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A Harlot's Progress: Plate 2
1732
12 5/16” X 14 3/4” (H X W)
View the full resolution plate here.
View the copper plate here.
In Plate II, Moll is the kept mistress of a wealthy lover. She greets her newly-arrived patron, while her maid sneaks her preferred lover, in a state of undress out of the chamber. Moll kicks over a table to create a diversion so that the escape can be accomplished. Lichtenberg comments that Moll’s pet monkey, gasping in horror, witnesses the “danger” of the scene (21).
What is the “displayed” in displayed in the plate? Is it Moll’s absolute control over the situation? She has one lover for wealth and another, presumably for sexual pleasure. The mere implication that Moll acknowledges, much less indulges in, sexual appetites would be frightening to the English of Hogarth’s era. A.D. Harvey notes that female sexual desire was constructed as abnormal in the century:
The corollary of the belief that normal women did not enjoy sex was that women who enjoyed sex were not normal, and the term nymphomania came into use to describe the medical disorder that they were suffering from. (44)
Moll’s amused and satisfied expression certainly indicates her enjoyment of the sexual pleasure provides by her lover, whose phallic, unsheathed sword leaves no doubt (at least symbolically) as to their interrupted activity. She also enjoys her role as temptress in this exotic, Edenic setting, using her appeal to lure her lovers into sin. The falling table (initiated by her “misstep”) not only foreshadows her fall but also recalls the Fall.
Paulson also notes the escaping lover’s sword is placed so that it appears to stab Moll’s Jewish lover in the back (Life vol. 1 256). This enhances Hogarth’s presentation of his harlot as dangerous and powerful. Like Helen of Troy, she has the power to initiate violence between the rivals for her affection. This control over men is achieved solely through sexuality, allowing her to rule through passion. This prospect is dangerous indeed in an era that prized reason so highly. Moll’s power is disorder, an overthrow of human rationality through animalistic desire.
A Harlot's Progress: Plate 2
Shesgreen, Sean. Engravings by Hogarth. (1973)
Seduced by the glitter of a life of wealth and comfort, Moll has fallen quickly from the hands of the procuress and nobleman into the keeping of an unattractive but wealthy Jewish businessman. Quite transformed by her experience, she apes the life style of the class to which she aspires; instead of her modest work clothes she wears silk stockings, stylish shoes and a fashionable dress that reveals her arms and her breast. Her face, which bears a look of spirited insolence, is adorned with a beauty spot that may hide the first signs of venereal disease.
Her apartment is richly appointed. She keeps a maid (dressed much as she herself was in Plate I), an exotic West Indian servant boy and a monkey. The monkey, the most pointed indication of her affectation, resembles the merchant in facial expression and posture, and there is little difference in her treatment of either plaything. Prominent on her dressing table is a mirror, symbol of vanity, beside it a jar of makeup and a smiling white mask. The mask, which is not unlike a death mask, suggests that Moll has been taken to a masquerade by her partially but fashionably dressed visitor, a fellow noticeably more youthful and attractive than the middle-aged businessman who supports her.
Behind her hang small portraits of two contemporaries held to be atheists, Samuel Clarke and Thomas Woolston. Above the whole scene are two large paintings, one of Jonah outside Nineveh seated next to an ivy plant, the other of David dancing before the Ark while Uzzah, attempting to touch it, is knifed in the back. The picture of Jonah may be a warning to heed the prophet’s message to reform. The painting of David and Uzzah, one of whom is killed for his sacrilege. the other rebuked by his wife for indecency, seems to foreshadow the fates that await the two characters in the scene (19).
A Harlot's Progress: Plate 2
Uglow, Jenny. Hogarth: A Life and a World. (1997)
By Plate 2 she has become the mistress of a rich Jew, a sure sign of success: 'I madam', boasts Gay's whore Slammekin in The Beggar's Opera, 'was once kept by a Jew; and bating their religion, to women they are a good sort of people.' But Moll snaps her fingers at good luck, and is already deceiving him. As he takes tea, a young lover creeps out, trousers undone, the startled maid clutching his shoes. Moll provides a distraction, flashing her eyes and baring a nipple, flicking her fingers and kicking her tea table, much to the alarm of the scalded Jew, the pet monkey trailing her bonnet and the little black slave bringing the tea kettle. She seems in control, but she too is a slave and a pet, ministering to a rich man’s desires (201-202).
The Jew's room . . . is decorated not only with those portraits of Woolston and Clarke, attacked as enemies of Christianity, but with two pictures of Old Testament history. Appropriate, of course, but their content is mocking. In one, entitled 'Jonah, why art thou angry?', a weeping Jonah rages because God has not destroyed Nineveh (the Gentiles) as he promised. In the other David dances with his harp, while Uzzah steadies the Ark, toppled by the oxen: for this sacrilegious act, God, through his priest, stabs him in the back. In the 'real' scene, where the Jew who has 'sacrilegiously' touched a Christian girl is balancing the tilting table with his hand as Uzzah does the ark, the lover's sword also seems to 'stab him in the back'.
Both pictures undermine the Jew, presenting him as vengeful and tainted, but both also criticize the harshness of Old Testament justice and the cruelty of religious zeal. The Jew (like Moll) is an outsider and a victim of prejudice (204).
A Harlot's Progress: Plate 2
Paulson, Ronald. Popular and Polite Art in the Age of Hogarth. (1979)
In the second plate, a painting on the wall shows Uzzah trying to steady the ark of the covenant, which is falling. But Uzzah is breaking the law, for he is not a Levite, and only Levites can touch the ark. In the biblical text he is struck dead by an angry Jehovah. Hogarth characteristically, omits the hand of God and substitutes a human priest, a keeper of Jehovah’s law, who is stabbing Uzzah in the back. . . . From all of his prints and paintings it is plain that Hogarth associates the law with the Old Testament, the Ten Commandments, and the harshness of eye-for-an-eye justice. Old Testament subjects appear enclosed and forbidding as pictures on the wall, painted copies and after dead masters, serving to urge on the living to brutal punishments for the least transgression to themselves (19).
In the second plate of A Harlot’s Progress the mask, monkey, and mirror are straight out of Ripa’s Iconologia, where the description of Imitation includes “a woman holding a bundle of brushes in her right hand, a mask in her left, with an ape at her feet.” The ape is present, Ripa says (1709 translation), because of “its aptitude for imitating man with its gestures” (ars simia naturae), and the mask to suggest “the imitation, on and off the stage, of the appearance and bearing of various characters.” Certainly “aping” and “masking,” verbally and metaphorically, are present in the scene. On the level of story, the mask also alluded to a masquerade as the place where the Harlot has met her new lover: she has worn this mask, and so the metaphorical relationship is almost one of identity. The monkey too is a fashionable acquisition (like the black slave-boy) which has been made either by the Jewish merchant or by his mistress, and is itself an aping of fashion, which applies to both: she with her clothes and young lover, a “lady”; he with his old-master paintings and Christian mistress, a “gentleman.” The monkey is shown trying on attire that resembles the Harlot’s before a dressing table, and his expression of surprise at her kicking over a table (to divert her keeper from the retreat of her lover) is parallel to the Jew’s (118-119).
The two examples of divine justice, pictured above the Harlot’s head on the wall of her Jewish keeper’s room (or the one he has furnished for her), choose the moment when God has withdrawn and spared Nineveh and it is Jonah who is still cursing the wicked city; and in the story of Uzzah touching the Ark of the Covenant, it is not God’s thunderbolt but a human priest who stabs Uzzah in the back. The allegory has been humanized, and the providential structure removed, or rather displaced to human agents.
On the one hand, the order of divine providence has been reduced to the natural law of causality. It has been dismissed by the humans themselves insofar as they ordered the mutilated copies of the paintings. . . . While Hogarth demonstrates horizontal causality, however, he also shows the vestiges of vertical causality, which should be the divine pattern, but now consists only of humans imitating the models or the roles of the biblical stories and classical myths, and the vertical pull is that of puppet strings. When a priest stabs Uzzah and Jonah curses the sinners of Nineveh, beneath the picture the Jewish keeper prepares to curse the unfaithful Harlot and cast her into outer darkness (119-120).
A Harlot's Progress: Plate 2
Paulson, Ronald. Hogarth: His Life, Art and Times. (1971)
. . . in the second plate, the monkey’s expression paralleling the man’s as the girl—now Harlot—kicks over the tea table in order to divert his attention. She has been corrupted, as Pamela never is; and there is no suggestion of Pamela’s devout purity (“May I never survive, one moment, that fatal one in which I shall forfeit my innocence!”) or Clarissa’s gloom (measuring herself for her coffin after being raped). Rather, she appears with her keeper, a Jewish city merchant, gaily distracting him in order to allow a younger and more handsome lover to sneak out the door.
The paintings that hang on the Jew’s wall—old master renderings of Old Testament subjects—act as a commentary on their collector and his newest item. Directly over his head is Uzzah rashly touching the Ark of the Covenant, much as the merchant took the forbidden object, a Christian girl: the Ark was supposed to be carried only by Levites and Uzzah was not a Levite. The whole scene below is a redaction of the painting with imaginary lines connecting each character with his biblical counterpart above. Most obvious, the tilting Ark of the Covenant becomes the tilting tea table; Uzzah reaching out to steady the Ark becomes the Jew steadying the table; the sportive oxen (lasciviens in the Biblical commentaries) who cause the Ark to tile become the Harlot who locks over the table. Hogarth has changed the story in 2 Samuel in one respect: he has substituted for the hand of God a priest who is stabbing Uzzah in the back. The Harlot, like the oxen, is kicking at her traces; she has taken a young lover, and toward the door, appears (by a characteristically Hogarthian false perspective) to be stabbing the Jew in the back. The stabbing priest becomes the cuckolding young lover. (Antlers appear prominently in the pattern of the wallpaper.)
The other painting shows Jonah sitting next to a withered gourd with God’s sun beating down on his head. God was punishing Jonah for wanting the people of Nineveh to be destroyed even after they had repented of their sins. As Jonah sat outside the city walls hoping to see the Ninevites destroyed, God sent a gourd to protect his head from the rays of the sun, and a worm to wither it so that he would feel the full force of the heat; then He asked Jonah to compare the gourd to Nineveh as a lesson in mercy. Hogarth’s Jonah has his fists clenched in anger and is looking in the direction of Uzzah in the other painting. Whether Jonah is analogous to justice directed against the Jew or analogous to the Jew himself, the problem is one of human justice and divine mercy. For if the Jew is a victim of human justice, he is also an agent of it: like Jonah, he will pass rigorous judgment and banish the Harlot when he discovers her transgression. The paintings he collects reflect his own stern Old Testament justice; in the next plate he has past her out and she is living in a shabby room in Drury Lane, the territory of prostitutes.
Moving up into the print from the bottom left, from monkey to Jew, from tilting table to Harlot, and thence up to the pictures, the painting of Uzzah reads as an extension of the action below, and the painting of Jonah as a commentary on the action. But if (following the early Hogarth commentators from Lichtenberg on) the paintings are read from left to right, they apply equally well to the Harlot, who is under the protection of the Jew as Jonah was under the shade of the gourd, which withered in the morning leaving him unprotected under a fierce retributory sun. The painting of Uzzah also applies in a way to the Harlot, for like her Jewish keeper she too is reaching out to touch something forbidden. Their situations are in a way parallel: both are climbing socially, he by picture collecting and taking a Christian girl for his mistress (I suppose this was the reason for Hogarth’s making him a Jew), she by presuming to rise above the status of a mistress and take a lover of her own; and both suffer particularly human punishments. Uzzah’s error, temeritas or rashness, glossed by some of the biblical commentators as ignorantia, is her crime too. In her case the materialization of God’s wrath in a priest connects with Justice Gonson in the next plate, in which the distinction between human justice and divine mercy is further underlined (vol. 1 255-256).
In Plate 1, he shows, from left to right, the York Wagon and the young girl who has dismounted, the girl in conversation with a procuress, and the waiting figure of the aristocratic keeper: past, present, and future. In Plate 2 the Jew and his mistress are in the foreground, the escaping lover in the background, and the future prophesied in the pictures of Old Testament retribution on the wall. . . . There is usually a central group and one in the rear; the first represents the present. And the second (which, through the disposition, focus, light, and shade, one sees the second) the next step in the action; the walls then convey exegesis, commentary and prolepsis. Here is a rigorous attempt to relate a temporal story in a spatial genre (vol.1 256) . . .
A Harlot's Progress: Plate 2
Paulson, Ronald. Hogarth’s Graphic Works. (1965)
Passing through the hands of Charteris, or perhaps dispatched by Mother Needham, Mary Hackabout, now the Harlot, as become the mistress of a wealthy London Jew. He has apparently arrived unexpectedly, and she is pettishly kicking over the tea table to divert his attention while her more attractive lover tiptoes out the door with the assistance of the serving woman. The mask on the toilet table, which appears again in Plates 3 and 5, shows that she has been to one of Heideigger’s masquerades. Since she is the Jew’s keeping, she must have slipper out masked to meet the lover who is now taking his leave. The Jew’s expression at her behavior is mirrored by the frightened monkey at their feet, as hers was in the previous print by the goose.
Both of the large paintings on the wall are, appropriately, of Old Testament subjects. The first shows Jonah seated beside his withering gourd with Nineveh in the distance and the sun, sent by God, beating on his head (see Jonah 4.6-8). Like Jonah, the Harlot sits under the shelter of her gourd, which sprang up in the night and which is being destroyed by the worm in the morning; the painting is a parable of "the girl’s upstart grandeur, and the frail nature of her protection" (J Ireland, 3, 328)'.The other picture shows Uzzah rashly reaching for the Ark of the Covenant to take hold of it--for which he is instantly struck dead by a priest. Both pictures imply the stern Old Testament justice that Moll can expect from the Jew when he discovers her duplicity It is probable that Hogarth intended to equate the Jew with David, singing, dancing, and playing his harp as he enters Jerusalem in triumph with the Ark (this Christian girl). David, "who uncovered himself ... in the eyes of the handmaids of his servants, as one of the vain fellows shamelessly uncovereth himself" (2 Samuel 6.20), may, as J. Ireland supposes (3, 327), "typify the backsliding Jew." (David's angry wife Micah is shown watching him from a window.) Hogarth may have had in mind Tom Brown's "Letter to Madame -------, kept by a Jew in Govern Garden," with its indecent suppositions about such a liaison (Letters on Several Occasions, 1700, in Amusements Serious and Comical and other Works, ed. A. L. Hayward, New York, 1927, pp. 199-200).
In the copy printed for Giles King (authorized by Hogarth), the two small portraits are superscribed "Clarke" and "Woolston" (BM Sat. 2048), presumably because Thomas Woolaston (1670-1733) and Samuel Clarke (1675-1729) were both considered freethinkers. The falling table and the general position of the Harlot may derive from the anonymous frontispiece to The Taming of the Shrew in Nicholas Rowe's edition of Shakespeare (1709, vol. 2; Antal, p. 105) (145).
A Harlot's Progress: Plate 2
Quennell, Peter. Hogarth’s Progress. (1955)
Her development is unusually rapid, as we discover from the next plate. Moll now embellishes the alcove of a wealthy Jewish merchant. Presumably she has been deserted by Chartres, but not without a thorough schooling; and the amant de cœur with whom she amuses her leisure, a sleek young fencing-master, probably a Frenchman, has been surprised in her room and quickly secreted in his mistress’s bed. She produces a diversion to mask his escape, kicking over the spindle-legged table and demolishing its egg-shell china. Hogarth—from a modern admirer’s point of view, it is among his more unpleasing traits—loved to reproduce the effects nowadays captured by instantaneous photography. Teacups and teapot hang in the air; the faces of the three actors at the front of the ages, behind an imaginary row of footlights, reflect feelings that occupy a fraction of a second, while the table is still on the slant, and the tinkle and crash of broken porcelain has not yet had the time to die away. But each face is alive with character; and—such as was the quality of Hogarth’s dramatic skill—from each of them we seem able to divine what its owner is likely to do next. While the negro page will continue to gape in alarm, horrified by the senseless destruction of so many rich and valuable objects, the merchant may go down on his knees—not ceasing, however, to grumble and expostulate—determined to save as much as he can of a new tea-service that has cost good money. As to Moll, she will arise and pace the room, relishing her factitious outburst of rage log after her concealed gallant has slipped forth on to the staircase. Her petulance, wantonness and charm are set off by the keen Sephardic profile of her startled and indignant companion. His voice is sharpening to a scream, as a cascade of scalding tea burns his unprotected shanks. The native decorum of his race has been irremediably outraged.
That Moll’s protector should be of Jewish descent is a detail the social historian may find particularly interesting. The Jewish colony in England was small; twenty years later, it is said not to have exceeded more that seven or eight thousand families; but they help important positions in London and Bristol; and during the notorious Oxfordshire Election of 1754 the influence that they were believed to exercise, and the dastardly intentions that they were alleged to entertain, would arouse a storm of anti-Semitic fury that reverberated in the House of Commons. The poorer sort retained their traditional habit—a Jewish pedlar tramping from place to place was among the very few wearers of a beard that the average Englishman had yet seen; but the merchant whom Moll exploits and deluded, and who, no doubt, bears a name that is either Portuguese or Spanish, has assumed the embroidered coat, ruffled shirt and crisply curled wig of a metropolitan man of the world. He cuts, nevertheless, a slightly exotic figure—for Hogarth’s audience he was indeed, something of a rarity; and the apparatus of the room he has furnished, where parts of Moll’s masquerade-costume lie scattered on the dressing-table, include two large and elaborate canvases with the subjects from Old Testament legend. Here Jonah is seated beneath his gourd: there the amorous King David prances jubilantly before the Ark (94-96).
A Harlot's Progress: Plate 2
Ireland, John and John Nichols. Hogarth’s Works. (1883)
Entered into the path of infamy, the next scene exhibits our young heroine the mistress of a rich Jew, attended by a black boy (the attendant black boy gave the foundation of an ill-natured remark by Quin, when Garrick , once attempted the part of Othello. “He pretend to play Othello! Said the surly satirist; “he pretend to play Othello! He wants noting but the tea-kettle and lamp to qualify him for Hogarth’s Pompey), and surrounded with the pompous parade of tasteless profusion. Her mind being now as depraved as her person is decorated, she keeps up the spirit of her character by extravagance and inconstancy. An example of the first is exhibited in the monkey being suffered to drag her rich head-dress round the room, and of the second in the retiring gallant. The Hebrew is represented at breakfast with his mistress; but having come earlier than expected, the favourite has not departed. To secure his retreat, is an exercise for the invention of both mistress and maid. This is accomplished by the lady finding a pretense for quarrelling with the Jew, kicking down the tea-table, and scalding his legs, which, added to the noise of the china, so far engrosses his attention, that the paramour, assisted by the servant, escapes discovery.
The subjects of two pictures with which the room is decorated are, David dancing before the ark, and Jonah seated under a gourd. They are placed there, not merely as circumstances which belong to Jewish story, but as a piece of covert ridicule on the old masters, who generally painted from the ideas of others, and repeated the same tale ad infinitium. One the toilet-table we discover a mask, which well enough intimates where she had passed part of the preceding night, and that masquerades, then a very fashionable amusement, were much frequented by women of this description; a sufficient reason for their being avoided by those of an opposite character.
Under the protection of this disciple of Moses she could not remain long. Riches were his only attraction, and though profusely lavished on this unworthy object, her attachment was not to be obtained, nor could her constancy be secured; repeated acts of infidelity are punished by dismission; and her next situation shows that, like most of the sisterhood, she had lived without apprehension of the sunshine of life being darkened by the passing cloud, and made no provision for the hour of adversity.
In this print the characters are marked with a master’s hand. The insolent air of the harlot, the astonishment of the Jew, eagerly grasping at the falling table, the start of the black boy, the cautious trip of the ungartered and barefooted retreating gallant, and the sudden spring of the scalded monkey, are admirably expressed. To represent an object in its descent has been said to be impossible: the attempt has seldom succeed; but in this print, the tea equipage really appears falling to the floor (106-109).
A Harlot's Progress: Plate 2
Lichtenberg, G. Ch. Lichtenberg’s Commentaries on Hogarth’s Engravings. (1784-1796). Translated from the German by Innes and Gustav Herdan (1966)
Higher than this, little Pandemos will never climb; it is her Silver Age. Tea-table, tea-pot, and what have you, are all of this metal. Her Golden Age was spent in Yorkshire—without money; her Silver Age in London, with silver, and that is of much more value—to a young girl. And are there many men who think otherwise? Oh! beloved Golden Age, your credit would stand so much higher in the world if you would only once reward your followers with something to jingle in their pockets, instead of paper money and cheques upon philosophy. Alas! the lions no longer care to lie down with your moral lambs, and your moral gold, if you but knew it, has changed into mere counters.
Thrown away, no doubt, by Charters (for with him girls shared the fate of playing cards in great Faro banks; he was soon done with them, but they passed on to others like new), she has now been acquired by a wealthy Old Testament sinner. She appears here as the mistress of a Portuguese Jew. He keeps her, as one sees, with Jewish splendour; all is somewhat rich, somewhat heavy; also sometimes, like the girl, somewhat second-hand but always of good value in the fraternity. But more about that later. Honour to whom honour is due. First Molly Hackabout.
In Heaven's name, just compare this figure with that piece of carved wood on the first Plate. How quickly its feet could acquire pretty ankles upon the slippery ice of London! There she stood like a slow, honest, good and clumsy animal, a plump pug-dog, everything parallel, indifferent to rest or motion. Here, though seated, is she not the living image of mobility? A whippet like a china ornament, poised rather than standing upon its three little legs, and the energy which it cannot expend on running is expressed at least by trembling; ever divided between Heaven and Earth. And her face! Is that caricature? Do you really think so? Ah, my good Hogarth, they still call you—you the painter of souls—a caricaturist, but take comfort. Those who so mistake you are very commonplace people. How to scrape laboriously together from little pots of paint a Greek stone-face with blind eyeballs cribbed from some concealed original, that you understand just as well as they did, and as well as hundreds of your countrymen all of whom are forgotten, whereas you live on, and always will.
I have drawn attention to the face. To understand it thoroughly we must now explain the whole scene, in rough outline first and then in detail. The girl is the mistress of this Israelite who has rented a room for her far away from his office and, perhaps, from his honest wife, where he can visit her at his convenience, at any hour of the day, counting the day as twenty-four hours. This morning he has driven up for breakfast. He must have come by coach, for such a wig, such coat sleeves, and such a chapeau has the London urchins of the New Testament would certainly not have tolerated in a pedestrian. Anyone parading on foot through London like that exposes himself as if in the Pillory, especially in the busy part of the City. But the deceived deceiver comes too soon. Payment on sight, if not demanded, was at least expected, and so this presentation ends with a protest. The funds are in an awful state. The lover with whom we spent the night is still on the premises and must first be disposed of before we can undertake even to speak of payment. There he slinks away at the back, only just not without his trousers, towards the door which, as fate would have it, opens on the wrong side, under the protection of the chamber-maid, who, to judge by her expression, has not had much experience yet of such a situation. To cover this retreat (an art which the greatest strategists have considered twice as difficult as achieving a victory) Molly fires off all her guns, and even explodes a mine. She has evidently led the discussion into the region of debt and credit, and at the moment when the Jew reaches the undermined spot, the mine explodes, she lifts her right leg and overturns the silver table with tea-pot and cups and everything that was on it, and throws it all down topsy-turvy. Everything jingles and clatters and crashes; even the Zona torrida, the Moor, trembles and stands petrified, while his compatriot, the monkey, makes off. Only imagine what will happen when the table falls, and fall it certainly will! No Homeric shield, when its bearer fell, ever made such a crash as that upon the Trojan heath. And so the retreat is covered, and the lover has escaped from the Portuguese sanctuary.
Now for the little face.
Greater impertinence in the eyes of a girl still in her teens, greater familiarity with all the practices of harlotry, combined with the knowledge of a still greater unused stock in reserve, could hardly be better expressed in so few strokes. In the whole face no line and no contrasting shadow, and yet how eloquent! 'See, fellow, not so much do I care for you and your wretched plunder; a fig for it!', and with a snap of her finger she indicates exactly how much she thinks of the plunder. It is half a finger joint and a little sound that she brings to his notice. The right eye has something indescribably scornful. But the fellow has money and that is an important item which the left eye clearly recognizes. The feint is, I think, quite unmistakable. On her whole right wing, war is declared, while the left is at peace, or at least, some admission is made there of guilt. On the right wing the knee is raised at least a few hands above the line of modesty, and in an ugly way, so that the tip of the foot is turned inwards; and the arm stretched out so that in the Quart she brings the snap of her fingers as close beneath the enemy's nose as if it were a pinch of snuff. The bracelet is missing. Where could it have been left last night? I have searched the departing lover for it more than once, but in vain. The upper part of the body leans over to support the lunge with its weight, and the head is drawn back to support it with contempt. The bosom presses forward, not as an offensive measure, of course, but the impertinence of the right side is palpably increased thereby. I have also read somewhere that a besieged enemy was once harassed, not only by cannon balls, but also in a most grievous manner by roast geese and wheaten bread which were displayed to him on a turnspit from afar. It is said that this form of attack was much more painful than the other because there was nothing with which to counter it, and every shot was a hit. On the left flank all is much more compliant, even the pretty arm speaks only of affability. I have seen them sometimes like that, when there was no enemy about, but merely an innocent neighbour.
We still cannot get away from that little head. If the whole scene had not been a surprise attack, but merely an early breakfast, which the suspicious Jew has made into a too-early one, I would regard the girl's hair style as a product of art. Why is it that an unruly coiffure suits a pretty face so much better than one from which the scaffolding has just been removed? The source of this charm must lie very deep and be rooted in human nature. For even the humblest members of the female sex feel that it is at least more to their advantage to shake the hair sometimes off the face, than to pin it neatly back. The Roman ladies felt that long ago. Indeed, what did they not feel?
Et neglecta decet multas coma. Saepe jacere
Hesternam credas; illa repexa modo est.
‘What suits the girl so charmingly you take for the ruins of yesterday's hair-do? You silly ass! She has just finished arranging it like that.'
In English gardens ruins are newly erected to improve the scenery. There they are meant to evoke meditations on the vanity of all human beauty and greatness, with the passage of the centuries. Here the momentary effect is also chronological, but points only to the possibility of a mysterious destruction in one night. It must appear, however, that such pre-arrangement was highly unlikely, otherwise everything is lost and the warmest enthusiasm congeals at the sight of an unlovely, cold, hair-dresser's model. I feel the utmost pity for the good young wives who have announced in the newspapers their decision not to mourn for their—dear —husbands (this is not a question of spirit and truth, but only weeds and black). For Heaven's sake and your own, take back that vow! Otherwise it may not come true. Weeds and black on young widows have always been regarded as a sort of solemn illumination of the burnt down part of a beautiful building, of which just the finest wing has remained standing, and who would not, thinks everyone, try to save the best and most beautiful in a conflagration? If they cease to mourn, nobody will feel sorry for them any longer, and all the great arrangements in the world for catching and letting oneself be caught will lose their force, and young widows dwindle down to mere youngish spinsters. This is a sad trans- formation, and at least one that is not advantageous to the ruins. So much for charming—ruins.
We have no language to describe what Molly's mouth is saying or has said. Only musical notes could do that in a range of at least four octaves. She has absolutely no ear, as on all such occasions. Instead her mouth has become two-tongued—Bilinguis—Billings—Billings-gate—Billingsgate- language. Ten invectives a second with a snap of the fingers to beat time. Save us!—and protect us! from such a storm and such porcelain hail-stones! How does the Jew comport himself? He accompanies the four-octave descant of his beauty in deep, slow, nasal bass, and he is well advised to do so. The first violin would burst if he had responded in still faster rhythm. He does not care to risk that. He has her on a life-and-love annuity. The interest, of course, for this morning, has gone, but the capital must be preserved. If anyone cannot follow the meaning of Kleist's
One sees the voice but hears it not,
he would be well advised to listen to that mouth and its neighbour, the reverberating nose, and he will surely see what sound they make. All is terror, astonishment, and apprehension in that noble head. His not very closely cropped hair seems to stand on end under its artificial load, so that Cupid wins time to push forward a little wisp of oriental hue over his brow which could not be more charming. Hesternam credos. The poor fellow! One really cannot look at him without smiling. For terror itself becomes ridiculous if its cause is the loss of unlicensed goods or forbidden fruit; and this is the case here. How mechanically he grips with all five fingers (it might very well have been six), upon one of which visibly rests Ephraim's blessing. I mean, a Berlin jeweller's. What he wants to catch hold of is silver, but the table will surely fall, because it cannot put a leg forward like its owner, who through this prerogative of all living things is by means of his legs only just able to keep himself in his seat. A solitary teacup is also saved, being perilously balanced in his right hand. But the others! One can hardly bear to look at it. Confusion and distress on every side. Everything is taking flight before the raised knee and tries to save itself. The sugar bowl and the little dish, and what appears to be a milk jug, venture first to spring overboard—and are no more! A little lid jumps after them and while still in the air sees the same fate approaching. Another lid appears to make a running start upon deck so as to jump over the others—with a like result. Calmest of all seems the teapot. Before risking the fatal jump it rids itself not only of its lid, which it has thrown a good way in advance, but also of its boiling ballast, and that straight into its master's stockings, and thence still farther, into his shoes. To judge from the hasty flight of the lid, and because this way of softening human skin is rather slow, the pot is going to turn topsy-turvy before it has finished, to accelerate the process. If one could reason with teapots, I know what I should tell this one—'This,' I would say, 'was a perfidious prank of yours, and the more perfidious the more it looks like a Last Will. Provided you get away without complete destruction, take care that as a reward for your pranks you do not become a badly glued-together, or even a mutilated laughing-stock, for the servants, in all your future services.'
That what the girl has just said must have been far weightier than what she indicates with her finger tips, may be seen from the petrifaction of the man, from which even the boiling tea, served at the utterly unsuitable end, is not capable of rousing him. Hogarth has done all that very well. For indeed, if he has not made us feel that, we should not hear either the creaking of the door, or the footsteps of the sly and lucky rival who even has his shoes carried after him.
The Europeans in this picture seem to pay little attention to the clatter of the falling tea-table with all its appurtenances. Three of them are not losing anything by it, and the fourth ignores it because he is losing so much. All the stronger, however, do the two directing gods of love from the torrid zone, monkey and Moor, feel the sad movements of the two hearts which they keep in trust, and which are now at variance. Looking at the monkey beside a pair of lovers like that, it is almost impossible not to think of him with bow and arrow. He is in flight, the poor devil; just now he was playing peacefully with mother's cap, just as in former days the Greek ideal whom he is aping disported himself with the helmet of Mars, when he came to mother with fatherly intentions. And now the swarthy god of love! His woolly hair seems to stand on end. Perhaps while sorrowing over the fate of his West Indian brothers, he sees with horror that here too he will have to—clear up the mess. The figure is striking and the expression has become almost proverbial. Garrick, whose stature tended more to the graceful than the majestic type, and whose whole soul found expression above all in his face, once undertook to act the part of Shakespeare's Moor of Venice, the strong, passionate and thundering Othello, a part which the most versatile soul could not have acted without physical weight. The consequence was that every make-up he put on was a failure, and especially that of the chimney sweep, which simply made night out of his day. When he appeared thus, Quinn, a comic actor of the first rank, notorious for his loose, biting humour, called out: 'Here's Pompey,—where's the tea-kettle?' Only once more, it is said, did Garrick ever dare to appear in that role, and then never again.
The escaping lover we shall allow to escape. To look at him is enough; it needs no comment. Only a single incidental remark on the sentimental side of his appointment. There is no Cupid to be seen fluttering over that Adonis to cover his retreat with delicate wings and in the end smile contemptuously back into the room. Instead, and this is far safer, he has cudgel and rapier under his arm. Whoever creeps into such a hen-house must always expect that the first person he meets will be just such another cock. One cannot miss the cockade on his hat. Thus he was here merely on duty.
Immediately in front of the monkey stands a toilet table, and his flight is evidently directed thither. He wants to crawl underneath where at least he will no longer see the danger, and this, as is well known, is as good as security itself for monkeys and children and whatever else belongs to that category. A mirror stands on the table, and a little packet of visiting cards and a mask are lying there. Perhaps Molly returned last night from a Masked Ball and brought with her the new recruit who is about to desert in the background. What lies in the right-hand corner there looks very much like a discarded domino. To be sure there could be no greater warning against masquerades, at least the London ones. Hussies like her brought together with honest people into one and the same game on a perfectly equal footing merely through a flimsy disguise! Nothing good can come from that. We all hope for equality in the next world. To look for it here already is dangerous in any case, and especially in a domino; for it does not always cease when the mask is thrown down, and upon such a cessation depends after all the whole charm of the short illusion.
On the back wall hang two pictures, which may even be woven into the tapestry, for the comer of one of them is under the frame of the door. However, strict perspective was never Hogarth's strong point. The one nearest the door represents the prophet Jonah facing the city of Nineveh, and as if boxing with a cluster of sunrays which the worm-eaten watermelon is no longer capable of warding off. Such fists have the weight of words in England. The other represents King David, not in his glory, but when he dances before the Ark of the Covenant and is despised by Micah, Saul's daughter, who looks out of a window. The Ark of the Covenant is drawn by oxen who upset it, as it is written in the Bible, and the Ark falls, or is about to fall. A certain Uzzah tries to support it, and for that service a man in a Bishop's mitre runs a knife into his breast, from behind. The Bible only says, 'and the anger of the Lord was kindled against Uzzah, and he smote him for his error and there he died by the Ark of God'. I am sorry to find that Hogarth wants to interpret the ancient Bible in a modern way. Take care, good friend, I thought to myself, there you are upon the dangerous bridge which is to connect Sunday faith with weekday reason! Of what avail are your pictures against folios of which you do not understand a syllable, and which, had they ever so little force would still remain respectable through their mass alone. Take care! Though nobody is likely to murder you from behind, as they did your Uzzah before the Ark of God, but I don't mind betting that before you know where you are something very hot may be poured into your shoes, as happened to our Jew at the tea-table. 'Stick to your last' is a proverb upon which the earth itself rests. It is this true saying which restrains us here and compels us to pass over the second picture completely. Since the interpretation of straightforward prophecies of even the minor prophets offers Such difficulties to the most profound scholars, how much more difficult is it for an insignificant writer to interpret the artificial misuse which a sly fox makes of them. One word only on the subject: Jonah complains about a misfortune which has not materialized, and is afraid of sunstroke. Here too there is at least an indication that the two diamonds in the Jew's head might blaze up and prove deadly; a misfortune which though conjectured by almost every reader does not materialize either. No more now about these pictures, though a more courageous interpreter could and would perhaps say more. If anyone would like to venture an interpretation of his own he may look up the fourth Chapter of the prophet Jonah and 2 Samuel, Chapter 6. On the same wall hang two engravings of characters from the New Testament, with wigs and chapeau-bas; thus scholars. In the first copies of the engraving the higher one was a portrait of the famous Dr Clark, and the one beneath of Mr Woolston. The latter has written an apologia for the Christian religion against the Jews, and the former on a number of topics which would here provide more material for conjecture. This must, however, be left undone because Hogarth by eradicating their names in later copies has expressly shown his wish that it should be left undone (16-24).
A Harlot's Progress: Plate 2: Boy
View this detail in copper here.
Moll keeps an exotic servant. His startled appearance, even outrage, at the scene perhaps denotes a moral superiority. As Lichtenberg notes, the Europeans in the plate are not horrified (21). This is, then, Hogath’s condemnation of the licentiousness of English society.
A Harlot's Progress: Plate 2: Boy
Shesgreen
Her apartment is richly appointed. She keeps a maid (dressed much as she herself was in Plate I), an exotic West Indian servant boy and a monkey. The monkey, the most pointed indication of her affectation, resembles the merchant in facial expression and posture, and there is little difference (19).
A Harlot's Progress: Plate 2: Boy
Ireland
Entered into the path of infamy, the next scene exhibits our young heroine the mistress of a rich Jew, attended by a black boy (the attendant black boy gave the foundation of an ill-natured remark by Quin, when Garrick , once attempted the part of Othello. “He pretend to play Othello! Said the surly satirist; “he pretend to play Othello! He wants noting but the tea-kettle and lamp to qualify him for Hogarth’s Pompey), and surrounded with the pompous parade of tasteless profusion. Her mind being now as depraved as her person is decorated, she keeps up the spirit of her character by extravagance and inconstancy. An example of the first is exhibited in the monkey being suffered to drag her rich head-dress round the room, and of the second in the retiring gallant. The Hebrew is represented at breakfast with his mistress; but having come earlier than expected, the favourite has not departed. To secure his retreat, is an exercise for the invention of both mistress and maid. This is accomplished by the lady finding a pretense for quarrelling with the Jew, kicking down the tea-table, and scalding his legs, which, added to the noise of the china, so far engrosses his attention, that the paramour, assisted by the servant, escapes discovery (106-107).
A Harlot's Progress: Plate 2: Boy
Lichtenberg
Everything jingles and clatters and crashes; even the Zona torrida, the Moor, trembles and stands petrified, while his compatriot, the monkey, makes off (17).
The Europeans in this picture seem to pay little attention to the clatter of the falling tea-table with all its appurtenances. Three of them are not losing anything by it, and the fourth ignores it because he is losing so much. All the stronger, however, do the two directing gods of love from the torrid zone, monkey and Moor, feel the sad movements of the two hearts which they keep in trust, and which are now at variance. Looking at the monkey beside a pair of lovers like that, it is almost impossible not to think of him with bow and arrow. He is in flight, the poor devil; just now he was playing peacefully with mother's cap, just as in former days the Greek ideal whom he is aping disported himself with the helmet of Mars, when he came to mother with fatherly intentions. And now the swarthy god of love! His woolly hair seems to stand on end. Perhaps while sorrowing over the fate of his West Indian brothers, he sees with horror that here too he will have to—clear up the mess. The figure is striking and the expression has become almost proverbial. Garrick, whose stature tended more to the graceful than the majestic type, and whose whole soul found expression above all in his face, once undertook to act the part of Shakespeare's Moor of Venice, the strong, passionate and thundering Othello, a part which the most versatile soul could not have acted without physical weight. The consequence was that every make-up he put on was a failure, and especially that of the chimney sweep, which simply made night out of his day. When he appeared thus, Quinn, a comic actor of the first rank, notorious for his loose, biting humour, called out: 'Here's Pompey,—where's the tea-kettle?' Only once more, it is said, did Garrick ever dare to appear in that role, and then never again. (21-22).-
A Harlot's Progress: Plate 2: Broken China
Lichtenberg
The lover with whom we spent the night is still on the premises and must first be disposed of before we can undertake even to speak of payment. There he slinks away at the back, only just not without his trousers, towards the door which, as fate would have it, opens on the wrong side, under the protection of the chamber-maid, who, to judge by her expression, has not had much experience yet of such a situation. To cover this retreat (an art which the greatest strategists have considered twice as difficult as achieving a victory) Molly fires off all her guns, and even explodes a mine. She has evidently led the discussion into the region of debt and credit, and at the moment when the Jew reaches the undermined spot, the mine explodes, she lifts her right leg and overturns the silver table with tea-pot and cups and everything that was on it, and throws it all down topsy-turvy (17)
The Europeans in this picture seem to pay little attention to the clatter of the falling tea-table with all its appurtenances. Three of them are not losing anything by it, and the fourth ignores it because he is losing so much. All the stronger, however, do the two directing gods of love from the torrid zone, monkey and Moor, feel the sad movements of the two hearts which they keep in trust, and which are now at variance. Looking at the monkey beside a pair of lovers like that, it is almost impossible not to think of him with bow and arrow (21).
A Harlot's Progress: Plate 2: Harlot
View this detail in copper here.
In Plate II, Moll is the kept mistress of a wealthy lover. She greets her newly-arrived patron, while her maid sneaks her preferred lover, in a state of undress out of the chamber. Moll kicks over a table to create a diversion so that the escape can be accomplished. Lichtenberg comments that Moll’s pet monkey, gasping in horror, witnesses the “danger” of the scene (21). Moll’s amused and satisfied expression certainly indicates her enjoyment of the sexual pleasure provides by her lover, whose phallic, unsheathed sword leaves no doubt (at least symbolically) as to their interrupted activity. She also enjoys her role as temptress in this exotic, Edenic setting, using her appeal to lure her lovers into sin. The falling table (initiated by her “misstep”) not only foreshadows her fall but also recalls the Fall.
A Harlot's Progress: Plate 2: Harlot
Shesgreen
Seduced by the glitter of a life of wealth and comfort, Moll has fallen quickly from the hands of the procuress and nobleman into the keeping of an unattractive but wealthy Jewish businessman. Quite transformed by her experience, she apes the life style of the class to which she aspires; instead of her modest work clothes she wears silk stockings, stylish shoes and a fashionable dress that reveals her arms and her breast. Her face, which bears a look of spirited insolence, is adorned with a beauty spot that may hide the first signs of venereal disease (19).
A Harlot's Progress: Plate 2: Harlot
Uglow
By Plate 2 she has become the mistress of a rich Jew, a sure sign of success: 'I madam', boasts Gay's whore Slammekin in The Beggar's Opera, 'was once kept by a Jew; and bating their religion, to women they are a good sort of people.' But Moll snaps her fingers at good luck, and is already deceiving him. As he takes tea, a young lover creeps out, trousers undone, the startled maid clutching his shoes. Moll provides a distraction, flashing her eyes and baring a nipple, flicking her fingers and kicking her tea table, much to the alarm of the scalded Jew, the pet monkey trailing her bonnet and the little black slave bringing the tea kettle. She seems in control, but she too is a slave and a pet, ministering to a rich man’s desires (201-202).
A Harlot's Progress: Plate 2: Harlot
Paulson, His Life, Art and Times
the girl—now Harlot—kicks over the tea table in order to divert his attention. She has been corrupted, as Pamela never is; and there is no suggestion of Pamela’s devout purity (“May I never survive, one moment, that fatal one in which I shall forfeit my innocence!”) or Clarissa’s gloom (measuring herself for her coffin after being raped). Rather, she appears with her keeper, a Jewish city merchant, gaily distracting him in order to allow a younger and more handsome lover to sneak out the door (vol. 255).
A Harlot's Progress: Plate 2: Harlot
Paulson, Hogarth's Graphic Works
Passing through the hands of Charteris, or perhaps dispatched by Mother Needham, Mary Hackabout, now the Harlot, as become the mistress of a wealthy London Jew. He has apparently arrived unexpectedly, and she is pettishly kicking over the tea table to divert his attention while her more attractive lover tiptoes out the door with the assistance of the serving woman (145).
A Harlot's Progress: Plate 2: Harlot
Quennell
Moll now embellishes the alcove of a wealthy Jewish merchant. Presumably she has been deserted by Chartres, but not without a thorough schooling; and the amant de cœur with whom she amuses her leisure, a sleek young fencing-master, probably a Frenchman, has been surprised in her room and quickly secreted in his mistress’s bed. She produces a diversion to mask his escape, kicking over the spindle-legged table and demolishing its egg-shell china (94).
A Harlot's Progress: Plate 2: Harlot
Ireland
Entered into the path of infamy, the next scene exhibits our young heroine the mistress of a rich Jew, attended by a black boy (the attendant black boy gave the foundation of an ill-natured remark by Quin, when Garrick , once attempted the part of Othello. “He pretend to play Othello! Said the surly satirist; “he pretend to play Othello! He wants noting but the tea-kettle and lamp to qualify him for Hogarth’s Pompey), and surrounded with the pompous parade of tasteless profusion. Her mind being now as depraved as her person is decorated, she keeps up the spirit of her character by extravagance and inconstancy. Under the protection of this disciple of Moses she could not remain long. Riches were his only attraction, and though profusely lavished on this unworthy object, her attachment was not to be obtained, nor could her constancy be secured; repeated acts of infidelity are punished by dismission; and her next situation shows that, like most of the sisterhood, she had lived without apprehension of the sunshine of life being darkened by the passing cloud, and made no provision for the hour of adversity (106-107).
A Harlot's Progress: Plate 2: Harlot
Lichtenberg
Thrown away, no doubt, by Charters (for with him girls shared the fate of playing cards in great Faro banks; he was soon done with them, but they passed on to others like new), she has now been acquired by a wealthy Old Testament sinner. She appears here as the mistress of a Portuguese Jew. He keeps her, as one sees, with Jewish splendour; all is somewhat rich, somewhat heavy; also sometimes, like the girl, somewhat second-hand but always of good value in the fraternity. But more about that later. Honour to whom honour is due. First Molly Hackabout.
In Heaven's name, just compare this figure with that piece of carved wood on the first Plate. How quickly its feet could acquire pretty ankles upon the slippery ice of London! There she stood like a slow, honest, good and clumsy animal, a plump pug-dog, everything parallel, indifferent to rest or motion. Here, though seated, is she not the living image of mobility? A whippet like a china ornament, poised rather than standing upon its three little legs, and the energy which it cannot expend on running is expressed at least by trembling; ever divided between Heaven and Earth. And her face! Is that caricature? Do you really think so? Ah, my good Hogarth, they still call you—you the painter of souls—a caricaturist, but take comfort. Those who so mistake you are very commonplace people. How to scrape laboriously together from little pots of paint a Greek stone-face with blind eyeballs cribbed from some concealed original, that you understand just as well as they did, and as well as hundreds of your countrymen all of whom are forgotten, whereas you live on, and always will.
I have drawn attention to the face. To understand it thoroughly we must now explain the whole scene, in rough outline first and then in detail. The girl is the mistress of this Israelite who has rented a room for her far away from his office and, perhaps, from his honest wife, where he can visit her at his convenience, at any hour of the day, counting the day as twenty-four hours. Greater impertinence in the eyes of a girl still in her teens, greater familiarity with all the practices of harlotry, combined with the knowledge of a still greater unused stock in reserve, could hardly be better expressed in so few strokes. In the whole face no line and no contrasting shadow, and yet how eloquent! 'See, fellow, not so much do I care for you and your wretched plunder; a fig for it!', and with a snap of her finger she indicates exactly how much she thinks of the plunder. It is half a finger joint and a little sound that she brings to his notice. The right eye has something indescribably scornful. But the fellow has money and that is an important item which the left eye clearly recognizes. The feint is, I think, quite unmistakable. On her whole right wing, war is declared, while the left is at peace, or at least, some admission is made there of guilt. On the right wing the knee is raised at least a few hands above the line of modesty, and in an ugly way, so that the tip of the foot is turned inwards; and the arm stretched out so that in the Quart she brings the snap of her fingers as close beneath the enemy's nose as if it were a pinch of snuff. The bracelet is missing. Where could it have been left last night? I have searched the departing lover for it more than once, but in vain. The upper part of the body leans over to support the lunge with its weight, and the head is drawn back to support it with contempt. The bosom presses forward, not as an offensive measure, of course, but the impertinence of the right side is palpably increased thereby. I have also read somewhere that a besieged enemy was once harassed, not only by cannon balls, but also in a most grievous manner by roast geese and wheaten bread which were displayed to him on a turnspit from afar. It is said that this form of attack was much more painful than the other because there was nothing with which to counter it, and every shot was a hit. On the left flank all is much more compliant, even the pretty arm speaks only of affability. I have seen them sometimes like that, when there was no enemy about, but merely an innocent neighbour.
We still cannot get away from that little head. If the whole scene had not been a surprise attack, but merely an early breakfast, which the suspicious Jew has made into a too-early one, I would regard the girl's hair style as a product of art. Why is it that an unruly coiffure suits a pretty face so much better than one from which the scaffolding has just been removed? The source of this charm must lie very deep and be rooted in human nature. For even the humblest members of the female sex feel that it is at least more to their advantage to shake the hair sometimes off the face, than to pin it neatly back. The Roman ladies felt that long ago. Indeed, what did they not feel?
Et neglecta decet multas coma. Saepe jacere
Hesternam credas; illa repexa modo est.
‘What suits the girl so charmingly you take for the ruins of yesterday's hair-do? You silly ass! She has just finished arranging it like that. (16-19).
A Harlot's Progress: Plate 2: Keeper
View this detail in copper here.
In Plate II, Moll is the kept mistress of a wealthy lover. She greets her newly-arrived patron, while her maid sneaks her preferred lover, in a state of undress out of the chamber. Moll kicks over a table to create a diversion so that the escape can be accomplished. Lichtenberg comments that Moll’s pet monkey, gasping in horror, witnesses the “danger” of the scene (21).
A Harlot's Progress: Plate 2: Keeper
Uglow
By Plate 2 she has become the mistress of a rich Jew, a sure sign of success: 'I madam', boasts Gay's whore Slammekin in The Beggar's Opera, 'was once kept by a Jew; and bating their religion, to women they are a good sort of people.' But Moll snaps her fingers at good luck, and is already deceiving him. As he takes tea, a young lover creeps out, trousers undone, the startled maid clutching his shoes. Moll provides a distraction, flashing her eyes and baring a nipple, flicking her fingers and kicking her tea table, much to the alarm of the scalded Jew, the pet monkey trailing her bonnet and the little black slave bringing the tea kettle. She seems in control, but she too is a slave and a pet, ministering to a rich man’s desires (201-202).
A Harlot's Progress: Plate 2: Keeper
Paulson, Hogarth's Graphic Works
Passing through the hands of Charteris, or perhaps dispatched by Mother Needham, Mary Hackabout, now the Harlot, as become the mistress of a wealthy London Jew. He has apparently arrived unexpectedly, and she is pettishly kicking over the tea table to divert his attention while her more attractive lover tiptoes out the door with the assistance of the serving woman. The Jew’s expression at her behavior is mirrored by the frightened monkey at their feet, as hers was in the previous print by the goose (145).
A Harlot's Progress: Plate 2: Keeper
Quennell
Her development is unusually rapid, as we discover from the next plate. Moll now embellishes the alcove of a wealthy Jewish merchant. Presumably she has been deserted by Chartres, but not without a thorough schooling; and the amant de cœur with whom she amuses her leisure, a sleek young fencing-master, probably a Frenchman, has been surprised in her room and quickly secreted in his mistress’s bed. She produces a diversion to mask his escape, kicking over the spindle-legged table and demolishing its egg-shell china (94).
Her petulance, wantonness and charm are set off by the keen Sephardic profile of her startled and indignant companion. His voice is sharpening to a scream, as a cascade of scalding tea burns his unprotected shanks. The native decorum of his race has been irremediably outraged.
That Moll’s protector should be of Jewish descent is a detail the social historian may find particularly interesting. The Jewish colony in England was small; twenty years later, it is said not to have exceeded more that seven or eight thousand families; but they help important positions in London and Bristol; and during the notorious Oxfordshire Election of 1754 the influence that they were believed to exercise, and the dastardly intentions that they were alleged to entertain, would arouse a storm of anti-Semitic fury that reverberated in the House of Commons. The poorer sort retained their traditional habit—a Jewish pedlar tramping from place to place was among the very few wearers of a beard that the average Englishman had yet seen; but the merchant whom Moll exploits and deluded, and who, no doubt, bears a name that is either Portuguese or Spanish, has assumed the embroidered coat, ruffled shirt and crisply curled wig of a metropolitan man of the world. He cuts, nevertheless, a slightly exotic figure—for Hogarth’s audience he was indeed, something of a rarity; and the apparatus of the room he has furnished, where parts of Moll’s masquerade-costume lie scattered on the dressing-table, include two large and elaborate canvases with the subjects from Old Testament legend. Here Jonah is seated beneath his gourd: there the amorous King David prances jubilantly before the Ark. (95-96).
A Harlot's Progress: Plate 2: Keeper
Ireland
Entered into the path of infamy, the next scene exhibits our young heroine the mistress of a rich Jew, attended by a black boy (the attendant black boy gave the foundation of an ill-natured remark by Quin, when Garrick , once attempted the part of Othello. “He pretend to play Othello! Said the surly satirist; “he pretend to play Othello! He wants noting but the tea-kettle and lamp to qualify him for Hogarth’s Pompey), and surrounded with the pompous parade of tasteless profusion. Her mind being now as depraved as her person is decorated, she keeps up the spirit of her character by extravagance and inconstancy. An example of the first is exhibited in the monkey being suffered to drag her rich head-dress round the room, and of the second in the retiring gallant. The Hebrew is represented at breakfast with his mistress; but having come earlier than expected, the favourite has not departed. To secure his retreat, is an exercise for the invention of both mistress and maid. This is accomplished by the lady finding a pretense for quarrelling with the Jew, kicking down the tea-table, and scalding his legs, which, added to the noise of the china, so far engrosses his attention, that the paramour, assisted by the servant, escapes discovery (106-107).
A Harlot's Progress: Plate 2: Keeper
Lichtenberg
The girl is the mistress of this Israelite who has rented a room for her far away from his office and, perhaps, from his honest wife, where he can visit her at his convenience, at any hour of the day, counting the day as twenty-four hours. This morning he has driven up for breakfast. He must have come by coach, for such a wig, such coat sleeves, and such a chapeau has the London urchins of the New Testament would certainly not have tolerated in a pedestrian. Anyone parading on foot through London like that exposes himself as if in the Pillory, especially in the busy part of the City. But the deceived deceiver comes too soon. Payment on sight, if not demanded, was at least expected, and so this presentation ends with a protest. The funds are in an awful state. The lover with whom we spent the night is still on the premises and must first be disposed of before we can undertake even to speak of payment. There he slinks away at the back, only just not without his trousers, towards the door which, as fate would have it, opens on the wrong side, under the protection of the chamber-maid, who, to judge by her expression, has not had much experience yet of such a situation. To cover this retreat (an art which the greatest strategists have considered twice as difficult as achieving a victory) Molly fires off all her guns, and even explodes a mine. She has evidently led the discussion into the region of debt and credit, and at the moment when the Jew reaches the undermined spot, the mine explodes, she lifts her right leg and overturns the silver table with tea-pot and cups and everything that was on it, and throws it all down topsy-turvy (17).
A Harlot's Progress: Plate 2: Lover
View this detail in copper here.
In Plate II, Moll is the kept mistress of a wealthy lover. She greets her newly-arrived patron, while her maid sneaks her preferred lover, in a state of undress out of the chamber. Moll kicks over a table to create a diversion so that the escape can be accomplished. Lichtenberg comments that Moll’s pet monkey, gasping in horror, witnesses the “danger” (21) of the scene.
A Harlot's Progress: Plate 2: Lover
Quennell
Her development is unusually rapid, as we discover from the next plate. Moll now embellishes the alcove of a wealthy Jewish merchant. Presumably she has been deserted by Chartres, but not without a thorough schooling; and the amant de cœur with whom she amuses her leisure, a sleek young fencing-master, probably a Frenchman, has been surprised in her room and quickly secreted in his mistress’s bed. She produces a diversion to mask his escape, kicking over the spindle-legged table and demolishing its egg-shell china (94).
A Harlot's Progress: Plate 2: Lover
Ireland
Entered into the path of infamy, the next scene exhibits our young heroine the mistress of a rich Jew, attended by a black boy (the attendant black boy gave the foundation of an ill-natured remark by Quin, when Garrick , once attempted the part of Othello. “He pretend to play Othello! Said the surly satirist; “he pretend to play Othello! He wants noting but the tea-kettle and lamp to qualify him for Hogarth’s Pompey), and surrounded with the pompous parade of tasteless profusion. Her mind being now as depraved as her person is decorated, she keeps up the spirit of her character by extravagance and inconstancy. An example of the first is exhibited in the monkey being suffered to drag her rich head-dress round the room, and of the second in the retiring gallant. The Hebrew is represented at breakfast with his mistress; but having come earlier than expected, the favourite has not departed. To secure his retreat, is an exercise for the invention of both mistress and maid. This is accomplished by the lady finding a pretense for quarrelling with the Jew, kicking down the tea-table, and scalding his legs, which, added to the noise of the china, so far engrosses his attention, that the paramour, assisted by the servant, escapes discovery (106-107).
A Harlot's Progress: Plate 2: Lover
Lichtenberg
The lover with whom we spent the night is still on the premises and must first be disposed of before we can undertake even to speak of payment. There he slinks away at the back, only just not without his trousers, towards the door which, as fate would have it, opens on the wrong side, under the protection of the chamber-maid, who, to judge by her expression, has not had much experience yet of such a situation. To cover this retreat (an art which the greatest strategists have considered twice as difficult as achieving a victory) Molly fires off all her guns, and even explodes a mine. She has evidently led the discussion into the region of debt and credit, and at the moment when the Jew reaches the undermined spot, the mine explodes, she lifts her right leg and overturns the silver table with tea-pot and cups and everything that was on it, and throws it all down topsy-turvy.(17).
The escaping lover we shall allow to escape. To look at him is enough; it needs no comment. Only a single incidental remark on the sentimental side of his appointment. There is no Cupid to be seen fluttering over that Adonis to cover his retreat with delicate wings and in the end smile contemptuously back into the room. Instead, and this is far safer, he has cudgel and rapier under his arm. Whoever creeps into such a hen-house must always expect that the first person he meets will be just such another cock. One cannot miss the cockade on his hat. Thus he was here merely on duty (22).
A Harlot's Progress: Plate 2: Mask
View this detail in copper here.
The mask represents the Harlot’s attendance at a masquerade—that most depraved and morally compromised of activities and connotes that she is “masking” something—as she is. Her affection for and allurement of her Jewish keeper are feigned, as she “masks” sexual interest in him to divert his attention from the escaping lover.
A Harlot's Progress: Plate 2: Mask
Shesgreen
Prominent on her dressing table is a mirror, symbol of vanity, beside it a jar of makeup and a smiling white mask. The mask, which is not unlike a death mask, suggests that Moll has been taken to a masquerade by her partially but fashionably dressed visitor, a fellow noticeably more youthful and attractive than the middle-aged businessman who supports her (19).
A Harlot's Progress: Plate 2: Mask
Paulson, Popular and Polite Art
the mask, monkey, and mirror are straight out of Ripa’s Iconologia, where the description of Imitation includes “a woman holding a bundle of brushes in her right hand, a mask in her left, with an ape at her feet.” The ape is present, Ripa says (1709 translation), because of “its aptitude for imitating man with its gestures” (ars simia naturae), and the mask to suggest “the imitation, on and off the stage, of the appearance and bearing of various characters.” Certainly “aping” and “masking,” verbally and metaphorically, are present in the scene. On the level of story, the mask also alluded to a masquerade as the place where the Harlot has met her new lover: she has worn this mask, and so the metaphorical relationship is almost one of identity. The monkey too is a fashionable acquisition (like the black slave-boy) which has been made either by the Jewish merchant or by his mistress, and is itself an aping of fashion, which applies to both: she with her clothes and young lover, a “lady”; he with his old-master paintings and Christian mistress, a “gentleman.” The monkey is shown trying on attire that resembles the Harlot’s before a dressing table, and his expression of surprise at her kicking over a table (to divert her keeper from the retreat of her lover) is parallel to the Jew’s (118-119).
A Harlot's Progress: Plate 2: Mask
Paulson, Hogarth's Graphic Works
The mask on the toilet table, which appears again in Plates 3 and 5, shows that she has been to one of Heideigger’s masquerades. Since she is the Jew’s keeping, she must have slipper out masked to meet the lover who is now taking his leave (145).
A Harlot's Progress: Plate 2: Mask
Lichtenberg
A mirror stands on the table, and a little packet of visiting cards and a mask are lying there. Perhaps Molly returned last night from a Masked Ball and brought with her the new recruit who is about to desert in the background. What lies in the right-hand corner there looks very much like a discarded domino. To be sure there could be no greater warning against masquerades, at least the London ones. Hussies like her brought together with honest people into one and the same game on a perfectly equal footing merely through a flimsy disguise! Nothing good can come from that. We all hope for equality in the next world. To look for it here already is dangerous in any case, and especially in a domino; for it does not always cease when the mask is thrown down, and upon such a cessation depends after all the whole charm of the short illusion (22-23).
A Harlot's Progress: Plate 2: Monkey
View this detail in copper here.
The monkey, as Paulson notes, is a symbol of the “aping” occurring in the plate as the Jewish keeper adopts the aristocratic practices of the English, and Moll acts the role of the perfect mistress while sneaking her lover out of the back door (Popular 118).
A Harlot's Progress: Plate 2: Monkey
Shesgreen
Her apartment is richly appointed. She keeps a maid (dressed much as she herself was in Plate I), an exotic West Indian servant boy and a monkey. The monkey, the most pointed indication of her affectation, resembles the merchant in facial expression and posture, and there is little difference (19).
A Harlot's Progress: Plate 2: Monkey
Paulson, Popular and Polite Art
the mask, monkey, and mirror are straight out of Ripa’s Iconologia, where the description of Imitation includes “a woman holding a bundle of brushes in her right hand, a mask in her left, with an ape at her feet.” The ape is present, Ripa says (1709 translation), because of “its aptitude for imitating man with its gestures” (ars simia naturae), and the mask to suggest “the imitation, on and off the stage, of the appearance and bearing of various characters.” Certainly “aping” and “masking,” verbally and metaphorically, are present in the scene. On the level of story, the mask also alluded to a masquerade as the place where the Harlot has met her new lover: she has worn this mask, and so the metaphorical relationship is almost one of identity. The monkey too is a fashionable acquisition (like the black slave-boy) which has been made either by the Jewish merchant or by his mistress, and is itself an aping of fashion, which applies to both: she with her clothes and young lover, a “lady”; he with his old-master paintings and Christian mistress, a “gentleman.” The monkey is shown trying on attire that resembles the Harlot’s before a dressing table, and his expression of surprise at her kicking over a table (to divert her keeper from the retreat of her lover) is parallel to the Jew’s (118-119).
A Harlot's Progress: Plate 2: Monkey
Paulson, Hogarth's Graphic Works
The Jew’s expression at her behavior is mirrored by the frightened monkey at their feet, as hers was in the previous print by the goose (145).
A Harlot's Progress: Plate 2: Monkey
Lichtenberg
Everything jingles and clatters and crashes; even the Zona torrida, the Moor, trembles and stands petrified, while his compatriot, the monkey, makes off (17).
The Europeans in this picture seem to pay little attention to the clatter of the falling tea-table with all its appurtenances. Three of them are not losing anything by it, and the fourth ignores it because he is losing so much. All the stronger, however, do the two directing gods of love from the torrid zone, monkey and Moor, feel the sad movements of the two hearts which they keep in trust, and which are now at variance. Looking at the monkey beside a pair of lovers like that, it is almost impossible not to think of him with bow and arrow (21).
A Harlot's Progress: Plate 2: Picture 1
View this detail in copper here.
These portraits of atheists are placed by the Jewish lover, but they also highlight Moll’s rejection of conventional Christianity, a reality made more manifest in Plate 3 where she features a portrait of a religious rebel while relegating a Pastoral Letter to a butter wrapping.
A Harlot's Progress: Plate 2: Picture 2
View this detail in copper here.
These portraits of atheists are placed by the Jewish lover, but they also highlight Moll’s rejection of conventional Christianity, a reality made more manifest in Plate 3 where she features a portrait of a religious rebel while relegating a Pastoral Letter to a butter wrapping.
A Harlot's Progress: Plate 2: Jonah
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Another Old Testament scene features Jonah before Nineveh. As Jonah was the reluctant prophet, Moll is the unknowing figure who prophesies the fate of young English girls who come unprotected into the corruption of London. Shesgreen also comments that the plate may be a warning to reform (19). Thus, Hogarth gives Moll once last chance to turn from the lifestyle in which she is rapidly becoming fully engaged. She does not, and her fall is assured.
A Harlot's Progress: Plate 2: Jonah
Shesgreen
Above the whole scene are two large paintings, one of Jonah outside Nineveh seated next to an ivy plant, the other of David dancing before the Ark while Uzzah, attempting to touch it, is knifed in the back. The picture of Jonah may be a warning to heed the prophet’s message to reform. The painting of David and Uzzah, one of whom is killed for his sacrilege. the other rebuked by his wife for indecency, seems to foreshadow the fates that await the two characters in the scene (19).
A Harlot's Progress: Plate 2: Jonah
Uglow
The Jew's room . . . is decorated not only with those portraits of Woolston and Clarke, attacked as enemies of Christianity, but with two pictures of Old Testament history. Appropriate, of course, but their content is mocking. In one, entitled 'Jonah, why art thou angry?', a weeping Jonah rages because God has not destroyed Nineveh (the Gentiles) as he promised. In the other David dances with his harp, while Uzzah steadies the Ark, toppled by the oxen: for this sacrilegious act, God, through his priest, stabs him in the back. In the 'real' scene, where the Jew who has 'sacrilegiously' touched a Christian girl is balancing the tilting table with his hand as Uzzah does the ark, the lover's sword also seems to 'stab him in the back'.
Both pictures undermine the Jew, presenting him as vengeful and tainted, but both also criticize the harshness of Old Testament justice and the cruelty of religious zeal. The Jew (like Moll) is an outsider and a victim of prejudice (204).
A Harlot's Progress: Plate 2: Jonah
Paulson, Popular and Polite Art
A painting on the wall shows Uzzah trying to steady the ark of the covenant, which is falling. But Uzzah is breaking the law, for he is not a Levite, and only Levites can touch the ark. In the biblical text he is struck dead by an angry Jehovah. Hogarth characteristically, omits the hand of God and substitutes a human priest, a keeper of Jehovah’s law, who is stabbing Uzzah in the back. . . . From all of his prints and paintings it is plain that Hogarth associates the law with the Old Testament, the Ten Commandments, and the harshness of eye-for-an-eye justice. Old Testament subjects appear enclosed and forbidding as pictures on the wall, painted copies and after dead masters, serving to urge on the living to brutal punishments for the least transgression to themselves (19).
The two examples of divine justice, pictured above the Harlot’s head on the wall of her Jewish keeper’s room (or the one he has furnished for her), choose the moment when God has withdrawn and spared Nineveh and it is Jonah who is still cursing the wicked city; and in the story of Uzzah touching the Ark of the Covenant, it is not God’s thunderbolt but a human priest who stabs Uzzah in the back. The allegory has been humanized, and the providential structure removed, or rather displaced to human agents.
On the one hand, the order of divine providence has been reduced to the natural law of causality. It has been dismissed by the humans themselves insofar as they ordered the mutilated copies of the paintings. . . . While Hogarth demonstrates horizontal causality, however, he also shows the vestiges of vertical causality, which should be the divine pattern, but now consists only of humans imitating the models or the roles of the biblical stories and classical myths, and the vertical pull is that of puppet strings. When a priest stabs Uzzah and Jonah curses the sinners of Nineveh, beneath the picture the Jewish keeper prepares to curse the unfaithful Harlot and cast her into outer darkness (119-120).
A Harlot's Progress: Plate 2: Jonah
Paulson, His Life, Art and Times
The other painting shows Jonah sitting next to a withered gourd with God’s sun beating down on his head. God was punishing Jonah for wanting the people of Nineveh to be destroyed even after they had repented of their sins. As Jonah sat outside the city walls hoping to see the Ninevites destroyed, God sent a gourd to protect his head from the rays of the sun, and a worm to wither it so that he would feel the full force of the heat; then He asked Jonah to compare the gourd to Nineveh as a lesson in mercy. Hogarth’s Jonah has his fists clenched in anger and is looking in the direction of Uzzah in the other painting. Whether Jonah is analogous to justice directed against the Jew or analogous to the Jew himself, the problem is one of human justice and divine mercy. For if the Jew is a victim of human justice, he is also an agent of it: like Jonah, he will pass rigorous judgment and banish the Harlot when he discovers her transgression. The paintings he collects reflect his own stern Old Testament justice; in the next plate he has past her out and she is living in a shabby room in Drury Lane, the territory of prostitutes. Moving up into the print from the bottom left, from monkey to Jew, from tilting table to Harlot, and thence up to the pictures, the painting of Uzzah reads as an extension of the action below, and the painting of Jonah as a commentary on the action. But if (following the early Hogarth commentators from Lichtenberg on) the paintings are read from left to right, they apply equally well to the Harlot, who is under the protection of the Jew as Jonah was under the shade of the gourd, which withered in the morning leaving him unprotected under a fierce retributory sun. The painting of Uzzah also applies in a way to the Harlot, for like her Jewish keeper she too is reaching out to touch something forbidden. Their situations are in a way parallel: both are climbing socially, he by picture collecting and taking a Christian girl for his mistress (I suppose this was the reason for Hogarth’s making him a Jew), she by presuming to rise above the status of a mistress and take a lover of her own; and both suffer particularly human punishments. Uzzah’s error, temeritas or rashness, glossed by some of the biblical commentators as ignorantia, is her crime too. In her case the materialization of God’s wrath in a priest connects with Justice Gonson in the next plate, in which the distinction between human justice and divine mercy is further underlined (vol.1 256-257).
A Harlot's Progress: Plate 2: Jonah
Paulson, Hogarth's Graphic Works
Both of the large paintings on the wall are, appropriately, of Old Testament subjects. The first shows Jonah seated beside his withering gourd with Nineveh in the distance and the sun, sent by God, beating on his head (see Jonah 4.6-8). Like Jonah, the Harlot sits under the shelter of her gourd, which sprang up in the night and which is being destroyed by the worm in the morning; the painting is a parable of "the girl’s upstart grandeur, and the frail nature of her protection" (J Ireland, 3, 328) (145).
A Harlot's Progress: Plate 2: Jonah
Ireland
The subjects of two pictures with which the room is decorated are, David dancing before the ark, and Jonah seated under a gourd. They are placed there, not merely as circumstances which belong to Jewish story, but as a piece of covert ridicule on the old masters, who generally painted from the ideas of others, and repeated the same tale ad infinitium. One the toilet-table we discover a mask, which well enough intimates where she had passed part of the preceding night, and that masquerades, then a very fashionable amusement, were much frequented by women of this description; a sufficient reason for their being avoided by those of an opposite character (107-108).
A Harlot's Progress: Plate 2: Jonah
Lichtenberg
On the back wall hang two pictures, which may even be woven into the tapestry, for the comer of one of them is under the frame of the door. However, strict perspective was never Hogarth's strong point. The one nearest the door represents the prophet Jonah facing the city of Nineveh, and as if boxing with a cluster of sunrays which the worm-eaten watermelon is no longer capable of warding off. Such fists have the weight of words in England (23).
A Harlot's Progress: Plate 2: Ark
View this detail in copper here.
This portrait features David dancing before the Ark of the Covenant. The Jewish keeper’s selection of this particular scene to furnish his apartment is an interesting one. In a sense, it is a touting of his own daring in touching a forbidden object—a Christian woman. Paulson notes that it features the kind of “Old Testament” justice that Moll can expect when her affair is discovered (Popular 120).
A Harlot's Progress: Plate 2: Ark
Shesgreen
Above the whole scene are two large paintings, one of Jonah outside Nineveh seated next to an ivy plant, the other of David dancing before the Ark while Uzzah, attempting to touch it, is knifed in the back. The picture of Jonah may be a warning to heed the prophet’s message to reform. The painting of David and Uzzah, one of whom is killed for his sacrilege. the other rebuked by his wife for indecency, seems to foreshadow the fates that await the two characters in the scene (19).
A Harlot's Progress: Plate 2: Ark
Uglow
The Jew's room . . . is decorated not only with those portraits of Woolston and Clarke, attacked as enemies of Christianity, but with two pictures of Old Testament history. Appropriate, of course, but their content is mocking. In one, entitled 'Jonah, why art thou angry?', a weeping Jonah rages because God has not destroyed Nineveh (the Gentiles) as he promised. In the other David dances with his harp, while Uzzah steadies the Ark, toppled by the oxen: for this sacrilegious act, God, through his priest, stabs him in the back. In the 'real' scene, where the Jew who has 'sacrilegiously' touched a Christian girl is balancing the tilting table with his hand as Uzzah does the ark, the lover's sword also seems to 'stab him in the back'.
Both pictures undermine the Jew, presenting him as vengeful and tainted, but both also criticize the harshness of Old Testament justice and the cruelty of religious zeal. The Jew (like Moll) is an outsider and a victim of prejudice (204).
A Harlot's Progress: Plate 2: Ark
Paulson, Popular and Polite Art
The two examples of divine justice, pictured above the Harlot’s head on the wall of her Jewish keeper’s room (or the one he has furnished for her), choose the moment when God has withdrawn and spared Nineveh and it is Jonah who is still cursing the wicked city; and in the story of Uzzah touching the Ark of the Covenant, it is not God’s thunderbolt but a human priest who stabs Uzzah in the back. The allegory has been humanized, and the providential structure removed, or rather displaced to human agents.
On the one hand, the order of divine providence has been reduced to the natural law of causality. It has been dismissed by the humans themselves insofar as they ordered the mutilated copies of the paintings. . . . While Hogarth demonstrates horizontal causality, however, he also shows the vestiges of vertical causality, which should be the divine pattern, but now consists only of humans imitating the models or the roles of the biblical stories and classical myths, and the vertical pull is that of puppet strings. When a priest stabs Uzzah and Jonah curses the sinners of Nineveh, beneath the picture the Jewish keeper prepares to curse the unfaithful Harlot and cast her into outer darkness (119-120).
A Harlot's Progress: Plate 2: Ark
Paulson, His Life, Art and Times
The paintings that hang on the Jew’s wall—old master renderings of Old Testament subjects—act as a commentary on their collector and his newest item. Directly over his head is Uzzah rashly touching the Ark of the Covenant, much as the merchant took the forbidden object, a Christian girl: the Ark was supposed to be carried only by Levites and Uzzah was not a Levite. The whole scene below is a redaction of the painting with imaginary lines connecting each character with his biblical counterpart above. Most obvious, the tilting Ark of the Covenant becomes the tilting tea table; Uzzah reaching out to steady the Ark becomes the Jew steadying the table; the sportive oxen (lasciviens in the Biblical commentaries) who cause the Ark to tile become the Harlot who locks over the table. Hogarth has changed the story in 2 Samuel in one respect: he has substituted for the hand of God a priest who is stabbing Uzzah in the back. The Harlot, like the oxen, is kicking at her traces; she has taken a young lover, and toward the door, appears (by a characteristically Hogarthian false perspective) to be stabbing the Jew in the back. The stabbing priest becomes the cuckolding young lover. (Antlers appear prominently in the pattern of the wallpaper.) (vol. 1 255-256).
Moving up into the print from the bottom left, from monkey to Jew, from tilting table to Harlot, and thence up to the pictures, the painting of Uzzah reads as an extension of the action below, and the painting of Jonah as a commentary on the action. But if (following the early Hogarth commentators from Lichtenberg on) the paintings are read from left to right, they apply equally well to the Harlot, who is under the protection of the Jew as Jonah was under the shade of the gourd, which withered in the morning leaving him unprotected under a fierce retributory sun. The painting of Uzzah also applies in a way to the Harlot, for like her Jewish keeper she too is reaching out to touch something forbidden. Their situations are in a way parallel: both are climbing socially, he by picture collecting and taking a Christian girl for his mistress (I suppose this was the reason for Hogarth’s making him a Jew), she by presuming to rise above the status of a mistress and take a lover of her own; and both suffer particularly human punishments. Uzzah’s error, temeritas or rashness, glossed by some of the biblical commentators as ignorantia, is her crime too. In her case the materialization of God’s wrath in a priest connects with Justice Gonson in the next plate, in which the distinction between human justice and divine mercy is further underlined (vol.1 256-257).
A Harlot's Progress: Plate 2: Ark
Paulson, Hogarth's Graphic Works
The other picture shows Uzzah rashly reaching for the Ark of the Covenant to take hold of it--for which he is instantly struck dead by a priest. Both pictures imply the stern Old Testament justice that Moll can expect from the Jew when he discovers her duplicity It is probable that Hogarth intended to equate the Jew with David, singing, dancing, and playing his harp as he enters Jerusalem in triumph with the Ark (this Christian girl). David, "who uncovered himself ... in the eyes of the handmaids of his servants, as one of the vain fellows shamelessly uncovereth himself" (2 Samuel 6.20), may, as J. Ireland supposes (3, 327), "typify the backsliding Jew." (David's angry wife Micah is shown watching him from a window.) Hogarth may have had in mind Tom Brown's "Letter to Madame -------, kept by a Jew in Govern Garden," with its indecent suppositions about such a liaison (Letters on Several Occasions, 1700, in Amusements Serious and Comical and other Works, ed. A. L. Hayward, New York, 1927, pp. 199-200) (145).
A Harlot's Progress: Plate 2: Ark
Ireland
The subjects of two pictures with which the room is decorated are, David dancing before the ark, and Jonah seated under a gourd. They are placed there, not merely as circumstances which belong to Jewish story, but as a piece of covert ridicule on the old masters, who generally painted from the ideas of others, and repeated the same tale ad infinitium. One the toilet-table we discover a mask, which well enough intimates where she had passed part of the preceding night, and that masquerades, then a very fashionable amusement, were much frequented by women of this description; a sufficient reason for their being avoided by those of an opposite character (107-108).
A Harlot's Progress: Plate 2: Ark
Lichtenberg
The other represents King David, not in his glory, but when he dances before the Ark of the Covenant and is despised by Micah, Saul's daughter, who looks out of a window. The Ark of the Covenant is drawn by oxen who upset it, as it is written in the Bible, and the Ark falls, or is about to fall. A certain Uzzah tries to support it, and for that service a man in a Bishop's mitre runs a knife into his breast, from behind. The Bible only says, 'and the anger of the Lord was kindled against Uzzah, and he smote him for his error and there he died by the Ark of God'. I am sorry to find that Hogarth wants to interpret the ancient Bible in a modern way (23).
A Harlot's Progress: Plate 2: Maid
View this detail in copper here.
In Plate II, Moll is the kept mistress of a wealthy lover. She greets her newly-arrived patron, while her maid sneaks her preferred lover, in a state of undress out of the chamber. Moll kicks over a table to create a diversion so that the escape can be accomplished. Lichtenberg comments that Moll’s pet monkey, gasping in horror, witnesses the “danger” of the scene (21).