by Michael Dean
‘I’m a fool! Jane, darling, as you’ve had so much practice, do you think, just possibly, that you could forgive me just one more time?’
She laughed. Thank God I could always make her laugh. There was another peck on the lips. As we embarked at the place where all the hackney carriages were stopping, at the three-way corner of Yeates Street, Holbourn Row and Lincoln’s Inn Fields, a crowd of eight or ten of my friends, including my old apprentice friends Felix and Stephen, were there to greet us.
The company included most of the up-and-coming painters from Sir James’s copying school. Francis Hayman was there, eating, gesticulating, and talking, all at once, with his shirt hanging out over the arse of his breeches, as ever. George Lambert was of the company. John Ellys, George Knapton.
Oh, and there was Jack Laguerre. I think he was one of Felix’s French mob, not from the bloody copying class. I couldn’t remember if the boys from the copying class knew about me and Jane or not. They did now.
When I had finished the last sitting for her portrait, Lavinia said she would meet us outside the theatre, before the opening. She was at the flood tide of her acting career. To my knowledge, she was already in The Fortune Hunters (as Nanny), The Pilgrim (Alinda, with her legs showing in a breeches part), and Jaculine in The Royal Merchant, as well as giving a richly moving Ophelia. Her opening in Beggar that night made that at least six plays in which she took the stage, all going on at once; I suspected there may have been more.
There was, naturally, no sign of her outside the theatre to meet us, as she would forget any arrangement minutes after making it. She was as much a creature of chance and influence as a butterfly in a cross-current, was our Lavinia.
Anyway, the rest of us fought our way through the throng at the theatre door, me holding tight to Jane. At least this warmed us up against the late January frost, though it was our good fortune (and Lavinia’s) that it wasn’t snowing.
By the time we pushed our way through to the box seats some of our companions were gone, no doubt heading for the cheaper areas in the pit, but there was enough of a crowd in the theatre to warm us – over a thousand, by the look of it: from pit to rafters the place was heaving like a bishop’s belly.
The Theatre Royal was one of my favourite places of entertainment in the whole of London, but like the others they kept the place as chill, not to mention dark, as possible for as long as possible to save money. The only candles burning were in the floats at the front, but they at least gave out some warmth.
As usual, the place reeked like a dead dog rotting in the devil’s privy. The aristocratic faction, on the stage, in the boxes or in the slips, were sniffing Hungary water or violets or buying oranges, some even cutting them with their swords, against the odour. Effete, bloodless fops, the lot of them.
I recognised one of them from the House of Commons committee, a blob of meaningless fat called Bubb Dodington, an individual without purpose who was very rude to me on the two occasions he deigned to speak to me at all.
Instantly forgetting Blub-Blub, I glanced sideways at Jane, steady, as ever, in repose. Her eyes were shining.
‘Happy?’
‘Mmm. I’ve never been to a theatre before. This is the naughtiest thing I’ve ever done. Well …’
We looked at each other, both bursting out laughing together. No matter how many people were around me, when I was with her all I could see was her eyes. Still, I did notice the place was quieter than usual. They, we, the audience, were all waiting, holding our collective breath. That daring title – Opera suggested high Italian (foreign); Beggar suggested low English. This was something new.
I wouldn’t start my preliminary sketch until Lavinia was on the stage but, even so, I had that tightening in my guts that presaged creation: that winding up of emotions, brains, eyes, like the cogs and wheels of a clock being put into motion.
Francis Hayman was on the other side of me, chattering away with his heavy bonhomie, but everyone and everything except Jane, the theatre play and my coming creation was a dashed-off background of sound and noise.
And then it started!
One of the four doors onto the stage opened. A beggar walked on and addressed the audience. I remember it still, thirty-six years later, as I write this: ‘If poverty be a title to poetry, I’m sure nobody can dispute mine. I own myself of the Company of Beggars; and I make one at their weekly festivals at St Giles’s.’
There was a roar of recognition at the mention of St Giles; I joined it lustily: none of your foreign places here, your MIlans, your PADuas, your PARises. I pictured the verminous back-alleys of St Giles: the scrofulous streets, thick with grime, and the filthy Dutch-gin shops, floors coated with sick, which formed every other establishment. St Giles, the Bethlehem of pleasure, profit and dirt. St Giles in an opera! I knew what I was roaring about, too, unlike the fops on the sides of the stage or at the front.
But the scene shifted as the story was told. The scene shifted to Newgate Prison! Newgate Prison, just a few streets down from where I played tip-cat with my friends of the day, while the sound of St Sepulchre’s bell tolled every time some poor wretch took the cart to Tyburn to be hanged. Newgate Prison, where I had painted Sarah Malcolm, and so did Sir James. Newgate, a prison, just like the prison in which I lived my boyhood. Another prison.
There it was, represented in painted boards on the stage: a tableau of moving, speaking pictures. I clutched Jane’s hand so hard I did believe the poor darling girl whimpered. Stories! If it was possible to tell stories in tableaux, then why not in paint? And real stories, stories about me, my world, London – not worn out myths from the past, in foreign places nobody knows or cares about.
The audience was hushed, hardly talking; never before had I experienced theatre-watchers so quiet, so dough-like, being shaped by what they were seeing. I was part of the audience but I should soon be a player; I would paint this scene, I would paint this story!
Our Lavinia, by the way, was a peach as the daughter of Peachum the peacher: that is, the betrayer. She entered in an ivory white dress with a yellow sash, on loan from my sisters’ shop, her bosom hefted up by her stays, also provided by my sisters, her face pushed forwards to hide her double-chin. All her supporters, myself included, cried ‘Hurrah for Lavinia!’
Lavinia, meanwhile, was singing to great effect on the stage. She had an angelic, fluting voice, much suited to the English ballad style. For a while I listened; as ever, I was enthralled, captivated, transported, by matters on the stage. Then I started sketching.
BUT, and now here was the breakthrough for me, THIS time I would include the audience. I tried it with my painting of The Committee of the House of Commons when I painted Huggins brought to justice. Huh! But I was unable to bring off the painting of the audience that time.
Now, however! Lavinia was staring at the Duke of Bolton in the audience, just behind the spikes in the front row, as he stared back at her, quite besotted. We were not the only playgoers who knew of the drama between them, so knew what we were witnessing. Half of London knew it. So the audience was as good a play as the play. We were all actors – totus mundus agit histrionem – even when we believed ourselves to be spectators.
This was a modern thought. I should be the first with it, in my finished painting. It would make my fame and fortune, enabling me to marry Jane in triumph.
I stood: the better to complete my lines of structure on my blue paper.
‘Sit down! Sit down, boy!’ They cried behind me.
‘Oh, shut up!’ I shouted back. ‘I am William Hogarth, the artist. And I shall stand, if I so please.’
‘William!’ Jane touched my sleeve, with ineffable gentleness.
I sat down, but went on sketching.
Painting my Beggar’s Opera in my little room in Long Lane began well enough. I sang the enchanting ditties from the piece as I laid on colour for the brick inside walls of Newgate. I could remember the words of songs with the same felicity as I could remember scenes, having heard the wo
rds only once and having only glimpsed the scene.
Through all the employments of life
Each neighbour abuses his brother./EXT
I roared away to myself as I plastered Newgate prison into life, occasionally wiping my painty hands on my smock or pushing my red cap back from my head, so the scar on my head always showed.
Whore and rogue they call husband and wife:
All professions be-rogue one another./EXT
The swag of the curtains, blocked in black, showed all life was on the stage; the curtains falling until they hovered above the audience; the audience as much on the stage, then, as the players. And in the swag of the curtains, there on high, the stage motto ‘Utile et Dulce’ – of use and loveliness.
And, oh, I sang!
But this happy time of blocking colour with sung accompaniment did not last. IT WAS NOT RIGHT! IT WAS NOT RIGHT! Its success was assured (the first night’s audience actually numbered over 1,300 – even more than I thought – the piece was the talk of the town: this would sell and sell and sell). BUT IT WAS NOT RIGHT!
I was painting the only scene in the opera in which all five major players were together. (Why, William? Because it was the most difficult?) And of course I had the personages of the audience too:
Bolton, of course, in love with Lavinia as Polly; then Major Paunceford, Sir Robert Fagg, Mr Rich, to whom we all owed the entire production; my friend and Sir James’s neighbour, Christopher Cock, the auctioneer; Mr Gay, who actually wrote the piece; Lady Jane Cook, Anthony Henley, Lord Gage, Sir Conyers D’Arcy, Sir Thomas Robinson of Rokeby, who I had met as an entertainer; all looking as if they were listening and watching; all looking like themselves, to themselves (as important purchasers) and to others (as important purchasers). Not the same thing, those last two, by the way.
And what was wrong? I couldn’t do Peachum’s hat without unbalancing the whole piece; the personages of the audience were too much caricatured for the overall tone; Lucy’s face was stiff (because I did not love Mrs Egleton as I loved Lavinia/Polly, I didn’t even like her much) … Oh!
I was suffering agonies. I went to sleep on my mattress on the floor, shivering even under my thick quilt, and it was not right. I woke, teeth chattering, coughing from the chest with the cold, and it was not right. I started again, and it was not right. I started again and again. It was not right.
Worst of all was when I made an irrevocable improvement, then found it was better before. And I could not, could not, get it back to what it was. So what was wrong, deep down? I did not know precisely – that, naturally, being the key to putting it right.
This version had not enough of the audience, that version too much. When I was satisfied with the structure of one version, I could not transfer the breathing life I conveyed in an earlier version to the later one in which the structure was right. I stopped awhile and drank cheap gin, but it only made me more miserable. I needed Jane!
Jane still wouldn’t come to my room, but I needed her to look at those paintings.
I had to find a way to marry Jane, or die in the attempt. I achieved a modicum of peace, when a painting would not come right, by the only means possible to me: start something else.
13
I HAD AN IDEA for a series of paintings which would tell a story, as the Beggar’s Opera did in its scenes. Like the opera, it was to be about low life, but with references to high life. It would be a progress, then, about a girl who came to London from the north, as my father did, and was ruined by great men’s promises, as my father was, ending her time languishing in gaol, as my father did.
I took a swig of gin from a bottle, then spat it out on the sawdusted floor. That was not the way. I remembered how angry my benefactor, Anthony da Costa, was when I asked about Kate at the Fleet, when I was painting the House of Commons committee. He also said she was in the hands of Colonel Charteris.
Dared I try to find Charteris? No! Dared I visit Anthony da Costa, to ask him about Kate?
He had been so good to my family, I dared not risk his wrath, and he would have been right to be angry. I HAD to get out of the studio – or bring Kate in – or my head would burst. I had to find Kate.
I clenched my fists, digging my nails into the flesh of my palms until they bled. Then I went and saw Mother Douglas.
‘Kate?’ Mother Douglas repeated, disbelievingly. ‘Just shut your eyes, then all of them are called Kate. Or just call her Kate, at your moment of bliss, even if she be Nell or Florence.’
‘Look, I really deeply need … I’m looking for one specific …’
‘I know. You said. All right. So what did she look like, this Kate of yours?’
‘Dark. Wondrous …’
‘Yeah. Skip the wonders. They can all hoik their orbs with decent stays.’
I sighed. ‘Regular features, straight nose, long black hair, deep blue eyes. A kind of spot. Here.’ I pointed to my forehead.
‘Syphilis?’
‘No! At least, I don’t think so.’
Mother Douglas shrugged. ‘Kate Repton. Katie Keppel, Kate Hackabout, Kath O’Mara … You look done in, William. Want me to find you a girl who looks like Jane?’
I burst out laughing. ‘No! I don’t need …’
‘You haven’t!’ Now Mother Douglas was laughing. ‘Oh, you naughty boy! Now, how did you manage that? Does John know?’
‘John Rakesby?’
‘Oh, William! You’re a dear boy and I’m truly fond of you. But play me for a fool and we’ll fall out. No dear, not John Rakesby. John Thornhill from down the road who calls himself Rakesby when he lowers his breeches, not in polite society, and doesn’t tell his father, Sir James.’
I shook my head in mock sorrow. ‘No, John doesn’t know about … how far it’s gone. And he’s not to.’
Mother Douglas cleared her throat.
‘Oh! Mother!’ I sighed and reached for my purse. ‘A guinea do you?’
‘What? From the painter half of London is talking about. When do we see this Bugger’s Opera then?’
I laughed. ‘Lavinia calls it that, too. Oh, you wicked woman.’
‘That’s why they pay me. Three guineas, if you please, young Master William.’
I shook my head ruefully. I needed her. For one thing, she sent her tally women to my sisters’ shop to buy clothes for her girls who walked Drury Lane and the Strand. ‘And that’s a final payment, in this matter?’ I said.
‘Yup!’ Mother Douglas held out a practiced hand, brown and hard as a tanner’s fist.
I gave her the money and got up to go.
‘Stay awhile, William. There’s only two or three girls around as early as this, but I’ll see you get a good time.’
‘Not now, mother. I’ll see you with John Rakesby this evening.’ And then an idea. A brilliant one. Brilliant ideas started from the stomach, I always found, then worked upwards.
‘When coaches come down from the north to London, Mother dear, where do they finish their journey?’
The Bell Inn in Wood Street. I did not have to wait long before the wagon from York arrived. And lo and behold, a young lady actually descended! She was nowhere near as pretty as my Kate, but what were artists for, after all, but to prettify reality here and there?
A clergyman alighted from the wagon, too. And Charteris, the evil rapist? Have him in the picture, too. It was so much more powerful to use real people. It would signal poor Kate’s fate from the off.
Then what? A series of four pictures? Six? The more you painted, the more you sold Modern moral subjects. After her arrival, a courtesan at the house of a Jew like my benefactor. I could use his interior. Then she would betray him. Downhill, after that. A cheap bawd with a bunter. And in the end? Dead from the pox. Sketch the other pictures in the series later.
I was deeply exhausted. I took a chair back to my studio, then slept the sleep of the righteous, or the sleep of the dead, whichever was deeper.
After that I painted well, finishing the first of four versions of the Beggar�
��s Opera painting. In all of them, you could see the stage as far as the side-wings, though not as far forward as the orchestra. I showed Lucy, Macheath and Polly as part of the audience, as well as on the stage. And I showed the audience as part of the play – the married Duke of Bolton’s adoration of Lavinia/Polly and her acceptance of it.
The Beggar’s Opera paintings were the success everyone predicted. They made me rich. All I needed then were contacts in society, so I may continue those group portraits. I’d show them the modello of Beggar’s Opera, if I could get near enough to them. Jane! Oh, Jane. When was Sir James going to take me along to the masons, eh?
14
AS WINTER turned to spring, I painted and sold even more representations of The Beggar’s Opera, all of them on commission. Each representation had its own engraving; prints from the engraving compounding its sales and my success. And I was a success, I had not failed in life! Oh, what a relief!
By the time James finally deigned to introduce me to the masons, all London knew of me. My Beggar’s Opera was everywhere you looked: copied on snuffboxes and fans, praised and attacked in pamphlets and verses, chastised in sermons, celebrated in songs. Two more originals of the scene had been commissioned by London worthies, prominently featuring them in the audience.
So it was a man of substance, no ragged painter with his arse hanging out his breeches, who was presented at the new lodge (mind you, they were all new) at the Hand and Appletree in Little Queen Street, in Holbourn, round the corner from Lincoln’s Inn Fields.
There, old James was Lodge Master; presiding over the assemblage slumped in an elegant fauteuil dating from the time of some high-numbered French Louis (fifteen? Felix would know) with stuffed back, stuffed seat and stuffed arms, while we all sat, about ten of us, necessarily fidgeting and shifting occasionally on a motley assortment of mismatched but uniformly hard hall chairs.
Still, the company was convivial enough. We drank brandy punch, mainly from the serving ladle, while feeding our faces from food piled high on side tables. There was beef aplenty; I was always happy when there was good English beef, so bloody raw you could still hear it moo. There were churchwarden pipes available – some white, some brown, with use – plus a pot of Dutch tobacco, for those who preferred. But as for me, I’d eat.