by DM Bryan
What can Sarah say to such a preface? The gentleman is opposed to pictures? Has he forgotten who he is? In her head she plans words, the beginning of a long speech of respectful beggary, entreaty, correction, but instead she finds herself listing her interlocutor’s works. His rushed, partial style of speaking is catching.
“Your Harlot, sir,” says she, “your Rake, your Apprentices, idle and active, your Beggar’s Opera, your saintly Captain Thomas Coram.” Sarah stops for a breath. “Your Marriage-a-la-mode, your Four Times of Day, your Stages of Cruelty. Your Gin Lane and Beer Street.”
Hogarth nods and smiles. “You have seen them all?” he says.
“I possess a great book at home, and I have bound up new works as I am able to find them.”
“Very good,” says Hogarth. “You are a collector.”
“But, forgive me, Mr. Hogarth, I could not collect if you did not first venture into pictures—the very activity you say you oppose.”
“Nay,” says the old man, “I am not opposed to my venturing. I am opposed to the futile enterprise of others.”
“But,” says Sarah, “But.”
“Nay madam. I have too long scraped, and toiled, and suffered the indifferent lot of the artist to wish it upon any other. How often I have entertained young men, here in this very room, whose parents ask—nay, beg—me to accept their sons as apprentices. I turn them away, Mrs. Scott—that’s what I do.” Hogarth stops and scratches his chin. “Have I offered you coffee?” says he.
“No, sir,” says Sarah, “you have not.”
Hogarth leans over and stiffly manipulates the bell pull. “Do you like my room?” he says, while they wait for the girl to bring refreshment. “Jane, my wife, decorated it for me when we first came to this house. She put Thornhills on the walls.” Hogarth pulls a face and looks at Sarah for her reaction. He scowls when she provides none.
“Forgive me, Mrs. Scott, but I do not know your books. I have read Mr. Fielding’s work, Mr. Richardson’s, and Mr. Sterne’s, but I do not know yours. My wife reads rather more than I do.”
“I am not so much read as those authors you have mentioned, but my readers sometimes write my publisher to say my tales are not without their modest pleasures,” says Sarah.
“Oh yes, that’s exactly what Jenny said—your books are very proper. My pictures, you know, are not always what they ought to be. I am not the first person to say so.”
The girl enters the silent room, bringing coffee in a tall silver pot. The cups are very fine, but old and a little cracked. Mr. Hogarth pours. Sarah remembers, too late, that she does not like coffee. And when she leans forward to take the cup, the portmanteau slips from her lap.
“What’s that?” says Hogarth. He does not seem to remember that this is not a social call.
“I had hoped,” says Sarah, “to show it to you.” She realizes she must take charge of this interview or go home.
“Ah,” says Hogarth, sipping his coffee. The liquid is hot, and he makes another face. At least Sarah hopes it is on account of the heat that he grimaces and glowers.
“You have been kind enough to see me, sir,” she says. “I have come all the way from Bath to consult with you, and you have been good enough to drink coffee with me. My scheme, sir—I do not wish to become an artist.”
“Ah,” says Hogarth, holding up a finger. “I am very glad to hear you say so. Unsuitable employment for a gentleman, and for a lady—well.”
“I wish to raise funds for a charitable community—women caring for other women. In order to do so, I intend to produce a series of prints, elegantly engraved, suitable for framing. Purchased by subscription.”
“Subscription? Nay,” says Hogarth. “You’ll do nothing that way. The vogue for printed pictures is done.”
Sarah sips her coffee. “I do have friends. And I had hoped to advertise in the newspapers—like yourself.”
“Newspapers? Do you not see what they say of me in the broadsheets? Vulgar verse, caricatures. Jane will not let me see ’em, but I manage … I manage.”
“I would be advised by you Mr. Hogarth, and I have come to London entirely for that purpose. A recommendation for a suitable engraver. Or, guidance on placing advertisements.”
“Advice,” says Hogarth, putting his hands together. “I know engravers.”
“I require one with a charitable heart—at least until my scheme finds its feet.”
“I will not recommend a man unless you can pay him.”
“And I shall pay him, as soon as the prints begin to sell.”
Sarah wishes to say more, but Hogarth cuts her off. He says, “Have you any interest in signboards, Mrs. Scott?”
Sarah has never asked herself this question and has no answer, but Hogarth does not need one. “They are the original English art,” he tells her. “So much communicated with a single line. A tone or a shade. A glance from a painted face. Oh, I love a good signpost, and so should you, Mrs. Scott. If you enjoy a little foolishness, why then, you must go to the Sign-painter’s Exhibition. There you will see a great deal of English art that will cheer your heart, madam—I am as certain as there are three of us in this room.”
Three? Does he include the dog, Sarah wonders?
“This exhibit exposes my way of working to the world, for sign-painters paint signs, and I paint sign-painters’ signs—that is all I have ever done, ha! Will you promise to go, Mrs. Scott?”
“Alas, I am to leave London almost immediately, Mr. Hogarth.”
“What a shame. You will miss a present-day wonder, madam, for signposts teach us about ourselves. We live in an age of combination and amalgamation, madam. We moderns are alive to variation because we know the pattern so well. We need a little difference to sustain us. And it does! Each new version is a world entire. Do you agree, Mrs. Scott?”
Sarah does. But Hogarth’s volubility has emptied her of words.
The dog awakes and climbs to his feet. He stretches and yawns, and then he jumps up beside Sarah. Sarah puts out her hand so that her fingers might be sniffed before she employs them in rubbing the snub-nosed creature behind his ears. A moment later, a soft grunting signals the pug’s approval.
“So you think,” says the old man, watching the animal a little jealously, Sarah thinks, “the world rewards my daring?”
“I said so in my letter.” She seems to remember writing that. She is, she realizes, very tired. No aching head, but a layered sadness. But for the feel of the pug’s fur under her fingers, she might succumb to melancholy.
“The world cares little for my daring,” says Hogarth, “My reward has been to be mocked and parodied. I am the subject of satire and faint praise. Even my defenders cavil. It is a very hard fate to live on in the heads of others.”
Sarah tries to think of what she might say in reply. The differences between them appear vast.
“You are a good woman, Mrs. Scott,” says Hogarth, mistaking her silence for something else. “I find I will view the contents of that leather case, after all. You may produce your designs for us, and I will help you, if I can.”
Hogarth’s pug rolls like a boat on a wave as Sarah rises from the sofa. Taking her portmanteau to Hogarth’s desk, she removes her precious drawings and sets them before the artist. He asks her to open the heavy curtains. Grey light fills the little room.
Hogarth looks over her pictures, pulling one after another toward him. He stares. He squints. He scowls. At last, he pushes away the pages, and passes a hand over his eyes.
“I do not understand what these are,” he says.
Sarah explains. “My drawings give the outlines of rooms and show what will go inside. I have seen such pictures by William Kent in books.”
“Yes yes,” says Hogarth, “but Kent’s renderings do not look like this. What is this here?”
“It is a cheese. The product of that shed.”
&
nbsp; “And here?”
“The odor of gammon.”
“And in the margins?”
Sarah cannot believe the great Hogarth does not understand what lies at the edges of her page, but she seeks to explain. “There I draw such things as do not enter into my buildings but are necessarily part of their construction.”
“Such as?”
“Here, I have drawn a rake and a slipper, and over here I sketch a bumper poured in celebration of this lady’s ruin.”
“You have made the figures very curiously. They appear stemmed and lobed about the head.”
Sarah says nothing. She remembers her glimpse of the sketches on that desk—the nude. She says, “I have heard it said that you yourself mistake the human figure.”
Hogarth looks first surprised and then frowns mightily. He says, “When I was younger I did err sometimes in my proportions. I had only the artistic training a man receives in learning to silversmith.”
“And I was taught to render flowers very exactly, as a lady should.”
Hogarth bends his head closer to the page, frowning still. “Yes,” he says, “I see what you mean. Your technique is best suited to petal and leaf. Put them away.”
While Sarah restores her work to the portmanteau, she returns to the topic of a subscription. She intends, she tells him, to run an announcement in the papers, according to his model. “My drawings are highly moral,” she says, “and the scheme likewise. I will sell prints by the series, just as you do.”
“No,” says Hogarth. “These drawings are ill-formed and ugly. Your prints will not sell. My Jane says you have a talent for novel-writing, Mrs. Scott, but you have little aptitude for art.”
“I disagree.”
Hogarth’s face twists angrily. Sarah can see he is not used to contradiction, but he passes a hand over his forehead, smoothing signs of irritation. He tries again: “If your aims are truly philanthropic, I would imagine your sister better positioned to assist you than the print-buying public. I understand Mrs. Edward Montagu is patroness to Mr. Adams, or is it Mr. Stuart now? Such talented men might be persuaded to undertake an architectural design on your behalf.”
Sarah ignores him. She will not discuss Elizabeth. She will not discuss charity to herself. He has not understood her. With care, she takes up each drawing and replaces it in her portmanteau. She fastens the lid, and sets down the leather case. Planting her feet, she says, “Mr. Hogarth, your work—nay, your Harlot has a life of her own. How often have I seen her in the street? I glimpse her bonnet in a crowd, her cape in a doorway, her fingers upon a burnished pew. She led me to believe you and I would recognize one another, but we do not, sir. And I am sorry to have taken up your time. Please do not trouble yourself to rise.”
Then she exits the room.
e
On the stairs leading down to the street, Sarah looks out at Leicester Square. Expecting to see harlots laughing, pointing at her, she looks hard in the face of every person passing, but she sees no whores. Only respectable-looking people go by, walking arm-in-arm, exercising dogs.
Sarah tries to imagine a scene from Hogarth’s pen as an end to her tale. On the illustrated page of her mind the artist examines one of her drawings, his face etched with enthusiasm. He reaches for his pen, pushing aside the unpleasant, despairing sketches that fill his desk. He draws, designing—what? The frontispiece for their published prospectus. She bids the illustrated Hogarth exult, raise the paper to the skies, but she cannot make him move. Cross-hatched and flat, he bleaches. And no wonder—what work by Hogarth has ever ended happily? No, he always concludes in funerals and murders, suicides and hangings.
Oh, she should never have come to London. On the step, Sarah puts her hands to her eyes, rubs hard. When she brings her fingers away, her lids ache. Leicester Square blurs, but there is the house she shared with her husband, George Scott. Who will forgive her? Not Barbara, who cannot see the fault. Despite the moralizing, Mr. Hogarth’s prints show great generosity to those who slip—she’d pinned so much hope on that.
She’d been better off seeking absolution from the pug, thinks Sarah Robinson Scott.
Behind her, a voice says her name. It is the maidservant, with a scrap between her fingers. A promissory note, drawn up in Hogarth’s hand, for a subscription to her charitable project. The amount is not large. I would be of some help. Shaky, old man’s handwriting.
At first, Sarah wants to crumple the note in her fist, but then she thinks better and tucks it into her pocket. Now, she is laughing. Odd.
So inconclusive. She thinks, I will write a better ending than this. Mr. Hogarth may terminate his series in bathos, but I will finish with greater cheer. I will conclude with reformation and hopeful progress. I will not resolve my story indistinctly, without resolution, in a scene both flat and inconsequential. I will not close matters thus: by leaving a room, by standing on a step, by rubbing my eyes, by ending only because someone has written
Finis.
(Nay, I must keep writing, Sarah tells herself.)
Chapter 18
The History of Glossolalia:
Or, Virtues Various.
The Tale of the Green Mantua.
London, 1746.
Glossolalia stood at the heart of Bridewell Prison and raised her eyes to the walls. Bleak stone hemmed her in on every side. Overhead, an unremitting line of slate roofs trapped even the sky within grey arms. To the lady, Bridewell appeared every bit as dismal as its reputation, and she had to sternly remind herself that she had not come to that place by accident. No, she was there because the combined influence of a laundress and Mr. Hogarth’s improving prints had persuaded her to set aside those sorrows that so long held her captive in a gaol of her own devising. Having pulled down one set of prison walls, it was now that lady’s fixed intention to try herself against another. And yet, Glossolalia’s first sight of Bridewell was discouraging indeed.
On the far side of the prison’s courtyard stood a single gateway, with a pointed and shadow-choked arch. This seemed a portal so terrible that Glossolalia suffered no little surprise when out its fanged depths a perfectly ordinary gentleman approached. He was dressed in a sober coat and a queued wig, and he was undoubtedly headed in her direction. When he came close enough, he bowed low. “Madam,” said he, addressing her as if they were already acquainted, “you must not think yourself late—no, indeed, you must not.” He beamed upon her.
Glossolalia put out her hand, for the gentleman seemed to expect it, and he pressed his lips to her glove. When she had been thus saluted, she said, “Sir, I do not think myself late, for I did not think I was expected at all.” And this was no more than the truth, for Glossolalia had come to Bridewell without an appointment.
“Not expected?” said the gentleman. “Madame, we are more patient than that,” and he bowed a second time, deeper than the first.
Glossolalia was astonished by the gentleman’s forbearance—not to say his prescience. She said, “Then you have been patient indeed, for I have been a very long time in deciding to come. In truth, I have not been very heroic in my delay.”
“Come, come,” said the gentleman, “I will hear no excuses, for I am certain I need none. You are here now—that fact is sufficiency itself.” And he smiled at her most genteelly.
The lady could not help but be pleased by this generous welcome, and so, when the gentleman offered his arm, she did not refuse. She set her fingertips lightly upon his sleeve, and at her touch, the gentleman set off, determinedly, across that fearsome yard. Gravel crunched underfoot as they walked in the direction of the central wing, a heavy fortification, pierced through with grilled glass. Her companion was, she saw, leading her towards a set of wooden doors, which stood beside a span of oriel windows.
“Where do we go, sir?” said Glossolalia, as they approached the door.
The gentleman turned to her, saying, “The child waits upst
airs,” and he rapped sharply on the heavy wood.
“The child?” said Glossolalia. Could this far-sighted gentleman have somehow gleaned her compassionate interest in Mr. Hogarth’s picture of the harlot’s abandoned boy? Certainly, it was the plight of that young person that first put Bridewell into her head—but the thought was absurd. Glossolalia said, “There can be no such child.”
“Beg pardon,” said the Bridewell gentleman. “There are many.”
At this impasse the door flew open, and a narrow figure, dressed in a gown the shade of gloom, stood half visible in the opening. Without preamble, the gentleman spoke to this specter, whom he clearly knew and expected to see. “What do you think, Mrs. Malcolm?” said he. “The lady is come at last.”
The shade named Mrs. Malcolm spoke. “I watched her arrive,” said the melancholy voice. “In a coach, no less.”
“I think,” said Glossolalia, for the thought had begun to worry her, “there has been a mistake.”
“I make no mistakes,” said the woman in the doorway, and she put out a plain arm, devoid of lace ruffles, to urge Glossolalia toward her.
“In that case,” said Glossolalia, “the error is certainly mine.” She attempted to step away from the hand that sought her shoulder, but she found herself caught and pulled forward by fingers thin and hard as keys. “I mean,” she continued, “that I am in some confusion as to my purpose here.”
Upon this head, her interlocutors clearly concurred, for both nodded, but they also seemed to think her state of mind only natural. The thin woman in the murk-coloured dress pulled Glossolalia closer and examined her face with some care. A pair of large eyes regarded hers. “Leave this good lady with me, sir,” said the person belonging to the eyes. “I can do for her better than she would for herself. You needn’t come any further.”
“Thank you kindly, Mrs. Malcolm, for ’tis a tiring climb to the top.”
“Those stairs have not changed since King Henry’s day,” said Mrs. Malcolm, fatigue showing in her face, and a little cheerfulness went out of the gentleman as he contemplated her. “But, I don’t complain,” said the lady.