by Michael Dean
‘A maudlin whore tearing off the trinkets that her keeper had given her, to fling at his head.’ That was one of the kinder comments my dear friends, especially Hayman-adequate, fell over themselves to bring me.
They criticised me for the painting I had not painted, as well as criticising the one I had painted (a common fate of the artist). They enquired of me in absentia why Tancred was not in the painting. Also, why was Guiscardo absent, apart from his heart? I think this may be the most idiotic criticism ever made in the entire history of art.
And as to what I had painted, my Sigismunda, it seems, bore no resemblance to Sigismunda: ‘No more like Sigismunda than I to Hercules’ ran one of the toothed barbs.
As the number of parodies, mocking criticisms and denigrating quips increased, so my stock and reputation fell. For a while, I took refuge in the notion that these reports were calumnies spread by my enemies. I stationed a man, my faithful footman George Wells, to stand by the painting and tell me what he heard people say. I started to take the picture back to change it to meet their criticisms. I repainted the newly added white sleeves, for example.
But no matter what I did, the stream of ordure continued to pour down on my head. The good George, in his distress, was clearly hiding the worst of the comments from me.
But even what he told me was bad enough.
‘Sir …’ said George, close to tears after some days of his dismal task at the exhibition. ‘May I … could I put forward, do you think, a small opinion of my own?’
Even in my anguish, my torment over Sigismunda, I almost smiled. ‘What is it, George?’
‘Sir, it’s the heart that is causing … the most, well, laughter, sir, to be honest.’
I nodded.
‘Could you not make it smaller, sir? And keep it further away from her front, sir. I hope I’m not speaking out of turn.’
‘No, George, not at all,’ I said warmly. Why should he not be right, after all? He was a clever enough lad. Was his opinion to be discounted because cruel circumstance had given him a lowly station in life?
‘I can see you are right, George,’ I continued. ‘Go and get the painting, now. Take Henry with you. I shall make the alterations you suggest.’
When he left, I sat heavily in my chair, before my easel. Ah yes, the heart, the sacred heart, centre of the spirit. The heart must be reduced in my Sigismunda. Why not? It had already been reduced in me. I wept for a while: feeble, self-pitying tears.
As soon as Sigismunda returned to me, I worked non-stop like a demon, scratching away at what I had done before, sometimes using the handle of the brush for greater speed in this task of destruction.
Then I added more blue for the dress over what had been the top of the heart, even raising the rim of the cup, though this involved repainting the intricate gold-work. It was one of the longest single sessions of painting I have ever attempted, albeit with frequent short stops to sit down.
At the end of it, the brushwork was showing all over the place. It wasn’t smooth and creamy like my Election series. Would I ever be able to paint like that again? I didn’t know and I didn’t care. I had George and Henry restore the still tacky Sigismunda to her place at the exhibition.
Then I took to my bed, a prey to cramps and fevers, vomiting and pains. I knew myself to be very far from well.
But it was all to no avail. Barely hiding their glee, a deputation of artists headed by
Hayman-adequate, but with Roubiliac, happily, absent, came to see me. They informed me that the St Martin’s Lane group was now known as the Society of Artists.
‘First I’ve heard of it,’ I said.
Hayman ignored that and suggested I might like to withdraw Sigismunda from the exhibition, as it reflected badly on the Society of Artists. It was, as he put it, letting them down.
This was my death sentence, as an artist. My renown was on the way to the gibbet sure as the Swiss Gardelle, who I had seen from the window. If the present reviled my art, the future would never know it. It had all been for naught. For naught. The muses on high now mocked me.
I put a brave face on it while they were there. When they had gone, I took to my bed again, unable to stand, hardly able to partake of food without puking it back up almost instantly. I was subject to dizzying fits, pains in the chest, my leg swelled up.
The day after the visit of my confreres I gave them what they required of me and withdrew my Sigismunda from the exhibition. The day after that I discovered that the first meeting of this new Society of Artists had been chaired by John Wilkes.
2
I HAD FORGOTTEN it at the time, but I first met Wilkes long before he turned up on the board of the Foundling Hospital, long before that day when he looked into the depths of my being.
I first met him at those gatherings of the Medmenham Brotherhood, whose debaucheries I now regard with shame, but honesty compels me to admit that I did not do so at the time.
The Brotherhood, so called, met at Medmenham Abbey, under the auspices of Sir Francis Dashwood, who I knew from the Dilettanti Society. Dashwood used to dress as St Francis of Assisi before expressing mocking devotion to any pagan object, sometimes a pig, or more often in the latter stages of the debauch, to an unclothed woman. To my shame, I painted Dashwood as St Francis, a work I have repeatedly tried to buy back and destroy.
Oh, how my life mocks me! My glorious progress paintings, the Rake and the Harlot, consumed in flame, but this shameful daub of Dashwood lives on despite my attempts to wipe it from the face of the earth. And I was paid for it in debauchery, too: paid in women. Is the pain I now feel over every inch of my body enough recompense for that?
I sigh, I groan, but nothing assuages the pain. There is nobody I can confide in now, hence the device of these autobiographical notes I am presently writing. But at any rate, to return to the matter in hand, Dashwood, at that time, appeared able to have his way with any woman he saw, or any man come to that, even without the laudanum that flowed like wine at these bacchanalia.
And this … this terrible facility, this way with him was shared in equal measure by Wilkes. Wilkes used to boast, back then, that after ten minutes of his conversation any woman would forget his ugliness. And it was true. He was stroking my face as he said it, inducing that terrible somnolence which so saps the will.
That is why, when I saw him that day at the meeting of the Court of Governors of the Foundling Hospital, I shook my head like a wet dog, occasioning some laughter all round, to keep myself from his out of his powers.
But at a later meeting, once again in the ornate surroundings of the court room at the Foundling Hospital, with my Captain Coram and my Moses and Pharoah’s Daughter proudly on display on the wall, I was able to take my revenge. Or so I thought at the time.
This time, I knew he would be there, so I had prepared myself to meet those pale blue eyes, so sure of their power to assert his will and way. In the event, I avoided them, looking steadfastly down at the huge oak table, but that served my purpose. I was able to defy him, indeed to accuse him.
The mood of the meeting was against me from the start, however, as Wilkes had come dressed in gay and fantastical dress: yellow and red quartered motley, like some medieval court jester, occasioning much laughter.
He was also constantly stooping to fondle two dogs he had brought with him, who lay under the table. These he addressed as Dido and Pompey, proceeding to direct much of his discourse at them, his face upside down, to the hilarity of his twenty or so fellow governors, seated round the table, under Bedford’s presidency.
Indeed, before we had even got started, he let fly one of his famous quips, later much quoted as an example of his wit. One of our fellow governors, Sir Joseph Eyles, if I recall correctly, was attempting to get Wilkes to account for a balance of £10 due to him from the Aylesbury accounts, as audited by one Walden Hanmer. Eyles, if it was Eyles, was doing this in a conversational manner before the meeting proper had begun. Wilkes resolutely stared ahead of himself, refusing to reply
.
Finally Eyles, if it was Eyles – it may have been the Duke of Bolton, my Lavinia’s paymaster, making one of his last appearances before he killed himself – at any rate, whoever it was cried out in frustration ‘Wilkes, you will either die on the gallows or of the pox.’
To which Wilkes replied, ‘That must depend on whether I embrace his lordship’s principles or his mistress.’
There was an explosion of laughter round the table.
And it was against this background that I waved to Bedford to give me the word, on the same subject: Wilkes’s stewardship of the Foundling Hospital’s money.
Parliament had voted £70,000 for the branch hospitals and, although one Dancer was nominally Master of the Aylesbury Hospital, Wilkes, as Aylesbury branch treasurer, had complete control of his branch’s allocation of those funds.
Now, Jane, as an inspector for the Foundling Hospital, had visited the Aylesbury branch and met Robert Neale, the secretary, who appeared to be one of the few people Wilkes ever dealt with who was not completely in thrall to him.
Neale told Jane that Wilkes was drawing money to pay tradesmen, but then not paying them. Wilkes was even claiming more money than originally was allocated, causing such confusion that the chairman there, Hanmer, produced false minutes of a meeting, which the honest Neale refused to sign.
At the time of Jane’s visit to Aylesbury, Wilkes was absent, at which I confess I felt some relief. Jane, however, encouraged Neale to produce a full account, with figures and chapter and verse. This account, in effect accusing Wilkes of embezzlement, was on the table in front of me. Bolton knew about it from Lavinia, in whom I often confided, indeed she was a great solace to me in every way. Of the others round the table, I believe only Martin Folkes was in the know, he being much involved with the daily administration.
I had tried my best, assisted by Jane and indeed by Lavinia, who was surprisingly good with figures, to master my brief, the document from Robert Neale damning Wilkes, but I must admit my earlier aptitude for numbers was deserting me as I grew older. However, I loudly sucked in air, rapped on the table, took a last glance at Neale’s report and resolved to do my best.
‘Gentlemen!’ I said. ‘I wish to present a document concerning the financial affairs of the Aylesbury branch.’
As I stood to address the assembled Court of Governors of the Foundling Hospital, aristocracy and gentry to a man now that they had thrown poor dead Thomas Coram out of his own life’s work, all memory of the document accusing Wilkes fled from my mind. I was left with a dizziness in my empty head and a pain in the leg.
‘Gentlemen, I am informed by Mr Neale of Aylesbury that the money demanded by creditors … by tradespersons and so on, was not paid, though charged as paid, and many other articles charged as paid by Mr Wilkes appear not to have been paid, and that he knew it when he made up and transcribed the accounts to the hospital at London …’
There was a buzz of talk round the table, tending to a hostile tone. I scanned the faces around me, reading them, as I have done all my life. But I must say that I have never before encountered a gathering, among whom I am usually made welcome, where I could read so much anger against me on the phizes – with some bewilderment, perhaps, lacing it. Bolton showed some sympathy for me, along with Peter Burrell and James Cook, the merchants, but scant others.
Wilkes himself was not at all disquieted. He smiled thinly at me, touched his top lip with his tongue, then bent to scratch the ear of one of his dogs. He stayed folded over like that, in his fancy dress, occasioning more and more mirth.
Finally, bent almost upside down, he muttered into the ear of one of the dogs, ‘What’s this fellow on about, Dido, eh? He’s a strange little fellow, isn’t he?’
The dog obligingly growled, occasioning yet more merriment, whereupon Wilkes gave a loud bark, causing the other dog to bark back. The laughter round the table was by now considerable.
I said, ‘There is a sum of £445 received by the Aylesbury committee for which they have given no credit in account with the hospital at London.’
There was absolutely no reply to this, so I went on, remembering that Jane had dinned into me that we had a watertight case against Wilkes. I began, indeed, to read out the list of creditors who Wilkes was supposed to have paid, but had not.
‘Thomas Roger, £4 13s 8d; James Lee, £36 11s 1d; James Austin £2 16s 2d …’
This, of course, was tedious in the extreme to hear. Bedford, in the chair, eventually waved a green silk arm, languorously bringing me to a halt.
Wilkes finally made a great show of pulling himself upright, puffing theatrically at his exertion at having been half upside down. He spoke in a high, confident, though bored sounding voice:
‘At the hospital in Walton Street, in Aylesbury, we have from the beginning sought the care of the mothers as well as the children. From the beginning, I say. I refer this committee to the minutes of the committee at Aylesbury, chaired by Walden Hanmer, this last January.’
Wilkes stared at me. I sat down rather heavily. Wilkes piped on, ‘Are the benefits of this charity to be limited to children exposed and deserted, that are left naked on Salisbury Plain or a dunghill?’
This drew a murmur of agreement, my ramblings about tradesmen’s accounts already fading into the background.
And on he went, the devil: ‘I maintain that a mother dying from want with her infant at her breast is an exposed and deserted case. Are we living under the dispensations of Christianity and yet we cripple our notions of charity?’
The idea, vaguely, was that the missing money had somehow found its way to the indigent mothers, for which there was not a shred of evidence, in the accounts or anywhere else. Nevertheless, the meeting was clearly with Wilkes. There was silence round the table, all eyes on him, spellbound, or so it seemed, under his hex. Even his two dogs had ceased from growling, barking or snuffling around.
Wilkes continued to look straight at me with those deadly, pale blue eyes. I squirmed in my seat, afraid and excited. When his eyes left mine and rose to a point above my head I was so relieved I would thankfully have abandoned my case and my cause then and there, if, that is, there had been anything left of it.
He had been speaking a while longer before I realised that those deadly eyes were in fact fixated upon my own painting, behind my head.
‘Let us learn from Hogarth’s picture of Moses and Pharoah’s daughter,’ he was saying. ‘Let us fall back upon ancient times and take a lesson from the heathen maid.’
To my shame, I felt gratitude at his public approbation of my picture. The meeting moved on. I fell silent, no longer listening. I was shaking slightly and felt an urgent desire to piss, long before I summoned the strength to stand and take a piss pot into the corner of the room.
By the time I finished with this, the meeting, too, was finishing. As we all crowded out, Wilkes banged into me with the appearance of an accident. With his dogs behind him, with his hand squeezing my shoulder, he whispered in my ear:
‘I am your enemy now, Hogarth. I am your fiend and your nemesis. By the time I am finished with you, little man, there will be nothing left of you.’
And that is exactly what came to pass.
So … So, how did it start? I become tired easily these days, spending more and more of the day asleep. And naturally I am becoming forgetful. However, I cannot forget that I am becoming forgetful, as Jane insists on reminding me, as a small part of the daily catechism of my faults she insists on treating me to.
So, how did it start? I believe … My post as Serjeant Painter to the King meant little to me. Oh, I can see Jane’s reaction when she reads those words. That lifting of the eyebrows, that pursing of the lower lip.
All right, then, I had drudged my lines and my colours all my life to reach such an accolade, of course I had to defend it. And that meant pleasing the king, which in turn meant pleasing the king’s allies, notably the Whig faction led by Bute. This was congenial enough to me in any case, as I opposed the lates
t war against the French, their policy. Why should we lose the finest of our red-blooded young men merely for the benefit of contractors in the armaments industry?
This view brought me into disputation at many masonic lodges and many clubs, but most notably, for what was later to happen to me, with the toad-eater and supposed poet Charles Churchill, at the Nonsense Club, in Drury Lane.
Arguing with Churchill was like disputing with a building with a cannon at each window. His huge frame towered over you while spits of fire hit you from every angle and height, high and low. At this time, his wife was about to leave him, taking with her, or so it seemed, what little scruple about humanity the toad-eater had left.
Ostensibly, our disputes centred on the Tory William Pitt, his wish to attack the Spanish fleet before Spain allied with France and suchlike matters. But in reality any disagreement with the toad-eater ended up with him trying to destroy you, to burn your flesh until you were no more.
Churchill had lately become deputy editor of the North Briton, a journal edited by Wilkes. He had known Wilkes for years, from the time of their debauches together at Medmenham. And so the circle of fire was complete. I had made enemies of the two most dangerous men in London. And my enemies were already allies.
I then compounded my folly by producing the first and last political print of my life, unless you count painting the ridiculous Tory Bubb Dodington in Chairing the Member, part of my Election series. I only did that because the fat oaf had snubbed me at the inquiry into prison conditions when I was young, and anyway I got away with it.
Where was I? When I digress these days, I always forget where I started from. Oh yes, I did an engraving supporting the Bute faction, opposing Pitt, and so, as some saw it, challenging both Wilkes and Churchill. Entitled Time, the engraving had the biggest print run I have ever ordered, four thousand. It sold well.
My Time engraving showed the war as a fire consuming many buildings. One building represented France and Spain united, another Germany, and so on. I had Pitt, looking ridiculous on stilts, fanning the fire. I had Britain as a fire engine with the royal crest, putting the fire out, with the king heroically extinguishing the fire, just as his troops had tried to do when my mother was burned to death, and nobody tried to do when my Harlot series and my Rake series were consumed in flame.
