Hogarth: His Life, Art, and Times

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The division must be explained as a kind of self-therapy for Hogarth, because
it oversimplifies and even falsifies the complex vision of his earlier progresses.
It takes little imagination to perceive the obvious parallel between the indus-
trious apprentice and Hogarth, who married his master's daughter and took
over his business, carrying on the art academy, history painting, and defending
Thornhill's name. It is the face of Tom Idle, however, that resembles Hogarth's,
while Goodchild's is idealized almost to the point of caricature, and the strange
muffled shape of Idle's mother (repeated from print to print) bears a disconcert-
ing resemblance—hooded and in mourning attire—to the single portrait Ho-
garth painted of his own widowed mother (pl. 136). His image of a mother
might, of course, unconsciously draw on his own mother without seeking a fur-
ther parallel in the son. But if only to inject enough self-irony to make the por-
trayal palatable in his own mind, Hogarth must have introduced some sense of
himself into his opposite: he was so unlike Idle, so like the industrious one. Yet
one side of him clearly sought, as he put it, his "pleasure" as well as his "studies."
Looking back on his time as an apprentice, both in silver engraving and in
painting at Vanderbank's academy, he later emphasized his idleness, saying that
he required a technique "most suitable to my situation and idle disposition";
the mnemonic system he hit upon was useful because it allowed him "to make
use of whatever my Idleness would suffer me to become possest of." Idleness is
one of the key words he applies to himself in those years. 16 It sounds very much
as if there is a humorous self-portrait included in Tom Idle, hinting at that as-
pect of Hogarth that kept him from finishing his apprenticeship, liked to go
wenching, was deluded by illusions of ease and grandeur, and, perhaps, uncon-
sciously associated the creative act (as opposed to the successful businessman's
practice) with death and mutilation: the Harlot and the Rake in him that
needed to be exorcised.
Hogarth unflinchingly portrays the reality of both worlds. Idle's is an open,
unprotected world full of freedom, temptations, and dangers, with the threat of
some sort of retribution always hanging over him. Goodchild never ventures out
of a safe enclosure, remaining careful, comfortable, and protected. While Idle
sprawls over an open grave in a churchyard and shivers in an open boat on the
Thames, Goodchild is shown within what appears to be St. Martin in the Fields,
and in his master's counting house, obediently following first his heavenly and
then his earthly master. In Plates 6 and 7 both are inside a house, but Goodchild
is in perfect harmony with the outside world that is serenading him, while Idle
is in terror of any noise that may signify the presence of a hostile outside world.
Once the choice is made, outside all is hostile and fearful, full of impiety,
roguery, poverty, whores, failure, and chaos; inside is religion, shrewd business
sense, money, a wife, status, and order. In the final plates, Idle rides in an open
cart, Goodchild in a closed carriage, each to his own fate.