Hogarth: His Life, Art, and Times

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early years). Hogarth's teacaddy-shaped tomb also remains, though all design is worn away and the inscriptions have been restored. The Feathers Tavern still exists but probably not in its original location; the Burlington Arms still stands in Church Street. Hogarth's house is largely as it was, the sole alteration being the demolition of his stable and studio and the addition of a room, possibly where the studio once was (pl. 221). A visitor in the mid-nineteenth century said he saw the studio over the stable. It had a large window and a very narrow stairway, and so "his paintings, I presume, would be let down through this window, for trans- mission, in his carriage, to town." 27 On one side of the house and walled garden is now the Hogarth Laundry with its sign an adaptation of Hogarth Painting the Comic Muse; on the other is the enormous expanse of Chiswick Products, whose most publicized ware is Cherry Blossom Shoe Polish. But inside Ho- garth's garden one feels much as he must have felt 200 years ago—as though the torrent of traffic outside did not exist. All is still and green here, and the mul- berry tree, from which the Hogarths are supposed to have given the village chil- dren fruit every year, still produces fruit in September. The inside of the house was described by John Ireland in the 1780s, when it was still unchanged. None of Hogarth's own prints were on the walls, but there were engravings of Thornhill's St. Paul paintings around the parlor, and the Houbraken heads of Shakespeare, Spenser, and Dryden. In the garden, over the gate, was "a cast of George the Second's mask, in lead," and in one corner "a rude and shapeless stone, placed upright against the wall," the marker for a pet bulfinch: ALAS, POOR DICK! OB. 1760 AGED ELEVEN. Underneath were two bird crossbones surmounted by a heart and a death's head scratched with a nail, and at the bottom were Hogarth's initials. 28 In Hogarth's time the house stood alone, and fields stretched beyond, across which he sketched and etched his friend Dr. John Ranby's house on what is now Corney Road (pl. 222). Thomas Morell lived nearby in Turnham Green, Ar- thur Murphy in Hammersmith Terrace, William Rose in Bradmore House in Chiswick Lane (where for thirty years he kept an academy), Ralph Griffiths of the Monthly Review in Linden House, and James Ralph in various houses in the neighborhood. Fielding had a house not far away at Fordhook, on the Ux- bridge Road, about a mile from the village of Acton, at the eastern extremity of Ealing. The only house other than Hogarth's that has survived from the period is Chiswick House, the prototypical Palladian villa which Lord Burlington built and lived in, where he entertained William Kent and others, including Pope and Hogarth's own friend Garrick. Indeed, in the summer of 1749 Garrick had 81
82 visited Lord and Lady Burlington and sent current prints from London out to the latter. 29 Very little is known about Hogarth's private life during these middle years, aside from minutiae such as the fact Samuel Ireland discloses, that he could not distinguish fresh from salt butter till he had taken a bit of cheese at breakfast. And there are anecdotes about his forgetfulness or absentmindedness, traits often attributed to artists, but in his case perhaps a byproduct of his remarkable visual memory. One need only imagine him deeply immersed in some problem of his latest painting or print: "At table he would sometimes turn round his chair as if he had finished eating, and as suddenly would re-turn it, and fall to his meal again." Nichols, who tells this story, adds that he once addressed a letter to Benjamin Hoadly simply "To the Doctor at Chelsea," which did however reach its addressee and was preserved by Hoadly "as a pleasant memorial of his Friend's extraordinary inattention." Another remarkable instance of Hogarth's absence was related to Mr. Steevens, in 1781, by one of his intimate friends. Soon after he set up his carriage, he had occasion to pay a visit to the Lord Mayor. When he went, the weather was fine; but business detained him till a violent shower of rain came on. He was let out of the Mansion-house by a different door from that at which he entered; and, seeing the rain, began immediately to call for a hackney-coach. Not one was to be met with on any of the neighbouring stands; and our Artist sallied forth to brave the storm, and actually reached Leicester-fields without bestowing a thought on his own carriage, till Mrs. Hogarth (surprized to see him so wet and splashed) asked where he had left it. 30 Hogarth's absentmindedness or his being not yet used to a carriage could be equally at issue here. In 1776 George III, in the course of a conversation with Benjamin Wilson, Hogarth's old friend, observed that he supposed that Hogarth told a story very well. Wilson answered, 'Pretty well, but he was apt sometimes to tell the wrong story.' 'How is that?' said the King. 'Sir,' he answered, 'Mr. Hogarth was one day dining with Sir George Hay, Mr. Garrick and others, when he said he had an ex- cellent story to tell which would make them all laugh. Everybody being so prepared he told his story, but instead of laughing all looked grave, and Hogarth himself seemed a little uncomfortable. After a short time, however, he struck his hand very suddenly upon the table and said that he had told the wrong story. This caused no small amusement, and when he told the right one at last it was so good in its way that all the company laughed exceedingly.' 31 As the first of these stories suggests, by this time he had set himself up with an
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Hogarth: His Life, Art, and Times

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