Hogarth: His Life, Art, and Times

equipage and was very conscious—as the self-portrait too might indicate—of his
dress. Nichols talked with a barber who claimed often to have shaved Hogarth,
and commented that he persisted in wearing a scarlet roquelaure or "rockelo,"
the loosely-fitting many-buttoned cloak popularized by the Duc de Roquelaure
in the reign of Louis XIV, even after the fashion died away. Benjamin West
recollected him as "a strutting, consequential little man;" James Barry saw him
strolling about in a sky-blue coat, and others remembered "his hat cocked and
stuck on one side, much in the manner of the great Frederick of Prussia." John
Ireland noted that he always wore his hat in such a way as to show off the deep
scar in his forehead, which Ireland says he received as a child, and which also
appears prominently in the self-portrait with Trump. 32
We have seen him in the company of the Hoadlys and Garrick, of Fielding
and Richardson. Another friend was the Rev. Arnold King, who became rector
of St. Michael, Cornhill, in 1749; he chose the verses for Industry and Idleness,
many passages of which are marked in Hogarth's family Bible. It was to King
that Hogarth addressed his punning invitation to dinner at the Mitre Tavern
by drawing a circle for a dish with knife and fork as supporters; within the dish
he placed a pie with a mitre on top of it, and around it wrote his invitation: "M r
Hogarth's Comp ts to M r King and desires the Honnor of his Company at dinner
on thursday next to Eta Beta PY" (pl. 223). 33 With these people he was obviously
at ease. But unlike Garrick, for example, he was evidently not comfortable with
the upper classes. There is the story of Horace Walpole's inviting him to dinner
with the poet Thomas Gray, very likely in order to observe the confrontation of
these two diametrically opposite characters. "What with the reserve of the one
and the want of colloquial talent in the other, Walpole never passed a duller
time than between these representatives of Tragedy and Comedy." 34
Among the artists, he was most at ease with the most convivial—Hayman,
Lambert, and Ellys. With Lambert and Ellys, the mutual attachment to the
stage and scene painting probably contributed to the friendship. He seems to
have liked people who were something besides artists. This was especially true
of the younger generation, where he increasingly found his best friends. Benja-
min Wilson, to whom I have referred more than once for anecdotes of Hogarth,
was as much a scientist as a painter and published books on electricity. Allan
Ramsay wrote as well as painted, and Samuel Scott was interested in music.
Hogarth's early life had been one of powerful relationships, with his family
and with Thornhill, indicating an obvious personal need for security and for
models. Once he was married, however, with his father, mother, and Thornhill
dead, and the success and security he desired a reality, the remaining relation-
ships are more difficult to assess as to importance and purpose. The majority
were either convivial or professional, that is public, associations. For example,
it is very difficult to document the personal relationship between Hogarth and
Fielding, though much can be said about the public one. It is discernible in
83