey and the rest of it. The Reverend Winter cast a glance our way, but the words gurgled on. He appeared to wish us to keep some of the repast for him.

  And indeed, perhaps he was hungry, for his church was dilapidated enough. An inscription on the wall told us that St Mary-le-Bone was beautified in 1725. It paid tribute to two churchwardens, Sice and Horn, who apparently had patched the place up at that time.

  But their noble efforts had been smoked and wrecked by the bandit time. Plaster was falling from the walls and the pulpit was a stained, greasy disgrace, while a web so thick it surely represented the work of a whole team of spiders covered the poor box: which was as well, for I suspected the poor were not welcome here.

  Even as we munched – and I could have done with a beer, my Lady Thornhill, eh? – a parish boy in a coat that was more hole than coat, with shoes in similar state, placed a kneeler before the crone-bride, though I feared kneeling may have been a movement too far for the old dear. In fact, it occurred to me that if the Reverend Winter did not speed up a bit, he would have to proceed seamlessly to the funeral service, as the bride looked ready to expire.

  I shared this thought with my own bride-to-be, my arm round her waist, whispering in her ear. My lovely Jane laughed so much she was obliged to desist from the consumption of any more ham.

  But, finally, it was our turn. The callow groom helped his ancient beloved towards the church door, heading, I imagined, directly to her bank, now that he had complete control of her wealth, rather than to her bed.

  We replaced them before the Reverend Winter, who held out his hand for payment, then wiped his mouth on the sleeve of his holy vestment before launching into the marriage ceremony again, from the beginning. We put the basket with what was left of the food at our feet, lowered our heads and let the words from the Book of Common Prayer wash over us.

  We had just reached the point where I was to say I, William Hogarth, take thee, Jane Thornhill, to be my wedded wife, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better for worse’ and all the rest of it, when there was an almighty commotion behind us. A deep chill ran through me, belly up to head, as I recognised the voice of Sarah Young, the assistant at my sisters’ shop, who had performed certain pleasurable services for me at my workshop.

  I twisted as I spoke my vows, to see Sarah Young and, worse, her mother doing battle with a woman, evidently a churchwarden, as they tried to gain access to my wedding. And, oh calamity, Sarah Young had a baby at her breast, a mewling, squawking baby. As I spoke on with my holy vows, I was trying desperately to remember exactly what it was that Sarah and I did, in the privacy of my workshop.

  Did we do enough to make that baby? My recollection was only of her mouth, like Felix Pellett’s, only she used her tongue more and moaned more as she went about her work. Best hurry up with the ceremony!

  I started to gabble, ‘…for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death us do part, according to God’s holy ordinance; and thereto I plight thee my troth. ’

  Jane heard the commotion, too; one could hardly have missed it as it echoed round the massy walls and off the ceiling of the damp, decaying, holy dump.

  ‘I, Jane Thornhill, take thee, William Hogarth, to be my wedded husband …’

  She looked at me quizzically: the
lovely eyes open rather wider than usual. I shrugged elaborately, trying to mouth the name Sarah Young, but it was difficult to communicate this effectively, while speaking marriage vows. The Reverend Winter seemed oblivious, fortunately continuing to officiate.

  My fists clenched as I silently cheered the churchwarden on in her unequal struggle with Sarah, albeit handicapped by the baby, and her mother. But, fortunately, reinforcements were at hand. Like good Prince Rupert at the Battle of Edgehill, a lugubrious parson’s clerk, supported by the parish boy in the holey garments, charged to the succour of the fighting woman churchwarden. They joined forces, indeed as Rupert of the Rhine and his fellow royalist Lindsey once did at Edgehill, driving the parliamentarians (here Sarah Young, her mother and her baby) from the field.

  After the ceremony, with everybody concerned paid their due, I kissed my bride of minutes. Mercifully the coast was now clear. But …

  ‘Who was that woman?’

  ‘What woman …?’ But a look from the clever grey eyes was enough. ‘Ah! That was Sarah Young. She works for my sisters at their little emporium.’

  ‘How did she know we were to be married here?’

  ‘My sisters must have told her. I told them. I told them not to come, but …’

  ‘And she had her mother with her. And a babe in arms.’

  ‘Did …? Yes, she did.’

  ‘William?’

  ‘Yes, darling.’

  ‘Why would she bring a babe in arms to a wedding? Unless she believed … William, does she believe you to be the father of this baby?’

  ‘Who knows what she believes. She is a strange creature. Simple. But strange.’

  ‘Well, has she grounds for this belief? William, have you fornicated with this girl?’

  ‘Jane … Darling, I honestly can’t remember. I’ve been racking my brains all through the ceremony. She used to come to the shop. She wouldn’t go away. Before I met you. Naturally. As far as I recall, we only did … You know. Mouth stuff.’