by Michael Dean
A makeshift orchestra shivered their way through an anthem especially composed for the hospital by George Frideric Handel, Blessed Are They That Consider The Poor. Handel himself was not present, but a selection of the blessed, a knot of governors, stood ready to welcome the first children.
Prominent among the governors was the designer of the Hospital, Theodor Jacobsen; the Duke of Richmond; Martin Folkes, a vice-president; Daniel Lock, who had the decency to look very much like my hack portrait of him; and Dr Nesbitt, who was to inspect the babies when they arrived.
There was also the distinguished painter William Hogarth and his wife Jane. For by now I was not only a governor, not only a supporter who had found other governors, like the Duke of Bolton, but I had also designed uniforms for the older children, at no charge, designed the hospital’s letter-head, ditto, and donated the masterpiece of my life, the portrait of Coram, gratis to the hospital.
I had contacted my old patron, the now elderly Anthony (Moses) da Costa, who had given generously. As to our own contribution, in our passion for Coram’s life’s work, Jane and I had outdone each other in an unintentionally comic auction, deciding how much to give. We had finally bid each other up the maximum Jane knew we could realise in cash, £120.
We looked at each other now, proud, tense, perhaps a little happier with each other, straining for a glimpse of the first children, but also concerned. I said it out loud to Jane.
‘Where is he?’ I said, still expecting her to know, expecting her to know everything.
Because the one man absent from the knot of governors, medical men and porters outside the imposing hospital gates was the place’s only begetter, Thomas Coram. But before she could give the tense, edgy answer forming at her lips, we both saw a one-horse phaeton trotting out of Great Ormond Street into Red Lyon Street, then coming straight towards us at a brisk trot.
Coram alighted with his sailor’s grace and balance, in the opulent red sailor’s coat I had painted, but looking white in the face and tense. As the phaeton turned and trotted off, he made straight for Jane and me, ignoring the influential Richmond, who had his mouth open to greet him, ignoring Lord Abercorn, Daniel Lock, Martin Folkes and all the other luminaries. Pleased though I was to see him, I feared for the sea captain’s rough and ready ways among the other governors, now phalanxed round him.
‘Thomas!’ I shouted to him, ‘Your moment, my friend. Your triumph after …’ I ground to a halt at the tense lines in my friend’s face, betokening anything but triumph.
‘Yes,’ said Coram, absently. ‘“Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.”’ The over-rehearsed quotation from Luke was murmured into his chest. His eyes were down on his muddy boots and his soul appeared to be down there with them.
‘Eunice …?’ Jane asked.
By now Jane had met Coram’s wife, Eunice, several times. They had become as close as their husbands were. Funnily enough, like their husbands, they were a match physically, too, sharing the same full, heavy-breasted build. But unlike the robust Jane, Eunice’s health was poor. At their last meeting she had been coughing, struggling to breathe towards the end of the evening.
Coram shook his head. ‘In bed. She …’
I kept an arm round my friend’s shoulders. ‘Nothing to be done, now, Thomas,’ I said, softly. ‘Look, here come the first of our children.’
I had spoken, in truth, only to distract Thomas, who, to this practiced friend’s eye, looked in a very bad way indeed. But just as I spoke I saw a trickle then a stream of mothers with babies, with toddlers, with older boys and girls making their way along a little pathway called Powis Wells, then cutting across Lamb’s Conduit Field, for all the world as if the wide beaten way of Red Lyon Street, leading straight to the hospital gates, were not for the likes of them.
As they approached, the mothers mainly had their heads down. I thought that was from years of being called ‘harlot’ for having a child with no visible father. With tears in my eyes, I thought of the chance system which had brought them to the hospital, a system bizarrely based on that used for membership to an elite gentleman’s club, White’s Club in Chesterfield Street.
The system consisted of the drawing of balls from a bag: draw a white ball and the child is in, a black ball out, while a red ball meant wait until a place becomes free. Even the white ball, entry, did not guarantee the child life, as poverty and disease was doing its work, even as the mothers took their children towards the hospital, but a black ball meant death, with utter finality.
More mothers appeared, like the flight from Egypt, bustling towards their salvation in their white bonnets, with their dresses mainly shabby, either carrying their children or holding them by the hand. They were coming from all directions now. I glanced at Coram – a little tightness at jaw and lips, a little narrowing at the eyes, but fundamentally composed.
Jane was standing proud and alert, but with tears in her eyes as she searched the faces of the arriving children, especially the older ones. I knew she was looking for the child she would never have, now, and my heart went out to her.
After what seemed hours of chaos, with mothers, children, doctors, nurses, porters and governors mingling and milling, the children designated as the first two for admittance were located. These were baptised on the spot as Thomas and Eunice.
The weeping mothers made sure their former children had their token by which they could be recognised again, one day, perhaps, if the mother were able to return and claim her child. The mother of the male child now designated Thomas had a brass uniform button of a Coldstream Guardsman tied round his neck on a bead necklace, as his token. The girl designated Eunice had a silver heart engraved You have my heart, tho we must part.
The porter sent the mothers on their way with brusque, though not unkind, insistence. The doctor ushered the new Thomas and Eunice through the gates to the first experience of their new lives, which would be a medical inspection.
And finally, after what seemed hours, the dull, moist look in Jane’s eyes became a gleam.
They located the first of the Billys and Jennys. It was difficult to give them any sort of age; undernourishment had made them small. The new Billy’s mother was old for such a young child, and drab. The token she had given her child was half a silver shilling from the time of Edward VI.
‘Be good,’ said the mother, taking new Billy by the shoulder.
‘He shall come to play in our garden in Chiswick,’ Jane said to her.
‘You hear that?’ said the mother, shaking the boy slightly. ‘You hear that?’
Then the mother turned and left before the porter could shoo her away.
The new Jenny looked a couple of years older than Billy. She was blonde, like her mother, who was surely a bawd, and a handsome one. Her token was a child’s silk purse embroidered with the letters ‘MD’. Unlike most of them, the token was not affixed to the child in any way, she was clutching it.
The bawd mother shot me a shrewdly practiced look I knew well enough, then glanced at the girl. I shook my head, angry, though there were tears in my eyes as there were in Jane’s.
‘Madam,’ I said, heavily. ‘We have a mulberry tree in our garden, where your daughter shall play. We …’
‘… We shall cherish her,’ Jane said, interrupting me.
The bawd mother smiled, not above a coquettish glance at me, to take my look away from Jane. Then she turned on her heel and strode away, proudly, this one, straight down the highway of Red Lyon Street.
I made for Daniel Lock, ignoring everyone else and everything else. Again and again, I rehearsed wild thoughts in my mind; yes, in theory Jane was past childbearing age, but not so very far surely and women older than her had given birth, in the past. It had been attested. It could happen …
Daniel Lock was a simple man, for all his intelligence, and more than a touch pompous. He was supposed to be an architect, though nobody seemed able to name a building he had designed or constr
ucted. He saw me, no doubt looking flustered, barging my way through the melee towards him and guessed what I wanted. There had, after all, been so many questions about the new hospital he was starting.
‘Master Lock, good sir …’
‘Master Hogarth!’
‘Your new hospital …’
‘The Lock Hospital. Indeed. It’s for the poor, sir.’
‘Yes. Very praiseworthy, no doubt. But the poor suffering from …’
‘Venereal afflictions, sir. Those somewhat bluntly called the French pox.’
‘Master Lock … Daniel. Please let me attend your hospital. Treat me, sir. Help me. You are my last hope.’
14
THE FIRST foundling Jennys and Billys were brought to the country home in Chiswick to play and to stay. Mrs Parsons delighted in over-feeding them, young Charles Mahon, the second footman, was messianic about introducing them to beer and getting them drunk, and I devised sunshine games for them in Chiswick’s beautiful gardens.
Many of the games I conjured up were improving. I would call out a number and the children had to run and touch that number of mulberry trees, so while they scampered in joy they unconsciously learned their numbers. I sprawled in an armchair brought outside for me, easing my aches, and thought of my father, and how he would have clapped hands delightedly at the game, so cleverly devised.
But to my dismay, the visits of the children did not bring the joy to Jane that I had hoped for. However long they came for, however long they stayed for, she wanted them there for longer, especially a Billy and a Jenny she was clearly marking as her favourites.
She took to writing letters to all governors of the Foundling Hospital, at first collectively, then, when this brought only a polite response devoid of meaning, individually. Even I, her husband, received these letters, as a governor. They were left for me, propped up against a teapot or, on a couple of occasions, on my pillow. The tone of these letters was becoming wilder with time. She wanted to keep the children.
Jane and I quarrelled more frequently than at any other time in our marriage. I acknowledged to myself that this was at least in part my fault.
My humour was not improved by the failure of my treatment at the Lock Hospital. The various purges, sweatings, applications of leeches, applications of mercury and more mercury, the swigging down of Dr Prossily’s Water, it had all achieved nothing in the alleviation of my sores, my pain and my pox. And Jane was now no longer able to deny to herself what ailed me, so she refused all physical contact with me, even touching, let alone kissing.
Meanwhile, my good friend Thomas Coram was also plagued with woes. His beloved wife, Eunice, sickened unto death and it broke the old man’s heart. Then the other governors of the Foundling Hospital, aristocrats to a man except for myself and Coram, conspired to push the bluff old sea captain out, as I had always feared they would.
Thomas Coram’s connection to his life’s work was severed. The sea captain’s savings were dwindling fast. He was living in a couple of rooms in Spur Street, round the corner from our place in Leicester Fields. I visited him often, but I was the only Foundling Hospital governor who did. I used to take bottles of beer round; Coram beat me at chess while we drank them and talked. I watched the old man’s sea captain’s coat, which I had painted in its prime, get shabbier and shabbier.
Jane visited, too, bringing a variety of foods but usually pies of different sorts, overcoming the proud old man’s initial reluctance to accept such help. She also overcame his stubborn refusal to talk about Eunice. In the end, he would accept his food, pack his pipe and relive his happy years with the only human being he had ever felt at one with.
He talked about Eunice with Jane, never with me. And Jane and I never visited him together, not once. Any more than we did anything else together, anymore.
When Coram died, I read the sermon at the chapel in the Foundling Hospital. In death, all the governors accorded him their company, as they had not done in life. Perhaps they knew how widely the occasion would be reported in the newspapers: a full account in the London Evening Post, a page in Read’s Weekly Journal, a mention at least in all the others.
The coffin was met at the gate of the Foundling Hospital, at the top of Red Lyon Street, by the governors and the children. The little ones walked two and two before the coffin, which was immediately preceded by a governor carrying the charter on a crimson velvet cushion. As the pall was carried by the governors, a burial service was sung, accompanied by Dr Boyce on the organ.
And then I spoke: ‘Captain Thomas Coram, whose name will never want a monument as long as this Hospital shall subsist, was a man eminent in that most eminent virtue, the love of mankind …’
At the end of it I cried. I cried from the pit of my soul. Jane cried too, for the first time in a long time. And for the first time in a long time, she fell into my arms and allowed me to cradle her there.
15
AT THE NEXT MEETING of the governors of the Foundling Hospital, I saw the Duke of Bolton again. I thought him even sadder than before, when I had seen him with Lavinia. I thought then that no human being could encompass so much misery, and indeed he could not, being shortly before the taking of his own life.
At that same meeting I saw a most strange creature, a fellow governor. He was one of the ugliest human beings I ever beheld, yet exerted a terrible and very sexual fascination.
As he looked at me across the huge meeting table in the court room of the Foundling Hospital, pale reptilian eyes boring into me, a knowing smile making their power even stronger, I felt a terrible need to surrender to this man.
He was, I knew even then, a form of the devil. He was my nemesis, I felt that, too, even then. The man reached out, stretched out a hand to me. Almost swooning with helplessness, I took it. I thought it would be clammy but it was dry as parchment.
The man appeared to know the turmoil he was causing in me, to know and to feel no surprise by it. He said we had met before, many years ago. He said his name was John Wilkes.
Part IV
Finis
1757–64
1
I AM AN OLD MAN and I shall paint no more. My work is done, my race is run. My life now is my beloved Jane, my wife. I have always been a faithful husband, never straying, and I bless the decision to follow that path. I wish now only to make her days as light and delightful as possible, together with those Jennys and Billys sent to us by the Foundling Hospital, who we have with us in Chiswick for all too short a time.
To that end I was instrumental, using my influence as a governor, in having Jane appointed an inspector for the hospital. She supervises not only the main hospital at Red Lyon Street, but the more distant hospitals we have now in Ackworth, which has one hundred and thirteen children, and Aylesbury, which has as yet just forty.
This has much changed Jane’s life for the better, for she took the death of her mother, the good Lady Judith, hard. The sketches I made of her then, in her bereavement, are a worthy crowning of a life in phiz-mongering, being among the best work I have done.
I must break off these reminiscences to record a development; I had a note from a young man called Richard Grosvenor. Sir Richard Grosvenor, I should say, of the landowning family, who own half of London as well as land in the north: Cheshire, I believe.
Sir Richard Grosvenor wanted to look round my showroom. This, no doubt, being largely occasioned by my accession as Serjeant Painter to George II, following the sad passing away of my good and honourable friend and brother-in-law, John Thornhill, who held the post before me.
So I showed Sir Richard Grosvenor my wares, as displayed in the showroom adjacent to my studio. I had left the showroom untouched, I may add, even though I had foresworn painting. I thought of it rather as a collection of mementos, a museum, even. I was showing him round my past life, or so I believed.
And certainly young Sir Richard – the fresh faced youth surely did not have thirty even on the horizon – was gratifying in his appreciation of my work.
‘Master Hogarth,’ said Sir Richard. ‘I would dearly love a painting from you for myself. Of any subject dear to you, naturally. But a comedy for preference. Your forte, I believe.’
I formed the words of refusal in my mind, the explanation of my retirement from painting and so forth. But these words remained unsaid.
‘Sir Richard, I long ago conceived the idea of a work on the theme of Sigismunda, the daughter of Prince Tancred, mourning over the death of her lover, Guiscardo, who was murdered by her father. I’m sure you are familiar …’
‘Indeed! The Dryden poem.’
‘Yes. Dryden had it from Boccacio, I believe. Guiscardo was a page, low-born, at Sigismunda’s father’s court. The lovers consummate their passion but the king secretly witnesses it and has Guiscardo murdered. He sends his daughter the page’s heart in a golden goblet. Sigismunda mixes poison with her tears and Guiscardo’s blood, drinks this from the goblet and dies.’
‘Hardly the stuff of comedy then?’ said Sir Richard, doubtfully.
‘No, sir.’
Even as I spoke, I conceived Jane as the model for Sigismunda, or Ghismonda as she is called in the original tale, one my father read to me when I was a boy. It was that memory, and not, as people later said, the huge amount of £405 5s that another Sigismunda, by Furini (not Correggio, as people said), had fetched at a recent sale, that decided me on the subject.
Sir Richard’s lined frown clearly expressed his doubts from the beginning, but he accepted quickly, no doubt in fear that I should withdraw the offer of a painting completely.
And so began my downfall, as a painter and as a man.
I still refuse to use ready-primed canvases, no matter how old-fashioned this may be considered, so I quickly primed what was to be my new Sigismunda canvas with all speed.
I walloped on the grey ground, the size, the second layer of ground with sweeping movements of my poor, aching arm, for all the world as if the wall of St Paul’s was once again my canvas, as it had been when I learned painting at the feet of my long-dead friend and father-in-law, Sir James.