I, Hogarth

by Michael Dean

  I led the way past artfully created groves, from where came the faint sounds of a fiddle and a Jew’s harp. We came across a Chinese temple where visitors were dining in supper boxes, regaled by an orchestra playing Dido and Aeneas out of tune.

  Tyers then overtook me, leading us past a Turkish tent held aloft by Doric and Ionic columns, and by now lit by no fewer than five massive chandeliers. Then on through a series of arches to an artificial waterfall, which clearly afforded Tyers much pleasure and pride.

  We diverted to see the art on display at the supper boxes. Indeed, the art was not only on display but tacitly on sale, though prices would be brazenly added only later. All this was my idea. Who else?

  And very pleased with the result I was, too. My Four Times of the Day was displayed to advantage. The paintings had already been sold to one Baker for over £40, and a set of the four plates in their first state for more than £6. Jane had praised the series, too. What more could a man want?

  Well, actually there was something more, and this early evening time at Vauxhall Gardens duly provided it: Hayman-adequate pictures, clumps of them, hung side by side with the Hogarths. The implicit comparison was cruel to Hayman. There was no doubt of the inferiority of works by the big Devon man to those of the great, small Pug Hogarth, the illuminator (not satirist, please, I have never liked the term) of our times.

  There was a Hayman-adequate called May Day, showing three female figures stiffly cavorting in front of a young fellow with something strange on his head, while an old man with apparently no legs played the fiddle supported by a crutch.

  Country Dancers Round a Maypole showed more of Hayman-adequate’s stiff figures dancing round a maypole, despite the apparent rheumatic condition affecting nearly everyone he painted upright. I found myself grinning with delight and failing to hide my joy or the source of it from Hayman. Our brief cessation of hostilities was at an end, as I was to discover to my cost some years later.

  We made our way to the Great Grove, where the statue was to be unveiled.

  Roubiliac followed close after me, drawing level with me and touching my arm all the time. He kept looking at me, almost pleadingly.

  When we reached the Great Grove a crowd was gathered in the rotunda, round a life-size statue with white cloth draped over it. Tyers ran up the stairs, placing himself in front of the statue before addressing the throng.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your patience. This is a great day for Vauxhall Gardens, one of the greatest since the old Spring Gardens opened some seventy-seven years ago. Since then the Gardens have been a home to many sorts of pleasure …’ That was received with a knowing laugh. ‘But never before have we played host to such great art. And I am delighted to say that the creator of this art is here with us today. Ladies and gentleman, a welcome Frenchman in our midst. Mr Louis-Francois Roubiliac.’

  There was a decent round of applause for Roubiliac, with me smacking my hands together vigorously and Jane smiling at the sculptor as she decorously clapped. Roubiliac had told Tyers he did not want to make a speech, but now looked terrified in case the owner of the gardens had forgotten. Again, he kept looking at me, and touching my arm.

  But without further preamble, Tyers gave the cloth over Roubiliac’s statue of Handel a vigorous yank, and there, carved from a single block of marble, was the work for all to see.

  And what a work of wonder it was. As ever with great art, I took in the whole before any of the parts. It was like being thrown in the air. George Frideric Handel, who I knew well enough, was embodied in marble before me, sitting with one leg crossed over the other so his body formed an ‘S’ curve of utterly moving beauty. The pose was audacity of the highest order, the execution a triumph.

  No dead copying this, such as I had so often inveighed against, as artists aped other artists down the centuries. No Hayman-adequate meeting of lazy expectation. This was new. This showed viewers something they didn’t know they knew. Gone the stiffness plaguing the art of the day, gone the rigidity, gone even the formality.

  I glanced at Jane as tears streamed down my cheeks. Then I glanced at Roubiliac, who was also crying. Then a step forwards, almost stumbling. I clumsily knelt at the feet of the statue, oblivious to the crowd cheering and braying. I reverently kissed the plinth.

  ‘Oh, Roubiliac! Roubiliac, this is sublime!’

  10

  THE TOPSY-TURVY DAY was my idea; it is a day when the master and mistress of the house become servants and the servants are the masters, or at least are waited upon in the manner of masters.

  Jane had liked the idea from the beginning. She regarded it as a sort of running jape or jest, as did Fanny the maid when she was told. Over the decades, mistress and maid had become like equal friends, with Fanny spending hours chatting to Jane so spontaneously that she hardly realised she was talking. Her work had limited itself to dressing Jane, helping supervise the shopping and running the household when Jane was away or indisposed.

  The two women had even grown to resemble one another, Fanny taking on more than a little of Jane’s stout build. The once pert face was now pouched with flesh, the flush at the cheeks crossed with thin red lines. They finished each other’s sentences as they chatted, reducing nature’s barriers between them to the point where, in my view, a Topsy-Turvy Day would show little difference in their manner with each other.

  Of the two other female servants, the housemaid, Sarah Young, had the most to gain from the brief break from work of a Topsy-Turvy Day, as her health was so poor that some of the more cruel establishments would long ago have had the butler show her the door.

  The consumption never really left her. She had overcome the smallpox, however, after we sent her to the Pancras hospital. Poor Sarah Young had also taken to her bed, over the years, with bouts of thrush, dropsy and, especially in the winter, bronchitis.

  The cook, one Mrs Parsons, was a healthier specimen than Sarah, indeed it would be hard to find anyone in the whole of London who was not, but of all the Leicester Fields household she was the least enthusiastic about Topsy-Turvy Day.

  ‘Meaning no disrespect, madam,’ as she bobbed a curtsey to illustrate the point, ‘but I don’t want nobody among my utensils, not even you, as owns them, I suppose. I shall never be able to find a thing afterwards.’

  Jane laughed and swore by all the culinary gods to put everything back just as she had found it.

  So much, then, for the three women. Of the three men servants, the boy second footman, Charles Mahon, was the most pleased by the coming day. Jane had hired Charles Mahon, I had nothing to do with it. The boy’s father had just died; he would like as not have starved, or been driven to thieving, and the rest of his family with him. At odd moments Jane had taught him to read, then to write. She had arranged for Henry Tompion to teach him his figures, with a view to one day helping with the household accounts. The boy worshipped Jane.

  The day appointed for Topsy-Turvy Day was a bright clear Monday. I had no idea that the servants got up at two in the morning, to start the washing and cleaning chores, but was relieved to discover that this applied to the maids only, whose place Jane would be taking. The butler and footmen arose somewhat later.

  So while I slumbered, Jane laced herself into her stays, indignantly refusing help from Sarah Young and Fanny, and sleepily began on Sarah’s first task of the day, the polishing of all the household’s door locks with an oily rag and rottenstone.

  This accomplished, Jane flushed red and expected praise, but as Fanny and Sarah warmed to their roles, she received none. A bellows was thrust into her hand by a newly-fierce Fanny, with which Jane was set to blowing the dust off the stucco work and all the paintings, most of them by her father and the Old Slaughter artists – my own stayed in the studio until they were sold. This was a task she rather enjoyed, resolving to ask Sarah if she may undertake it now and again on days that were not topsy turvy.

  Sarah sneaked off to empty the chamber pots, utterly unable to let Jane, who she unashamedly loved
, undertake the task. Meanwhile, Jane was distracted by Fanny showing her how to polish all the wooden floors with a long-handled hard brush and herbs.

  Jane was delighted at her success at this task, neither Sarah nor Fanny telling her that the hard part had not yet been started. The floors required another sweeping when the herbs had dried and another hard polishing until they shone like mahogany. The servants intended to do all that later.

  The indulgent Sarah and Fanny then let Jane trundle a mop over the kitchen floor, clean some of the windows from the inside only, and fumigate the drawing room with brimstone against the bugs which infested it. Jane was eager to do more, but Fanny gently pointed it that it was now past the mid-morning hour at which breakfast was normally served.

  By now, the footmen, the butler and the maids were up and about, as was I.

  ‘Well, Henry,’ I said to the butler, ‘what is the first task of the day?

  Eh? Let me be the humblest footman. Young Charles, here,’ I indicated the grinning

  Charles Mahon, ‘what is my first task?’

  ‘To attend to the wishes and needs of callers and guests, sir.’

  ‘But we haven’t got any callers and guests. It’s too early.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  This exchange took place in the drawing room. Meanwhile, Jane was helping Mrs Parsons with breakfast, the cook having flatly refused to let the mistress do it alone.

  There was an escabeche, some of which had been cunningly kept back by Mrs Parsons from yesterday’s dinner; Mrs Parsons, like every cook in London, was adept at planning ahead. Even the choice of escabeche, not so much because it was fish but because it was served cold, had been made for dinner with the following day’s topsy-turvy breakfast in mind.

  As Mrs Parsons well knew, I would have cried havoc at merely fish being on offer at breakfast, so there had to be some leftover cuts of prime purple beef for me, too. Jane was allowed to make the morning chocolate.

  After that, Topsy Turvy Day came to a halt for a while until I received a caller, in my role of footman. It was the playwright Henry Fielding: former sow-gelder, former hackney writer, one of the tallest men in London and certainly, in my view, the one with the biggest nose London had ever seen, bar none. Certainly, as a painter, I delighted in exaggerating the already enormous proboscis in my drawings of the scribe, until the imposing organ resembled the prow of a Roman galleon.

  Fielding entirely failed to notice my temporary role as footman, assuming that I opened the door himself because I happened to be passing in the hall. Thereafter, we walked off together, both delightedly aware of the contrast between the smallest artist in London moving in the shadow of the tallest. (As well as the one with the biggest nose.)

  We – playwright and painter – talked in the drawing room, the subject of Topsy Turvy Day being well received by Fielding, who had recently married his maid. We talked delightedly and lubriciously about sex with servants until the appearance of the footman, George Wells, reminded me that I had forgotten about Topsy Turvy Day.

  I immediately leaped up, seized Wells, forced the alarmed footman into the armchair I had just vacated and commanded him to continue his discussion about sex with servants with the large-nosed playwright. I myself, meanwhile, fetched two bottles of North Country Pale Ale, with which I hoped to refresh the footman and the playwright.

  On returning with the drinks, I realised that the demands of Topsy Turvy Day required me to depart, beerless, after the ‘master’ had been served, so missing all Fielding’s best stories about tupping Mary Daniel, the housemaid now the present Mrs Fielding.

  A wave of irritation spread through me. I felt it rising quickly to my familiar hot anger. George Wells spotted it immediately; all the servants could read my face far better than I could read theirs, avid student of physiognomy though I was. The footman leaped up with a quick-thinking ‘I’m away to the studio to paint a portrait.’

  To roars of laughter from Fielding, the servant fled the drawing room, allowing me to resume my conversation over beer, which naturally tasted all the sweeter for being thwarted in the drinking of it for a few seconds.

  Topsy Turvy Day reached its apotheosis at the main meal of the day, in the late afternoon. As we had planned and discussed, Jane and I served all the servants a splendid repast, as the six of them sat at the dining room table.

  As all the food was, as ever, set out in side dishes on the long dresser in the dining

  room, strictly speaking, no service was required at all, but this made the master and mistress’s solicitous enquiries as to exactly what the servants required all the more poignant.

  Fanny, not averse to tucking in on a huge scale, nevertheless required Jane to eat with her.

  ‘This is all well and good madam, I mean Jane, but I shan’t enjoy a mouthful if you’re not eating.’

  Jane saw the sense in this and ate from the chafing dishes with a knife and spoon, while standing up. Previously starving in the sight of plenty, I gratefully did the same, helping myself to wine and beer, too.

  As eating, or indeed any endeavour in company, was impossible for me without singing, I led the assembled company in a rendition of The Ode on Saint Cecilia’s Day.

  At this point, Sarah Young started to cry, and the faithful Fanny, digging her in the ribs in protest, was not far from tears herself.

  Mrs Parsons began a strange hissing at Henry Tompion, while raising both hands as if enjoining him to take off from his seat in flight. The good butler flushed red from emotion and beef. And then the youngest of all the company, the boy Charles Mahon, rose a little unsteadily.

  ‘Mr Hogarth, sir. Mrs Hogarth, madam. Mr Tompion has a few words he would like to say to you both.’

  The young footman resumed his seat. Henry Tompion rose ponderously, his short upper lip, as ever, failing to cover his top teeth.

  ‘Master, madam. On behalf … The servants have asked me to say that we never … There is no better master and madam in all London. In all England. We wish you every joy. Sir. Madam. And we wish you to sit and join us at this meal.’

  As Henry Tompion sat heavily, the round-faced, white-foreheaded Mrs Parsons led a round of clapping. I began to cry. I remembered Richard, my father. I remembered the hungry dinners of my youth in Spitalfields. I wanted to feed not only our servants but all the many brave and beautiful folk who deserved it.

  Fanny stood, tenderly embraced Jane and kissed her on the cheek. She led her mistress to a place next to her and sat her down like a child. Half-protesting, I was placed at the head of the table.

  ‘Thank you,’ I said, still crying.

  ‘Three cheers for Mr and Mrs Hogarth,’ called out Charles Mahon. ‘Hip, hip …’

  ‘Hooray!’

  ‘Hip, hip!’

  ‘Hooray!’

  ‘Hip, hip!’

  ‘Hooray!’

  A few days after Topsy Turvy Day, I painted the servants. I knew I would never sell it, there would be no buyers and in any case I did not wish any. So, free from the constraints of trade, I could do what I liked.

  The faces of six servants, hardly even a Dutch-style tondo, really just the heads, but in those heads six lives and all they contain, forever. In the middle, as befits his age and status, good Henry Tompion. Kindly, the man was. A little distrait. Hair to his shoulders. Forehead wide. That short upper lip failing to cover his teeth forever.

  Flanking and ahead of him, on his right, the faithful Fanny, who would have quietly and uncomplainingly laid down her life for my Jane, because that was how things were. She would have counted herself fortunate in the opportunity. Fanny is shown in her white bonnet. Serious. Ready for the next task.

  Also in her white bonnet, on the other side of Henry Tompion, we see Sarah Young, rendered just a little prettier than she is. Wide lustrous eyes. She still loves me, I am her only love. And I love her, too, in my way. At least, I am greatly fond of her.

  Behind Fanny, the cook, Mrs Parsons. Of all of them, she is the one whose gaze migh
t boldly look out to meet the viewer’s. But it doesn’t. I decided against it. None of them meet the viewer’s gaze, even though Fanny and Sarah are facing squarely forwards. It indicates humility. It shows a life of service, a life for others, willingly given because they met kindness in return.

  The two figures at the back were young Charles Mahon, at the top of the painting, and the oldest of them, the footman George Wells. The boy has learned wariness on a still unformed face. His hair is cut short at the front but reaches down over his ears at the sides and to his collar at the back, giving him a hint of freedom in his aspect. The pursed lips hint at a sensuality to come.

  And over it all, to the right, the biggest head, old George Wells, bleached bland by life, worn like a poor man’s sole calico shirt, but still a decent man: still quietly holding to standards part given by his Presbyterian principles, part learned, part coming from wherever good comes from, which no man knows but all give thanks for.

  Ironically, the only touch of dash, in the subdued yellows and browns of the servants’ garb, is a quick froth of impasto white at old George’s throat, at the knot of his scarf. And do you know why that is there? Because the composition needs it. Not everything has a reason. Some things just are, because the picture requires it.

  11

  WE DECIDED to buy a villa in the country. The summer of 1749 was an unremitting blaze of heat, burning every blade of grass brown, shrivelling all but the hardiest of trees. Now, I am a quintessential Englishman and that means I detest excess in the weather, heat as much as cold.

  Yet another reason for this partial escape from the London which had cosseted, coddled and shaped me all my life, was the beginning of a decline in my health, most especially the running sore on my leg, which now refused to stop bleeding, let alone heal, and was oblivious to mercury, leeches and all other medication to close it up.

  Chiswick it was then, a villa in Chiswick, in addition to, not instead of, the house at Leicester Fields. The last house in the village, rented for £10 the year. It lay just a few miles upriver from London by wherry, Chiswick did: a toehold in the countryside, yet not far from the malting houses.