by Michael Dean
Stout Gamble, then, evidently unaware of the regularity and predictability of his plod through life, would hold forth at something past ten in the morning.
‘What price work, then?’ rumbled Gamble, from his customary place at the doorway, hand in waistcoat, overseeing eyes. ‘£100 South Sea stock worth £126 at Christmas. And now new dividends at thirty per cent voted. The company is so rich it has taken over the national debt. Anyone who is not a complete fool will be richer than Croesus in a year.’
‘Not for me,’ I piped up, thankfully dropping my engraving tool. ‘I’m putting my money in Puckle’s Defence Gun; fires round bullets against Christians and square bullets against the unbelieving Turks.’
Frenchy laughed, staring Gamble in the eye. Stephen snorted, head down at his work.
Gamble gave me a long look, then a volley of rapid blinks.
‘That’s as may be, Bill,’ was Gamble’s ponderous summation of the situation.
He gave his belly a final rub, his throat a final clear, then rolled out of his emporium to hoots of laughter before the door had even closed.
‘Bugger wyverns,’ quoth I, at the shade of my departed employer.
I made an impatient cut at the silver; it was obviously crooked. ‘Damn! Oh Lord, it’s ruined. Gamble will kick me out.’
‘Let me see.’ Frenchy came over, stared judiciously at my clumsy groove. ‘We can make that line the top line of the scroll. Thicken it a bit. Give it to me. I’ll do it.’
I handed the salver over. ‘Thanks Felix. You’re a life-saver and no mistake.’
‘That’s all right! I bought you something.’
He had something hidden behind his back. He displayed it, flourishing and waving like a conjuror. It was a well-thumbed book with a black cover.
‘Etchings,’ he said, ‘by Jacques Callot. You must look at all his pictures of the war. There is the movement you always talk about.’
I nodded. ‘I’ll look at it later,’ I said.
‘Look at it whenever you like. It’s a present, cherie. Parce que je t’aime.’
‘What?’
‘Because you are my friend.’
‘Why, thank you, Monsieur Pellett!’
‘You are most welcome, Monsieur Hogarth.’
Stephen and I laughed because he pronounced it ‘O-Gart’, like I was an Irishman.
Felix got on with my work while I pulled out the drawing I had hidden under the desk at Gamble’s coming. I no longer drew from life at all, instead training myself to memorise a scene, then sketch the story of it later, as soon as the engraved images of the pestilential beasts of mythology could be put aside.
This particular drawing of mine celebrated the denizens of Button’s Coffee House. I was pleased with it; it excited me. Three verticals, pillars if you like: the first, a sober citizen with a fine full-bottom periwig, tricorn hat on the table. The middle, shorter vertical was formed by a little man standing and a bigger one sitting opposite him, so that he had his black-inked back to the viewer. The third pillar was a cadaverous gent who was pulling the little man’s shoulder, his sheathed sword emphasising the vertical.
There were two diagonals: sober citizen’s staff and the cadaverous man’s arm. But here’s the rub, the little man facing us was talking, he had his mouth open but we could not quite see what cadaverous was doing with his hand – so our narrative was open, our story to be completed in the imagination of the viewer.
It was a brilliant construct. Brilliant! The world should see that drawing soon, recognise its greatness, seize me and pluck me from the repetitious grooving of bloodless beasts and Latin tags. Come on! Come on!
Frenchy Pellett came to stand behind me, hands on my shoulders, one hand sliding up to caress my neck. He looked at my drawing.
‘Well?’ I said. ‘Is it not magnificent? Brilliant?’
‘Not far off,’ he said, his accent thick. ‘You are an artist, Bill, no doubt of that.’
At that point the door opened with a ‘ding’ of the bell. We dashed back to mime working, thinking we had a customer. It was John Rakesby, the dissolute one from Lovejoy’s bagnio, fresh from killing a man, come for his clothes, no doubt.
Rakesby had the same aura of apartness I remembered from the hectic events at the bagnio, as if his essence was elsewhere and what remained to us in the room was a pictorial representation. That did not stop him greeting me and then Stephen Fowler cordially enough. Frenchy, of course, he had not met, though Monsieur Pellett was aware of the events at Lovejoy’s, as Stephen and I had told the story several times, in our excitement at it all.
‘John Rakesby!’ I cried. ‘This is my good friend and companion, Felix Pellett. Felix – John.’
John and Felix shook hands solemnly, for all the world as if Frenchy was ceding Calais all over again.
Stephen, the while, who was becoming increasingly clown-like, was holding John’s waistcoat over his chest. ‘Nice stuff,’ he murmured, to nobody in particular.
I gathered John’s clothing from where it was screwed up in a ball beneath the shelf at my feet. It comprised his drawers, his white silk stockings, buckled shoes, calico shirt, three-cornered hat, wig, blue cloth coat with gold braiding and buttons. I handed the lot over to him, then rescued his waistcoat from Stephen and handed that over, too.
John took it expressionlessly and stuffed it in a linen bag he had presumably brought for the purpose. I noticed that the set of clothes he had on now were every bit as fine as those he was collecting.
‘No sign of my sword, I suppose,’ he muttered, in that absent manner I was already getting used to.
‘Never saw a sword, John,’ I said, cheerily.
‘Stephen? A sword?’
The Birdcatcher shook his head.
‘No sword,’ I confirmed. ‘Will you stay and take a drink with us, John? We would invite you to a coffee house or a tavern or something, but if we do that one of us must stay here in case a customer comes, or even our esteemed employer, unlikely though that is.’
John laughed good-naturedly. ‘I’ll happily stay here with you good fellows,’ he said, ‘and whatever refreshment you can provide. Or indeed none.’
We broke open some bottles of beer and swigged from them, sitting in a circle.
‘What happened?’ I asked John. ‘At the bagnio. That chap, you know, he’s …’
‘Yes, I know,’ said John. Then he paused to gulp beer. ‘That was not meant to happen. A jealous husband, I’m afraid.’ He shrugged, as if indicating a routine hazard of his profession, like burns on the hand for a baker or drowning for a waterman. ‘I have no idea how he found out where we were. Mother Douglas, perhaps. If he paid her more shillings than I do.’
‘Yo-ho!’ I cried. ‘You’re a merry one and no mistake.’
‘In truth, I am rather sad,’ said John, and looked it.
‘I steer clear of married women,’ said Stephen. ‘Too complicated.’
‘I wish to marry a girl with a rich father,’ I said. ‘How about you, Felix?’
Frenchy shrugged. ‘No marriage for me,’ he said. ‘Just beauty. Beauty in art, sometimes in people, but mainly in art.’
‘Well said,’ I said, for no particular reason. ‘Come, come now, we must plan our next expedition. So, where are we going then?’
For theatre it was not too difficult to get up a party, Felix was always among the first to agree, Stephen less enthusiastic. My new friend, John Rakesby, preferred the brothels but would genially agree to other plans when pressed. He was my guide to the girls, with Stephen sometimes joining us at that sport, but Felix never.
Going to see paintings was the most difficult to get companions for: nobody being terribly keen. Felix Pellett continued to teach me about Callot, occasionally joining me on my pilgrimages to St Paul’s, though not as often as I wished. John came along now and again, Stephen Fowler never.
At St Paul’s, I worshipped the paintings of our great English painter, Sir James Thornhill. There, above us, a sequence on the life
of St Paul, in the vast upturned eggshell of the cupola.
‘Magnificent!’ I gasped to John and Felix, my breath leaving my body at the wondrousness of it. ‘St Paul before Agrippa. There! Look! Look! You see how he puts a frame between the viewer and the action? You see how the eye is drawn in and back, to that Palladian building in the background?’
John nodded, palely. He did not say much, being usually too exhausted from drink and debauchery to offer a lot in the way of opinion. Felix peered up judiciously, as if this was the first time we had ever been there, which it was not.
‘It’s not bad,’ he said, with a shrug. ‘Competent execution, grisaille is always effective, grouping of the figures perhaps too close.’
‘Too close … competent …?’ I squared up to him, my fists clenched, further enraged by his knowing smile. ‘How dare you damn our great English painter with faint praise.’
There was a pause. Felix gave a faint, thin-lipped smile.
‘All right, who do you like, then, Frenchy?’
Felix shrugged in that world-weary way he knew infuriated me. ‘Chardin,’ he murmured.
‘Chardin!’ I shouted, so loud my voice echoed round the gallery, back down and along the nave. ‘When I compare … Very well, who is he?’
Felix laughed. ‘I will show you some Chardin.’
‘Thank you,’ I said, humbly.
‘And I will show you some etchings of the St Paul grisaille series,’ said Felix, solemnly.
‘Can you …?’
‘Oh, yes! They are in a book. I can borrow it, at least. We can study the detail together, if you would like that?’
I hugged him. ‘You are a prince among men, Pellett the Frenchy. A prince among men.’
John was smiling quietly to himself.
Greenwich was very difficult to organise. To my disappointment, even Felix cried off. But John, when he dropped in, which he did nearly every day now, readily agreed to go. Greenwich, naturally, was important because the wondrous artistic genius Sir James Thornhill was painting the frescoes at Greenwich Hospital.
As we were rowed across the Thames on a Saturday, a choppy ride with the river at swell, John was sick all over his coat collar, down the front of his waistcoat, splashing his cravat and soaking through to his silk shirt. His wig fell off, lying at his feet as he gave the appearance of heaving up every morsel he had ever eaten in his life. As I tried to reach over to him to hold his head, a fresh stream of vomit hit the inside of his upended wig.
The boatman yelled at me to sit down, as my efforts to help John were unbalancing the little bumboat we had hired, because it was cheap. I yelled back at the boatman to hold his salty tongue and know his place. He yelled back to me that he would tip me into the sea if I as much as said another word.
It was at this point, for reasons that were not clear to me, that John told me he is a painter. The information, or confession perhaps, stopped him vomiting, so it was welcome as well as of interest to me. As we tied up, the waterman and I were still trading insults, some of the waterman’s being so vivid, although anatomically dubious, that I lodged them for my own future use.
And so on to Greenwich Hospital, which turned out to be the most wondrous experience of my life to that date. Some of it was not finished; Thornhill was still working on it, so we were not allowed in those places. But there, on those walls, the wondrous Sir James Thornhill told the story in pictures of our great country’s progress from the sickly mysticism and gloved threat of Catholic power to the glorious Protestant shining light, from William to our present great and glorious King George.
There, as I gazed in wonder, was good Queen Anne and her consort, supported by Hercules. There, our glorious Prince of Wales, in armour. There, if I was not mistaken, was the figure of Justice and there Juno … And was that man, could it be, was he their creator, half turning to face the viewer, like that?
‘Yes, that is the figure of James Thornhill himself, near the list of English naval victories.’
A voice had answered my unspoken question! The voice belonged to John. I must have spoken my question out loud without being aware of it, so deep was my trance before these paintings.
‘Have you been here before, John?’ I said absently, my eyes never leaving the paintings on the wall, my spirits soaring in a way I knew was lifting me forever.
‘Oh yes,’ said John, absently wiping his hat on his forearm in a forlorn attempt to clean the vomit from it. ‘You see … the issue for the painter was how real to make his representation without losing the regality and … hence the grandeur of the subject.’
‘What?’
John cleared his throat. ‘Well, take the king landing in … when was it? September 1714.’ He flapped his encrusted hat at the representation of our good King George landing after his journey from Hanover. ‘It was actually night, so do you paint it as night? Where’s the grandeur if you can hardly see anything? Do you paint the king in full kingly regalia, although that would be ridiculous after a long sea journey? Do you paint the other ships, accompanying, guarding, thus emphasising the majesty but cluttering up the background?’
My eyes were wide. I stared up at him. ‘John, how do you know all this?’
‘Oh … He used to discuss it with my sister and me. He talked about it all the time.’
‘Who did?’ I seriously wondered if our short sea journey had unhinged his mind.
‘My … Bill, there’s something I haven’t told you. I use the name John Rakesby in the bagnios because … well, I get into so much trouble. But my name is really John Thornhill. Sir James Thornhill is my father. Would you like to meet him?’
4
I ALWAYS THOUGHT of my sisters as one person, not two: as Mary-Anne or Anne-Mary, not as Mary and Anne. Mary being two years older than Anne made less and less difference now they were grown women. They looked astonishingly alike, both being big, fleshy women with big jaws – far too big in Mary’s case – small ears and eyes, and thin, pinched noses.
I wished them no harm, I even wished them happiness, but I wished they were not there. When they were not an irrelevance, they were a distraction from my efforts to improve my situation. They pulled me back into my past, just by being. All I wanted from my past was my father, not my mother and not them. My father lived on in me, not them. Good or bad, right or wrong, that was how matters stood. What mattered was how things were, not how we would like them to be.
But I went to see them now and again, my sisters. Why? Because I was still looking for Kate, the bawd I saw at da Costa’s, who I dreamed of night and day, and my sisters’ shop was nearby. My visits to the bawdy houses, bagnios and brothels with John and Stephen had started a fiery itch in me, a place where satiety was brief – satisfaction led only to further and stronger desire. More and more this slakeless thirst was for Kate. I choose bawds who resembled her, I called her name, all to no avail. It was her my nether regions craved.
But as Priapus led me to my sisters’ shop, politeness at least determined some civility before I resumed my low quest. I burst open the door, roaring out my greetings as the owner as the shop bell dinged. (I was not the owner, I know that, but without me my sisters would not have found our benefactor, da Costa, so I behaved like the owner and was treated as such.)
My sisters hurried towards me, Mary leaving the stocking of shelves, Anne the attendance on a customer to do so.
‘William!’
I was made much of, this was very gratifying. The attention of these two large women was like being pressed between two feather bolsters. Only when I emerged did I take pleasure in the colour of their shop: bolts of cloth, high on shelves where they could be reached only by a ladder, and finished frocks of every hue in the rainbow, some on stands which mimicked the female form. There was a riot of Genoa velvet, paduasoys, tabbies watered and unwatered, mantuas, sarsnets, Perscans and I didn’t know what. Oh, the eye, queen of senses, so royally served!
But who was this?
‘My name is Sarah Young, sir.’
She dropped the deepest of curtsies, even lowering her eyes to the floor, lowering, indeed, her whole head so far the nape of her neck was visible. She was plain, red in the face but full in her bosom, something that readily excites me, these days.
‘We have been able to take on an assistant, William,’ said Mary.
‘Sarah is our assistant,’ added Anne.
My sisters often spoke to me in this Greek chorus manner, with overlapping information, Anne most often adding the redundant elements.
‘William Hogarth,’ I said loftily, to the heaving employee, ignoring my sisters. ‘I am the owner of this establishment.’
There was, as I have said, a degree of artistic licence in that statement. Anne laughed at it; Mary pursed her lips severely.
‘You may stand,’ I conceded magnanimously, as the wench Sarah was showing no sign of doing so, as a result growing even redder in the face from the exertion of holding her supplicant position. Her bosom really was splendid … The wench struggled awkwardly to her feet, like a poleaxed pugilist about to leave the ring.
I ignored her, for a while. ‘What of our benefactor?’ I asked my sisters. ‘Is he still satisfied with the arrangements?’
‘Mr da Costa’s clerk comes monthly to collect the rent and the repayment portion of the loan,’ said Mary. ‘He confesses himself happy.’
‘Content with everything,’ added Anne. She laughed. ‘We even sold him a Kashmir shawl last time he was here, a present for his wife.’
‘He has become a customer,’ Mary smiled. ‘And with you, William? How are …?’
‘I am already the best man at silver engraving. The best the engraver Gamble has ever had. He said the other day he was lucky to have me.’
I glanced at Sarah Young. Her eyes were still at the floor, like one not daring to look at the sun. Her red-raw hands were twisting each other at the front of her apron, beneath the swelling and heaving bosom. I tore my eyes away and looked at Anne. Should I broach …? I am shy but plough on.