The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Eighteenth Century in English Caricature, by Selwyn Brinton This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org Title: The Eighteenth Century in English Caricature Author: Selwyn Brinton Release Date: August 9, 2009 [EBook #29647] Language: English Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 18TH CENTURY IN ENGLISH CARICATURE *** Produced by Stephanie Eason and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net. (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.) THE LANGHAM SERIES AN ILLUSTRATED COLLECTION OF ART MONOGRAPHS EDITED BY SELWYN BRINTON, M.A. THE LANGHAM SERIES OF ART MONOGRAPHS EDITED BY SELWYN BRINTON, M.A. Vol. I.—Bartolozzi and his Pupils in England. By Selwyn Brinton, M.A. Vol. II.—Colour-Prints of Japan. By Edward F. Strange, Assistant Keeper in the Victoria and Albert Museum. Vol. III.—The Illustrators of Montmartre. By Frank L. Emanuel. Vol. IV.—Auguste Rodin. By Rudolf Dircks, Author of "Verisimilitudes," "The Libretto," &c. Vol. V.—Venice as an Art City. By Albert Zacher. Vol. VI.—London as an Art City. By Mrs. Steuart Erskine, Author of "Lady Diana Beauclerk," &c. Vol. VII.—Nuremberg. By H. Uhde-Bernays. Vol. VIII.—The Eighteenth Century in English Caricature. By Selwyn Brinton, M.A., Author of "Bartolozzi and his Pupils in England," &c. In Preparation Rome as an Art City and Italian Architecture These volumes will be artistically presented and profusely illustrated, both with colour plates and photogravures, and neatly bound in art canvas. 1s. 6d. net, or in leather, 2s. 6d. net. Recruits. By H. W. Bunbury. THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY IN ENGLISH CARICATURE BY SELWYN BRINTON, M.A., Author of "BARTOLOZZI AND HIS PUPILS IN ENGLAND," ETC. A. SIEGLE 2 LANGHAM PLACE, LONDON, W. 1904 To Friends beyond the Seas this Study Of a Common Heritage in English Art All rights reserved CONTENTS Page I. INTRODUCTORY 1 II. THE COMEDY OF VICE 8 III. THE COMEDY OF SOCIETY 29 IV. HE COMEDY OF POLITICS 54 V. THE COMEDY OF LIFE 74 ILLUSTRATIONS Recruits. By Henry William Bunbury Frontispiece Shrimpers (Tail-piece). By Thomas Rowlandson Page 7 Morning. By William Hogarth Facing page 10 The Distrest Poet. By William Hogarth " 12 Marriage à la Mode. By William Hogarth " 20 The Family Piece. By H. W. Bunbury " 42 A Fashionable Salutation. By H. W. Bunbury " 48 Lumps of Pudding. By H. W. Bunbury Page 53 Britannia between Death and the Doctors. By James Gillray Facing page 64 Armed Heroes. By James Gillray " 66 Buonaparte as King-Maker. By James Gillray " 68 Nelson Recruiting with his Brave Tars after the Battle of the Nile. By Thomas Rowlandson " 82 Filial Affection (Colour-print). By Thomas Rowlandson " 86 A Ball at the Hackney Assembly Rooms. By Thomas Rowlandson " 90 A Theatrical Candidate. By Thomas Rowlandson " 92 Old Joseph Nollekens and his Venus. By Thomas Rowlandson " 94 I INTRODUCTORY The word Caricature does not lend itself easily to precise definition. Etymologically it connects itself with the Italian caricare, to load or charge, thus corresponding precisely in derivation with its French equivalent Charge; and— save a yet earlier reference in Sir Thomas Browne—it first appears, as far as I am aware, in that phrase of No. 537 of the Spectator, "Those burlesque pictures which the Italians call caracaturas." Putting the dry bones of etymology from our thought the essence, the life-blood of the thing itself, is surely this—the human creature's amusement with itself and its environment, and its expression of that amusement through the medium of the plastic arts. So that our caracatura, our burlesque picture of life, stands on the same basis as comedy or satire, is, in fact, but comedy or satire finding its outlet in another form of expression. And this is so true that wherever we find brilliant or trenchant satire of life there we may be sure, too, that caricature is not far absent. Pauson's grotesques are the correlative of the Comedies of Aristophanes; and when the development of both is not correlative, not simultaneous, it is surely because one or other has been checked by political or social conditions, which have been inherently antagonistic to its growth. Those conditions—favourable or antagonistic—it becomes part of our inquiry at this point to examine. We have this to ask, even granting that our "burlesque picture" is a natural, almost a necessary, accompaniment of human life,— was found, we may quite safely assume, in the cave-dwelling of primitive man, who probably satirised with a flint upon its walls those troublesome neighbours of his, the mammoth and the megatherium,—peers out upon us from the complex culture of the Roman world in the clumsy graffito of the Crucifixion,—emerges in the Middle Ages in a turbulent growth of grotesque, wherein those grim figures of Death or Devil move through a maze of imagery often quaint and fantastic, sometimes obscene or terrible—takes a fresh start in the Passionals of Lucas Cranach, and can be traced in England through her Rebellion and Restoration up to the very confines of the eighteenth century. Why, we have to ask, even granting that William Hogarth's "monster Caricatura" is thus omnivorous and omnipresent, does he tower aloft in some countries and under some conditions to the majesty of a new art, and in others dwindle down to puny ridicule? Taking the special subject of this little volume, the eighteenth century itself, we find little to interest us in French pictorial satire until that monstrous growth of political caricature created by the Revolution. Italy in the same period has but little to offer us, Germany as little or less; and it is to England that we must turn for the pictorial humour, whether social or political, of that interesting epoch. And this because the England of that time is a self-conscious creature, emergent from a successful struggle for freedom, and strong enough to enjoy a hearty laugh—even at her own expense. While the Bastille still frowns over France, the Inquisition and the Jesuits are an incubus upon Spain and Italy, while Germany is split up into little principalities, Dukedoms, Bishoprics, Palatinates, England has already won for herself the great boon of freedom of thought, freedom of speech, freedom of religious and political opinion. The satirist could here find expression and appreciation. The birth of the pictorial satirist who is the subject of my first chapter coincides pretty closely with the creation of that Tale of a Tub, of which Dean Swift, in all the ripeness of his later talent, exclaimed: "Good God! what genius I had when I wrote that book"; and no print from the artist's graver —even his "Stages of Cruelty," or his "Players dressing in a Barn"—could excel in coarseness of fibre the great satirist's Strephon and Chloe. The pen of Swift and the graver of Hogarth in the early eighteenth century found in England conditions not very dissimilar to those which awaited Philipon and Honoré Daumier[1] in Paris of the early nineteenth century—that is, a public which had come through a period of intensely active political existence to a complete and complex self- consciousness, and which enjoyed (just as in Paris La Caricature, when suppressed, found a speedy successor in Le Charivari) sufficient political freedom to render criticism a possibility. And from Hogarth through Sandby and Sayer and Woodward to Henry William Bunbury, and onwards to that giant of political satire, James Gillray, and his vigorous contemporary Thomas Rowlandson, what a feast of material is spread before us; what an insight we may gain, not only into costume, manners, social life, but into the detailed political development of a fertile and fascinating period of history. In the earlier age Hogarth is ready to present the very London of his time in the levée and drawing- room, in the vice and extravagance of the rich, in the industrious and thriving citizen, and those lowest haunts where crime hoped to lurk undisturbed. In the century's close Gillray's pencil notes every change of the political kaleidoscope. In his prints we seem almost to hear the muffled roar of the Parisian mob, clamorous for more blood in those days of Terror; or we watch the giant forms of Pitt and Buonaparte fronting each other as the strife comes nearer home to Britain. To attempt within the limits of this little volume to exhaust a subject so rich in magnificent material would be obviously impossible. All that is permitted me here by imperative limits of space is a sketch, where my matter tempts me sorely to a comprehensive study. Yet even the sketch may claim for itself a place beside the finished work of art, if—while omitting the detail which it was unable to include—it has yet secured for us the main outlines, the swing of the figure, the balance of light and shadow, the sweep and spacing of the horizon; just as the massed clouds in a Constable study can give us as keen artistic pleasure as the "Valley Farm," or his "Salisbury Cathedral." And thus I have [Pg 1] [Pg 2] [Pg 3] [Pg 4] [Pg 5] [Pg 6] attempted here not so much the history of the men, the catalogue of their achieved work—interesting or valuable though such a history or catalogue might be—as to show the spirit of the age itself reflected most faithfully, even when it seems most caricatured or burlesqued, by their brush or graver or pencil; to watch the grotesque visage and ignoble form of Vice traced by Hogarth's genius from the homes of London's luxury to her dens of hidden crime; to study the more refined, if somewhat weaker, social satire of Henry William Bunbury; to admire those magnificent political cartoons of James Gillray—colossal and overwhelming, even in their brutality or obscenity; and finally, to lose ourselves in the luxuriant and living growth of Thomas Rowlandson's pencil, recreating for us the features of an age that was, like himself, vigorous, buoyant, and expansive,—that true Age of Caricature, which is also known as the Eighteenth Century. II THE COMEDY OF VICE The eighteenth century, which was to witness the magnificent and, in its own way, unequalled achievement of English art in the paintings of Reynolds, Romney, Gainsborough, Hoppner; in the engravings of Bartolozzi, Dalton, John Raphael Smith, and William Henry Ryland; in the caricatures, which we have just noted, of Bunbury, Rowlandson, and Gillray, was to open, not inappropriately, with the appearance and speedy recognition of a very individual and very characteristic genius—with the pictured comedies of William Hogarth. A first survey of my subject led me for a moment to doubt how far my title would cover the creations of that incomparable humourist. He is, indeed, more than caricaturist in the sense in which we shall use this term of his artistic successors. His pictured moralities teem with portraits drawn from the very life. He is a satirist, as mordant and merciless as Juvenal, or, in his own day, the terrible Dean of St. Patrick's; from his house in Leicester Fields he looks out upon the London of his day, and probes with his remorseless brush or graver to the hidden roots of its follies, its vices, and crimes. "He may be said to have created," says one of his early biographers,[2] "a new species of painting, which may be termed the moral comic;" meaning, thereby, that the instinctive humour of the man's art is generally (not, as we shall see, always) directed to some moral purpose, some lesson of conduct to be thence derived. That is just where Hogarth connects himself, inevitably and intimately, with the Puritan England which had preceded him. Not for nothing had that century, into whose last years he was born, seen the great uprising of Puritan England,—the struggle for civil and political liberty, and its achievement,—the Ironsides of Cromwell with Bible and uplifted sword. That intensity of moral and spiritual conviction, that earnestness about life and its issues was yet in the nation's blood, and must find some outlet in the returning world of art, which its own austerity had banished; but, in another sense, mark how truly Hogarth connects himself with the later caricaturists of the coming age. By William Hogarth MORNING Beauty does not enter into his art,—most of all in that highest sense of plastic beauty of form, which the great Italians had so intensely felt, which the great English school, uprising in his own day, was in some measure to recover. At most a comely buxom wench steals sometimes slyly into his canvas or copper-plate—the two servant-maids in his print of "Morning" at Covent Garden, whom the roysterers turning out from Tom King's coffee-house are kissing in the Piazza; the demure and pretty Miss West, looking over a joint hymn book with the amorous—but industrious— apprentice; or that coy minx—most delicious of them all—who has just dozed off amid "The Sleeping Congregation," with her prayer-book opened at the fascinating page of Matrimony, and to whose luxuriant charms of face and form the eyes of the fat old clerk are stealthily directed. To Hogarth these are the incidents, not the inspiration, of his art. Lavater, that keen observer, aimed near to the mark when he wrote: "Il ne faut pas attendre beaucoup de noblesse de Hogarth. Le vrai beau n'étoit guère à la portée de ce peintre." It is, indeed, one of the [Pg 7] [Pg 8] [Pg 9] [Pg 10] [Pg 11] unconscious ironies of art history that the artist, whose work shows least of its influence or attraction, should have devoted the one offspring of his pen to an Analysis of Beauty. But it is when we turn to the humour of life, even in its most sordid tragedies, that his real strength appears. "Quelle richesse inexprimable"—says Lavater again, and no less justly—"dans les scènes comiques ou morales de la vie." None like Hogarth has characterised "the lowest types of modern humanity, has better depicted the drunken habits of the dregs of the people, the follies of life, and the horrors of vice." And it is just here, as I have hinted, that Hogarth connects himself with the later caricaturists. It were quite possible to treat a purely moral story, such as that of "The Industrious and the Idle Apprentice," in a purely moral sentiment; but this is just what our artist cannot bring himself to do. He must have that touch of nature, and of humour, which makes the whole world kin. He must introduce the quarrelling cat and dog into the office scene between West and Goodchild, or the feline visitant whose apparition through the chimney disturbs Thomas Idle's unhallowed slumbers; he must accentuate the gormandising guests in the Sheriff's banquet, and the humours of the crowd even in a Tyburn execution. And in other subjects—where the moral lesson is either absent or less intrusive— the man's fancy runs absolutely riot in humorous observation. "The Distressed Poet," with the baby squalling in his bed, the poor wife stitching at his solitary pair of breeches, and a strapping milkmaid clamouring for payment of her account; "The Enraged Musician," with every conceivable pandemonium of noise congregated beneath his window; above all, "The Sleeping Congregation," collected in a conventicle of very early Georgian design, and unanimously occupied in carrying out the precept of their reverend pastor's text, "Come unto me ... and I will give Rest"—save only those two vigilant old ladies, perhaps pillars of the edifice, and the clerk to whose interest in the sleeping nymph of the next pew I have already alluded—are studies in pure humour. By William Hogarth THE DISTREST POET But to multiply examples of Hogarth's humour would come very near to cataloguing his every work. Let us turn now from that work to the man himself, and study something of those conditions of life of which his genius gives us our most vivid impress. William Hogarth was born in 1697 or 1698, in London, but of a Westmorland family (Hoggard would seem to have been the earlier spelling), one member of which, the artist's father, after working as a schoolmaster in Westmorland, had settled in London as corrector of the Press. He must have been a man of some education, since we hear of a Latin-English Dictionary of his composition, though there seems some uncertainty as to whether it ever got beyond the initial stage of MS.; and his son William was early in life bound 'prentice to a silversmith named Gamble, his business being to learn the graving of arms and ciphers upon plate. His marvellous gift for caricature soon showed itself; and a tavern quarrel at Highgate seems to have afforded subject for an early manifestation of his talent in this direction. As the period of his 'prenticeship came to its close he entered an Academy of drawing in St. Martin's Lane, where he may have come under Sir James Thornhill's notice; but seems to have failed to show any exceptional proficiency in his life studies. Form, we have seen already, lay outside—in certain manifestations entirely outside—the peculiar limits of his temperament. Shop-bills and coats- of-arms were probably the mainstay of his livelihood at this period, though plates for books were beginning, little by little, to come in his way; but when in 1730 he clandestinely married the daughter of Sir James Thornhill, the Court painter was so incensed at this mèsalliance that he refused the young couple any acknowledgment. It was at this very time that Hogarth created his first work of individual genius in that superb series of plates to which he gave the name of "The Harlot's Progress"; and it is said that Lady Thornhill designedly placed one of the plates in her husband's way, only to elicit the grudging praise of: "The man who can produce these can also maintain a wife without a portion." But the ice was broken, and the ensuing thaw led to a complete reconciliation. Sir James Thornhill treated his daughter and son-in-law more generously, and lived with them in future till his death in 1733. At the same time the Series which had brought about domestic reconciliation, had also brought fame and fortune to the artist. The third scene of the Progress, in which the erring girl is arrested, contained, it would seem, a clever portrait of Sir James Gonson, a magistrate whose energies were famous in this direction. The print is passed around at a meeting of the Board of Treasury, at which Sir James is present; every Lord must repair to the print-shop, to obtain for himself a copy; the vogue was started, and twelve hundred subscribers entered their names for the Series, the price of each set being one guinea. William Hogarth was now well started in his career of fame; and deservedly so, for in some respects "The Harlot's [Pg 12] [Pg 13] [Pg 14] [Pg 15] Progress" is one of the most characteristic and the most brilliant of his creations. Its popularity was immense and instantaneous; it was played in pantomime, and reproduced on ladies' fans. But if he did not surpass the genius of his first invention he certainly came very close to it, both in the "Rake's Progress" and in his "Marriage à la Mode." Each of these Series, as well as that of the "Industrious and Idle 'Prentices" are complete stories, worked out to their dénoûment—tragedies, one might say, written with a burlesque pencil, of eighteenth-century life. And if the note struck seem sometimes too insistent, if the Industrious one be too sleek, too self-complacent, the prodigal too immersed in sensual folly and indulgence; if the blacks seem too black, and the whites too white, and those half-tones which accord the values of life be generally missing; if a more refined age demands a subtler analysis, a more artistic treatment, can we yet deny the truth and necessity of the eternal lesson? Have we yet reached, or shall we ever reach, an age in which ineptitude, insolence, idleness, fail to work out their inevitable resultant? Or is it less true for us than for those earlier ages—the message which the writer of that magnificent thirty-eighth Psalm reiterates, as though he would drive deep into our souls its lasting verity. "Put thou thy trust in the Lord and be doing good; dwell in the land and verily thou shall be fed. Delight thou in the Lord; and he shall give thee thy heart's desire.... Yet a little while and the ungodly shall be clean gone ... the Lord shall laugh him to scorn, for he hath seen that his day is coming." Just as insistent, just as certain of his concluding verdict as the Psalmist is the eighteenth-century engraver and humorist. Even his own day may already have seen "the ungodly" set high above men in social position, quoted with respect in financial circles, perhaps even a regular attendant at the local conventicle,—"flourishing," in short, to quote that inimitable phrase of the same Psalmist, "like a green bay-tree"; but he, at least will admit no doubt of the ultimate conclusion. "In all his delineation," says Mr. Austin Dobson,[3] with fine insight, "as in that famous design of Prudhon, we see Justice and Vengeance following hard upon the criminal. He knew, no doubt, as well as we, that not seldom (humanly speaking) the innocent are punished and the guilty go at large. What matter! that message should not be preached by him at any rate. So he drew his 'Bogey' bigger ... and drove his graver deeper in the copper." Yet it is to be noted that from the first his genius is attracted to social satire. The Masquerades and Operas, Burlington Gate, 1724 (which he calls in his own notes The Taste of the Times)—the first plate which he published on his own account,—was popular enough to be freely pirated. "The Wanstead Assembly" brings him close to the later caricaturists; "The Burning of Rumps" shows us a London crowd beside old Temple Bar, with its ghastly trophies of Jacobite relics; and all these lead up to his later success in the two Progresses and the Marriage Series. In 1733 he had settled in his house in Leicester Fields, with its gilt sign of the Golden Head—the sign which he had fashioned and gilded himself, in the similitude of the painter Van Dyck; and here the most of his life was to be spent, varied by visits in later years to the villa which he then acquired at Chiswick. He is now fairly facing his life work, and a brief survey of this is all we can hope to attempt in the limits of this chapter. I have already mentioned "The Harlot's Progress," and its immediate successor, "The Rake's Progress," the subjects of which speak for themselves. The country maiden's arrival in London, the breakfast scene with her Jewish admirer, and the scene in Bridewell are to be noted among the prints of the first Series; but all are full of character and interest. In "The Rake's Progress" the second plate introduces us to a side of Hogarth's talent which he was to develop later on more fully in his "Marriage à la Mode"—namely, his satire of eighteenth-century life of fashion. The awkward youth who in the plate before had come into his fortune is now in the full of its enjoyment: become a fine gentleman, he holds his morning levée of those numerous parasites who minister to his vanity or pleasure. The foreign element (which Hogarth in his heart detested) is here to the front in the figure of the French dancing-master, trying a new step, with the fiddle in his hand; behind him the maître d'armes, Dubois, is making a lunge with his epée de combat, while Figg, a noted English prize-fighter, watches his movements with an expression of contempt. Another portrait is Bridgman, a well-known landscape gardener of the time, who is proposing to our young hero some scheme for his estate; while the seated and periwigged figure who runs his fingers over the harpsichord has been suggested as that of the great composer Handel. But when we start forth to knock down the watch, "beat the rounds," intrigue with the fair, and generally keep up the character of a young blood or "macaroni," a little timely assistance is often welcome; and is here proffered (with hope of due remuneration) by the villainous-looking figure on the prodigal's left, whose recommendation is seen in the letter he presents: "The Capt. is a man of honour, his sword may serve you." Meanwhile, a jockey holds before his master the cup he has won; and a tame poet in the corner seems to be invoking the Muses in unmerited praise of the same patron. By William Hogarth MARRIAGE À LA MODE Plate II [Pg 16] [Pg 17] [Pg 18] [Pg 19] [Pg 20] In his next plate Hogarth passes to a scene of indescribable orgy; but all this satire on fashionable extravagance, which we have just noted in detail, is still more fully developed in his masterly Series of "Marriage à la Mode." Hogarth's oil paintings of this complete Series are in the London National Gallery, and it is instructive to compare these with the prints, the two first pictures of the Series being especially attractive in treatment. The second of these, representing the morning, when husband and wife awake to ennui from a night of dissipation, is peculiarly happy in spacing and composition, as my illustration may show; while Plate IV. of this Series, showing a reception of the Countess while at her toilet, gives an opening for a clever satire by our artist of the fashionable society of his day, which is as brilliant as any Venetian scene by Longhi, and the ensuing plates point the sequel to a life of folly. Nor has the artist forgotten here to give a side blow to the foreign element—which aroused his hostility, from the French dancing-master or perruquier to the great Italian Masters—Correggio's "Jupiter and Io" finding a place on the walls of her ladyship's bedroom, just as the "Choice of Paris" had been included in the Rake's levée; and we shall note very soon that these allusions were not incidental, but far more probably intended. For Hogarth had now in these three series attained a reputation which he probably increased by his delightful studies of pure humour, among which "Modern Midnight Conversation," "The Sleeping Congregation," "Strolling Players in a Barn," "The Laughing Audience," "The Enraged Musician," and "The Distressed Poet" are to be especially commended, as well as that fine series of "The Four Times of the Day," in which last "Morning" (of which I am able to give an illustration) is certainly a masterpiece. His estimate of his own powers had increased, and now led him to leave that path in which his genius had already found its intimate expression, and to seek to become that which he was not and never could be—a great imaginative and historical painter. Without ever having really studied the great Masters of the past, without comprehending either their merits or demerits, he declared that it were an easy task for him to surpass even Correggio on his own ground: the result was, if not disaster, at least something very near to it. The "Sigismunda," which he had painted with the above object, was returned on his hands by the purchaser. It hangs now, indeed, in the National Gallery, but I do not imagine many serious critics will prefer it to the marvellous chiaroscuro, the refined ideal beauty of the Master of Parma. Yet that delicious "Shrimp Girl" which hangs near it, painted with almost a Fragonard's gaiety of palette, shows what our artist might have achieved had he gone, like Morland, for his subjects to the common life of his own country. The staircase paintings of St. Bartholomew's Hospital are not likely, I think, to induce us to revise the above opinion; and Sir Joshua's criticism is here so apposite and so just that I need no excuse for quoting it in some detail. "After this admirable artist had spent the greater part of his life in an active, busy, and, we may add, successful attention to the ridicule of life; after he had invented a new species of dramatic painting in which probably he will never be equalled; and had stored his mind with infinite materials to explain and illustrate the domestic and familiar scenes of common life which were generally, and ought to have been always, the subject of his pencil,—he very imprudently, or rather presumptuously, attempted the great historical style, for which his previous habits had by no means prepared him: he was indeed so unacquainted with the principles of this style that he was not even aware that any artificial preparation was necessary. It is to be regretted that any part of the life of such a genius should be fruitlessly employed." This criticism, which is all the more telling from its reticence, was keenly felt, and probably never forgiven, by our artist; to us it is of value critically as marking the cleavage between himself and the great English school of the eighteenth century, which sought its inspiration otherwise than in his comedy of life. But with a tenacity, with a stubborn faith in his genius which we cannot but admire, he holds firm to his own view of art. That is in the character of the man—sound, honest, sincere even where he is mistaken or narrow—just as we see him in his self-portrait of the London Gallery, with his faithful "Trump" sitting in front, as who should say, "This is my master, Hogarth—and let me just see the dog who will dare bark at him." And so when his critics barked or railed he held but the more stubbornly to his opinion; he rated the more mercilessly those "black masters," whose faults or whose supreme genius it needed a deeper study than he had given them to understand; and when "Sigismunda," that was to rival Allegri, comes back upon his hands he prices it obstinately at £400, even in his will insisting that it should not be sold below that sum. But now, not content with attempting to eclipse the great Italian masters, not content with quarrelling with the critics, in the same reckless confidence, with the same bull-dog courage and tenacity he will descend from his artistic charger to meet these last upon their own ground, and armed only with those weapons so dear to them, but new to his untried hands—the goose quill and the ink bottle—will tear down the veil that conceals Beauty, and teach them what in future to write, what to select, what to admire! I am treating in this chapter William Hogarth as a delineator of the comedy of life, not as an art critic, nor as a philosopher; and it is not my painful duty to drag the gentle reader through the verbose Preface to a no less verbose Introduction, to find ourselves at the end of these still in front of the author's main problem of the "Analysis of Beauty." The work probably suffered from the presence of more than one obliging literary—or would-be literary— friend. We hear of a Mr. Ralph, from Chiswick, volunteering his services in this direction, of a Mr. Nichols following him; and of the Rev. Mr. Townley being much busied on that Preface, wherein Lomazzo rubs shoulders with Michelangelo and Protogenes, and where the modern mortal hears with astonishment of "the sublime part which is a real je ne sçai quoi," and which, "being the most important part to all connoisseurs, I shall call a harmonious propriety, which is a touching or moving unity, or a pathetic agreement, &c." But it would be unfair to judge the Analysis by this preface, which admittedly befogged even poor Hogarth himself. Suffice to say here that he seeks to divide his elusive element, which might have defied even the dialectic of Socrates, [Pg 21] [Pg 22] [Pg 23] [Pg 24] [Pg 25] [Pg 26] into its "principles of Fullness, Variety, Uniformity, Simplicity, Intricacy, and Quantity; all which co-operate in the production of beauty, mutually correcting, and restraining each other occasionally "; and that the essay, even if entirely inadequate as a philosophical treatment of the subject, contains many useful suggestions and shrewd observations. It had been enough surely for one short life-time to have been the greatest pictorial humorist of his age, to have tried to climb above Allegri and Titian, and to have traced in thought Beauty's self to her hidden source; but behold our ill- judged artist plunging now, with equal assurance and courage, into that tumultuous sea of English eighteenth-century political strife. The result was this time fatal to his peace, and probably even to his life. John Wilkes was not a very safe man to attack carelessly, nor yet likely to remain quiescent under this treatment; and Hogarth's print of the "Times," published in September of 1762, provoked a very savage rejoinder in No. 17 of the North Briton. Hogarth's reply was a caricature of the popular leader; who then engaged one of his supporters, named Churchill, to retaliate in an angry epistle to the artist. Hogarth again replies with the graver—that terrible weapon in his practised hands—and draws a portrait of "The Bruiser, once the Reverend Churchill," shown in the form of a dancing bear, with club plastered with lies, and a tankard of porter at his side. "Never," says one of his earlier critics, "did two angry men with their abilities throw mud with less dexterity; but during this period of pictorial and poetic warfare (so virulent and disgraceful to all the parties) Hogarth's health declined visibly." A presentiment of his end seems to have come to him at his own table among his friends, and he said to them: "My next undertaking shall be the 'End of all things.'" The next day his graver was already busy with the strange plate which he called "The Bathos," where Father Time is seen dying, his broken scythe and hour-glass beside him, amid a chaos of ruin all around. This was actually his last work, for a month later, on the 28th of October, 1764, having returned in weak health from Chiswick to his house in Leicester Fields, he died suddenly of an aneurysm on his chest. His tomb at Chiswick, where his widow came to join him twenty-five years later (in 1789), was adorned in relief with the mask of Comedy, the wreath of laurel, the palette and the book on Beauty; and it was his friend Garrick who is said to have composed those lines of his epitaph, with which we too may take our farewell of the great artist of comedy: "... Whose pictur'd morals charm the mind, And through the eye correct the heart. If genius fire thee, reader, stay; If nature touch thee, drop a tear; If neither move thee, turn away, For Hogarth's honoured dust lies here." III THE COMEDY OF SOCIETY In the work of Henry William Bunbury we strike an entirely different note to that of the artist we have just studied. The contrast is, in its way, refreshing as well as instructive. Just as Hogarth appears (b. 1698) at almost the first years of the eighteenth century, so Bunbury dates (b. 1750) from exactly its dividing year; therefore he belongs no longer to those days of Swift and Bolingbroke and Walpole, of Jacobite intrigue and Hanoverian power, but to the period of the American war, and those ominous thunderclouds preceding the French Revolution. Again, just as William Hogarth belongs entirely to the people, and shares profoundly both their best and worst qualities, so the artist we are now considering belongs no less definitely to the aristocratic class—is a member of a Suffolk family which dated its English origin to the Conquest, which had gained its knighthood from Queen Elizabeth, and its baronetcy from the Merry Monarch; and had himself in his younger days made the "grand tour" of France and Italy, and later held a commission in his Majesty's Militia, and the post of equerry to the Duke of York. "Something of the amateur"—I have written elsewhere[4]—"remains through all the work of Bunbury, who left politics practically out of his field of subjects, and whose social qualities were one of his greatest charms. He married Catherine Horneck, whose sister Mary had been painted—and, it is said, proposed to—by Sir Joshua Reynolds, who had elsewhere painted these two pretty women together; and when he settled in the country with his young wife, his circle of friends came to include Oliver Goldsmith, the actor Garrick, Hoppner, and Sir Joshua—the latter being godfather to his second son, Henry, and painting his eldest as Master Bunbury in 1781—and last, but not least, Dr. Samuel Johnson." The great Doctor had in fact presented to the young couple their family Bible—a fact which is recorded upon the fly-leaf in our artist's own handwriting. Of the two sons that were born to Henry and Catherine Bunbury, their special hopes seem to have centred on the eldest, Charles John, the lovely child for whom Sir Joshua himself had improvised fairy tales to keep him amused while busy on his portrait; but those hopes were not fulfilled, for his manhood did not bear out the promise of his schooldays, and he died comparatively early. Bunbury's caricatures commence as early as his foreign tour, though some of the best refer to his later military life in [Pg 26] [Pg 27] [Pg 28] [Pg 29] [Pg 30] [Pg 31] England; especially to the time when he was in camp at Coxheath, during the troubled days of the American War. For we have now left far behind the days of Swift and Bolingbroke and Oxford, of Marlborough's battles, and of the great political settlement which marked the Hanoverian succession. Dettingen and Fontenoy are now old soldiers' tales, and the invasion of England by Charles Stuart, the younger Pretender—in which connection we may remember Hogarth's print of the march of the Guards to Finchley—lies equally behind us: we have passed through the long Ministry of Walpole and that of the elder Pitt, we have seen the war with France, and been stirred by Wolfe's victory and heroic death upon the Heights of Abraham. In a word, we have turned the corner with the year of our artist's birth, and are going downwards into the latter half of the eighteenth century. George III. has now taken his father's place upon the throne of England: the Tories have returned again to be a power in political life as in the days of Bolingbroke, and against the "King's friends," the party subservient to Court influence, there appears in the nation a very strong democratic movement with John Wilkes as its leader and idol. Meanwhile the fatal policy of Grenville had led to the alienation of the great American colonies, and the passing of the Stamp Act in 1765 brought a complete rupture. But this phase of politics enters but little into our present subject. It is of more interest to inquire, apart from this complex turbulent world of home or foreign politics, what were the people themselves in their home life, their outdoor life, their tastes, aspirations, sympathies, social surroundings? I think we shall get an answer to some of these questions—an answer none the less valuable because it comes to us indirectly—from the study of Henry William Bunbury's social caricatures. These appear to commence with (or are in some special cases even earlier than) his Grand Tour. The delightful "Courier François"—published by Bretherton at 134 New Bond St.—belongs surely to this period; and Thomas Wright, in his valuable "History of Caricature,"[5] seems to bear this out when he says of Bunbury that his earlier prints were etched and sold by James Bretherton, who published also the works of James Sayer—an artist whom we shall meet in our next chapter. In this print the "Courier" cracks a long whip as he covers the ground, mounted upon a steed almost as long, as tough and wiry- looking as himself. A short sword is at his side, and he wears enormous jack-boots. In the distance rise peaked mountains, perhaps those of Southern France or Savoy; and the inn to which he seems bound bears the legend, Poste Royale, with the three fleur-de-lys. Our Courier belongs evidently to the ancien règime, and might indeed have stepped—or galloped—to us out of Sterne's "Sentimental Journey." The drawing of these prints is clumsy and coarse in technique, though full of character; and, in fact, Bunbury, who seems to have begun to publish as early as 1771,[6] when he was only twenty-one years of age, had little knowledge or skill in engraving, and seems, after some preliminary efforts which were not very successful, to have entrusted the most of his work to be engraved by other hands. Thus James Bretherton, who was an engraver as well as a publisher, was engaged on Bunbury's prints from 1772 onwards; though later we shall find Rowlandson working as an engraver on Bunbury's humorous sketches, and necessarily, from his strong individuality, imparting to them much of his own character. The pendant to the print just described is the "Courrier Anglois," and this was in fact both engraved and published by Bretherton in 1774 (it bears the inscription, H. W. Bunbury, delineavit; J. Bretherton, fecit). In fine contrast to the hurry of the lean Frenchman his English counterpart ambles leisurely along, as if time were for him a matter of entire indifference; his horse is loaded with a heavy pack, against which the rider comfortably leans, while he puts a long horn to his lips. He has no sword, or any weapon of defence; but the two grisly figures by the roadside dangling on a gibbet, and his own inimitable expression of contented ease, seem to imply that travelling is secure for him, and Justice prompt and keen-eyed. To this period of the Grand Tour belong also, in my judgment, the "Tour to Foreign Parts" (drawn by Bunbury, engraved by Bretherton, published in 1799 by J. Harris of Cornhill), the "Cuisine de la Poste," or "The Kitchen of a French Post House" (H. Bunbury, invt., published 1771 by Harris), "The Englishman at Paris," 1767, the earliest in date of these (Mr. Bunbury, del.; Js. Bretherton, fecit, published 1799 by J. Harris), and lastly the "View on the Pont Neuf at Paris" (H. W. Bunbury, invt. The engraver's name, in my example, is cut). These prints are as precious in their detailed evidence of costume and methods of life as they are amusing. They are snapshots caught—not with a camera, but with an eye and pencil which were almost as quick—of the life of that old monarchic France as it was seen by the English traveller, posting along the great high-roads, or taking his walk through the town. Soon, very soon, all that life was to be swept away in the hurricane of political passion, never in any of its quainter features to return; that is why these jottings of our artist are to the student of this period so inestimably precious. Our travellers, three in number, and evidently portrayed from the life, have just descended ("A Tour in Foreign Parts") from the two-horse chaise, which the postilion is driving into the yard. The smallest of the three Englishmen, with "Chesterfield's Letters" under his arm, approaches the obsequious host of the "Poste Royale" with a conciliatory smile; the while the landlady is engaged in an assault upon her hen-roost, and the servant-girl seems to aim at a similar result with the domestic cats. And now ("La Cuisine de la Poste") we are introduced to the interior. The pot-au-feu hangs in the great chimney over the blazing logs; the village gossips are there—the postilion in his clumsy jack-boots, the housewife, and the curé with a friend sipping his glass of red wine—and on the walls Louis le bien-aimé, with baton and perruque, is balanced by Sanctus Paulus, with a sword much bigger than himself, or by the "Ordonnances de Monsieur le Duc de Choiseul, Grand Maître des Postes et Relais de France." Or, again, our travellers have arrived at last in the great city ("Englishman at Paris"), and take their walk in the streets of La Ville Lumiére. A fat monk and a thin peasant seem both to regard our tourist with astonishment; a dandy of the period is driving his chariot with a lackey hanging on behind, and the indispensable perruquier is hurrying to an appointment. Or—in its way most curious of all—we [Pg 32] [Pg 33] [Pg 34] [Pg 35] [Pg 36] [Pg 37] see the Pont Neuf of those old days, with the costumes and characters which then thronged its thoroughfare. Huge muffs seem to have been then the fashion, often combined in use with umbrellas, such as we now should call Japanese sunshades; the perruquier here, too, must have his muff, though both hands are filled with the shaving-pot and curling tongs; the trim abbé in his short cassock, even the truculent-looking postilion are all provided. In the corner a poodle is being clipped, just as we may see to-day beside the Seine, and is loudly vociferating his complaints; and, above all, we see the quaint ensign of the trade, which combined the shoeblack's lower art with that of the dog-barber. Aux Quarante Lions St. Louis Décrotte à l'Anglaise et Tond des Chiens Proprement Allons, Messeigneurs, Allons. We must turn now to our artist's later prints of English eighteenth-century social life, which are as full of humorous observation, even though they have not the special interest of these notes on old France. For, like Collet and Sandby, his predecessors in English caricature, Bunbury gave but little attention to political caricature. Sandby belongs almost (b. 1725) to the later years of Hogarth's ascendency; and, though not a professional caricaturist, being perhaps annoyed at that artist's depreciation of other painters, many of his caricatures are directed against Hogarth himself. But Sandby's best claim to our interest lies outside our present subject; for his landscape work in steel engraving, in aquatint and oil-colour, had led him up to the discovery of the beauty and interest of water-colour painting, in which art he may claim to be a pioneer. He outlived John Collet, who had been born in the same year (1725) as himself, and is said to have been a pupil of Hogarth, though Lambert, a landscape-painter, is mentioned as giving him his first instructions. Certainly there is something which recalls Hogarth in his drawings, which deal, as I have said, with social satire rather than politics. "A Disaster" treats of a lady who has lost both hat and wig together by the same gust of wind; her footman behind has caught one of these in each hand, and the rustics, who have preserved nature's covering, laugh at her plight. Collet's picture of "Father Paul in his Cups, or The Private Devotions of a Convent," was one of a series by our artist intended to illustrate Sheridan's comedy of "The Duenna," produced in 1775. This was close upon the period of Lord Gordon's riots (1780), and the "No Popery" feeling which then prevailed finds illustration in this work of Collet's. Like Sandby, he worked also in water-colour, and two of his sketches in this medium are mentioned by Bryan as in the Victoria and Albert Museum. We have now returned with Bunbury from his "grand tour" abroad, and have to study him at his best in his sketches of English social life in town and country. He was probably himself a good horseman, and at any rate understood, as thoroughly as even Caran d'Ache himself, the humorous side of the equestrian art. A whole series of his smaller prints deal with the rider and his steed. "How to pass a carriage," "How to lose your way," "How to travel on two legs in a frost," are among the best of these. Another clever print shows the rider of a pulling animal with a mouth of cast-iron just clearing an old woman's barrow; while among the larger prints we have "Richmond Hill," "Hyde Park," "Coxheath Ho," and "Warley Ho," and his inimitable print of a "Riding House," published by Bretherton in 1780. Bunbury's caricatures of military subjects naturally connect themselves with the period when he was actively connected with the Suffolk County Militia, more especially when, in 1778, he was in camp at Coxheath at the time of the war in America. "Recruits," of which I give an illustration, may be included among these, as well as the "Militia Meeting" and "The Deserter," while "A Visit to the Camp" and "A Camp Scene" belong to the same class of subject. The characterisation of "Recruits" is excellent, from the smart young officer to the rustic awkwardness of the two recruits, and the more dangerous self-approval of the third; behind we see a chawbacon grinning at the scene, beneath the portentous sign of "The Old Fortune," with its painting of a wooden-legged and armless veteran. "A Visit to the Camp" gives just such a scene—save that the characters are in eighteenth-century costume—as might be witnessed even to-day, when parents, aunts and cousins visit their young hopeful amid the martial surroundings of his volunteer camp; and here, too, may be mentioned a series of single figures in military costume—a "Life-guardsman," "Light Infantryman," "Light-horseman" and a "Foot-soldier." These were all published by Macklin. The foot-soldier's uniform appears in "Recruits"; the handsome uniform of the Light-horseman, with its plumed helmet and high boots, in "A Visit to the Camp," and again in "The Deserter." While Bunbury was thus occupied with his military career his wife, whom he had left in lodgings in Pall Mall, gave him their second son, to whom Sir Joshua Reynolds stood godfather. Is it too much to suggest that this latter is the artist caricatured in that delightful "Family Piece," of which I also hope to give an illustration; and which may have been suggested to our artist by the scene in his friend Oliver Goldsmith's masterpiece, "The Vicar of Wakefield"? To the next period of Bunbury's life—when war's alarms were over and the camp at Coxheath broken up—belong many of his best prints of English country life. He was living now in Suffolk, and his print of the "Country Club" is said to have depic...