Marriage a la Mode: Plate 3
1745
13 7/8” X 17 1/2"
Engraved and etched from Hogarth's painting.
View the full resolution plate here.
View the painting here.
While his wife explores the banality of an affair with the family's attorney. Lord Squanderfield's sexual tastes run toward the deviant. Here, Squanderfield visits a quack doctor with the current object of his affections, who appears to be a very young girl. Shesgreen notes that the placement of his mistress is vulgarly "between the nobleman's legs" and that she seems "the victim of his decadent appetite for girl children" (53). His cane is vulgarly upraised, hinting at his sexual arousal at procuring such a treasure. Both Shesgreen and Peter Quennell remark that Squanderfield has certainly "lost his appetite for normal adult pleasures" (Quennell 174). The purpose of his visit is made clear by the prominent beauty patch on his neck; his mistress's tears convey that she too has been infected. The unnaturalness of their attraction is underscored by the unusual objects in the room: Paulson notes that the skeleton in the closet behind Squanderfield is "making amorous advances to a life-size figure" and Shesgreen draws attention to the "two pictures of abnormal human beings" (53). Lichtenberg states, "Next to the poison chest, Hogarth has excellently . . . placed two mummies. Out of their infinite security . . . they look down, evidently with proud contemptuous looks" (112-113). Their chronological distance recalls the "good old days" when such corruption was not so commonplace. These and the other objects of death and dismemberment also lend a grave and ominous air to the scene, as if these actions will have eternal consequences. The other woman pictured is of a more obscure function. It has been alternately suggested that she is the young girl's mother, her procuress, and even another mistress for Squanderfield. Her disgust is evident, however, as both her glare and opened knife indicate. Certainly this is to be our reaction as well, as Lichtenberg terms her the "Mother Superior" (104) of the scene—a satirical move, but one that places her, rather correctly, in the moral, as well as physical, center of the work.
Marriage a la Mode: Plate 3
Shesgreen, Sean. Engravings by Hogarth. (1973)
The young couple’s depravity has increased and their idle, pleasure-seeking lives are now so unconnected that they are portrayed in separate plates. Plate III shows the husband attending to one of the consequences of his debauchery. He has come to a quack whose house is a gallery of grotesque objects, many of them images of death.
In a glass case behind the young nobleman a human skeleton makes sexual advances to a preserved cadaver. A wig bock stands beside them. The horn of a narwhal projects from the side of the case; the horn and the shaving dish between the pillboxes and the urinal warn that this quack was trained as a barber. The rest of the items hint at the practice of a science more ominous and occult than medicine; they include: a femur, a human head with a pill in its mouth, a tripod shaped like a gallows, a bone, a hat, shoes, a spur, a chained crocodile, a sword and shield, a bug and the picture of a child. Above these hangs a stuffed crocodile with an ostrich’s egg attached to its belly.
Through the door the quack’s laboratory is visible. In the left foreground stand two threatening machines used for oddly divergent purposes: “An explanation of two superb machines, one for setting shoulders, the other for pulling corks, invented by Mr. Pill, seen and approved by the Royal Academy of Science of Paris.” On the right side of the room stands a cupboard full of labeled jars and drawers. A ferocious wolf’s head seems to warn of their contents and of their owner’s voraciousness. Beside the chest stand two mummies and two pictures of abnormal human beings.
Squanderfield, half-threateningly and half-cajolingly, complains about the efficacy of the doctor’s pills. The bowlegged quack, standing beside a memento mori, defends himself. The pathetic, tearful child standing between the nobleman’s legs seems to be the victim of his decadent appetite for girl-children, his interest in normal sexual relationships having been exhausted. The relationships between the nobleman, his child-mistress and the commanding, fierce-eyed woman who opens the clasp knife is unclear. The wild-eyed woman may be his second mistress, prompted to violence by disease acquired from the man or by jealousy of the younger girl; she may be the girl’s mother or procurer about to revenge her pollution or defend some aspect of her business reputation (53).
Marriage a la Mode: Plate 3
Uglow, Jenny. Hogarth: A Life and a World. (1997)
At first the husband’s pleasures seem the more sinister. In the third plate he wears a rich gold-laced suit, like his father’s, but instead of attending at Court, his is winsomely holding out a box of pills to a vile-looking quack. An angry bawd, huge in her black-hooped skirt, glares down on him, and a weeping young girl dabs her handkerchief to a sore. Here Hogarth weaves his medical satire into the social. No matter who has infected whom, he implies that the pills will be as useless as the narwhal horn and the stuffed crocodile that hang from the ceiling; the Viscount’s phallic cane, so gaily raised, points straight at a skeleton, dangling his bony wrist over the genitals of an embalmed man. The dingy room is full of horrors—a wolf’s head, a skull, a two-headed hermaphrodite, a collection of mummies. Around the doomed aristocrat and the sick child, pulleys, chains and gallows-like models condemn antiquarian and apothecary alike, and the monsters from “darkest Africa” hint at the white man’s savagery as well as his primitive science (378-379).
Hogarth's wit had never been so assured. Each scene had a different kind of humour. The marriage contract, like the opening of a comedy of manners, introduced formal contrasts of class; the bourgeois and the aristocrat conform to convention - the Alderman stooping, feet wide apart, the Earl lying back with a pseudo-Watteauesque grace. The morning scene, so acute and penetrating in its psychological study of the young couple, damned both the idle rich and the doom-demanding Methodist servant. The consulting room wove the darkness of Jonson's Alchemist into a satire on modern doctors (381).
Marriage a la Mode: Plate 3
Paulson, Ronald. Hogarth’s Graphic Works. (1965)
The room shown is the house, or "museum," of Dr. Misaubin, 96 St. Martin's Lane, Westminster (see J. T. Smith, 2, 164). The machine in the left foreground holds two folios, one of which, open to the title page reads: "EXPLICATION DE DEUX MACHINES SUPERBES L'UN POUR REMETTRE L'EPAULES L'AUTRE POUR SERVIR DE TIRE BOUCHON INVENTES PAR MONSR DE LA PILLULEVUES ET APROUVEÈS PAR L'ACADEMIE ROYAL DES SCIENCES A PARIS"; in short, these elaborate machines are for straightening a dislocated limb and drawing a cork from a bottle. Dr. Misaubin was called "M. de la Pilule" for his famous pill. He has been identified as the lean doctor in the fifth plate of A Harlot's Progress, a much leaner doctor than this one, whom Hogarth may have wished to generalize. Misaubin died April 20, 1734, but was still remembered in 1749 when Fielding referred to his conceit, which was so great that he "used to say that the proper direction to him was, 'To Dr. Misaubin, in the World' (Tom Jones, Bk. XIII, Chap. 2). The woman is said to have been modeled on Misaubin's Irish wife (J. T. Smith, 2, 163).
In one show case a large periwig and wig-block are visible, probably Misaubin's, and a skeleton making amorous advances to a life-size anatomical figure. Trusler (pp. 76-77) thinks that the bones are warning the flesh of the consequences of dealing with quacks. Over the top hang a large glass urinal and a brass shaving-dish, and near this is a narwhal tusk that, with its convolutions, resembles a striped barber's pole. All of this is to intimate the quack's original calling as a barber-surgeon (See Rouquet, p. 35.) A dried crocodile with an ostrich's egg depending from its belly hangs from the ceiling. There are also an enormous femur, part of a fish's skeleton, an old tall hat, a pair of shoes and an odd shoe, the head of a stuffed crocodile, a large prick spur and its straps, a sword and buckler (suggesting Don Quixote or Hudibras), a stuffed fish and a picture of a monstrous child. Resting on top of the case is a pile of pill-boxes, a model of a human head with a pill in its mouth and a movable jaw, reminiscent of Friar Bacon's brass head (in Greene's Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay); there is also a tripod, used for holding retorts, but here resembling the triple gallows at Tybum. The position of the gallows, directly over the anatomical model's head, implies that the latter is the stuffed, dried body of a hanged malefactor.
The show case at the right is full of jars used at the time in apothecaries' shops, and it has a stuffed animal head (probably a wolf) on top Beyond this are two mummy cases and two pictures of full-length monsters, one a two-headed hermaphrodite, the other an anthropophagi with his head beneath his shoulders.
The meaning of the print is in general clear, but in particulars open to disagreement. Dr. Misaubin is standing next to a human skull, “the forehead of which has been perforated by the disease in respect to which the party are in consultation” (Stephens, BM Sat.). The nobleman is holding out to Misaubin a pill box, playfully threatening with his cane. The girl of indeterminate age at his side (anywhere from six to sixty) wears the same cap the dog was sniffing in the nobleman's pocket (Pl.2). This girl, his mistress, "is applying a white handkerchief to her lips, as if to a sore," as Stephens notices. The other woman has been explained in various ways.
Rouquet (p. 34), who may have obtained his interpretation from Hogarth himself, explains that Hogarth has introduced the nobleman into:
1'appartement d'un empirique, ou il ne peut guères se trouver qu'en consequence de sés débauches; il fait en même tems rencontrer chez cet empirique une de ces femmes qui perdues depuis long-tems, font enfin leur métier de la perte des autres. II suppose un démelé entre cette femme &: son héros, dont le sujet paroît être la mauvaise santé d'une petite fille, du commerce de laquelle il ne s'est pas bien trouvé.
Trusler, who may have derived his information from Mrs. Hogarth (p. 75), dubiously concludes that the nobleman has:
brought with him two females with whom he had been acquainted, that the doctor might determine to which of the two he might attribute his disorder, both of them being supposed to have been some time under cure. His being prejudiced in favour of the girl, we are to imagine, occasions a quarrel between him and the woman, which proceeds to the greatest extremities, even to that of fighting.
J. Ireland {2, 33-34):
This quack being family surgeon to the old procuress, who stands at his right hand, formerly attended the young girl, and received his fee, as having recovered his patient. That he was paid for what he did not perform, appears by the countenance of the enraged nobleman, who lifts up his cane in a threatening style, accompanying the action with a promise to bastinado both surgeon and procuress for having deceived him by a false bill of health.
Finally, an explanation given by Charles Rogers, esq., who says it came from [Luke] Sullivan, one of Hogarth's engravers: "The Nobleman threatens to cane a Quack-doctor for having given pills which proved ineffectual in curing a girl he had debauched; and brings with him a woman, from whom he alledges he caught the infection; at which she in a rage, is preparing to stab him with her clasp knife . . . [quoted, Gen. Works, 2,178 n.].
The important thing to note is the drama of expressions: Misaubin concerned only for the honor of his pills, the completely passive little girl, the indignant bawd, and--most telling of all--the gay indifference of the young nobleman, without a hint of awareness of the seriousness.
The “F.C.” in gunpowder initials on the termagant's bosom, is supposed to stand for Fanny Cock, daughter of the famous auctioneer," with whom our artist had had some casual disagreements" (Gen. Works, 2, 178 n.); Cock's being an auctioneer of old masters may connect him with the auction objects in PI. 4. But if the initials are "E C," perhaps it stands for Betsy Careless, who became a brothel-keeper (d. 1752) [see Rake, plate 8] (271-272).
Marriage a la Mode: Plate 3
Dobson, Austin. William Hogarth. (1907)
That the viscount and his lady have elected to take their pleasures is evident. What those pleasures are, is specifically indicated in the third and fourth pictures. Over that relating to the distractions of the husband we shall not linger long, both by reason of its subject and the obscurity of its story. None of the commentators—not even of those whose inspiration is said to be derived direct from Hogarth—has given a satisfactory explanation of it. Churchill, in the after-days of his enmity, affirmed that the artist himself did not know what he meant, but had worked from the imperfectly apprehended suggestion of some friend. This, in a man of Hogarth’s type is improbable. It is far more likely that—even in age more tolerant of pictorial plain-speaking—he did not desire to be exactly explicit. The design may be thus briefly described. The reader will remember a woman’s cap (in the painting it has a blue ribbon) which peeped from the viscount’s pocket in the saloon scene. In the present picture a similar blue-ribboned cap is worn by a slight girlish figure in a laced “manteel” and brocaded skirt, who has been brought by the nobleman to consult a quack doctor, one of that worshipful fraternity whose electuaries and cathlicons generally formed the tailpiece to the eighteen-century newspaper. The girl’s health, and the quack’s treatment of it, are certainly the questions under discussion; and the viscount, who is seated, with lifted cane threatens a fierce-looking and masculine woman (who may be the quack’s wife, or a procuress, or both), to whom he sarcastically holds out a box of pills. She, in return, is preparing to reply with a formidable clasp-knife. The bow-legged practitioner, an admirable figure, whose face, Hazlitt says happily, “seems as if it were composed of salve.” Sander near her, and is apparently addressing some snarling query to the unfortunate patient, who listens in a mute, impassive attitude, with a handkerchief to her mouth. But if the meaning of the figures is not clear, there is no doubt about the objects by which they are surrounded. These are the stock-in-trade of an empiric of the first order. Skulls, stuffed crocodiles, retorts, mummies and the like, decorate the apartment. To the left of the canvas, in obvious ridicule of the futile ingenuities of science, is a cumbrous apparatus of levers and cog-wheels for setting collarbones; near this is a smaller one devoted to the humbler office of drawing corks. Both are invented by “Mons. De la Pillule [sic]” (presumably the quack himself), and have been “seen and approved by the Royal Academy of Sciences at Paris.” The room, according to J.T. Smith, was copied from one at 96 St. Martin’s Lane, once the residence of Dr. John Misaubin (the lean physician of A Harlot’s Progress and Fielding’s “Mock Doctor”), who died there in April 1734. He was the proprietor of a famous pill; and if, as Smith further says, he had an “Irish wife,” it may well be that Hogarth, though he did not reproduce the actual individuals, was for the moment thinking of the Misaubin establishment (76-78).
[Hazlitt] is equally good in his vignette of the younger woman in the episode at the Quack Doctor’s, a study which he rightly regards as one of Hogarth’s most successful efforts. “Nothing,” he says, “can be more striking than the contrast between the extreme softness of her person and the hardened indifference of her character. The vacant stillness, the docility to vice, the premature suppression of youthful sensibility, the doll-like mechanism of the whole figure, which seems to have no other feeling but a sickly sense of pain—show the deepest insight into human nature, and into the effects of those refinements in depravity by which it has been good-naturedly asserted, that ‘vice loses half its evil in losing all its grossness.’” (82).
Marriage a la Mode: Plate 3
Quennell, Peter. Hogarth’s Progress. (1955)
The exact significance of the next episode has puzzled many commentators: a contemporary critic begging leave to doubt whether Hogarth himself really understood the scene, while a Victorian writer nervously suggests that the “subject is not one upon which detailed discussion is expedient.” But its general purport is clear enough. The young nobleman, who has contracted a venereal disease, visits the establishment of a quack doctor—probably Dr. Misaubin (already represented in the Harlot’s Progress) of 96 St. Martin’s Lane. Flourishing his stick, half jocular, half blustering, he holds out a tell-tale box of pills; the practitioner snarls defiantly back at him, and a beribboned procuress, who may be the doctor’s wife, exasperated by this attack on her professional reputation, threatens to take violent measures. Her rage is directed at the nobleman’s favourite—“un petite fille (remarks Rouquet) du commerce de lacquelle il ne s’est pas bien trouvé”. Presumably he has lost his appetite for normal adult pleasures; and his new mistress, who stands by mum but guiltily snuffling, although dressed in adult finery is a child of twelve or thirteen. There is a curious fascination (as Hazlitt noted) about her face and attitude—the “vacant stillness” and “doll-like mechanism of the whole figure which seems to have no other feeling but a sickly sense pain”. The quack-doctor is also an alchemist; and from the background looms the grotesque apparatus of his occult studies—a skeleton and a mummy, presses and retorts, stuffed reptiles and a narwhal’s horn (173-174).
Marriage a la Mode: Plate 3
Paulson, Ronald. Hogarth: His Life, Art and Times. (1971)
In Plate 3 the triangle is realized in the feeble-looking child who is the count’s mistress, the count, and the bawd, and quack who cater to his sexual wants. This is paralleled in Plate 4 by the countess’ lover, lawyer Silvertongue, the countess herself, and the denizens of her world, hairdressers, fashionable ladies, eunuch singers, and the like. Then in Plate 5, where the count and countess are reunited, the countess is placed, as in Plate 1, on one side the dying count and on the other the fleeing lawyer, his murderer (vol.1 485-486)..
The first shows the earl’s quarters with the old masters he collects, pictures of cruelty and compulsion from which his present act of compulsion naturally follows, his portrait of himself as Jupiter furens, and his coronet stamped on everything he owns. . . . Then follows the empiric’s room, with his mummies and nostrums . . . Here art has become an integral part of Hogarth’s subject matter: it is here for itself, a comment on itself, and also on its owners and on the actions that go on before it. In no other series is the note so insistent . . . it dominates every room, every plate. The old masters have come to represent the evil that is the subject of their series: not aspiration, but the constriction of old, dead customs and ideals embodied in bad art. Both biblical and classical, this art holds up seduction, rape, compulsion, torture, and murder as the ideal, and the fathers act accordingly and force these stereotypes on their children (vol. 1 488-489)..
The trends toward art as theme and reader as active participant are further underlined by the importance placed on viewing. . . . In Plate 3 the skeleton whispers to a stuffed man that is its companion (vol. 1 489).
Marriage a la Mode: Plate 3
Lichtenberg, G. Ch. Lichtenberg’s Commentaries on Hogarth’s Engravings. (1784-1796). Translated from the German by Innes and Gustav Herdan (1966)
Lord Orford, in Part VI of his Anecdotes of Painting in England, where he speaks about our artist, affirms that the main idea in his work was always comprehensible. True as this is for by far the greater part of his engravings, it does not quite apply to the present one. There are, if I am not mistaken, no less than five different interpretations of this scene. This circumstance alone would be sufficient evidence of its obscurity, but an anecdote which Mr Ireland quotes to the same end is too remarkable to be omitted here. On some occasion when the well-known poet Churchill was asked about the meaning of this engraving, he confessed that it had always seemed to him so ambiguous that one day he had asked the artist himself for an explanation, but he, like many another commentator, had left it as obscure as it had been before. 'And I am therefore,' proceeded the poet, 'quite convinced that he based his tale upon an idea of Hoadley, Garrick, Townley, or some other friend, and never rightly understood himself what it meant.' In this remark one can sense the cynic's bitterness. Mr Ireland further comments, in connection with the story, that this opinion of Churchill's was given at a time when the unfortunate quarrel between him and Hogarth had already broken out. It may happen, though, to the most honest man that in a fit of philosophical penetration or poetical inspiration, especially just before Mass, he will write something which he himself no longer understands when Mass is over. These are the lightning flashes of genius, and lightning does not take aim; nor do flashes of genius, any more than natural storms—especially thunder without lightning—leave any trace, either in the element from which they come, or in that into which they go. But a work of art like this one is not just flashed on to the canvas by a single coup de main. Each separate line of the attack must be planned and visualized before it is executed, and afterwards it must undergo still more aiming and planning, for days, even weeks, and it would be a queer thing indeed if the besieger were not to see what he wanted to take by storm. Hogarth certainly saw it, and saw it clearly. We shall now see whether we cannot indicate, by a few slowly convergent straight lines, the proper direction of his manifold ordnance, and thus the position of the main targets. We shall not prolong these lines as far as their meeting points; our paper is too small for that. We therefore beg the indulgent reader to transfer them from here on to a somewhat larger canvas and then apply his own ruler to them, and everything else will come by itself. And, after thus reducing the solution of the problem to a mere linear plan, we can, I think, afford to be brief.
It has already been hinted several times, and fairly distinctly, that the young Viscount was neither quite healthy nor otherwise quite comme-il-faut. But all this was mere rumour. There was mention of a plaster behind the left ear and of some muslin and ribbon in his pocket and so on. But here we obtain reliable official confirmation that all is really so and, so to speak, straight from the Viscount's own mouth. We see him here in the consulting room of a certain Monsieur de la Pillule, a French doctor who specializes in that type of disease which the linguistic usage of all nations has made a co-national of Monsieur le Docteur, and which is probably treated by him, on account of that relationship, with profitable care and leniency. His name we learn from a copy of the impressive tome which lies open there on his right, and the success of his practice can be inferred from the whole appearance of the elegant room with its vaulted window overlooking the street, and from what is loudly proclaimed not by architecture alone but by all the realms of art and nature on the walls.
Presumably this is also the establishment where our hero was stamped behind the ear. Together with the poor immature creature who stands on his left, he has just arrived at Monsieur de la Pillule's, to whom he has also invited, or brought along, the more than mature witch on his right. Now the quarrel develops, the cause of which is as follows: his Lordship has hired the little creature from the old woman's educational institute, to serve as companion in his extra-domestic household, for an indefinite time and at a high price. For this, the Mother Superior of that Nunnery guarantees in her novices immature youthfulness, innocence, complete ignorance of gallicism of any kind, and therefore complete security. The last item was very necessary on account of his domestic household, and the immaturity was really made an explicit condition, mainly because of fashion, but partly also because of the increased security. And in this, alas! his Lordship found himself miserably and quite irreparably damaged. He is surely within his rights, for the old hag, instead of remonstrance, immediately draws her pocket knife against the defamer of her institute. But he, for his part, is about to produce an argument against which the mere tongue-wagging of the procuress will be powerless. The young and candid creature has, in fact, confessed to him herself that she has used the doctor's pills before, and is still using them. They have therefore brought the whole supply with them to lay here before the tribunal. His Lordship holds a little box open in his hand, and shows it to the quack, who is perhaps one of the girl's underwriters, probably with some such words as these: 'Look here. Monsieur, are not these the self-same pills which I've already taken myself more than a hundred times?' He may be presenting them also to the Mother Superior: 'Aren't these the cough lozenges which you provide for your nuns?'
I believe this is the simplest solution of the puzzle, because it also explains the expression on the face of the poor victim, in which predominates an eloquent fear of the old dragon, and of the castigation awaiting her in the nunnery for telling tales. The supply of pills was not negligible, since the child has another little box in her hand, if it is not the lid of the open one, and yet another lies on the chair in front of his Lordship, from which it would certainly fall were it not that the angle formed by his Lordship's thighs had made a suitable resting place for it. That his Lordship has sat down for the poor creature's sake, as if to put himself on a level with her, and even takes her between his legs, is a very subtle and striking touch of our artist's. It shows how small, childish, and in need of help the little creature appears, even in the eyes of a good-for-nothing. Had he been a sincere defender or avenger of innocence, surely that position in itself would have secured him the spectator's affection. As it is, it only increases our horror of the disgusting, brutish voluptuary. It seems unlikely that he raises his Spanish cane to administer a real thrashing--he only brandishes it a little so as to give the ironic amiability of his face and the light mockery of his words the proper cudgel-like solidity, by which alone it is possible to make oneself understood in such society. The Mother Superior's defence with the knife cannot be of any special consequence. Nothing more comes of it. Probably Monsieur de la Pillule interposed with the volubility that belongs to his nation as well as his profession. This would be quite in his line; a main ingredient of pills like his was always the gilt of oratory: it would thus not be difficult for him who had concluded so many more difficult peace treaties between ego and non- ego, in which this gilt was a main ingredient, to conclude one so easy as that between cane and pocket-knife, through the gilt alone.
Be that as it may, the pious dame now grasps her pocket-knife, just as her adversary the half-raised stick, as a stress accent for those who might still find anything equivocal in the expression of their faces. On her bosom can be seen the letters F.C., probably etched with gunpowder. If the English police had found it advisable to subdivide into companies the Light Regiment in which that piece of hussar had served forty years ago, then the letters might denote First Company; also Free Corps, or Filia Carissima—in the nunnery, that is; or if the kerchief covered'the name of the founder, owner, or landlord, then they might also stand for the well-known Fieri Curavit or Faciendum curavit N.N. According to Dr Nichols, the letters stand for Fanny Cock, the daughter of an auctioneer named Cock with whom Hogarth had a quarrel. Whether he also had some quarrel with the daughter is not known; probably she herself had one with the public. But whatever the letters may mean, they are characteristic enough in this context, for among all London's pious dames, Mothers Superior and Prioresses, those with burnt or etched mottoes are the most infamous.
Now for a glance at Monsieur de la Pillule himself. It is to be hoped that the reader will be fully indemnified thereby for the nausea which the rest of the company may have caused him. It is impossible to look at this man, who either gilds everything he touches or turns it into money, without feeling a few years younger. Only look at his gold mouth! What a source of comfort, especially when he spouts broken English! And beneath it a nose which surely represents the most perfect saddle ever ridden by spectacles. Do our readers recollect perhaps a description which Fabre d'Eglantine has given of the blessed Marat? Oh, c'est Marat tout craché! Even if a touch were missing here and there, no one could easily miss 'the eye, naturally gentle, even charming, and yet penetrating, the short thighs and the bow legs' of Marat. If the wig was only perched a little more to one side, I should believe it was Marat himself drawn immediately after the box on the ear which led to his theory of light. He wipes his spectacles for the inspection of the corpus delicti, which he can hardly avoid doing. Upon his table lies a book which has the appearance of being clasped by a somewhat curious skull that had evidently in life been gnawed by the compatriot disease. It is permissible to draw conclusions from such a padlock about the contents of the jewel box; there must be something of the momento mori in it. In that case, it could either contain the mysteries of the doctor's poison-brewing art, or it might be the book of life in which he enters the names and the debts of the blessed cured.
Opposite that closed book, at the other side of the consulting room, lies an open one. An arrangement like that is almost reminiscent of the German promotion ceremony for the Doctor's Degree at which, as is well- known, the candidate is recommended in a fatherly but serious manner to apply himself not only to the opening of books but to their shutting as well, at the proper time. In France, however, to the best of my knowledge, that custom is not in fashion; at least, there is nothing about it printed in the protocol of Doctor Molière. Moreover, the open book of our Doctor is his own work, and in any learned establishment such books surely open by themselves. The full title of the work, which consists of two moderately sized volumes, is as follows: Explication de deux machines superbes, l'une pour remettre les épaules, l'autre pour servir de tire-bouchon, inventées par Monsr de la Pillule. Vues et approuvées par I'Académie Royale des Sciences à Paris. Thus it is a description of two machines, one of which serves to set dislocated shoulders, the other to pull corks out of bottles, both examined by the Royal Academy of Sciences at Paris, and approved forthwith. That means something. Such an honour is only shown by the Academy of Sciences to people whose value is already established. If he is a poor un- known devil, they will either examine his work stringently, or, if there is no time for this, they will only glance at it and reject it. From the appearance of both machines which Hogarth shows us here, the verdict of the Academy appears completely justified. One need only look at them to approve of that. In the first volume, as we just read in an old review, the author shows the use of the machine for dislocated shoulders: he explains how the patient is to be properly strapped on, made rigid, and screwed down. By one of the springs which we see here, the end of a napkin gathered into a ball is pressed into his mouth, and as the tension and therefore the pain increases, more and more of the napkin is intruded, so that the patient is completely prevented from crying out. Upon the great jagged pole at the back is fixed a very finely adjusted measuring scale which he calls points de démembrement. If now the machine is set at the proper point, depending upon the age and strength of the patient, one may boldly wind like an organ-grinder without fear that the patient will be torn apart, since before this could happen the great hook (a sort of lock) will fall into the third wheel, and stop the machine, and the patient remains whole. One more revolution and the patient is torn apart (démembrement); hence the name of the measuring scale. In the second volume, the author shows how the machine could easily be used for uprooting old stumps of oak trees, and even raises the hope that it might serve for restoring leaning steeples to their proper elevation. Very modestly, almost like Archimedes, he requires for this only a little spot of earth on which to stand. But vigorously and strongly though it performs one of its functions, so gently and tenderly, one might almost say kindly, does it perform another. For he claims to have extracted with it the teeth of personages of high rank, even the corks of the bottles on their dinner tables. The part which serves for drawing corks he has worked on specially, so that it can be separated from the rest and used by itself, and this is the marvellous idea which we see materialized there on the floor.
Although it is evident that Hogarth has displayed all this here in majoram gloriam of the noble simplicity of the medical art in general, and of French surgery in particular, which, as he intimates, is capable of dispelling diseases of all kinds without much ado, whether rooted like oak trees or sitting lightly like corks, the downy bird still cannot suppress his mockery of the venerable de la Pillule. He has carried this so far that with the best will in the world to think the opposite, we are inclined to believe that Hogarth's sole intention with all that machinery was to indicate that Monsieur de la Pillule was a charlatan and a shark who made preparations for cutting nails as if for amputating a thigh, and afterwards, in the Book of Life, entered his charges accordingly. One need only look at the cup- board with the glass doors over there; that sort of thing could not possibly be meant as a recommendation. On top of it we see a rather curious tripod. It is hardly the tripod of Pythia, although the whole shelf looks like an antique shop. It seems rather to be a tripod of another sort, from which, instead of the unknown being foretold as at Delphi, something well known is proclaimed. Yes, it is quite certainly the sort of tripod whose sight has comforted many a poor traveller in Germany whom some landlord has despoiled of half his purse; he sees that on the highway, at least, he need not worry about the other half. It is the well-known legal tripod—the gallows. It hovers here like a halo or a coronet above three figures which represent man, and more especially the laboratory of his thought, like the three layers of an onion—the skeleton, the skin, and the wig. Unfortunately, the noblest layer, the wig, is none other than our doctor's. That it sits here upon a somewhat more beautiful carving makes no difference. From the outside he might really have looked like that in earlier years, and from the inside they still probably resemble each other. The group would bear more than one explanation to be sure, but none would be able to explain our doctor away from beneath the gallows. The naked figure, it is believed, might be a patient, and the other two, doctors in consultation, one of whom is our doctor here, and the other the famous medicinae practicus of whose humane behaviour Horace sings as truly as beautifully,
Aequo pulsat pede pauperum tabernas Regumque turres.
The latter, though, does as if he were angry with the former, but only because the patient is listening; fundamentally, both are making common cause. Or, one might be already in bliss, and has come to succour the other who is not yet quite so far gone: 'Are you going to "cure" him to a skeleton as you did me, you scoundrel?' Or both might have been hanged, one dried honestly in chains, the other dishonestly dissected, for which he is making the bitterest reproaches to the Faculty. 'It's still a question,' he says, 'which of us two is the more [de]pendable, you or I.' Or they may represent a Concilium medicum in general. In a word, one sees that the three-leaved clover in the cupboard is a gallows-pendant, and our doctor the 'pendant' (in the metaphorical sense of the word) to the skeleton.
The laboratory at the back seems to be a mere show-piece—a chemical kitchen in which no cooking is ever done. The glass apparatus in it apparently serves the same purpose for the doctor's pills as the oak tree extractor does for his corks. He himself does not draw his corks in this way, nor does he make his pills in that. Everything here has been chosen, not for its necessity and usefulness, but to impress with its splendour and pomp, together with a dash of terror. Quacks are good at that. They know that without window-dressing the masses cannot be served with physical or spiritual food, nor with the foods of the chemist's shop either, which are something between the two.
On the wall above the cupboard hangs a whole encyclopaedia of showpieces of every kind, evidently intended to inspire his patients with feelings of awe or perhaps to afford them some preliminary entertainment until the doctor had made up his mind on the appropriate final jibber-jabber. It is a well-established fact that many people can talk, if not very well, at least tolerably, on matters of which they understand nothing, provided they are allowed, for the fortification of their inner confidence as well as the increased energy of their jaws, a little time to dwell on things which are familiar to them, and of which the listener understands nothing. As such a running start to the main objective, the collection up there is not at all badly designed. For there will hardly be a soul except the owner who would understand all the little object lessons hanging up there. Beauty is hardly represented, but rather the great and the sublime. The collection begins on the left with a huge narwhal's tooth which, if seen as a horn growing out of the procuress's head, adds not a little to the fury in her face. But this is not the meaning of it, at least not the only one. That is still to come. Then there follow a few bricks, probably baked more than 2,000 years ago, a barber's basin, shaped like Mambrin’s helmet, a urine bottle evidently for the reception of some aqua regia of prehistory; giant bones, giant children's heads with small pipes or tubes to emit smoke and fire, gigantic combs against gigantic pests, and between these colossal magnifications of the small stands the colossal diminution of one of the most uplifting objects in the civilized world. Next to it hangs—once antiquated but now again the dernier cri—the high-crowned hat; more properly the felt knock-and-shock absorber. That is why it is left partly empty. That emptiness extends, when even the best heads are stuck into it, to at least half the height, with others to two-thirds and over, and, occasionally, according to the kind of heads, to the whole. Then follow the insignia of nobility, the spur, the shield and the lance of youth and the slippers of old age; two crocodiles, one with amputated legs and an ostrich egg, since no better was available, and the other with a chain on its lower jaw; finally, a monster and an insect almost too big and too many- legged for the giant comb.
Whether Hogarth had a purpose in displaying just these relics is difficult to decide; but it is quite possible, even if we regard the whole cabinet as a perfect general satire upon certain collectors of all the rubbish of Nature and Art. For nobody understood better than he the art of adding, with inimitable roguery, to what is of general appeal in his art some other ingredients which would only act with full force upon such individuals as would be specially sensitive to it, by reason of some hidden defect. A touch of this sort is to be found here, one which hits at the learned descent of our Monsieur de la Pillule. He has had the unfortunate idea of putting up his narwhal's tooth at a slant, thus transforming it into the generally recognized shop-sign of the barber (the barber's pole), and then, an untoward fate caused him to place Mambrin’s helmet, the barber's basin, and the urine bottle so close to the pole that through that hieroglyph the well-stocked room of Monsieur de la Pillule becomes a barber's shop and he himself a urine-wise barber, who could only jabber about medicine.
Thus the doctor's collection may perhaps be interpreted partly historically, partly prophetically, indicating his life-history as follows: he began as a barber, then became a urine diviner, surreptitiously gained the doctor's hat soon afterwards through his cures, though just missing the gallows by a hair's breadth, and now even reckons upon a knighthood, if he has not won it already.
The two pictures hanging on the left wall of the room represent two monsters, one of which has both arms growing out of its head. It is perhaps, as Mr Ireland believes, one of Sir John Mandeville's cannibals:
Whose heads
Do grow beneath their shoulders.
Its arms hang down in the painting like the ornamental wings of the noblest type of wig. The other monster has, without a trace of further reduplication, simply two heads. If these creatures really existed, which I do not doubt, we can only regard them as some well-meant attempts on the part of Nature to give the writer's profession a better foundation at last. The two ways in which this purpose could be quickly achieved are obvious: either each writer should be given two heads, one for the daily domesticities, for smoking, taking snuff, compilation and mystification, and another for solemn thought, for the uninterrupted acquisition of knowledge and for writing proper; or if, as hitherto, everything has to be accomplished by a single head, then such an important instrument for the writing of books as the arm with its hand should not be suspended from the shoulder, but rather from the head itself. Why this beautiful project has not materialized I do not know. Perhaps the booksellers were against it.
On the right, over the door leading to the kitchen, hangs another picture; also a monster. It is not clearly visible; however, from the brazenness with which it presents itself, that is, from the extended legs and out- stretched arms, we may conclude that it must have something curious to show. Having taken a great deal of trouble with this creature, I believe I have found that it represents a new variety of Janus bifrons, that is, one in whom the positive and negative front, I mean the face and the seat, lie on one and the same side, and who thus, wherever he turns, be it to the past or the future, not only looks at people, but shows them something too. For it is clear that with this creature, the navel does not appear on the same side as the face, from which it naturally follows that whatever as a rule is not on the side of the face must here appear on it. That the Janus of ancient Rome, before he shut himself in at the conclusion of peace, never showed himself to the people like that, is pretty certain. But what he did or ought to have done in modern Rome before he recently shut the temple door there cannot be determined.
If somebody wanted to draw the life-line of Monsieur de la Pillule through this fifth point also, I would suggest his considering whether the picture cannot be interpreted as the dog-like fawning and flattery of that class of human beings; for my readers are aware that some little dogs do not know how to make their masters a greater compliment than to approach them wriggling like snakes and showing them, just like that picture at the conclusion of peace, both fronts simultaneously.
Above the quite sizeable medicine chest on the left, a terrible hyena head, or whatever it is, threatens with destruction anyone who comes near it. Certainly a very telling symbol for the poison chest above which it hangs; a proper noli me tangere, keep away from me! Or it portends cannibalism. From this viewpoint, the head would fit in very well with Sir John Mandeville's cannibals. Of course, Monsieur le Docteur will interpret it quite differently by pointing to the diseases which have found their inevitable end in his jars and boxes.
Next to the poison chest Hogarth has excellently, it seems to me, placed two mummies. Out of their infinite security and after their thousand years truce with the healing faculty, they look down, evidently with proud contemptuous looks, on all the quack turmoil and the drug trash of this world; which one can do if one is—a mummy. The doctor's overcoat and hat, thrown upon the floor, are evidence of his activity, his haste to save life, and his great practice. (102-113).
Marriage a la Mode: Plate 3: Croc
Shesgreen
The rest of the items hint at the practice of a science more ominous and occult than medicine; they include: a femur, a human head with a pill in its mouth, a tripod shaped like a gallows, a bone, a hat, shoes, a spur, a chained crocodile, a sword and shield, a bug and the picture of a child. Above these hangs a stuffed crocodile with an ostrich’s egg attached to its belly (53).
Marriage a la Mode: Plate 3: Girl
Shesgreen notes that the placement of his mistress is vulgarly "between the nobleman's legs," and she seems "the victim of his decadent appetite for girl children" (53). His cane is vulgarly upraised, hinting at his sexual arousal at procuring such a treasure. Both Shesgreen and Peter Quennell remark that Squanderfield has certainly "lost his appetite for normal adult pleasures" (Quennell 174). The purpose of his visit is made clear by the prominent beauty patch on his neck; his mistress's tears convey that she too has been infected.
Marriage a la Mode: Plate 3: Girl
Shesgreen
The pathetic, tearful child standing between the nobleman’s legs seems to be the victim of his decadent appetite for girl-children, his interest in normal sexual relationships having been exhausted. The relationships between the nobleman, his child-mistress and the commanding, fierce-eyed woman who opens the clasp knife is unclear (53).
Marriage a la Mode: Plate 3: Girl
Paulson, Hogarth's Graphic Works
The girl of indeterminate age at his side (anywhere from six to sixty) wears the same cap the dog was sniffing in the nobleman's pocket (Pl.2). This girl, his mistress, "is applying a white handkerchief to her lips, as if to a sore," as Stephens notices (271-272).
Marriage a la Mode: Plate 3: Girl
Dobson
In the present picture a similar blue-ribboned cap is worn by a slight girlish figure in a laced “manteel” and brocaded skirt, who has been brought by the nobleman to consult a quack doctor, one of that worshipful fraternity whose electuaries and cathlicons generally formed the tailpiece to the eighteen-century newspaper. The girl’s health, and the quack’s treatment of it, are certainly the questions under discussion (77-78).
[Hazlitt] is equally good in his vignette of the younger woman in the episode at the Quack Doctor’s, a study which he rightly regards as one of Hogarth’s most successful efforts. “Nothing,” he says, “can be more striking than the contrast between the extreme softness of her person and the hardened indifference of her character. The vacant stillness, the docility to vice, the premature suppression of youthful sensibility, the doll-like mechanism of the whole figure, which seems to have no other feeling but a sickly sense of pain—show the deepest insight into human nature, and into the effects of those refinements in depravity by which it has been good-naturedly asserted, that ‘vice loses half its evil in losing all its grossness.’” (82).
Marriage a la Mode: Plate 3: Girl
Quennell
. . . his new mistress, who stands by mum but guiltily snuffling, although dressed in adult finery is a child of twelve or thirteen. There is a curious fascination (as Hazlitt noted) about her face and attitude—the “vacant stillness” and “doll-like mechanism of the whole figure which seems to have no other feeling but a sickly sense pain” (174).
Marriage a la Mode: Plate 3: Girl
Lichtenberg
The young and candid creature has, in fact, confessed to him herself that she has used the doctor's pills before, and is still using them (104).
That his Lordship has sat down for the poor creature's sake, as if to put himself on a level with her, and even takes her between his legs, is a very subtle and striking touch of our artist's. It shows how small, childish, and in need of help the little creature appears, even in the eyes of a good-for-nothing. Had he been a sincere defender or avenger of innocence, surely that position in itself would have secured him the spectator's affection. As it is, it only increases our horror of the disgusting, brutish voluptuary. It seems unlikely that he raises his Spanish cane to administer a real thrashing--he only brandishes it a little so as to give the ironic amiability of his face and the light mockery of his words the proper cudgel-like solidity, by which alone it is possible to make oneself understood in such society (105).
Marriage a la Mode: Plate 3: Head
Shesgreen
The rest of the items hint at the practice of a science more ominous and occult than medicine; they include: a femur, a human head with a pill in its mouth, a tripod shaped like a gallows, a bone, a hat, shoes, a spur, a chained crocodile, a sword and shield, a bug and the picture of a child. Above these hangs a stuffed crocodile with an ostrich’s egg attached to its belly (53).
Marriage a la Mode: Plate 3: Head
Paulson, Hogarth's Graphic Works
Resting on top of the case is a pile of pill-boxes, a model of a human head with a pill in its mouth and a movable jaw, reminiscent of Friar Bacon's brass head (in Greene's Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay) (271).
Marriage a la Mode: Plate 3: Groom
Here, Squanderfield visits a quack doctor with the current object of his affections, who appears to be a very young girl. Shesgreen notes that the placement of his mistress is vulgarly "between the nobleman's legs" and that she seems "the victim of his decadent appetite for girl children" (53). His cane is vulgarly upraised, hinting at his sexual arousal at procuring such a treasure. Both Shesgreen and Peter Quennell remark that Squanderfield has certainly "lost his appetite for normal adult pleasures" (Quennell 174). The purpose of his visit is made clear by the prominent beauty patch on his neck.
Marriage a la Mode: Plate 3: Groom
Shesgreen
Plate III shows the husband attending to one of the consequences of his debauchery. He has come to a quack whose house is a gallery of grotesque objects, many of them images of death.
Squanderfield, half-threateningly and half-cajolingly, complains about the efficacy of the doctor’s pills (53).
Marriage a la Mode: Plate 3: Groom
Uglow
At first the husband’s pleasures seem the more sinister. In the third plate he wears a rich gold-laced suit, like his father’s, but instead of attending at Court, his is winsomely holding out a box of pills to a vile-looking quack (378).
Marriage a la Mode: Plate 3: Groom
Dobson
The viscount, who is seated, with lifted cane threatens a fierce-looking and masculine woman (who may be the quack’s wife, or a procuress, or both), to whom he sarcastically holds out a box of pills (77).
Marriage a la Mode: Plate 3: Groom
Quennell
The young nobleman, who has contracted a venereal disease, visits the establishment of a quack doctor—probably Dr. Misaubin (already represented in the Harlot’s Progress) of 96 St. Martin’s Lane. Flourishing his stick, half jocular, half blustering, he holds out a tell-tale box of pills; the practitioner snarls defiantly back at him (173).
Presumably he has lost his appetite for normal adult pleasures; and his new mistress, who stands by mum but guiltily snuffling, although dressed in adult finery is a child of twelve or thirteen (174).
Marriage a la Mode: Plate 3: Groom
Lichtenberg
It has already been hinted several times, and fairly distinctly, that the young Viscount was neither quite healthy nor otherwise quite comme-il-faut. But all this was mere rumour. There was mention of a plaster behind the left ear and of some muslin and ribbon in his pocket and so on. But here we obtain reliable official confirmation that all is really so and, so to speak, straight from the Viscount's own mouth (103).
His Lordship holds a little box open in his hand, and shows it to the quack, who is perhaps one of the girl's underwriters, probably with some such words as these: 'Look here. Monsieur, are not these the self-same pills which I've already taken myself more than a hundred times?' He may be presenting them also to the Mother Superior: 'Aren't these the cough lozenges which you provide for your nuns?' (104).
That his Lordship has sat down for the poor creature's sake, as if to put himself on a level with her, and even takes her between his legs, is a very subtle and striking touch of our artist's. It shows how small, childish, and in need of help the little creature appears, even in the eyes of a good-for-nothing. Had he been a sincere defender or avenger of innocence, surely that position in itself would have secured him the spectator's affection. As it is, it only increases our horror of the disgusting, brutish voluptuary. It seems unlikely that he raises his Spanish cane to administer a real thrashing--he only brandishes it a little so as to give the ironic amiability of his face and the light mockery of his words the proper cudgel-like solidity, by which alone it is possible to make oneself understood in such society (105).
Marriage a la Mode: Plate 3: Memento
While seeming a typical memento mori, the skull shows perforations.
Marriage a la Mode: Plate 3: Memento
Paulson, Hogarth's Graphic Works
Dr. Misaubin is standing next to a human skull, “the forehead of which has been perforated by the disease in respect to which the party are in consultation” (Stephens, BM Sat.) (271).
Marriage a la Mode: Plate 3: Memento
Lichtenberg
Upon his table lies a book which has the appearance of being clasped by a somewhat curious skull that had evidently in life been gnawed by the compatriot disease. It is permissible to draw conclusions from such a padlock about the contents of the jewel box; there must be something of the momento mori in it. In that case, it could either contain the mysteries of the doctor's poison-brewing art, or it might be the book of life in which he enters the names and the debts of the blessed cured (106).
Marriage a la Mode: Plate 3: Quack
Squanderfield, infected with syphilis, brings his similarly infected young lover to this quack doctor.
Marriage a la Mode: Plate 3: Quack
Shesgreen
The bowlegged quack, standing beside a memento mori, defends himself (53).
Marriage a la Mode: Plate 3: Quack
Paulson, Hogarth's Graphic Works
Dr. Misaubin was called "M. de la Pilule" for his famous pill. He has been identified as the lean doctor in the fifth plate of A Harlot's Progress, a much leaner doctor than this one, whom Hogarth may have wished to generalize. Misaubin died April 20, 1734, but was still remembered in 1749 when Fielding referred to his conceit, which was so great that he "used to say that the proper direction to him was, 'To Dr. Misaubin, in the World' (Tom Jones, Bk. XIII, Chap. 2). The woman is said to have been modeled on Misaubin's Irish wife (J. T. Smith, 2, 163) (271).
Marriage a la Mode: Plate 3: Quack
Quennell
The young nobleman, who has contracted a venereal disease, visits the establishment of a quack doctor—probably Dr. Misaubin (already represented in the Harlot’s Progress) of 96 St. Martin’s Lane. Flourishing his stick, half jocular, half blustering, he holds out a tell-tale box of pills; the practitioner snarls defiantly back at him (173).
Marriage a la Mode: Plate 3: Quack
Lichtenberg
the consulting room of a certain Monsieur de la Pillule, a French doctor who specializes in that type of disease which the linguistic usage of all nations has made a co-national of Monsieur le Docteur, and which is probably treated by him, on account of that relationship, with profitable care and leniency. His name we learn from a copy of the impressive tome which lies open there on his right, and the success of his practice can be inferred from the whole appearance of the elegant room with its vaulted window overlooking the street, and from what is loudly proclaimed not by architecture alone but by all the realms of art and nature on the walls (103-104).
Now for a glance at Monsieur de la Pillule himself. It is to be hoped that the reader will be fully indemnified thereby for the nausea which the rest of the company may have caused him. It is impossible to look at this man, who either gilds everything he touches or turns it into money, without feeling a few years younger. Only look at his gold mouth! What a source of comfort, especially when he spouts broken English! And beneath it a nose which surely represents the most perfect saddle ever ridden by spectacles. Do our readers recollect perhaps a description which Fabre d'Eglantine has given of the blessed Marat? Oh, c'est Marat tout craché! Even if a touch were missing here and there, no one could easily miss 'the eye, naturally gentle, even charming, and yet penetrating, the short thighs and the bow legs' of Marat. If the wig was only perched a little more to one side, I should believe it was Marat himself drawn immediately after the box on the ear which led to his theory of light. He wipes his spectacles for the inspection of the corpus delicti, which he can hardly avoid doing (106).
Marriage a la Mode: Plate 3: Skull
A skeleton is placed so that is perversely seems to kiss a corpse. The unnaturalness echoes that of Squanderfield and his obscenely young lover.
Marriage a la Mode: Plate 3: Skull
Paulson, Hogarth's Graphic Works
In one show case a large periwig and wig-block are visible, probably Misaubin's, and a skeleton making amorous advances to a life-size anatomical figure. Trusler (pp. 76-77) thinks that the bones are warning the flesh of the consequences of dealing with quacks (271).
Marriage a la Mode: Plate 3: Woman
The other woman pictured is of a more obscure function. It has been alternately suggested that she is the young girl's mother, her procuress, and even another mistress for Squanderfield. Her disgust is evident, however, as both her glare and opened knife indicate. Certainly this is to be our reaction as well, as Lichtenberg terms her the "Mother Superior" (104) of the scene—a satirical move, but one that places her, rather correctly, in the moral, as well as physical, center of the work.
Marriage a la Mode: Plate 3: Woman
Shesgreen
The relationships between the nobleman, his child-mistress and the commanding, fierce-eyed woman who opens the clasp knife is unclear. The wild-eyed woman may be his second mistress, prompted to violence by disease acquired from the man or by jealousy of the younger girl; she may be the girl’s mother or procurer about to revenge her pollution or defend some aspect of her business reputation (53).
Marriage a la Mode: Plate 3: Woman
Dobson
the viscount, who is seated, with lifted cane threatens a fierce-looking and masculine woman (who may be the quack’s wife, or a procuress, or both), to whom he sarcastically holds out a box of pills. She, in return, is preparing to reply with a formidable clasp-knife (77).
Marriage a la Mode: Plate 3: Woman
Quennell
a beribboned procuress, who may be the doctor’s wife, exasperated by this attack on her professional reputation, threatens to take violent measures. Her rage is directed at the nobleman’s favourite—“un petite fille (remarks Rouquet) du commerce de lacquelle il ne s’est pas bien trouvé” (174).
Marriage a la Mode: Plate 3: Woman
Lichtenberg
the Mother Superior of that Nunnery guarantees in her novices immature youthfulness, innocence, complete ignorance of gallicism of any kind, and therefore complete security. The last item was very necessary on account of his domestic household, and the immaturity was really made an explicit condition, mainly because of fashion, but partly also because of the increased security. And in this, alas! his Lordship found himself miserably and quite irreparably damaged. He is surely within his rights, for the old hag, instead of remonstrance, immediately draws her pocket knife against the defamer of her institute. But he, for his part, is about to produce an argument against which the mere tongue-wagging of the procuress will be powerless (104).
The pious dame now grasps her pocket-knife, just as her adversary the half-raised stick, as a stress accent for those who might still find anything equivocal in the expression of their faces. On her bosom can be seen the letters F.C., probably etched with gunpowder. If the English police had found it advisable to subdivide into companies the Light Regiment in which that piece of hussar had served forty years ago, then the letters might denote First Company; also Free Corps, or Filia Carissima—in the nunnery, that is; or if the kerchief covered'the name of the founder, owner, or landlord, then they might also stand for the well-known Fieri Curavit or Faciendum curavit N.N. According to Dr Nichols, the letters stand for Fanny Cock, the daughter of an auctioneer named Cock with whom Hogarth had a quarrel. Whether he also had some quarrel with the daughter is not known; probably she herself had one with the public. But whatever the letters may mean, they are characteristic enough in this context, for among all London's pious dames, Mothers Superior and Prioresses, those with burnt or etched mottoes are the most infamous (105-106).