 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
A Harlot's Progress: Plate 4
1732
11 13/16” X 14 13/16” (H X W)
View the full resolution plate here.
View the copper plate here.
Moll, apprehended by the watch and Sir John Gonson, in Plate III, is shown her beating hemp. She is still accompanied by her faithful servant (who will emerge as the only true mourner at her funeral). She is being used by yet another male—this time her keeper who profits from her labor. She is mocked by his wife for wearing the fine clothes that often denotes harlots. Next to her, a gambler also toils away. He is another representation of the vice disintegrating England: sexual licentiousness, gambling and the like.
A Harlot's Progress: Plate 4
Shesgreen, Sean. Engravings by Hogarth. (1973)
Sentenced to Bridewell Prison, Moll beats hemp with the other prisoners, mostly women, in this brutalizing house of “correction.” The spirited look is gone from her tired, flabby face and her mouth droops slightly. She lifts her mallet only with great effort. Dressed in a grand gown, she is an object of ridicule to those around her. At her side stands a stern-faced jailer who threatens her with the leg-iron and cane—the stocks are already filled by another inmate.
The prison itself is a nurturer of crime; behind Moll a woman (perhaps the keeper’s wife) steals an item of the girl’s dress while she mocks her fashionable condition and acquired sensibilities. Moll’s servant, dressed in rags but for a pair of incongruously gaudy shoes and stockings, smiles at the woman’s treatment of her mistress. Beside the servant, a woman kills vermin on her body.
The prisoners are ranked by the warden according to their wealth and appearance. Next to Moll stands an older, well-dressed man who has been permitted to bring his dog with him; the forged playing card that lied in front of him has betrayed him. Next to him stands a mere child with a look of resignation on her pretty face; she works with great earnestness and intensity. Beside her a more experienced, older woman rests on her mallet as she watches the keeper’s movements. The last visible figure in the line is a pregnant Black, evidence that women of all races are subject to the same fates. At the end of the shed is a crude vengeful stick drawing of Sir John Gonson hanging from the gallows; the letters “Sr J G.” appear above it. On the left wall stands a whipping post with the warning “The Wages of Idleness” (21).
A Harlot's Progress: Plate 4
Paulson, Ronald. Hogarth’s Graphic Works. (1965)
The Harlot is now beating hemp in Bridewell Prison, the House of Correction in Tothill Fields, Westminster, for prostitutes, bawds, card-sharps, and the like. The man next to her is a gambler, with one of his torn cards lying on the floor in front of him. The other women are low types, one of whom, at the right, is destroying vermin in her clothes; the Harlot's servant is sitting next to this woman, resting as she ties her garter. A woman stands behind the Harlot jeering at her finery; and among the rest the Harlot and the gambler stand out because of their dress. A case was recorded of such a well-dressed woman in Bridewell: Mary Muffet, "a woman of great note in the hundreds of Drury, who about a fortnight ago was committed to hard labour in Tothill-fields Bridewell . . . where she is now beating hemp in a gown very richly laced with silver" (Grub-street Journal, Sept. 24, 1730).
The warder, or labor-master, draws Moll's attention to the log and chain as a punishment if she does not show more eagerness to beat hemp. He holds a rattan like the one shown in the third plate. Behind the Harlot the stocks are in use: "Better to Work than Stand thus" and further down a whipping post with "The Wages of Idleness" inscribed on it. The warder had reason for prodding his charges--he sold their beaten hemp to a merchant, and with the money paid for the prisoners' food and kept what remained. Accordingly, the prisoners worked from 6 in the morning till 6 at night. On the shutter at the back of the shed is an effigy of Sir John Gonson ("Sr J G") hanging from a gallows, pointing to the prisoners' feelings about the magistrate and to the final use that is made of the hemp they are preparing (147).
A Harlot's Progress: Plate 4
Uglow, Jenny. Hogarth: A Life and a World. (1997)
Hogarth showed full well that he understood this old superstition [the fear of caricature as a form of witchcraft]: in The Harlot’s Progress a stick-drawing in Bridewell shows the harlot-hunting magistrate Gonson on the gallows (56).
In the fourth plate, she is beating hemp in Bridewell among other petty thieves and prostitutes. The warder will sell the product of their labour, spending just enough on food to keep them standing at their work from six in the morning until six at night. Moll's fine dreams are mocked, just as her fine dress is tweaked by the leering, half-blind, syphilitic crone behind her, perhaps the gaoler’s wife. She is hardly able to lift the heavy hammer and her sexiness is grotesquely transferred to the over-ripe body of her bunter, pulling up the ragged stocking with its fashionable silk clocks, probably handed down from her mistress.
When the prints came out, Moll was identified with Mary Muffet a well- known Drury Lane character committed to hard labour in Tothill Fields Bridewell in 1730, where she was reported as ‘now beating hemp in a gown very richly laced with silver’. This kind of contrast had a dark allure; in 1725 young Saussure was agog to see a woman in fine linen and lace, committed for stealing a gold watch from her lover. A queenly figure covered in sweat from beating with her heavy mallet, she was wearing ‘a magnificent silk dress brocaded with flowers. The captain took great heed other; he had made her arm quite red with the little raps he gave her with his cane’. The hint of titillation here, and in Hogarth's print, flowered unashamed in one verse commentary:
When Moll I view'd at Hempen Block
Brocaded Gown and laced Smock . . .
I could have ventured Plague and pox
And all that fill's Pandora's Box,
To've had a silly snotty Pleasure
But she, poor Girl, was not at leisure.
The women's prison, however, was more than an image of a prostitute's decline or a sadist's delight. It was the incarnation of domination, the body subdued and beaten for punishment and profit, not enjoyed for pleasure In particular, the pregnant black whore in the background stung the imagination of later eighteenth-century commentators like the irrepressibly responsive Lichtenberg:
‘a negress poor devil! And as I gather from her rotundity, a double one besides. What a nest of prisons for the embryo! Imprisoned in a mother who herself sits in the Penitentiary, in a world which again is a Penitentiary for her whole family. Oh let us be thankful that we were born with the colour of innocence and the livery of freedom.'
Only a torn playing card, a caricature of Gonson on the gallows and inscriptions on the pillory and whipping post—‘Better to work than stand here’ and ‘The Wages of Idleness’—adorn Bridewell’s stark, uncompromising shed (205-207).
A Harlot's Progress: Plate 4
Ireland, John and John Nichols. Hogarth’s Works. (1883)
The situation in which the last plate exhibited our wretched female was sufficiently degrading, but in this her misery is greatly aggravated. We now see her suffering the chastisement due to her follies; reduced to the wretched alternative of beating hemp, or receiving the correction of a savage taskmaster. Exposed to the derision of all sound, even her own servant, who is well acquainted with the rules of the place, appears little disposed to show any return of gratitude for recent obligations, though even her shoes, which she displays while tying up her garter, seem by their gaudy outside to have been a present from her mistress. The civil discipline of the stern keeper has all the severity of the old school. With the true spirit of tyranny, he sentences those who will not labour to the whipping post, to a kind of picketing suspension by the wrists, or having a heavy log fastened to their leg. With the last of these punishments he at this moment threatens the heroine of our story; nor is it likely that his obduracy can be softened except by a well-applied fee. How dreadful, how mortifying the situation! These accumulated evils might perhaps produce a momentary remorse, but a return to the path of virtue is not so easy as a departure from it. The Magdalen hospital has been since instituted, and the wandering female sometimes finds it an asylum from wretchedness, and a refuge from the reproaches of the world.
To show that neither the dread no endurance of the severest punishment will deter from the perpetration of crimes, a one-eyed female, close to the keeper, is picking a pocket. The torn card may probably be dropped by the well-dressed gamester, who has exchanged the dice-box for the mallet, and whose laced hat is hung up as a companion trophy to the hoop-petticoat.
One of the girls appears scarcely in her teens. To the disgrace of our police, these unfortunate little wanderers are still suffered to take their nocturnal rambles in the most public streets of the metropolis. What heart so void of sensibility as not to heave a pitying sigh at their deplorable situation? Vice is not confined to colour, for a black woman is ludicrously exhibited as suffering the penalty of those frailties which are imagined peculiar to the fair.
The figure chalked as dangling upon the wall, with a pipe in his mouth, is intended as a caricatured portrait of Sir John Gonson, and probably the production of some wou’d-be artist whom the magistrate had committed to Bridewell as a proper academy for the pursuit of his studies. The inscription upon the pillory, BETTER TO WORK THAN STAND THUS, and that on the whipping-post, near the laced gambler, THE REWARD OF IDLENESS, are judiciously introduced.
In this print the composition is tolerably good: the figures in the background, through properly subordinate, sufficiently marked; the lassitude of the principal character well contrasted by the austerity of the rigid overseer. There is a fine climax of female debasement, from the gaudy heroine of our drama to her maid, and from thence to the still lower object who is represented as destroying one of the plaques of Egypt. (111-114).
A Harlot's Progress: Plate 4
Quennell, Peter. Hogarth’s Progress. (1955)
By Gonson, Moll is committed to Bridewell, the House of Correction in Tothill Fields, where prostitutes, card-sharpers and bawds were condemned to serve terms of hard-labour, and stubborn offenders were regularly beaten after the hours of divine service (see Dunciad, Book II, I, 270). Threatened by the gaoler’s whip, robbed and derided by brutal veterans of the London pavements, she endeavours feebly to pound her ration of hemp, still wearing the rather tarnished remains of her rich professional wardrobe (98).
A Harlot's Progress: Plate 4
Paulson, Ronald. Hogarth: His Life, Art and Times. (1971)
In the fourth plate her pretension (to use Fielding’s word, her affectation) is even sadder, juxtaposed with the threatening shape of the warder who is another representative of human justice and repectability (vol. 1 257).
A Harlot's Progress: Plate 4
Lichtenberg, G. Ch. Lichtenberg’s Commentaries on Hogarth’s Engravings. (1784-1796). Translated from the German by Innes and Gustav Herdan (1966)
As is well known, Chemistry describes three stages of fermentation: wine fermentation, acetous fermentation and putrid fermentation. But these terms could also apply in quite other fields than Chemistry. One might find analogous processes wherever organic matter of any kind, combined with a volatile portion of je ne sais quoi, life-force or spirit or whatever it is, in varying proportions of quantity as well as intensity, takes part in the cycle of Nature, which is characterized by stability amid constant change. This is true of the life of individuals as well as of States, in the whole as well as in part. The first fermentation of life, O how it rejoices the heart of man! In what long draughts he imbibes enthusiasm and delight from everything! A little time goes by and it is no more, as happened in the last war, or whatever period the historian may choose. The pleasant taste has gone. The drinker puts down the half-drained cup with a grimace and a disgusted shake of the head. He no longer sees the sense of it; it is for- bidden fruit; it is abominable—and up comes the sour face. But the process still goes on. Age makes for carefulness, carefulness for mistrust, and mistrust makes a man still older. Instead of with figures, he calculates with hyphens—upon the forehead, and many a time between supper and breakfast makes a costly midnight feast off his own fat. Thus one tooth after another falls out, one lock of hair after another goes, and one faculty after another fails, and so he goes on, without teeth, without hair, without faculties, or as Shakespeare says, 'sans everything', through the last stage of fermentation towards putrefaction. Oh! how he stinks! Away with him into the box with its wood-shavings; off to the Resurrection field with him, with the mighty Thing that will never be seen again! Such is the life of man. Is it otherwise with States and cities? All that remains from the glories of former times are tombstones above a mighty corpse, or miserable off-shoots on a decaying stump which drop off with every passing winter.
But life does not always pass so slowly and so regularly through all the stages. Some people get through all their fermentations in the time which for others is hardly sufficient for the first stage, and this is often the fault of the fermenting agents. Lord Rochester, a notorious witty old pig-skin, had grown old by his thirtieth year, was converted in his thirty-first,' and died, utterly bored with life, in his thirty-third. All this is quite possible, even with a constitution intended for a hundred years of life. For that genius, as he himself used to boast, had once been drunk for five years on end. Every calendar year he used up, on an average, three years of his life, that is on a biometer whose scale is divided according to the durability of the human body. Have there also been States of this kind? Two years' wine fermentation, two years' acetous fermentation and two years' putrefaction! It might be possible with a proud and rash people who always acted first and thought afterwards.
All this is really meant for you, poor Molly. Your fermentation too is going forward very quickly. Barely twenty, and already Hearing the end of the second stage, whose progress that brewery scullion in the apron beside you there will have difficulty in arresting.
Our heroine has, in fact, been brought to the penitentiary, of which this apartment appears to be the refectory or Activity-room, for the purpose of beating hemp during her leisure hours, and of such, alas, the day mostly consists here; or if she does not make a success of it, to let herself be beaten. In that event she will have leave to rest, like the fellow behind her, who a boy once thought, when he saw that engraving, was looking for sparrows' nests.
At a perfunctory inspection, it looks as if they were not too badly housed here. The company is fairly numerous, not entirely wicked, and, although in prison, they are at least not in imprisoned air; all is very airy and high, and that is something, especially on the border line of—putrefaction. She stands on the right wing of the file as file-leader, in a 'winged' cap, and altogether very much be-winged. Apparently she has been caught in the guise of a night-butterfly, and incorporated in that motley collection, or she has at least the colourful apparel in which she used to flutter at night around the lantern. But this item deserves a closer inspection. How is it, one might ask, that the girl has arrived here so decked out, since she has been fetched out of her bed and would hardly have been given time to dress up like that? For supposing she has tried on her head-gear four or five times, and every other article of clothing on an average about twice, and this surely is the least that can be assumed, she could easily have taken from two to three and a half hours. At that rate the butterfly-catchers would not earn their shoes. And then let us not forget the miserable mirror leaning against the punch bowl, which would reflect hardly a fiftieth part of that magnificent structure, and which would have to be shifted from zone to zone, each barely a few hands broad, all round the firmament, for her to see whether there was too much here or too little there. Do not some ladies require three hours to attire them- selves for a Ball, and that when four hands are at work, and with a mirror in which, as they step in front of it, they can survey the whole sky? No, that would not do; so much patience cannot be asked of bailiffs, and could hardly be expected, if it were asked. For we cannot help observing in the hand of one of them in the third Plate the very instrument which the man here, whom we have just designated as the brewery-scullion, is also holding. Wherever that appears, it is never as an emblem of patience. I believe it is called a cowhide whip. Thus I can see only two ways of solving this puzzle. Either this is not the first arrest, one that ended perhaps merely with a private castigation, which however had no effect. I should be very sorry if that were so; and so we come to the second (and surely the fairest) interpretation: the girl was taken away covered only so much as the cool air and the gaze of curious nature-lovers in the street made necessary, and had her wardrobe sent after her. Now we know that in England nobody may be sentenced without a hearing, and that in the places where people are heard, they are also very much seen. It is an important moment for a poor sinner who relies to some extent upon her pretty face and figure. She knows for certain that her misdeeds will find an inexorable and incorruptible judge in the grave individual who sits opposite her under the sword of justice. But she knows, too, that among the non-professionals around her, her face, her figure, her hair, and her whole bearing will find many a judge who will not take the matter so seriously, people who have not sworn an oath to regard a pretty girl as immediately reprehensible or even distasteful, just because she had been caught while on duty. If therefore in England a woman is brought before the Judge, and if in addition to a pretty face she possesses of good manners at least the form, and of clothes either possesses, or knows how to procure, the substance, then one can be sure of something worth seeing. The name of a Mrs Rudd, who in the year 1775 brought the twin brothers Perreau to the gallows, from which she escaped herself only through that kind action of hers, is surely immortalized by all the magazines of that time—if the magazines themselves are still in existence. Everything she wore was described and painted ribbon for ribbon and bow for bow. Her head-gear, which decency itself seemed to have arranged, was analysed, and painted for the benefit of those who might perhaps have felt the desire to catch a few Perreaux themselves; greater honour could not have been accorded to a Madame Siddons as Cordelia or Desdemona. That was going rather far. But who would reproach a girl like this if she rakes together her all (which is so little) against the day of reckoning? The jury are of course forbidden to let themselves be dazzled by it, but the poor sinner is not forbidden to believe in the possibility. Even if the blow itself could not be averted thereby, still it might awaken some Samaritan or other among the spectators who would afterwards pour oil into the wound; for in London there are some queer Samaritans, and among them, no doubt, somebody upon whom such a creature with its heavy mule-trappings would make just as great an impression as did the dancing Grace, Julie Potocki, upon a certain man of the world, and one of the finest sentiment.
Molly was found guilty at the Bar and sentenced to be privately whipped, and also to serve a term of hard labour, beating hemp. And it is of course a slight intensification of the punishment to make her start in that attire. When she has run the gauntlet of her fellow-prisoners' tongues, she will make herself more comfortable. Already, over there on the wall, hang a crinoline and a braided hat which are no part of the prison livery. How dull her eyes have grown! The dark rings around them are very noticeable, even in an engraving. Her mouth, how helplessly agape, and her whole face, how puffy! What a few false steps in the world can do, if they are the kind that lead to the medicine bottle! How heavy her poor heart must be! And how awkwardly she holds the hammer! With the left hand high up and the right a long way down. This is not the way to beat, at least not hemp—nor sugar either. Alas! it is a hopeless task for her, she cannot bear to look at it, she cannot and cannot beat. But 'thou shalt and must' is written on that face of bronze beside her, in letters which without punctuation can be read and understood the whole world over. It was quite unnecessary to stress the words by an accent grave! I mean the oblique cowhide is quite redundant—the face speaks for itself. Is he not a rogue of a warder, as if designed by Nature for such a herd? Just like Daphnis in Vergil,
Formosi pecoris custos, formosior ipse
'Lovely little swine, the swineherd even lovelier.'
But do our readers know who it was that torturer resembles as one egg another? Mr Magister Thwackum, tutor to the two brothers Blifil and Tom Jones. Fielding says so expressly. As is well known, that learned man provided the religious instruction in the boys' education. Did he too give his lessons in a white apron, I wonder? It has a sort of domestic-preparatory look about it, something exciting expectation, and at the same time suggesting to a bad conscience the idea of fleecing which, if used only as a deterrent, cannot possibly do any harm. That fellow's metal, though, is not altogether base; indeed, his upper half might even inspire respect if one were to put in his hand, in place of the cowhide, some instrument which had at least a different name. In order, however, not to prejudice our readers too much against the man, or to make them apprehensive for the poor prisoner in the charge of such a tyrant, we ought to mention that people of that sort have always at their command, apart from the faces for which they are paid by the municipal authorities, and those which they have to produce gratis, at least half a dozen others which can be bought against a small consideration. These are usually served up entirely without cowhide, and some of them, as I have been told, even with a genial cross-slash beneath the nose, from one ear to the other. What we see here is only ordinary fare, by way of entree.
Immediately behind our heroine stands the wife of that Master of the Ceremonies, holding over the sufferer's head a whip of quite another sort which hurts only the soul—the lash of the most impudent derision. Should the Devil decide to animate one of his puppets in the world for some doubtful purpose, his fingers and expression as he grips the wires could hardly differ much from that woman's as she fingers the lace and ribbons or the handkerchief here. Could one easily imagine a more satanic physiognomy? And yet her expression is still of the kind which fits such faces best; namely, the ironic. Illuminated by rage and brandy it would gain tremendously in force, and still not be caricature. Oh till you have set eyes on such a creature, you have seen nothing of the world! If she is not actually removing the handkerchief from the pocket, as Ireland believes, she is surely drawing a witty comparison for the amusement of her husband and the gratification of her own heart, between the bridal adornment of the lady and the tomb in which she has been buried here. One other eyes is not so much shut as non-existent, but the face loses nothing on that side in the way of light: all is richly compensated by the splendour of the ivories which that rattle-snake displays so inimitably that one hardly notices her eye is missing. If the greeting 'I'm absolutely delighted to see you here!' has ever been heard in that establishment, it could only have proceeded from such a slash of a mouth. So much for the torturer's— torturess.
Just let us run down the row of penitents—what a hammer-scale it is! What music! Curiously enough there are just seven of them—Doh, Re, Mi, Fa, Sol, La, Ti. The pair in the foreground do not count, since they are not performing for the time being. Whether something is in need of repair, or whether they have finished playing for today (since their hammers are at rest, and also there is no hemp lying on their block), I shall not venture to decide. Also there seems to be something like a small ditch between their place and that of the others. This may indicate that even here there are two classes, prima and secunda. Or is it that our Molly stands upon a platform as an example to the others, and that she works here in the pillory? That only half of the dog is visible really indicates such an elevation, and since rank is unthinkable without its insignia, just at that raised spot a ring is let into the ground, attached to a buttress-like stump of wood to obstruct or lessen movement. But let us return to our musical scale and to the hammer-mill.
Next to our keynote Doh there hammers Re, quite a dignified old man. I once saw an old copper-plate engraving of an ambassador being received in audience, who looked exactly like him, and who stood almost in the same attitude, only there was no hammering there, though maybe there was some talk about it. Really if we were to see that man in an honest workhouse in the guise of a Superintendent Police Inspector, or as a tutor in his study, we should think in the first case that he practised hemp-beating like the Chinese Emperor ploughing, and in the second like the dogs who eat grass when they have an upset stomach. How could he have landed here? The interpreters believe he is a card-sharper. They deduce this from the torn playing-card which lies on the floor in front of his work table. It is quite true, the man has something about him which usually characterizes people of that sort. Nature in her wisdom, while tolerating these poisonous snakes, usually puts into their appearance and apparel something which fills the office of a rattle, and gives warning to the bystanders without the snake itself being aware of it. There is always something not quite as it should be. Sometimes their clothing is out of season, sometimes even out of century. Full-dress uniform of the Peace of Ryswick period worn at the Coronation of Francis I, or magnificent furs on a cool evening in August. That is one of the idiosyncrasies of this class of human beings, and which class is without them? The card is an eight of spades, but there are no such eights with four spades in a row. Most likely it is an 'improved' nine. The two pieces say: three opposite five and one in reserve makes the alterum tantum. That certainly spells some fraud. Oh! if only the remark about prophesying from the coffee grounds had not already been made above, here would be an opportunity to sell ink without trouble and at a good price too!—like cinnamon oil. But the point has its difficulties. We must not, then, pass it over too lightly. One might ask: how does the card come to be here? Has he pulled it out with his handkerchief, and why is it in two pieces? Was it perhaps so often bent over in play that ultimately it had to fall apart? The shallowness of the English commentators on this occasion is as strange as it is incomprehensible. Surely a point like that must have been easy enough to clear up at the time. After all, what is the point of writing if one adds nothing to the old capital? A foreigner can do nothing here but grope, and must be satisfied if he does not make a fool of himself before the native expert. So here goes.
To me the man seems not so much a gambler by profession as an old fortune-hunter who has tried his hand at everything, gambling included, and after being utterly ruined by it has taken to other paths which finally brought him here. With such a fate, a man might easily come to curse all playing cards, and on finding one still in his coat pocket might tear it up and throw it down before beginning—to beat hemp. I regard him as one of those notorious people who give the London Law Courts a lot of work every year, and who in English are called 'swindlers'. 'Swindler', incidentally, one of the words which the great Doctor Johnson has omitted in his equally great Dictionary, means in English a felon who through cunning subterfuges, and usually with the appearance of a man of rank and means, tries to defraud people of their property. For carrying out these stratagems, an interim wife, at least as decoy, is an indispensable article; she does the talking and he the job. I fear, I almost fear, our Doh and Re are such a couple. That their places are next one another, that they are both so magnificently overdressed and both in the same taste, adds weight to that assumption. Whether Re used Doh, or Doh used Re in the operation, we shall not decide; perhaps their parts stood in the relation of the three to the five on the torn card and thus differed from the relation of equality only by one-eighth of the total load. It may be that after long search they were finally arrested in their State carriage and brought here after a short trial, and the obvious distinction of our heroine would then appear to be a consequence of a second arrest, which is always connected with certain disagreeable attentions. Whoever finds this reason for Molly's presence here more plausible than the one given above, may adopt it; it is really only a matter of taste. That the braided hat on the wall belongs to our Re goes without saying.
After Re comes Mi, a mere child, the most wretched object in this Plate. Hardly in her 'teens, she is already under this roof, suffering for a crime of which she had no conception, and into whose mere form she had been forcibly initiated, like a poodle into its antics. Anyone coming from the seat of virtue, I mean from the small towns of Germany, to London, must feel his heart bleed if, of an evening, he comes across such little creatures of twelve or thirteen, dressed like ballet shepherdesses, being handled and intercepted with theatrically tender embraces. It really beggars description. They speak in a sweet childish voice and with a volubility obviously acquired through learning by rote, about things of which they certainly do not understand one word. One is therefore almost tempted to regard them as children about to be confirmed, if all this did not belong to a Catechism which only Charters or the Devil could have written. It cries to heaven. The poor girl has something good-hearted in her physiognomy, and the zeal with which she is beating her hemp shows a willingness to follow any instruction. Good heavens! If this child deserves the penitentiary, what punishment would they not merit whose instructions have poisoned her innocence before she had time to reflect, and her youth before it had fully ripened?
We come now to the fourth note, Fa, the short, roundish thing who, propped on her hammer, is pausing a moment, a perfect little Satan. Her eyes, a charming pair of deadly-nightshade berries, seem to be directed upon a mosquito which is buzzing about in the air hardly three inches from her nose, but in reality they are aimed at the gaudy nightbird. No. 1 in the Cabinet, and its beautiful wings. She is taking a very sharp aim and is sure to make a hit when she lets fly. I should like to hear that girl talk. Near her Hogarth has added one of those touches which characterize him so perfectly; in these six Plates they are not very often to be found, but are increasingly apparent as his genius approaches maturity. It is a point which none of the English commentators has noticed. Behind the girl, there stands the well-known post with the iron collar, which can be seen in Germany, too. It bears the inscription, 'The Wages of Idleness'. Thus Fa is taking a rest immediately below the Tables of the Law which prohibit such respite, and not only that, since her Northern portion leans so far forward, her Southern parts are obviously turned against the Tables, which in every nation is recognized as a lack of respect. Here it is doubly indecent to direct that Pole upon a mere inscription, for although we know that this end sometimes accepts chastisement, we should not easily find an example of its ever having been used to receive a written warning.
Sol, the fifth from our heroine, is quite a goodlooking girl; anyone attracted by passive obedience could hardly take his eyes off her. I have come across just such a face once before, but whether in Nature or in a picture, on the cook of a Cathedral Chapter or on a Sphinx, I cannot now recall. A slightly mechanical aptitude for service and also a slightly Egyptian parallelism can hardly be missed in the face and in the whole way she is holding her head. Her hammer is very heavy; she seems scarcely able to lift it without supporting her elbow on her hip. By all the rules of perspective it is obviously bigger than those of her neighbours. Could there perhaps be lead in it? Mr Thwackum, perchance, has different hammers as he has different faces.
La is a negress, poor devil! And as I gather from her rotundity, a double one besides. What a nest of prisons for the embryo! Imprisoned in a mother who herself sits in the Penitentiary, in a world which again is a Penitentiary for her whole family. Oh let us be thankful that we were born with the colour of innocence and the livery of freedom. Thou blessed Sun, grant us only that and good health and our Ananas Troglodytes,! the rest we shall surely provide for ourselves.
Ti concludes the series. She is like Cordelia in King Lear—'although our last, not least'. She works more earnestly than all the rest, is also the only one who grasps the hammer with the right hand above. She sees little and we see little of her, and yet she does a good deal, or rather that is just why she does a good deal, just as in the great Workhouse of the World. After that little moral sermon from the coffee grounds, we now turn to the two in secunda.
The foremost is evidently the pug-nosed horror who poured out water for the tea on the third Plate. That she was brought here as well shows that she is something more than a mere servant. She looks rather pleased about the fate of her fosterchild, and appears to be giving the glad eye to the cowhide which today, perhaps for the first time, is a good distance away from her. Hogarth had already provided her with an ample supply of bosom in the third Plate, evidently not without reason; here she seems to consist almost entirely of bosom and legs. The fancy stockings which she is pulling up here evidently do not belong to her sex, since they unpermittedly and quite indecently reach up too high, and have clearly not been woven for knees—of the weaker sex, which require more space. Hence the evident break-through in this region. Black with white clocks, or even silver ones! If we only knew the Court and town fashions of those days, we might perhaps hazard a guess as to who had lost them. But as it is, we must declare them, together with the embroidered shoes, as the acquired property of the woman who, in order to impress town and Court had, in the appearance of her legs at least, to try to imitate them. The whole figure is not a masterpiece of drawing, nor of light and shade. Where does the brightness under her skirt come from? Phosphorescence is out of the question, for whence should that emanate? And yet one can see so clearly. Most likely it is only a reflection of the light in the roguish eyes of the artist, which for one brief moment illuminated the character of that infamous creature so as to cause decency itself to look that way. To pull up the stocking she grips it, perhaps with a remnant of modesty, now at least, using her fist like a handle at the knee. The garter, to judge from the gentle undulations which it readily assumes, appears to have been cut from a piece of old oilcloth. Next to her sits another such creature. Mr Ireland says she is occupied with one of the Egyptian plagues; this is clear enough. Both appear to be versed in the beating of hemp; it is not the first time for them. Their finished task is in the basket above them. They thus have time before dinner to make their toilet, each in her own way.
At the very back on the right-hand side, on a window shutter or cup- board door, is a picture of the gallows drawn with chalk in guard-room style, with a man hanging from it, smoking his little pipe. The gallows are well drawn, they are familiar with it under that roof; moreover it often becomes the Estate of this aristocracy when they leave town. The man on it is a mere cipher. Above is the inscription S.J.G. (Sir John Gonson), the name of the honest man whom we mentioned in the third Plate. It is clearly the joke of a scoundrel carried out in chalk because he was too cowardly or too pious to do something like that with a stiletto. The pipe in the mouth has little significance. Every honest man engraved on a copper-plate has to put up with that sort of thing. I have often seen portraits of the most honest people, especially those who have been specially assiduous in the education of the young, decorated with that pipe by those very youths, and with a moustache as well which stuck out pitch-black beyond the powdered wig. It is a bad joke, but, of course, to allow a picture of oneself, beard and all, to be put in the front of a little school book so as to make oneself and the book venerated is not much better. To see such a figure, so very modern, and yet already engraved on copper, is a rarety; had it lain 1,500 years under volcanic ashes, we should not waste a word over it.
The fellow who appears to be bird-nesting is really standing in the prison Stocks, and so has first to work honestly before he can become a rogue of ordinary degree. On the board over the Stocks we read: 'Better to work than stand thus.' The scene needs no explanation except to mention that in all probability the delinquent (the squeezed-in one) has made a secret plea for his liberation to Mrs Gaoler by a correspondence which might quite easily be carried on here by way of their lower Poles. Nothing else remains now but the dog, no easy item if one has to deal with such an unfathomable rogue as Hogarth. Is he meant to be here only as a volunteer, in evidence of un-human faithfulness towards a master whom he has followed into prison? This moral is somewhat too plain for our moralist; also we have already had an example of that with the Egyptian plague in secunda;, and there it even had a moral tailpiece which is missing here, that is to say the reward which we are accustomed to expect in this world in return for extreme devotion. This does not fit. I think, therefore, it must be the sheep-dog of the lovely shepherd and his shepherdess who has to watch over and prevent certain movements of the herd while the loving couple is engaged on operations. What may not a dog learn? That he pricks his ears so much towards the wing commanded by his master is very understandable. Well does he know the voice which thunders against Molly. Evidently it is also the very formula with which he is sometimes received. He believes it is meant for him. For everything here is free and equal, so far as is possible under a cowhide (40-51).
A Harlot's Progress: Plate 4: Dog
View this detail in copper here.
Shesgreen believes the dog belongs to the gambler, and if this is the case, perhaps Lichtenberg’s suggestion is correct. The commentator theorizes that the gentleman is imprisoned not only for gambling, but also for patronizing Moll’s services.
A Harlot's Progress: Plate 4: Dog
Shesgreen
Next to Moll stands an older, well-dressed man who has been permitted to bring his dog with him; the forged playing card that lied in front of him has betrayed him (21).
A Harlot's Progress: Plate 4: Gonson
View this detail in copper here.
The hangman on the wall has been identified as an effigy of Sir John Gonson, the harlot hunter. He is shown arresting Moll in the third plate of the series. It is likely that he is responsible for the imprisonment of many of the women here.
A Harlot's Progress: Plate 4: Gonson
Paulson, Hogarth's Graphic Works
On the shutter at the back of the shed is an effigy of Sir John Gonson ("Sr J G") hanging from a gallows, pointing to the prisoners' feelings about the magistrate and to the final use that is made of the hemp they are preparing (147).
A Harlot's Progress: Plate 4: Gonson
Uglow
Hogarth showed full well that he understood this old superstition [the fear of caricature as a form of witchcraft]: in The Harlot’s Progress a stick-drawing in Bridewell shows the harlot-hunting magistrate Gonson on the gallows (56).
Only a torn playing card, a caricature of Gonson on the gallows and inscriptions on the pillory and whipping post—‘Better to work than stand here’ and ‘The Wages of Idleness’—adorn Bridewell’s stark, uncompromising shed (207).
A Harlot's Progress: Plate 4: Gonson
Ireland
The figure chalked as dangling upon the wall, with a pipe in his mouth, is intended as a caricatured portrait of Sir John Gonson, and probably the production of some wou’d-be artist whom the magistrate had committed to Bridewell as a proper academy for the pursuit of his studies (114).
A Harlot's Progress: Plate 4: Harlot
View this detail in copper here.
Moll, apprehended by the watch and Sir John Gonson, in Plate III, is shown her beating hemp. She is still accompanied by her faithful servant (who will emerge as the only true mourner at her funeral). She is being used by yet another male—this time her keeper who profits from her labor. She is mocked by his wife for wearing the fine clothes that often denotes harlots. Next to her, a gambler also toils away. He is another representation of the vice disintegrating England: sexual licentiousness, gambling and the like.
A Harlot's Progress: Plate 4: Harlot
Shesgreen
Sentenced to Bridewell Prison, Moll beats hemp with the other prisoners, mostly women, in this brutalizing house of “correction.” The spirited look is gone from her tired, flabby face and her mouth droops slightly. She lifts her mallet only with great effort. Dressed in a grand gown, she is an object of ridicule to those around her (21).
A Harlot's Progress: Plate 4: Harlot
Paulson, Hogarth's Graphic Works
The Harlot is now beating hemp in Bridewell Prison, the House of Correction in Tothill Fields, Westminster, for prostitutes, bawds, card-sharps, and the like. The man next to her is a gambler, with one of his torn cards lying on the floor in front of him. The other women are low types, one of whom, at the right, is destroying vermin in her clothes; the Harlot's servant is sitting next to this woman, resting as she ties her garter. A woman stands behind the Harlot jeering at her finery; and among the rest the Harlot and the gambler stand out because of their dress. A case was recorded of such a well-dressed woman in Bridewell: Mary Muffet, "a woman of great note in the hundreds of Drury, who about a fortnight ago was committed to hard labour in Tothill-fields Bridewell . . . where she is now beating hemp in a gown very richly laced with silver" (Grub-street Journal, Sept. 24, 1730) (147).
A Harlot's Progress: Plate 4: Harlot
Uglow
In the fourth plate, she is beating hemp in Bridewell among other petty thieves and prostitutes. The warder will sell the product of their labour, spending just enough on food to keep them standing at their work from six in the morning until six at night. Moll's fine dreams are mocked, just as her fine dress is tweaked by the leering, half-blind, syphilitic crone behind her, perhaps the gaoler’s wife. She is hardly able to lift the heavy hammer and her sexiness is grotesquely transferred to the over-ripe body of her bunter, pulling up the ragged stocking with its fashionable silk clocks, probably handed down from her mistress.
When the prints came out, Moll was identified with Mary Muffet a well- known Drury Lane character committed to hard labour in Tothill Fields Bridewell in 1730, where she was reported as ‘now beating hemp in a gown very richly laced with silver’. This kind of contrast had a dark allure; in 1725 young Saussure was agog to see a woman in fine linen and lace, committed for stealing a gold watch from her lover. A queenly figure covered in sweat from beating with her heavy mallet, she was wearing ‘a magnificent silk dress brocaded with flowers. The captain took great heed other; he had made her arm quite red with the little raps he gave her with his cane’. The hint of titillation here, and in Hogarth's print, flowered unashamed in one verse commentary:
When Moll I view'd at Hempen Block
Brocaded Gown and laced Smock . . .
I could have ventured Plague and pox
And all that fill's Pandora's Box,
To've had a silly snotty Pleasure
But she, poor Girl, was not at leisure (205-206).
A Harlot's Progress: Plate 4: Harlot
Ireland
The situation in which the last plate exhibited our wretched female was sufficiently degrading, but in this her misery is greatly aggravated. We now see her suffering the chastisement due to her follies; reduced to the wretched alternative of beating hemp, or receiving the correction of a savage taskmaster. Exposed to the derision of all sound, even her own servant, who is well acquainted with the rules of the place, appears little disposed to show any return of gratitude for recent obligations, though even her shoes, which she displays while tying up her garter, seem by their gaudy outside to have been a present from her mistress (111-112).
A Harlot's Progress: Plate 4: Harlot
Quennell
By Gonson, Moll is committed to Bridewell, the House of Correction in Tothill Fields, where prostitutes, card-sharpers and bawds were condemned to serve terms of hard-labour, and stubborn offenders were regularly beaten after the hours of divine service (see Dunciad, Book II, I, 270). Threatened by the gaoler’s whip, robbed and derided by brutal veterans of the London pavements, she endeavours feebly to pound her ration of hemp, still wearing the rather tarnished remains of her rich professional wardrobe (98).
A Harlot's Progress: Plate 4: Harlot
Paulson, His Life, Art and Times
In the fourth plate her pretension (to use Fielding’s word, her affectation) is even sadder, juxtaposed with the threatening shape of the warder who is another representative of human justice and repectability (vol.1 257).
A Harlot's Progress: Plate 4: Harlot
Lichtenberg
Our heroine has, in fact, been brought to the penitentiary, of which this apartment appears to be the refectory or Activity-room, for the purpose of beating hemp during her leisure hours, and of such, alas, the day mostly consists here; or if she does not make a success of it, to let herself be beaten. In that event she will have leave to rest, like the fellow behind her, who a boy once thought, when he saw that engraving, was looking for sparrows' nests.
At a perfunctory inspection, it looks as if they were not too badly housed here. The company is fairly numerous, not entirely wicked, and, although in prison, they are at least not in imprisoned air; all is very airy and high, and that is something, especially on the border line of—putrefaction. She stands on the right wing of the file as file-leader, in a 'winged' cap, and altogether very much be-winged. Apparently she has been caught in the guise of a night-butterfly, and incorporated in that motley collection, or she has at least the colourful apparel in which she used to flutter at night around the lantern. But this item deserves a closer inspection. How is it, one might ask, that the girl has arrived here so decked out, since she has been fetched out of her bed and would hardly have been given time to dress up like that? For supposing she has tried on her head-gear four or five times, and every other article of clothing on an average about twice, and this surely is the least that can be assumed, she could easily have taken from two to three and a half hours. At that rate the butterfly-catchers would not earn their shoes. And then let us not forget the miserable mirror leaning against the punch bowl, which would reflect hardly a fiftieth part of that magnificent structure, and which would have to be shifted from zone to zone, each barely a few hands broad, all round the firmament, for her to see whether there was too much here or too little there. Do not some ladies require three hours to attire them- selves for a Ball, and that when four hands are at work, and with a mirror in which, as they step in front of it, they can survey the whole sky? No, that would not do; so much patience cannot be asked of bailiffs, and could hardly be expected, if it were asked. For we cannot help observing in the hand of one of them in the third Plate the very instrument which the man here, whom we have just designated as the brewery-scullion, is also holding. Wherever that appears, it is never as an emblem of patience. I believe it is called a cowhide whip. Thus I can see only two ways of solving this puzzle. Either this is not the first arrest, one that ended perhaps merely with a private castigation, which however had no effect. I should be very sorry if that were so; and so we come to the second (and surely the fairest) interpretation: the girl was taken away covered only so much as the cool air and the gaze of curious nature-lovers in the street made necessary, and had her wardrobe sent after her. Now we know that in England nobody may be sentenced without a hearing, and that in the places where people are heard, they are also very much seen. It is an important moment for a poor sinner who relies to some extent upon her pretty face and figure. She knows for certain that her misdeeds will find an inexorable and incorruptible judge in the grave individual who sits opposite her under the sword of justice. But she knows, too, that among the non-professionals around her, her face, her figure, her hair, and her whole bearing will find many a judge who will not take the matter so seriously, people who have not sworn an oath to regard a pretty girl as immediately reprehensible or even distasteful, just because she had been caught while on duty. If therefore in England a woman is brought before the Judge, and if in addition to a pretty face she possesses of good manners at least the form, and of clothes either possesses, or knows how to procure, the substance, then one can be sure of something worth seeing. The name of a Mrs Rudd, who in the year 1775 brought the twin brothers Perreau to the gallows, from which she escaped herself only through that kind action of hers, is surely immortalized by all the magazines of that time—if the magazines themselves are still in existence. Everything she wore was described and painted ribbon for ribbon and bow for bow. Her head-gear, which decency itself seemed to have arranged, was analysed, and painted for the benefit of those who might perhaps have felt the desire to catch a few Perreaux themselves; greater honour could not have been accorded to a Madame Siddons as Cordelia or Desdemona. That was going rather far. But who would reproach a girl like this if she rakes together her all (which is so little) against the day of reckoning? The jury are of course forbidden to let themselves be dazzled by it, but the poor sinner is not forbidden to believe in the possibility. Even if the blow itself could not be averted thereby, still it might awaken some Samaritan or other among the spectators who would afterwards pour oil into the wound; for in London there are some queer Samaritans, and among them, no doubt, somebody upon whom such a creature with its heavy mule-trappings would make just as great an impression as did the dancing Grace, Julie Potocki, upon a certain man of the world, and one of the finest sentiment.
Molly was found guilty at the Bar and sentenced to be privately whipped, and also to serve a term of hard labour, beating hemp. And it is of course a slight intensification of the punishment to make her start in that attire. When she has run the gauntlet of her fellow-prisoners' tongues, she will make herself more comfortable. Already, over there on the wall, hang a crinoline and a braided hat which are no part of the prison livery. How dull her eyes have grown! The dark rings around them are very noticeable, even in an engraving. Her mouth, how helplessly agape, and her whole face, how puffy! What a few false steps in the world can do, if they are the kind that lead to the medicine bottle! How heavy her poor heart must be! And how awkwardly she holds the hammer! With the left hand high up and the right a long way down. This is not the way to beat, at least not hemp—nor sugar either. Alas! it is a hopeless task for her, she cannot bear to look at it, she cannot and cannot beat. But 'thou shalt and must' is written on that face of bronze beside her, in letters which without punctuation can be read and understood the whole world over. It was quite unnecessary to stress the words by an accent grave! I mean the oblique cowhide is quite redundant—the face speaks for itself. Is he not a rogue of a warder, as if designed by Nature for such a herd? Just like Daphnis in Vergil,
Formosi pecoris custos, formosior ipse
'Lovely little swine, the swineherd even lovelier' (41-44).
A Harlot's Progress: Plate 4: Hemp
View this detail in copper here.
Moll is here beating hemp in prison. Her labors provide profits for her tyrannical keeper.
A Harlot's Progress: Plate 4: Hemp
Shesgreen
Sentenced to Bridewell Prison, Moll beats hemp with the other prisoners, mostly women, in this brutalizing house of “correction.” The spirited look is gone from her tired, flabby face and her mouth droops slightly. She lifts her mallet only with great effort (21).
A Harlot's Progress: Plate 4: Hemp
Lichtenberg
Our heroine has, in fact, been brought to the penitentiary, of which this apartment appears to be the refectory or Activity-room, for the purpose of beating hemp during her leisure hours, and of such, alas, the day mostly consists here; or if she does not make a success of it, to let herself be beaten. In that event she will have leave to rest, like the fellow behind her, who a boy once thought, when he saw that engraving, was looking for sparrows' nests (41).
A Harlot's Progress: Plate 4: Hemp
Uglow
In the fourth plate, she is beating hemp in Bridewell among other petty thieves and prostitutes. The warder will sell the product of their labour, spending just enough on food to keep them standing at their work from six in the morning until six at night (205-206).
A Harlot's Progress: Plate 4: Hemp
Ireland
The situation in which the last plate exhibited our wretched female was sufficiently degrading, but in this her misery is greatly aggravated. We now see her suffering the chastisement due to her follies; reduced to the wretched alternative of beating hemp, or receiving the correction of a savage taskmaster (111-112).
A Harlot's Progress: Plate 4: Hemp
Quennell
By Gonson, Moll is committed to Bridewell, the House of Correction in Tothill Fields, where prostitutes, card-sharpers and bawds were condemned to serve terms of hard-labour, and stubborn offenders were regularly beaten after the hours of divine service (see Dunciad, Book II, I, 270). Threatened by the gaoler’s whip, robbed and derided by brutal veterans of the London pavements, she endeavours feebly to pound her ration of hemp, still wearing the rather tarnished remains of her rich professional wardrobe (98).
A Harlot's Progress: Plate 4: Keeper
View this detail in copper here.
Moll, apprehended by the watch and Sir John Gonson, in Plate III, is shown her beating hemp. She is still accompanied by her faithful servant (who will emerge as the only true mourner at her funeral). She is being used by yet another male—this time her keeper who profits from her labor.
A Harlot's Progress: Plate 4: Keeper
Paulson, Hogarth's Graphic Works
The warder, or labor-master, draws Moll's attention to the log and chain as a punishment if she does not show more eagerness to beat hemp. He holds a rattan like the one shown in the third plate. Behind the Harlot the stocks are in use: "Better to Work than Stand thus" and further down a whipping post with "The Wages of Idleness" inscribed on it. The warder had reason for prodding his charges--he sold their beaten hemp to a merchant, and with the money paid for the prisoners' food and kept what remained (147).
A Harlot's Progress: Plate 4: Keeper
Uglow
In the fourth plate, she is beating hemp in Bridewell among other petty thieves and prostitutes. The warder will sell the product of their labour, spending just enough on food to keep them standing at their work from six in the morning until six at night (205-206).
A Harlot's Progress: Plate 4: Keeper
Ireland
The situation in which the last plate exhibited our wretched female was sufficiently degrading, but in this her misery is greatly aggravated. We now see her suffering the chastisement due to her follies; reduced to the wretched alternative of beating hemp, or receiving the correction of a savage taskmaster. The civil discipline of the stern keeper has all the severity of the old school. With the true spirit of tyranny, he sentences those who will not labour to the whipping post, to a kind of picketing suspension by the wrists, or having a heavy log fastened to their leg. With the last of these punishments he at this moment threatens the heroine of our story; nor is it likely that his obduracy can be softened except by a well-applied fee. How dreadful, how mortifying the situation! These accumulated evils might perhaps produce a momentary remorse, but a return to the path of virtue is not so easy as a departure from it (111-112).
A Harlot's Progress: Plate 4: Keeper
Quennell
By Gonson, Moll is committed to Bridewell, the House of Correction in Tothill Fields, where prostitutes, card-sharpers and bawds were condemned to serve terms of hard-labour, and stubborn offenders were regularly beaten after the hours of divine service (see Dunciad, Book II, I, 270). Threatened by the gaoler’s whip, robbed and derided by brutal veterans of the London pavements, she endeavours feebly to pound her ration of hemp, still wearing the rather tarnished remains of her rich professional wardrobe (98).
A Harlot's Progress: Plate 4: Keeper
Paulson, His Life, Art and Times
In the fourth plate her [Moll’s] pretension (to use Fielding’s word, her affectation) is even sadder, juxtaposed with the threatening shape of the warder who is another representative of human justice and repectability (vol. 1 257).
A Harlot's Progress: Plate 4: Keeper
Lichtenberg
But do our readers know who it was that torturer resembles as one egg another? Mr Magister Thwackum, tutor to the two brothers Blifiland Tom Jones. Fielding says so expressly. As is well known, that learned man provided the religious instruction in the boys' education. Did he too give his lessons in a white apron, I wonder? It has a sort of domestic-preparatory look about it, something exciting expectation, and at the same time suggesting to a bad conscience the idea of fleecing which, if used only as a deterrent, cannot possibly do any harm. That fellow's metal, though, is not altogether base; indeed, his upper half might even inspire respect if one were to put in his hand, in place of the cowhide, some instrument which had at least a different name. In order, however, not to prejudice our readers too much against the man, or to make them apprehensive for the poor prisoner in the charge of such a tyrant, we ought to mention that people of that sort have always at their command, apart from the faces for which they are paid by the municipal authorities, and those which they have to produce gratis, at least half a dozen others which can be bought against a small consideration. These are usually served up entirely without cowhide, and some of them, as I have been told, even with a genial cross-slash beneath the nose, from one ear to the other. What we see here is only ordinary fare, by way of entrée (44-45).
A Harlot's Progress: Plate 4: Gambler
View this detail in copper here.
Moll, apprehended by the watch and Sir John Gonson, in Plate III, is shown her beating hemp. Next to her, a gambler also toils away. He is another representation of the vice disintegrating England: sexual licentiousness, gambling and the like. His dog accompanies him, and as dogs frequently serve as representations of sexuality and sexual arousal, perhaps Lichtenberg’s theory that he was Moll’s customer is correct.
A Harlot's Progress: Plate 4: Gambler
Paulson, Hogarth's Graphic Works
The Harlot is now beating hemp in Bridewell Prison, the House of Correction in Tothill Fields, Westminster, for prostitutes, bawds, card-sharps, and the like. The man next to her is a gambler, with one of his torn cards lying on the floor in front of him (147).
A Harlot's Progress: Plate 4: Gambler
Ireland
The torn card may probably be dropped by the well-dressed gamester, who has exchanged the dice-box for the mallet (113).
A Harlot's Progress: Plate 4: Gambler
Lichtenberg
Next to our keynote Doh there hammers Re, quite a dignified old man. I once saw an old copper-plate engraving of an ambassador being received in audience, who looked exactly like him, and who stood almost in the same attitude, only there was no hammering there, though maybe there was some talk about it. Really if we were to see that man in an honest workhouse in the guise of a Superintendent Police Inspector, or as a tutor in his study, we should think in the first case that he practised hemp-beating like the Chinese Emperor ploughing, and in the second like the dogs who eat grass when they have an upset stomach. How could he have landed here? The interpreters believe he is a card-sharper. They deduce this from the torn playing-card which lies on the floor in front of his work table. It is quite true, the man has something about him which usually characterizes people of that sort. Nature in her wisdom, while tolerating these poisonous snakes, usually puts into their appearance and apparel something which fills the office of a rattle, and gives warning to the bystanders without the snake itself being aware of it. There is always something not quite as it should be. Sometimes their clothing is out of season, sometimes even out of century. Full-dress uniform of the Peace of Ryswick period worn at the Coronation of Francis I, or magnificent furs on a cool evening in August. That is one of the idiosyncrasies of this class of human beings, and which class is without them? The card is an eight of spades, but there are no such eights with four spades in a row. Most likely it is an 'improved' nine. The two pieces say: three opposite five and one in reserve makes the alterum tantum. That certainly spells some fraud. Oh! if only the remark about prophesying from the coffee grounds had not already been made above, here would be an opportunity to sell ink without trouble and at a good price too!—like cinnamon oil. But the point has its difficulties. We must not, then, pass it over too lightly. One might ask: how does the card come to be here? Has he pulled it out with his handkerchief, and why is it in two pieces? Was it perhaps so often bent over in play that ultimately it had to fall apart? The shallowness of the English commentators on this occasion is as strange as it is incomprehensible. Surely a point like that must have been easy enough to clear up at the time. After all, what is the point of writing if one adds nothing to the old capital? A foreigner can do nothing here but grope, and must be satisfied if he does not make a fool of himself before the native expert. So here goes.
To me the man seems not so much a gambler by profession as an old fortune-hunter who has tried his hand at everything, gambling included, and after being utterly ruined by it has taken to other paths which finally brought him here. With such a fate, a man might easily come to curse all playing cards, and on finding one still in his coat pocket might tear it up and throw it down before beginning—to beat hemp. I regard him as one of those notorious people who give the London Law Courts a lot of work every year, and who in English are called 'swindlers'. 'Swindler', incidentally, one of the words which the great Doctor Johnson has omitted in his equally great Dictionary, means in English a felon who through cunning subterfuges, and usually with the appearance of a man of rank and means, tries to defraud people of their property. For carrying out these stratagems, an interim wife, at least as decoy, is an indispensable article; she does the talking and he the job. I fear, I almost fear, our Doh and Re are such a couple. That their places are next one another, that they are both so magnificently overdressed and both in the same taste, adds weight to that assumption. Whether Re used Doh, or Doh used Re in the operation, we shall not decide; perhaps their parts stood in the relation of the three to the five on the torn card and thus differed from the relation of equality only by one-eighth of the total load. It may be that after long search they were finally arrested in their State carriage and brought here after a short trial, and the obvious distinction of our heroine would then appear to be a consequence of a second arrest, which is always connected with certain disagreeable attentions. Whoever finds this reason for Molly's presence here more plausible than the one given above, may adopt it; it is really only a matter of taste. That the braided hat on the wall belongs to our Re goes without saying.
After Re comes Mi, a mere child, the most wretched object in this Plate. Hardly in her 'teens, she is already under this roof, suffering for a crime of which she had no conception, and into whose mere form she had been forcibly initiated, like a poodle into its antics. Anyone coming from the seat of virtue, I mean from the small towns of Germany, to London, must feel his heart bleed if, of an evening, he comes across such little creatures of twelve or thirteen, dressed like ballet shepherdesses, being handled and intercepted with theatrically tender embraces. It really beggars description. They speak in a sweet childish voice and with a volubility obviously acquired through learning by rote, about things of which they certainly do not understand one word. One is therefore almost tempted to regard them as children about to be confirmed, if all this did not belong to a Catechism which only Charters or the Devil could have written. It cries to heaven. The poor girl has something good-hearted in her physiognomy, and the zeal with which she is beating her hemp shows a willingness to follow any instruction. Good heavens! If this child deserves the penitentiary, what punishment would they not merit whose instructions have poisoned her innocence before she had time to reflect, and her youth before it had fully ripened? (46-48).
A Harlot's Progress: Plate 4: Sign
View this detail in copper here.
The sign “Better to Work than Stand Thus” warns that the stocks will be the punishment for those who slack in their labors.
A Harlot's Progress: Plate 4: Sign
Paulson, Hogarth's Graphic Works
The warder, or labor-master, draws Moll's attention to the log and chain as a punishment if she does not show more eagerness to beat hemp. He holds a rattan like the one shown in the third plate. Behind the Harlot the stocks are in use: "Better to Work than Stand thus" and further down a whipping post with "The Wages of Idleness" inscribed on it. The warder had reason for prodding his charges--he sold their beaten hemp to a merchant, and with the money paid for the prisoners' food and kept what remained (147).
A Harlot's Progress: Plate 4: Sign
Lichtenberg
The inscription upon the pillory, BETTER TO WORK THAN STAND THUS, and that on the whipping-post, near the laced gambler, THE REWARD OF IDLENESS, are judiciously introduced (51).
A Harlot's Progress: Plate 4: Post
View this detail in copper here.
A whipping post with the warning "The Wages of Idleness" is one of the few items that are on the walls of the prison. All items adorning the room are emblems of punishment. Other examples are the stocks and the hangman, identified as the figure of John Gonson, the harlot hunter who imprisoned Moll (and possibly many of the other inmates).
A Harlot's Progress: Plate 4: Post
Paulson, Hogarth's Graphic Works
Behind the Harlot the stocks are in use: "Better to Work than Stand thus" and further down a whipping post with "The Wages of Idleness" inscribed on it. The warder had reason for prodding his charges--he sold their beaten hemp to a merchant, and with the money paid for the prisoners' food and kept what remained (147).
A Harlot's Progress: Plate 4: Wife
View this detail in copper here.
Moll, apprehended by the watch and Sir John Gonson, in Plate III, is shown her beating hemp. She is still accompanied by her faithful servant (who will emerge as the only true mourner at her funeral). She is being used by yet another male—this time her keeper who profits from her labor. This is the his wife who is mocking Moll for wearing the fine clothes that often denotes harlots. Next to her, a gambler also toils away. He is another representation of the vice disintegrating England: sexual licentiousness, gambling and the like.
A Harlot's Progress: Plate 4: Wife
Uglow
In the fourth plate, she is beating hemp in Bridewell among other petty thieves and prostitutes. The warder will sell the product of their labour, spending just enough on food to keep them standing at their work from six in the morning until six at night. Moll's fine dreams are mocked, just as her fine dress is tweaked by the leering, half-blind, syphilitic crone behind her, perhaps the gaoler’s wife (205-206).
A Harlot's Progress: Plate 4: Wife
Lichtenberg
Immediately behind our heroine stands the wife of that Master of the Ceremonies, holding over the sufferer's head a whip of quite another sort which hurts only the soul—the lash of the most impudent derision. Should the Devil decide to animate one of his puppets in the world for some doubtful purpose, his fingers and expression as he grips the wires could hardly differ much from that woman's as she fingers the lace and ribbons or the handkerchief here. Could one easily imagine a more satanic physiognomy? And yet her expression is still of the kind which fits such faces best; namely, the ironic. Illuminated by rage and brandy it would gain tremendously in force, and still not be caricature. Oh till you have set eyes on such a creature, you have seen nothing of the world! If she is not actually removing the handkerchief from the pocket, as Ireland believes, she is surely drawing a witty comparison for the amusement of her husband and the gratification of her own heart, between the bridal adornment of the lady and the tomb in which she has been buried here. One other eyes is not so much shut as non-existent, but the face loses nothing on that side in the way of light: all is richly compensated by the splendour of the ivories which that rattle-snake displays so inimitably that one hardly notices her eye is missing. If the greeting 'I'm absolutely delighted to see you here!' has ever been heard in that establishment, it could only have proceeded from such a slash of a mouth. So much for the torturer's— torturess (45).
A Harlot's Progress: Plate 4: Maid
View this detail in copper here.
Moll, apprehended by the watch and Sir John Gonson, in Plate III, is shown her beating hemp. She is still accompanied by her faithful servant (who will emerge as the only true mourner at her funeral).
A Harlot's Progress: Plate 4: Maid
Shesgreen
Moll’s servant, dressed in rags but for a pair of incongruously gaudy shoes and stockings, smiles at the woman’s treatment of her mistress (21).
A Harlot's Progress: Plate 4: Maid
Lichtenberg
The foremost is evidently the pug-nosed horror who poured out water for the tea on the third Plate. That she was brought here as well shows that she is something more than a mere servant. She looks rather pleased about the fate of her fosterchild, and appears to be giving the glad eye to the cowhide which today, perhaps for the first time, is a good distance away from her. Hogarth had already provided her with an ample supply of bosom in the third Plate, evidently not without reason; here she seems to consist almost entirely of bosom and legs. The fancy stockings which she is pulling up here evidently do not belong to her sex, since they unpermittedly and quite indecently reach up too high, and have clearly not been woven for knees—of the weaker sex, which require more space. Hence the evident break-through in this region. Black with white clocks, or even silver ones! If we only knew the Court and town fashions of those days, we might perhaps hazard a guess as to who had lost them. But as it is, we must declare them, together with the embroidered shoes, as the acquired property of the woman who, in order to impress town and Court had, in the appearance of her legs at least, to try to imitate them. The whole figure is not a masterpiece of drawing, nor of light and shade. Where does the brightness under her skirt come from? Phosphorescence is out of the question, for whence should that emanate? And yet one can see so clearly. Most likely it is only a reflection of the light in the roguish eyes of the artist, which for one brief moment illuminated the character of that infamous creature so as to cause decency itself to look that way. To pull up the stocking she grips it, perhaps with a remnant of modesty, now at least, using her fist like a handle at the knee. The garter, to judge from the gentle undulations which it readily assumes, appears to have been cut from a piece of old oilcloth. Next to her sits another such creature. Mr Ireland says she is occupied with one of the Egyptian plagues; this is clear enough. Both appear to be versed in the beating of hemp; it is not the first time for them. Their finished task is in the basket above them. They thus have time before dinner to make their toilet, each in her own way (49-50).