I, Hogarth

by Michael Dean

  Nevertheless, I truly had no idea of their strength of feeling for me. Indeed, even as I thought this old Henry Tompion, who would not see forty again, also volunteered for certain death to attempt a rescue of my mother.

  I clasped the good old servant by the shoulders. ‘We shall join the chain, Henry. We shall all join the chain. Mary, please …’

  Mary nodded. ‘Anne and I will go to Leicester Fields, William. You and the men do what you can.’

  The snaggle-toothed footman, George Wells, had already inserted himself between two Foot Guards, passing a water bucket from hand to hand. Henry Tompion, Charles Mahon and I joined him, all in a line, master and man. I never forgot that, never forgot their love for me.

  As I worked, swinging a bucket with characteristic energy, despite my now tubby frame, I noticed a figure from the past, John Huggins, sometime Warden of the Fleet. I had last seen Huggins when I painted him, but the picture seared on my mind was of Huggins demanding money of my mother, that garnish of £1 6s 8d for removal of my father’s fetters. And now, on what was no doubt to be my mother’s last day on earth, here was Huggins again, like an evil carrion crow.

  He looked much older, as he was entitled to. An old man now, with strands of white hair and pointy nose, not far from death. As I swayed in rhythm with the chain passing the bucket, I said ‘What on earth is he doing?’ out loud.

  He was giving out money, Huggins was. Of course, he was trying to bribe the watchers to form an ad hoc watch against the thieves, who were now more emboldened than ever to go into the houses. I remembered that one of Huggins’ many houses was in St Martin’s Lane.

  I stopped watching him, the better to swing buckets of water, until eventually I was taken away, exhausted, aching, coughing from the smoke, back to Leicester Fields, half-carried by my devoted servants.

  I was ever the citizen under the law, even though the law had used my father so harshly, so I attended the arraignment of one Mrs Kelloway, an Irishwoman accused of starting the fire deliberately. The arraignment was held at the Old Bailey before my neighbour and fellow mason, the magistrate De Veil. Only one person had died in the conflagration, my poor old mama passed away from the smoke and from fear.

  Mrs Kelloway was committed to Newgate. Mama found her final rest in the churchyard of St Anne’s, Soho. After the service, I began a portrait of her, working from memory. I also arranged for fire insurance from the Sun Insurance Company, insuring our valuables for the sum of £500. The cover was extended to my sisters. Jane remained my beloved; I did not doubt that for a second. But her dissatisfaction with our lives, or perhaps with me, increasingly solidified to anger. She was growing plumper, she was getting fractious, she was developing a plate-throwing, screaming temper. Once, just once, I called her a shrew, then fell to my knees weeping and said I was sorry.

  But there was the rub, that falling to my knees. I could still do it, but the rising up again was no simple matter. I realised I was becoming more than portly – fleshily plump. My knees ached, my back ached from hours of upright painting; my gums ached (and bled), I vomited on occasion for no discernible reason. I was a prey to rashes, blotches, swelling in the groin and under the armpits, fever.

  None of this, of course, was Jane’s fault, far from it. But in my public dealings I shut it all away, like locking a skeleton in a cupboard, only to find it breaking loose when I was at home. My weaknesses, corporeal and spiritual, made me impatient with her weaknesses and whatever ailed her. My dealings with her were no longer skilful and no longer always happy. We were distant; we were apart.

  As a last-gasp remedy I essayed another portrait of Jane, half-size, 35 by 27 inches, but seated like a queen. She chose an ivory silk dress fringed with lace, with a bow at the breast and matching bonnet. She wore a tight string of pearls at her neck. Her gaze at the viewer was to be steady, dignified, unsmiling.

  But from the beginning the sittings went wrong. I know I always demanded much of my portrait sitters, maintaining position for hours, sometimes accommodating my changes of mind and mood until the exasperated sitter feels that he or she was to match the portrait, not the other way round. With Jane, however, it was more than that. The sittings, which I hoped would let us recover our once total ease in each other’s company, were making her edgy and petulant.

  ‘William, you seem to think a sizeable house with six servants runs itself.’

  ‘Please, dearest …’ At that moment I was attacking the portrait like a fencer on the forward dart. ‘Please do not move or look angry, just for a moment.’

  ‘Angry? Angry? You expect me to sit here like a bolt of cloth on a shelf. Then you ask your cronies to dinner and expect food to appear as if by magic. If I do not instruct cook within the hour, she will have no idea what to buy at market for supper today.’

  I looked at her, then. I looked at her as a painter and I looked at her as a man. Her full breasts still excited me, even though I increasingly took what pleasure I was capable of elsewhere, sometimes even imagining some Catherine Street whore was her. Her face was not beautiful, apart from her grey eyes, but her handsome calm was imposing. And I still loved her. I loved my distant wife like few men in London loved theirs.

  So why was the portrait as barren as a mule? It was like a work by the current arbiter of taste, the idiot Joshua Reynolds. Or even the boy Rams-ay, the Scotty. Even Hayman-adequate could have done better. Silk, yes. Lace, yes. Very nice. Face, yes. It was a human face, it even had a mood that the viewer could leadenly name. But it said absolutely nothing. It was absolutely nothing, except a pile of cloth with a woman in it. It was art without art, representation without mind, let alone soul.

  All that was vivid in my life, at this time, were my dreams. The prison nightmares, which had never entirely left me, came back in force every night. The nightmares featured Sir James and me in prison together, as we had been when we both drew doomed Sarah Malcolm.

  Incredible though it came to seem to me in later life, I found out precisely what was wrong with Jane only much later. I found out through a painting, one of my own paintings.

  8

  I HAD KNOWN Daniel Graham for many years, initially because I purchased painting materials – that is to say, paints, ground, turpentine and the like – from Graham’s apothecary shop in Pall Mall. Later, as Graham became more successful, becoming apothecary to the Chelsea Hospital, our social circles overlapped.

  Neither Daniel nor I could remember exactly when the idea started that I should paint his children, but we talked about it for years before it came to pass. Then, in the way of these matters, aspiration suddenly and rapidly turned to a plan which turned to arrangements.

  I have always loved painting children. I feel an affinity for them, based on their energy and truth. I understand their perceptions, because I still remember vividly the various ages and stages of my own childhood. I had inherited this affinity with children from my beloved father, and therefore I cherished it.

  Daniel Graham had four children: Henrietta, the oldest; the seven-year-old Anna Maria; Richard, the chubby-faced little boy; and the baby, Thomas. At this point, I was interested in larger paintings, the larger the better, large as life. This one ended up some 64 by 62 inches.

  With this painting, I wanted to take on my self-appointed master, van Dyck, especially his Five Eldest Children of Charles I. That is why you can see many elements of Dutch still-life in the work, like the curtains and the silver bowl of fruit.

  The children were posed at the luxurious and charming Graham residence on the north side of Pall Mall, with the help of Daniel’s second wife, the delightful Mary Crisp. They were posed in the hall, so I could copy the Dutch-style tiling. But after that, all the props were added in my studio, except little Richard’s serinette, which he really was clutching when he was posed, and which therefore gave me the idea for the bird in the cage and the cat about to pounce on it.

  At any rate, the nearly-finished portrait of The Graham Children was in my studio when Jane saw it. Jane w
as in black, like a dowager, a style she had adopted some months ago, when our estrangement had become more fixed. I had noticed, meant to ask her about it, but somehow the time was never right. And forcing the matter may naturally have made the chasm between us even deeper.

  And then Fanny, Jane’s faithful maid, had tried to talk to me, two or three times, about Jane. But somehow I had always been on my way out, or on my way in, or about to paint, or about to visit my masonic lodge, but at any rate too busy to listen. And so I didn’t. Perhaps I did not wish to. I do not know. I just do not know.

  ‘What’s that?’ Jane said, pointing at the picture. She looked odd in black, with her face whey white.

  I did not even know what she was doing in the studio at this time. She did not usually come in when I was painting, unless I was painting her.

  ‘It’s the children of Daniel Graham and Mary,’ I said.

  ‘Look!’ Jane touched the image of baby Thomas, still tacky. ‘That’s what we should have had, one like that. A little boy.’

  ‘Don’t touch! And anyway, nobody’s got him now.’ I was in pain – teeth, guts, my right leg. I knew I was speaking tetchily but was powerless to stop. ‘He’s dead. Little Thomas died. The Grahams wanted him left in the picture. As a memorial.’

  Jane screamed. She beat me on the chest and shoulders with her fists. I felt the force through my thin linen smock. ‘Jane! Jane, have you lost your senses? What ails you, woman?’

  ‘Where are my children?’ she howled, in a strange low hoot. ‘You promised me children. We had a nursery. The servants live in it; it mocks me. You don’t care. You’re my husband. Give me children, you bastard.’ Jane lifted up her skirts with a handful of her petticoats. ‘Give me children now.’

  ‘Jane! Jane, my darling. You are overwrought. You …’

  ‘Do you know what they say about me? The same as they say about any woman who does not give birth for her husband. They say she is cursed. They say she must have sinned. And that is correct, isn’t it, my Billy? That is right. I let you have your way with me in my parents’ own house before we were married and now I must pay for it. I must pay for your damnable lusts, you dirty boy. The lusts you now void over half London. I … I …’ She banged herself in the chest with her fist. ‘I am the one who must pay.’

  I approached her. I tried to touch her shoulder, tenderly. ‘Jane … Jane, I …’

  ‘Don’t come near me. Don’t come near me again. I hate you for what you have done to us.’

  And with that she ran out of the room, running to Fanny who had heard the altercation and had come for her. It was the glance that Fanny shot me as she took Jane from the room that lanced me even more than Jane’s words had done. It was a glance of bitter disappointment.

  9

  EVERY TIME I entered Roubiliac’s coffin of a studio off St Martin’s Lane it seemed to have become smaller, colder, darker and dirtier. This time, I checked the Frenchman’s bed for dead whores on entry, thankfully finding none. I was then engulfed in a passionate, foreign embrace, smelling of sweat, semen and fish.

  A party of the St Martins artists were due at Vauxhall Gardens that evening. I had included Jane among the company, hoping to bring her back to her once cheerful ways. The occasion was the unveiling of Roubiliac’s statue of Handel, the commission which had my hidden hand in it. But the sculptor had insisted on seeing me privately first.

  This, I surmised, was to present the bust of me I had sat for. The role of sitter had not come easily to me. Ever a creature of extremes, as I am aware, I had begun by presenting myself as the world’s best sitter; I sat silent and immobile while Roubiliac worked, until the sculptor complained that this rigidity was changing my features.

  Never content with mediocrity, considering it the absolute monopoly of Hayman-adequate, I then became the world’s worst sitter: jumping about; relieving myself every ten minutes into the sculptor’s already brimming piss pot, with the excuse of a nervous disposition; talking nineteen to the dozen, then insisting on seeing the work in progress.

  Roubiliac coped with both my aspects as sitter with his customary charming equanimity, interesting lips widening a little, those lines in his cheeks deepening a little, eyes a-gleam and a-dance with amusement.

  That was the look on his face now. So I surmised not only that the bust of myself was about to be presented but that Roubiliac knew in his soul, his heart and his viscera that it was good. For artists know, so I believe, in ways beyond mind, when they are fulfilling their destinies in art. And when they are not. I winced as I thought of my portrait of Jane.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ Roubiliac’s face was all falling lines of concern.

  ‘Nothing. Why?’

  ‘Why are you making a funny face?’

  ‘Was I? I was thinking about something.’

  ‘It was bad, wasn’t it? It was a terrible face.’

  I laughed. ‘Yes, it’s bad, all right.’ I may have lost Jane. What could be worse?

  Without another word, Roubiliac took the pace and a half to the end of his bed, then picked up the bust, covered in a piece of dirty coal-sacking. He pulled the sacking away, presenting the bust to me, as if handing a bunch of flowers to a mistress.

  ‘Voila!’

  I arched my aching back, the better to view it, then laughed and cried at the same time. It was sculpted of warm pink terracotta, which in Roubiliac’s hands was as foldable as paper. It was better than I had dared dream. It was better than I knew was possible. It moved. It seemed to breathe. It seemed to think.

  I looked for my forehead-bash, the Finger of God, the sign of the storm upon me, and found it. In my indoor painter’s cap, Roubiliac had returned me to the handsome Hogarth of my own first self-portrait, not the Pug-Hogarth of the second one. Flattering the sitter is never a bad idea. Geniuses do it too; look at van Dyck. There were no arms, there was fancy stuff at collar and tunic fastening.

  But somehow, because of the dynamics of the work, the tension between neck, shoulders and the head as it was turned to the right shoulder, the head appeared to be about to move. I stood there, as Roubiliac showed his own bust to me and waited for my own head to move to look myself in the eye. And then it did. I swear to you, it did. By all that was holy, IT MOVED.

  ‘Roubiliac … You do me great honour.’

  ‘It’s good?’ The Frenchman was smiling.

  ‘No, no, Roubiliac. It’s not good. It’s beyond good. It’s beyond the judgement of the mind. Oh, you clever little Frenchman. You utter bloody genius.’

  I launched myself at the sculptor, embraced him, my head coming up to the Frenchman’s collarbone.

  Then I gave a huge sigh. ‘I must go. I must prepare for your unveiling this evening. Your Handel statue.’

  ‘No!’

  ‘No?’

  ‘Don’t go, William, please. I don’t want to be alone.’

  ‘All right. Come with me. Stay with me all the time until the unveiling. I’ll look after you. Is that what you want?’

  Roubiliac nodded. Then, very faintly, ‘Yes. Please.’

  ‘Very well.’ I looked round the room. The sculptor was wiping his hands on his smock and breeches. ‘Roubiliac, do you actually possess a shirt?’

  We took the wherry across to Vauxhall Stairs, all six of us, making maximum use of my free-entry medal from Jonathan Tyers. There was myself and Jane; the de facto guest of honour, Roubiliac, who had been persuaded into a shirt; Francis Hayman, the big Devon painter, currently at uneasy truce with me, still eating even on a choppy crossing of the Thames; Hubert Gravelot, the French engraver, looking mildly bored; and gentleman George Lambert, as elegant and gracious as ever.

  The crossing, I noted happily, was doing Jane good. There was pink tingeing her cheeks and she laughed, tossing back her head as the wherry pitched and tossed on the waves. She had been persuaded to abandon the black clothes she had affected for months, now wearing worsted stockings, a yellow bonnet, and a becoming green cloak over a new sack-back gown of pink and
yellow chiné French silk. She glanced at me now and again, making me realise that this gesture of hers, once a habit, had stopped some years ago.

  Jonathan Tyers met us at the entrance, sternly supervising the waived payment of a shilling each, tut-tutting as I presented my medal to the gatekeeper, as if such evidence of my high status were superfluous. As Tyers ushered us all through, waving his arms like an admiral flagging a message to a ship of the line, he spoke softly to Roubiliac.

  ‘Your statue of Master Handel is in place, sir. I think you will be happy at its positioning. It can be viewed to advantage. Certainly we at Vauxhall are most happy with it.’

  The Frenchman’s sallow complexion flushed as pretty a pink as his terracotta statues at the compliment. Tyers led the way through a vista of woodland, a contrived plantation sculptured into submission from its wild state by crisscrossing, man-made paths at sharp angles. It was all too tidy for me. I prefer nature to reflect life, in as much as both are an untidy struggle.

  ‘You see those lights?’ I demanded of his audience, waving at the oil lamps, presently unlit. ‘They are illuminations. The word is from lucere to shine. The gardens are indeed most magical and fairy-like when the lights are burning. Tyers, when will the lights be lit?’

  The first fingers of dusk were indeed touching the gardens as I spoke. The unveiling time had been chosen to maximise the size of crowds, yet still leave enough light for Roubiliac’s statue to be viewed to advantage.

  ‘The lights are being lit as we speak, William,’ said Tyers, as we all strolled along down a central pathway. He nodded at a lamplighter with his tapers ahead of us, one of many, as quickly became evident.