Hogarth: His Life, Art, and Times

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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 relationships 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
84 terms of their works, not of themselves: Fielding refers to "my friend Hogarth" in Tom Jones. And the Rev. James Townley, who assisted Hogarth with verses for his Stages of Cruelty and was to help correct The Analysis of Beauty, wrote him (28 February 1750): "I wish I were as intimate with you ... as your Friend Fielding." 35 There are signs of affection but no very clear indication of what kind of friendship it was or what Hogarth put into it or got out of it. Closer to home, his sister Anne and he remained in the same house for over twenty years, but nothing is known of their relationship save that she served him well and faithfully. His business situation was changing in the 1740s, most nota- bly with the addition of his trade with the Continent and the increasing sale of bound volumes of his prints. The sisters, who were living close to William by 1736, appear as ratable tenants in Cranbourn Passage from 1739-42. On Friday, 20 November 1741, Mary died and was buried three days later near her mother in the churchyard of St. Anne, Soho. 36 Anne remained in Cranbourn Passage into 1742; but by the end of that year she had given up the shop and moved in with William in Leicester Fields, and thereafter her signature begins to appear on receipts, bills, and the like, and she remained with her brother's family until her death in 1771. William may even have put money into Anne's shop before she came to live with him; certainly he supported her thereafter. In his will he
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Page 17 and 18: 72 two plates of The Four Times of
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Page 36 and 37: painting was late in 1749. It must
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