I, Hogarth

by Michael Dean

  The committee were ready for this sleight of hand; the next accuser dated from the time before the sale, so Huggins was in charge at the time. The accuser, the one who appeared in all the versions of the finished painting, was Jacob Mendes de Sola, a Portuguese Jew. I winced as he detailed his travails at the hands of Huggins.

  I waited impatiently – I was always impatient, but even more impatient than usual – for the next break in proceedings. But at that point Anthony da Costa made his way with surprising alacrity, though losing none of his elegance, to Jacob Mendes de Sola; the latter, clearly shaken by his own testimony, was bleeding lightly from the nose. I joined the growing crowd round the two of them. KATE, KATE. Was it possible I may find you?

  Finally, with the poor bleeding witness sat on a chair with his head back, I approached my benefactor.

  ‘Mr da Costa, sir. How nice to see you again.’

  ‘William! Yes, I heard you were painting the scene. It was even in the London

  Journal, I believe. Splendid to see you doing so well, my boy!’

  ‘Thank you, sir!’

  ‘I was at your sisters’ shop only the other day. All is progressing very well there, I’m happy to say. Your sisters did say you visit them rarely?’

  ‘Yes, I … er … so little time.’

  da Costa favoured me with a shrewd look. ‘You feel you are leaving them behind, no doubt. Let me give you some advice, William. Don’t. Don’t cut yourself off. Your family are like your limbs, my boy. Cut them off and you bleed. Go and see Mary and Anne, that’s my advice. This week.’

  ‘Yes, sir. I wanted to ask you. When I was at your house that first time. I was little more than a lad. But there was a … a woman. Her name was Kate.’

  da Costa, until then all solicitous smiles, indeed he even had his arm round me, jumped back as if stung by a bee. ‘What? What plan is this? What are you accusing me of?’

  ‘Sir, you mistake my meaning. Nothing …’

  ‘I know nobody of that name …’

  ‘Yes, you do. I just want to find her, sir. I …’

  He looked hard at me, his face pale, shocked and afraid. I did not understand what I had done to occasion this, I regretted it, but my need to see Kate overcame even this. ‘If you know anything, please tell me.’ This emerged from my mouth far more harshly than I intended.

  He reeled back, now really afraid. ‘I truly do not know. For certain. But I heard she was in the clutches of Charteris, of Colonel Charteris.’

  At that he swivelled on his heel and made off, so needful to be rid of my questions that he abandoned, at least temporarily, his friend Jacob Mendes de Sola. I regretted this but I was now pale, too.

  This Colonel Charteris, who lived a life of riches in his prosperous house in George Street near Hanover Square, raped any woman who came within his ambit, needful and helpless servant girls of his own establishment and others. He had been brought to the courts many times, but always managed to wriggle free, by fair means or foul. The only brake on his appetites was his falling foul of good old English decency and the need to see fair play. Society had finally judged him guilty on these counts even if the court had not. Oh Kate, oh my Kate! I have to find you.

  But first I had to show my six paintings of A Committee of the House of Commons to Sir James Thornhill, back at his house, as he had arranged the commission for me. I watched while he looked at them, secure in my ability to rouse his approbation, expecting his praise, waiting, truth to tell, for this to be over, so I could try to find my Kate.

  Sir James cleared his throat. ‘Huggins.’

  ‘What about him?’

  ‘I didn’t mean for you to include him in the painting, I thought you were just going to do the committee.’

  ‘Well, he’s …’

  Sir James held up an admonitory hand. ‘I would never have become Serjeant Painter to the King without Huggins. He knows how to organise these things. And now that I’m losing ground at court, I need him even more.’

  ‘You’re not suggesting …’

  ‘I’m not suggesting anything. But you can’t expect me to help you, if you don’t help me. In fact, you are damaging me with this painting.’

  ‘But I’ve done it now,’ I wailed.

  ‘Have you delivered any copies?’

  ‘No, not yet.’

  ‘Then it’s not too late to change it.’

  ‘How am I going to do that?’ I heard myself whine.

  ‘Just change Huggins’ face. Make it Bambridge.’

  ‘I’ve never met Bambridge.’

  ‘What’s that got to do with anything?’

  Everything. It was Huggins I wanted revenge on, for what he did to my father. Bambridge was after our time.

  Sir James was staring right at me, perhaps the first time he had met my gaze. ‘There’s the door, William. If you won’t change the painting, go now and don’t come back.’

  ‘I’m sorry, sir. I didn’t mean to upset you. I didn’t understand. I’ll change all the paintings immediately. Bambridge, not Huggins, it will be.’

  12

  I WAS GETTING somewhere. I was close to obtaining society portraits, through the good offices of Sir James; moreover, even the theatre visits, which sent my spirits soaring, held the promise of painting commissions, too (aside from my portrait of Lavinia Fenton, which I was carrying out without a guaranteed buyer, just for the love of her fascinating being).

  With money coming in from the engravings and my first paintings, I sallied forth every night, always for supper, usually to the theatre, now and again to the brothels and bagnios – this last usually with John Thornhill, who was working his way through every whore in the New Atlantis guidebook, or so it seemed. I felt my little room in Long Lane was a prison cell; it pained and trapped me to be there too long, to be there alone, at any time, but especially after dark.

  I eagerly watched every theatre piece Lavinia was in, often more than once, if it ran for more than one performance. She really was extraordinarily good on the stage: funny and pathetic by turns, giving as good as she got from the audience.

  Whenever she was on stage, I hoped there would not be a riot in the theatre, doing my best to quell one if it occurred. If she was not there, I rather enjoyed joining in.

  Lately, I had seen Lavinia as Mrs Squeamish in The Country Wife, as Lucy in Tunbridge Wells and as a country lass in The Rape of Proserpine. This last was arranged by the impresario John Rich. I kept nagging Lavinia for an introduction to him; I had had no luck so far, but I was sure it would happen.

  Lavinia and I ate supper together at those low places she liked, with bare floorboards and chairs so high I could barely drum my heels on the floor. Sometimes we went for walks, or to side-shows; but, to my pleasure, she too felt compassion for the freaks on show, the midgets, giants, hermaphrodites, Siamese twins and all the rest of it. We refused to laugh at them, indeed gave them money as often as we could.

  I brought Jane to these meetings with Lavinia sometimes, arranging her escape from the Thornhill household past the male Thornhills, with her mother’s gleeful assistance and that of Fanny, the gigglingly complicit (and very personable) maid.

  Jane had even joined me, on occasion, for sittings while I painted Lavinia’s portrait. I found Jane’s remarkable stillness, which came from her goodness of soul and spirit, soothing to me as I worked. As I told her often, I painted better when she was there.

  I asked her opinion at every stage of the work, but by smilingly saying little, sometimes nothing, and so letting me fill the silence with my own chatter and blather, she achieved the revelation of my own opinion to me. It took some little while before I realised that this was the process which was passing between us; I am still convinced she was herself unaware of it.

  My painting of Lavinia took place in her tiny room near the Cowpats soap factory. Lavinia talked non-stop during the sittings, my futile attempts to stop or even limit this were at an end; one may as well have tried to stop the lapping of the Thames. The th
emes of Lavinia’s monologues were love (her own) and money (her own and everybody else’s): in this she was the epitome of the modern Miss.

  I called Jane over to come and stand behind the easel, which she did. ‘What do you think?’

  Lavinia was shown in her new role as Polly Peachum in The Beggar’s Opera, opening the next week at Lincoln’s Inn Fields, with John Rich the producer. Her blue dress fell fetchingly back over her shoulders before widening to bell shape over her hooped petticoats.

  Jane looked at my work so far. ‘It’s good,’ she said, then met my gaze with those honest grey eyes, which went wide and wet as our gazes met.

  ‘Honestly?’

  ‘Among the best you’ve done, William. If not the best.’

  ‘I can’t bloody move,’ wailed Lavinia. ‘Jane, they’re making me wear these bloody hoops. I look like the dome on bleedin’ St Paul’s. I daren’t move on the stage, I’ll fall over and show everybody me bare arse.’

  ‘So?’ I said.

  ‘What yer mean, “so”? They ’aven’t bleedin’ paid for it, ’ave they? Oh, look. I’m serious. Jane, show me ’ow to move. Please. Please, luv.’

  ‘Yes, certainly.’

  ‘Oh, thanks!’

  ‘Take the dress off, Lavinia. Let me put it on. Then I’ll do a demonstration for you.’

  ‘Oh, thank you darlin’. You are a diamond, you are. Twenty-four carat gold. Don’t let this one go, William.’

  ‘I don’t intend to!’

  A fiery glance from Jane made my eyes water and stirred my loins. But the two women, with some girlish laughter, quickly fell to helping each other off with their dresses. Jane then donned, from Lavinia, what looked like a bent birdcage – a peculiar construction of oval hoops.

  ‘I ain’t never seen anything like these,’ Lavinia wailed, as the cage was transferred to Jane, who had removed most of her petticoats, putting the contraption over her shift and one under-petticoat. I reflected, the while, that there were worse vocations than that of painter, but after a quick glance at Lavinia in her shift (breathtaking) I kept my eyes loyally on my beloved, though mainly on the secret parts.

  ‘John Rich found this bloody contraption,’ wailed Lavinia, skipping about. ‘’Ee’s weird, ’ee is.’

  ‘He’s got a very sharp nose,’ I murmured. ‘Slightly hooked, too.’

  ‘That’s funny!’ Lavinia screamed. ‘’Is cock’s exactly the same. No, really, I mean it. Pointy but very bent.’ Lavinia demonstrated with a crooked finger. ‘’Ee ’ad me when we played pantomime. ’Ee was Mr Lun. It was worth it, ’cos he got me my role as Poll Peachum.’

  ‘He must have been to France,’ Jane said, putting her dress on over the hoops.

  ‘Why, they got bent cocks there, ’ave they?’

  Jane was hooting, laughing again. ‘No! At least not as far as I know. Your Mr Rich must have got this contraption in France, though. They are the latest from Paris. They’re called criardes. This and small handkerchiefs of Brussels lace are the new fashion.’

  ‘So, ’ow …?’

  ‘You take very small steps, see, like this.’ Jane appeared to glide round the tiny room. ‘Then the skirt swings out, keeping its bell-shape.’

  Lavinia put both hands to her mouth, which was how she registered surprise onstage.

  ‘Oh, Jane! You look so elegant! No! Look, this is really important. I’ve got a new beaux. Best I’ve ’ad since … the last one.’

  ‘Good as that?’

  Lavinia stuck her tongue out at me. ‘Change back, change back! Jane quick! I wasn’t going to say nothing for fear I’d jinx my luck. But this one could be the making of me.’

  The two women were changing back to their original clothes.

  ‘Who is he? King George?’

  ‘No! I don’t do Germans. But almost. He’s the Duke of Bolton. Now what do you think of that?’

  Back in her criardes and dress, Lavinia took a few tiny-toed steps. Like the born actress she was, you had only to show her something the once and she could mimic it.

  ‘That’s lovely, Lavinia!’ said Jane. ‘Graceful!’

  Lavinia minced over to her in the new tasteful walk. ‘You’re a darlin’, you are Jane. A real lovely person, you know that?’

  The two women embraced.

  ‘You’re not so bad yourself.’

  ‘You will come and see me on the first night, won’t you?’

  I felt a twinge of jealousy, as this was addressed solely to Jane, but banished the unworthy thought. ‘Yes, of course we will,’ I said. ‘Half of London is already talking about it. The word is that John Gay has written something truly revolutionary with his new opera, and Rich …’

  ‘Oh, bugger John Gay. Bugger John Rich. I’m getting thirty shillings a week and my Charlie is coming to the opening. That’s the Duke of Bolton to you peasants. And now, thanks to Jane here, I won’t be tripping over and showing me arse. That’s all I want. Oh, I’m so happy.’

  ‘I hope he’s good to you, Lavinia,’ said Jane, firmly as ever.

  ‘Bugger that ’an all. Look, he’s not much bigger than Little Will …’ (That was the waiter at Button’s Coffee House), ‘… and he’s ugly. That’s the best of it. Fat little face like a baby’s arse. Never go for the handsome ones, except for fun, except for a jiggle. If it’s serious, they have to be ugly. Then they’ll stay, then they’ll pay.’

  ‘I’ll remember that,’ said Jane with mock seriousness.

  ‘Oy, thanks!’

  But we were already laughing, all three of us, as Lavinia again tore off her dress and the fashionable French bird-cage and danced round the room in her shift, singing a made-up ditty which ran, ‘My Charlie’ll stay. My Charlie’ll pay.’ And then, ‘’Ere, William. Your sisters ’ave got a dress shop, ’aven’t they?’

  I looked wary. ‘Go on.’

  ‘I need another dress for act III of Bugger’s Opera. The gaol scene. You couldn’t sort of …’

  ‘I’ll have a word with them, with Mary and Anne.’

  ‘I ’aven’t got much money. Well, none at the moment.’

  ‘As I said, I’ll have a word with them.’

  ‘Thanks William, my darling. I need to look my best to take my Charlie away from ’is wife.’

  Thanks to lovely Lavinia, John Rich’s commission to paint The Beggar’s Opera on stage was through. I would be in the newspapers for it, sales of the painting and the prints from the engravings were assured. BUT. I really wanted to do a good job; I REALLY wanted it to be something special.

  Armed with folded sheets of the blue paper I now used for the first sketches, with crayons tucked into a leather pouch, I met Jane at our trysting place, on the way to the opening night of Beggar.

  We met at half past three, where the hackney carriages gathered, at the corner of Covent Garden Piazza. Fanny the maid or sometimes her mother, sometimes both, always accompanied her that far, then we sneaked into a carriage. I always insisted on paying for the carriage; this afternoon I also insisted on paying the entrance to Beggar – five shillings for box seats, nothing but the best for my Jane.

  She was fetching in green silk with a new French bonnet. As we clip-clopped along – hey, look at the Smithfield boy now – I was heady with success, seeing not the path ahead but the heights reached so far, something I later learned not to do.

  I leaned towards her. ‘Have you and your mother made any progress getting Sir James to invite me to a Masonic Lodge?’

  Firstly, it came out all wrong, far too direct. Secondly, when I leaned towards her she thought I wanted to kiss her, in the secret dark of the carriage, and she started to respond. So I messed that up, and no mistake.

  ‘Not really.’ She always spoke calmly, evenly, but the tone was a little frosty.

  Gawping out of the carriage window, like a Spitalfields boy unused to the ride, I spoke without thinking, a far from unusual occurrence: ‘What? You mean you haven’t spoken to him, or he said no? Which?’

  ‘We …’

  �
��I need this, Jane. You know that. Yes, I’ve got portraits and groups for the demi-monde, but the Masons can give me an entry into society. And that’s where the money is. Come on, Jane! Get your old ma mobilised and set to. Please!’

  There was silence in the dark of the carriage. I saw her shoulders move, recognising that she was crying. She even cried with dignity, quietly. Oh, Hogarth, you unworthy wretch. You greedy poltroon, you low-bred fool.

  ‘Oh, Jane, I’m so sorry! I spoke … My heart is good, especially where you are concerned, but I want too much too soon. I know that. It was ever a fault.’

  She sniffled, pulling a Brussels lace handkerchief from her sleeve. ‘It’s all right.’

  ‘No, it’s not! I would as soon hurt my own arm, or my leg or my head, as hurt you.’ I cuddled her against the sway and jolt of the carriage. ‘I am truly sorry. Please forgive me.’

  She smiled, then pecked me on the nose, giggling as the peck half missed because the carriage hit something, probably a dead dog or something, and lurched. ‘You are forgiven!’ she said brightly.

  But I was William Hogarth, so I stumbled from one blunder to the next, albeit on a rush that carried forever forwards and upwards. As we cuddles in companionable love, pressing soft, chaste lip-kisses (I still gave tongue only with the whores), I said for some reason, ‘We are meeting Frenchy, Francis Hayman and the others in Holbourn Row, then we can all go into Lincoln’s Inn Fields together …’

  She stiffened, then pulled away. ‘Others? What others?’

  ‘Well … Felix and his French crowd. Some of the painters. Stephen Fowler.’

  ‘I thought it was to be us, alone.’

  ‘Well, Felix … He’s … down on his luck at the moment. I just wanted to cheer him up.’ SHE IS YOUR VIRTUE. STOP IT. STOP LYING TO HER! ‘Look, we can avoid them all if you like, break the arrangement.’

  She was horrified. ‘William, no! Not once you have given your word. I won’t hear of it.’