Marriage a la Mode: Plate 5
1745
13 3/4" X 17 9/16” (H X W)
Engraved and etched from Hogarth's painting.
View the full resolution plate here.
View the painting here.
Marriage à la Mode is the most explicit and specific in assigning blame to parents for the deaths that occur in the series. By the time we have reached plate 5, we have already seen the Count and Countess Squanderfield's arranged marriage and their separate assignations borne from their inherent incompatibility. In this plate, we most clearly see what Hogarth has hinted for four previous plates—the blamelessness, even martyrdom, of the young couple's actions.
Despite his own aristocratic indulgences, Squanderfield’s death ironically results from his wife’s indiscretions and his attempt to impose a sort of double standard on her. The countess and her lover, the lawyer Silvertongue (not insignificantly the writer of the marriage contract), have retired for post-masquerade dalliances, only to be surprised by the count. When a duel ensues, the count is killed, and Silvertongue is escaping as the night watch bursts into the room. The placement of the swords indicates the emasculation of the count. Cowley states that Silvertongue is the “nearest to indecency” (130) of any figure in Hogarth. One can ponder the moral, as well as physical implications of this comment. Thus, although Squanderfield engages in immoral behavior himself, his death results from his wife’s dalliances. Cowley notes that former commentators have condemned the bride’s “insubordination” in the series (38-39). This concern gives the infidelities of the middle-class wife more import than those of the husband. Lawrence Stone relates that extramarital affairs among the aristocracy were “expected” if not morally sanctioned (330-331).
Although class is certainly a factor here, Hogarth’s does indict female sexual appetite as well. The wife’s discarded clothing and mask indicate that she has been to a masquerade. Terry Castle’s fascinating study of masquerade culture links the parties with the compromise of female virtue. She writes:
Promiscuous freedom enjoyed by women at masquerades is a constant theme in anti-masquerade writing . . . [Masquerades are a] comprehensible reaction to the horrific repression enjoined upon respectiable women . . . middle-class women were expected to show few signs of sexual desire, even within marriage. (43-44)
Therefore, the masquerade represents a sexual freedom for women. As evidenced in A Harlot’s Progress, Hogarth displays intense discomfort with this freedom.
Furthermore, Paulson notes that the circumstances of the marriage are compared to prostitution:
He has indeed borrowed and injected a part of the traditional Harlot's story from the popular Italian print cycles that he did not use in the Harlot's Progress: the rivalry of lovers for the harlot's favors, which leads to the fatal duel. The pictures on the walls of the countess' boudoir may have been suggested by those in the parlor of the whore, Sarah Millwood, George Barnwell's seducer, described in The History of George Barnwell...the bawd of the Harlot's Progress has now become the parent. (Life vol. 1 483-484)
Paulson also notes that the Harlot ultimately has some choice of her life's direction, where there is no such choice in Marriage (Life vol. 1 484). Considering the Squanderfield marriage legalized prostitution suggests another comparison often made of the countess—to Mary Magdalene. In this schema, Lord Squanderfield becomes the Christ figure; as Paulson notes, his awkward death pose even recalls the prints Crucifixion and Descent from the Cross both of which feature Magdalene attending Christ as the countess here attends her husband's side (Life vol.1 486). This comparison is further emphasized by the cross on the door. The countess, then, becomes the redeemed whore, and her conniving, adulterous husband is rendered impotent and is transformed into a martyr, sacrificed on the altar of parental greed. Another reference to prostitution is seen in the portrait of the prostitute and her squirrel in the visual center of the picture. Religious and political significance is added by the barely visible mural of the Judgment of Solomon in the background of the plate.
Marriage a la Mode: Plate 5
Shesgreen, Sean. Engravings by Hogarth. (1973)
Hearing of the lawyer’s and Countess’s assignation, the young Earl has come to their dreary meeting place, challenged the councilor to a duel and died in the defense of a virtue which he neither honored nor valued in a woman he did not love. From as masquerade, the couple have gone to the Turks Head bagnio (a paper with a Turk’s head and the words “The Bagnio” lies by the woman’s underwear). Undressing hastily, they have gone to bed but have been surprised before the end of the night. In the ensuing fight, the Earl is killed and, as the horrified landlord and watch enter, the lawyer flees in his shirt, abandoning his mistress to the police and her dying spouse. She kneels in tears to beg his forgiveness.
The eerie lighting from the fire, the shadows from the tongs and the sword, the scattered undergarments and the grinning masks (prophetic death masks) give a grotesque atmosphere to the scene. The tapestry on the main wall depicts in a caricatured manner the judgment of Solomon. The portrait of a prostitute with a squirrel in her hand is satirized by the appearance of a soldier’s legs beneath it. Above the door St. Luke, patron of artists, seems to record the scene in amazement (55).
Marriage a la Mode: Plate 5
Uglow, Jenny. Hogarth: A Life and a World. (1997)
In the fifth scene the shimmer turns to darkness and blood. Silvertongue and the Countess have retreated to the Turk's Head bagnio - the flames of the fire shine on a mask, a set of stays and a hooped petticoat, and the masquerade costumes of a nun and friar lie crumpled on the floor. The pursuing Earl has burst in upon them and in a fast, chaotic duel Silvertongue has stabbed him to the heart. Now the lawyer, bare-legged, is clambering from the window, lit by a guttering candle, and the watch thrusts through the door, their horror caught in a lantern's glare. The fiercely lit triangle at the heart of the picture is framed in the angle of two swords, one quivering, piercing the floor, the other covered in blood.
Suddenly, the poses of religious martyrdom, so far confined to the pictures on their walls, are given to the main characters themselves. The dying husband with blood staining his shirt strains back against the table, his body curved like Christ's in a Renaissance deposition, but with no one to support him; his young wife kneels like a Magdalen, clasping her hands in penitence. Part of the shock comes from the sense of blasphemous travesty, yet this too is 'a la mode' --from the Restoration onwards grand ladies of the Court had, as Pope said, enjoyed being painted as Magdalens. Yet beneath the double irony there is that familiar, ironic Hogarthian insistence that real life can be a crucifixion, without a mythic promise of redemption (381-382).
Even in the bagnio there is a tapestry of the Judgment of Solomon, obscured by a portrait of a huge-breasted prostitute dressed as a shepherdess. Above the door where the watch bursts in hangs a portrait of St. Luke with his ox—patron of doctors (too late) and also of the artists, recording and freezing the action—like the appalled Medusa in the opening scene (386).
Marriage a la Mode: Plate 5
Quennell, Peter. Hogarth’s Progress. (1955)
Silvertongue has suggested a visit to the masquerade. He next induces the Countess to spend the night with him at Covent Garden Bagnio, one of those louche establishments, medicinal bath-houses and convenient places of assignation, which had flourished in the metropolis since the seventeenth century. It is old and dingy and disreputable. The bedroom they have engaged is hung with faded tapestries and antiquated pictures. Masquerade costumes, pulled off in haste, are scattered on the uncarpeted floor; beside the Countess’s discarded bodice and shoes, a fire-lit mask lies staring upwards from beneath the rim of her hooped skirt; even the two hoods have a look of complicity, huddled together by a chair-leg; while the dying fire projects the monstrous shadow of a pair of fire-tongs. In this shabby but romantic retreat they are surprised by the Earl himself, at length goaded, presumably much against his will into acting the part if an indignant husband. Silvertongue, challenged to draw, has transfixed his opponent with a panic-stricken thrust. He is now scrambling desperately out through the window, as the Watch breaks open the door, and the watchman’s lantern casts a circular pattern of light upon the bedroom ceiling (175-176).
Marriage a la Mode: Plate 5
Paulson, Ronald. Hogarth’s Graphic Works. (1965)
Pl.5 is related to the masquerade screen in Pl.4. Apparently Silvertongue was arranging for the usual assignation, at a masquerade, and the usual retiring to a bagnio—in this case the Turk’s Head. (A paper with a Turk’s head and an inscription “THE BAGNIO” lies near the pile of costumes.) There were various “Turk’s Head” bagnios—one in Bow Street, Covent Garden (Mrs. Earle’s), another in James Street, Golden Square (Mrs. Neale’s). Apparently the young nobleman followed, though judging by the candle they have been in the bagnio for some time. A duel has resulted in the death of the Earl and the escape out the window of Silvertongue in his nightshirt. His masquerade mask lies on the floor beneath his disappearing figure, grinning. The lawyer had the advantage in the duel: the fire was behind him, a glare in the Lord’s eyes and a spotlight on him. The fire also suggests the winter season, when masquerades and the like were most common in London. The constable and the watch are just entering, led by the bagnio-keeper. The burst lock lies with the key on the floor.
The tapestry across the wall is of the Judgment of Solomon, reflecting the wife’s choice between husband and lover which ends in the same way (husband murdered, Silvertongue hanged). The tapestry has come loose at the corners and is flapping above the window. A portrait of a prostitute in the costume of a shepherdess, a squirrel perched on one hand, a parasol in the other, is completed by the heavy legs of a soldier on the tapestry that protrude from under the frame of the picture. Over the door is St. Luke, the patron saint of artists, his ox at his side, taking inspiration from the scene before him in the room (cf. the gorgon in Pl.1) (274).
Marriage a la Mode: Plate 5
Dobson, Austin. William Hogarth. (1907)
The succeeding pictures pass swiftly to the tragic termination of the story. The fifth scene, as appears from the paper on the floor, is laid in the “Turk’s Head Bagnio” (There was a “Turk’s Head Bagnio,” in Bow Street, Covent Garden—Mrs. Earle’s—which is mentioned in the Daily Advertiser for January 24, 1745. There was no one, with a similar bill, in James Street, Golden Square, kept by one Alice Neale. But there was doubtless many other. Sala, for some reason unexplained, places this scene at the “Key” in Chandos Street). Quitting the Masquerade, separate chairs, swinging away speedily between their thick-calved, trotting Irish bearers, have conveyed the Countess and the Counsellor to the place of assignation. Upon the pair the Earl, following in brief space, has come suddenly, bursting open the door-lock, of which the hasp lies upon the ground. A table has been hastily thrust aside; a stool with its litter of feminine apparel overturned; and the quarrel between the husband and the seducer has been fought out, briefly and fatally, in the dying firelight. The Counsellor, naked, vanishes through the window into the darkness; the Earl, run through the body, sways vaguely, with flimsy eyes and a falling sword, in the centre of the room. His wife, in an agony of terror and remorse, has flung herself on her knees at his feet, while the frightened keeper of the place, a constable, and a watchman enter at the door (79-80).
Marriage a la Mode: Plate 5
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 her the dying count and on the other the fleeing lawyer, his murderer.
The fifth plate will serve as an epitoe of the complexity Hogarth’s method has reached in Marriage à la Mode. It is especially useful because the dying count calls for explanation: it can only be an echo, and a conscious one, of a Descent from the Cross. As if the bring the point home, Hogarth has outlined a cross on the door to cast such a shadow without recourse to poetic license. Hogarth must have taken the count’s pose straight from a painting, probably Flemish, seen in France on his 1743 tour, not even adjusting for the absence of the man supporting Christ’s body under the arms. In painting and blockprints of the Crucifixion and Descent from the Cross, the female figure who, like the countess, “stood near” Christ wringing her hands, or spreading her arms wide, or kissing his feet, was Mary Magdalen; while Mary the Mother was some distance away silently watching or being supported by an apostle.
It is appropriate, of course, that in this context Hogarth produces a Magdalen—a prostitute—mourning Christ, who died for her sins. The traditional story of the Magdalen was actually rather close to that of the countess: she was born of a good family, but after her marriage her husband deserted her and she turned to a life of sin and was possessed by seven devils. But Hogarth probably remembered too, as a student of English portraiture, how Charles II’s mistress, the Duchess of Cleveland, had been painted in the pose of an erotically-stimulating but dubiously repentant Magdalen in a wilderness—etched and transmitted to the general public by Faithorne—as well as in the pose of St. Catherine, St. Barbara, Minerva, and others. Horace Walpole tells us how one of these representations, this time with the Duchess as a Madonna holding one of her royal bastards, hung over the altar until its true subject was discovered. With the countess, the Magdalen pose follows from her pictures of Io and Lot’s daughters on the walls of her boudoir.
The tapestry on the wall of the bagnio shows The Judgment of Solomon (I Kings 4): appropriately, the story of two harlots who claimed the same baby. Solomon’s judgment, of course, was to cut the baby in two and give each “mother” half, at which the true mother proved herself by giving way to the other. Prostitutes would be interested in stories of other prostitutes, especially sanctified by a biblical subject and the treatment of the old masters. But to continue to ponder the tapestry is to move from the court and the judgment to Silvertongue, a counselor by profession, who has in a sense given the countess Solomon’s judgment; but she, unlike the true mother, has allowed the division to take place. By a curious redistribution, the tapestry has become an analogue to the scene, with Solomon equivalent to Silvertongue, the prostitute to the countess, and the sacrificial babe to the count. As the tapestry of Solomon and the “mothers” emphasizes the element of choice that has now, however much the characters may have originally been compelled, moved to the fore, the Deposition poses of the dying count-Christ (with the wound in his side) and the countess-Magdalen emphasize the element of sacrifice. The fragmentation of roles that is implied by these parallels is underlined by the portrait on the wall of a harlot in the pose and costume of a shepherdess, with all the associations of pastoral purity; showing beneath the frame of the picture are the hefty legs of a soldier (Life vol. 1 485-488).
Plate 5 is also typical of Marriage à la Mode in that the rooms have become even more important than in the earlier series. Each one defines and comments on its owner, in fact dominates him, reflecting his entrapment in the rut that leads to disaster. 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. . . . the bagnio with its attempts at gentility in the tapestry and paintings . . . 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 (Life 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 5 St. Luke and the Shepherdess watch. (St. Luke is painting the scene; according to such authorities as Theodorus Lector’s Ecclesiastical History, he was noted for having painted the Virgin, who descended from heaven to sit to him.) (Life vol.1 489).
Marriage a la Mode: Plate 5
Lichtenberg, G. Ch. Lichtenberg’s Commentaries on Hogarth’s Engravings. (1784-1796). Translated from the German by Innes and Gustav Herdan (1966)
How clear and how terrible is everything in this picture!—blood, murder, death-struggle and despair, in the depth of night! How gruesome if we add in imagination the tumult of the Watch as it rushes in, the terrified whine of awakened conscience and infamy unmasked, mingled with the drawn-out, monotonous moans of the dying. Is this marriage à la mode? Merciful Heavens! There he sways, the modish husband, stabbed by the lover of his faithless wife. His knees are giving way beneath him. The only support left him, his arm, grows more and more powerless with each precarious beat of his pierced heart. He may stand for a few moments longer and then—never again. His breaking eye no longer sees the light, that light which illumines for us here the signs of approaching death in his sunken cheek and fallen jaw. In vain does the whine of despairing depravity rise up to him from the lips of that abandoned woman; in vain her supplication for mercy for crime discovered. His ears no longer hear them, and his mouth no longer responds. Between the two of them, accusation and defence have come to an end; the case is closed this side of the grave. The remainder of the hearing and the judge's sentence await her in another world.
There she kneels now, the modish wife, barefoot, in her shift only, before the Beadle and the Watch, craving forgiveness for her crime, and suffering for it. If she were to hold in her hand the light which stands beside her, I would say she is actually repenting and praying for forgiveness, as did formerly the French king's murderers, as long as there were only a select few. How closely and convulsively she clasps her hands! Hands so folded must surely be trembling, and the arms, too. This is no mode, it is pure nature. Her eye stares at the sinking features of that picture of despair, where the years of expected life are now dwindling to seconds. Each dull sound from the moaning man becomes a peal of thunder to her sleeping conscience, and even her numbed sense of honour seems re-awakened through the disgrace which in so manifold form has overtaken her. But enough of that terrible duo-drama.
The reader will, we hope, forgive the interpreter of these pictures his perhaps over-solemn introduction to this Chapter. He was just expressing his own feelings. The main content of the piece, I feel, is solemn enough, and would be still more so if the gentleman who makes his exit through the window there were less visible, or at least better covered than he is. Hogarth's intention was evidently to arouse terror, hatred, and revulsion with the first glance at this scene, and this he has certainly achieved. Of course, he could not entirely refrain from indulging his impish mood even here. But these features (with the possible exception of the large features in the window there) are all so much concealed that they really have to be looked for, and have therefore often been overlooked as well. They disturb the main impression so little that, on the contrary, it is they which, through the force of that main impression, are hardly noticed. But even if these touches were less recondite, what sort of human feelings would they be that would remain unmoved by such a scene, simply because the story was enacted in a ridiculously furnished room, or because at the same time there appear in it a few persons in queer attitudes? I am so little apprehensive of this reaction from my readers that I shall not hesitate to bring all these touches to their notice, and I am convinced that once they have considered them, they will themselves return them where they belong.
The occasion for this event was as follows: Lady Squanderfield and her advocate, Silvertongue, had, as will be recalled, a date for the Masked Ball, and they did in fact meet there. Excited by dancing and probably also by Lot's cup, they remember the miracles of the masked Jupiter, pointed out to them by Giulio Romano and Michelangelo, and, as true pupils of Crébillon, they leave the Olympus of the ballroom, glittering with countless lights, and settle themselves in the dirtiest corner of a so-called Bagnio, a sort of house which is open at all hours of the night to any miracle worker, and especially to those who descend from such a height. Lord Squanderfield, who has got scent of the exploit, sneaks along behind them with sword drawn, bursts open the locked and bolted door (key and cross-bar are lying on the floor) and finds what he was looking for, completely unmasked, without domino and even without clothes, except for one quilt to cover both, which didn't amount to much. He rushes at the advocate. That much experienced, legally cautious fox also carries, at this delicate appointment, a sword, in subsidium iuris, and before the attack can materialize he flings himself out of the quilt and confronts his furious adversary in the open. A fight begins, and one, alas! in which horns are no help whatever. For rage, resolute and nimble though it may be as a murderer, is notoriously the poorest fencer in the world. To be brief, Lord Squanderfield rushes on to the sword of the advocate and falls. After this victory, the lighter part of the garrison emerges from under the quilt to celebrate it as victories are usually celebrated in civil wars. This is the celebration. In that sortie she entangles herself in the sheet, drags it after her and apparently falls. Here again, her character is in the balance. Did she sink on to her knee intentionally, or has she merely forgotten to rise?
In the uproar, the night-watch awakes, rouses the landlord, finally even the police. There they stand, the whole bunch, in the doorway, partly visible, partly indicated, and arranged in the most natural order in the world, namely according to the interest of the parties. First of all, the landlord, with the five exclamation marks on his left hand and a face which, if times do not soon improve, might well be worth storing among the printing blocks. The honour of his house is at stake. Behind him stands the constable, the representative of the police, with his staff. A lovely figure, and one that can be seen by the hundred in England; a genuine tough composition of beef and pudding, tawny red, shining, stocky and stout with enough behind for two; slightly in advance of him a digestive apparatus of the most comfortable curvature, the true symbol of national debt and taxation pressure. His right hand rests admonishingly on the landlord's shoulder; he seems to recommend cool blood and caution. It is no use having too much heart in cases like this, especially when naked swords are flashing about; if it were wine-glasses, or fragments of them, one might perhaps do something more. The night-watchman, still more cautious than the police, heads the detachment, from behind; he dare not do anything nor does he want to; he does not even issue orders, he merely holds the light. We see nothing of him but the right hand holding the lantern, whose ventilation holes are projected on to the ceiling of the room according to the rules of perspective and there become a sort of canopy over a throne, which we shall mention in its proper place. Mr Silvertongue, though sure of his victory, yet takes to flight on account of that small detachment. As an advocate he would know better than anyone that the welfare belly there in the door belonged to the lesser troops of an invincible corps, namely the English Criminal Law Administration, and that this corps is rarely far away when such advance troops appear on the scene. But he seems especially apprehensive about a certain person employed only occasionally in that service, quite an unimportant person, by the way, whose acquaintance, however, cannot always be avoided, and who then becomes something of a nuisance—the hangman. That accounts for the great haste and the retreat by an outlet to the street from the second storey, with a rather abbreviated flight of steps which begins on the window-ledge and ends on the street itself. Moreover, it is a flight in winter, for the main illumination in this picture comes from the fireplace, and it is a windy night since the flame of the light indicates a sneezing draught between window and door. It is hard at such a time to be despatched like that, especially in one's summer coat. No victor surely has ever taken flight more scantily clothed. We can almost see Mr Silvertongue in his entirety up to his silver mouth, which is concealed here by his shoulder. What a ridiculous figure is cut by guilt when forced to expose itself in the so-called robe of innocence, from an angle which even innocence would regard as double nakedness. His position is awkward: he is about to leap out of the window from the second floor (for we do not see any window-sill), and straight down, silver mouth first, without climbing. It will be a dangerous jump. But then, what will a man not do to avoid acquaintance with the lower officials of the administration of Criminal Justice? It almost seems as if he wanted to throw something down in advance, perhaps a pillow, or something in the nature of an overcoat, or some underwear especially. For if Hogarth had intended to expose him on the street to the passers-by, or since they would be asleep, to some night-watchman, without pants, then he would probably have shown us somewhere the pants without the man. But of these there is no trace, although parts of the battlefield are strewn with armaments which might properly be termed their counterparts, such as whale-bone harness of all sorts for hand-to-hand and distant fighting, corsets and crinolines, hoods, masks, embroidered dancing slippers, swords and scabbards, and so on. In its sudden sortie from the bastion the young garrison came by mistake, it seems, upon the field medicine chest, knocked it over, and broke open some little boxes, releasing a hail of grape-shot (which pharmacy has taught us to cast from a well-known cold liquid metal), or whatever diabolic concoction that may be which is rolling about there under the address of that fine establishment and its landlord, as if under the protection of a patent.
Next to the corset lies something else for unlacing, to wit, a bundle of faggots; not unlike the former in appearance and very similar in stiffness. We may be sure that our artist has not thrown these two fascines so closely together for nothing; nor, in all probability, the two sticks which in the form of a sword point murderously at the nearer bundle. That almost looks like suicide. Oh, there are certainly prophetic voices in this room! And the sword there in the lower fascine presages very little comfort for the upper one.
The faggots are lying in front of the fireplace, as we infer from the shadow of the tongs which stretches along the floor beyond the murderer's sword. It is thrown by the same light which illuminates the main group. But the fact that they bum half-rotten faggots here instead of coal, throws, by the rules of another perspective, yet another light upon this room. In a great city at least, and especially in public establishments, this, to the best of my knowledge, would always be evidence of disreputable stinginess, and in this case it shows what a cosy little comer the good people have chosen. Whether fire-tongs standing near a considerable fire could throw so sharp a shadow need not be more closely investigated here. The shadow is merely a half-artificial device to indicate the fire in the fireplace: it does not seem to be an entirely natural one. It is not the first time that Hogarth has used shadows in his pictures and, just as unnaturally, merely to indicate the presence of objects which he could not actually bring before our eyes. Also, it is difficult to see how these tongs would have to be placed in front of such a fire in order to throw such a shadow, since they seem to be neither leaning nor hanging. They would, apparently, have to be stuck in some crevice of the fireplace, or to be a pair of falling tongs, just like the falling rapier over there which also throws a somewhat unnatural shadow.
At this point, a few words about the falling sword. As a telling detail in the delineation of the story itself it hardly calls for explanation. A moment ago the dying man still held it in his hand, that is what the artist wants to say, and the very next moment, that is, the one which has here been seized and fixed by art, it is already too heavy for him; it falls, or rather it stands there—like its master. That is all. Now a little about this presentation, partly as a work of art, partly about the present reproduction of the picture; not through literary importunity, but because of certain criticisms which have been raised by friends of mine, and which might easily be made by some of my readers. I start with the last point. In the original engraving, which must be clearly distinguished from the original picture, the dying man supports himself with his left arm, and the sword thus seems to have fallen from his right hand. What is more natural than that, one would say, for surely he held the sword in his right? But this apparently justified objection can immediately be countered by the fact that in the original engraving his Lordship wears that part of the sword belt on which the sword had been hanging, on his right, whereas in our reproduction it hangs properly on the left. His Lordship, while he was still standing unsupported, apparently flung the sword away and sank against the table which stood on his right. In our reproduction we also see the right hand of the scribe, or whoever he is up there over the doorway, restored to its eternal and unalienable right which in the original engraving it had apparently ceded to the left. Thus here, too, Mr Riepenhausen's reproduction is in agreement with the original painting. Now to the first point. It has pleased me not a little that almost everyone to whom I have shown these engravings has found the position of the sword unnatural. And why did it please me? Answer: because I am confident that I could easily elicit from anybody who felt like that after some slight subjection to Socrates' torture, some theorems of higher mathematics. He feels, without expressly knowing it, that the painter of the living and moving— just because his painted representation is still and without life—ought to present only an infinitely small moment of time, and he also feels that the infinitely small moments of time must preserve their relations with one another, for otherwise the falling of a sword inclined towards the horizon, with its heavy sword hilt on top, could not be found unnatural if compared with the falling of its master. Now the sinking master could still hold, or have held, himself up; not so the sword. There lies the difference. On the coat-of-arms of a knight on the point of falling we might still read the device, but we could hardly do so with the name of the sword-smith or the factory of a sword falling in that way. The position of his Lordship approaches that of rest, that of the falling sword more the motion of the cannon ball which in the first picture flew out of the hero's trouser pocket.
On the wall facing us is presented upon wallpaper (whether haute-lisse or basse-lisse cannot quite be discerned) the Judgment of Solomon. Solomon on the throne, though except perhaps for the crown, not in his usual splendour, but rather in the holiday attire of a Dutch sailor. Anyone not aware that this man was once at the helm of a powerful State, which he guided with great wisdom, would be inclined to believe that here, at least, he was guiding some coal barge or herring smack under the powerful influence of greed, rum and schnapps which clearly glow out of his eye and nose. Nor are the inanimate ornaments of the throne much more attractive than the animate ones. Not so much a terrible as a terribly-drawn lion's head, and a throne canopy with ten magnificent suns embroidered by the sombre rays of a stable lamp, that is all! Before him stands the mother of the child that is about to be divided according to the principles of equality. Were she not grasping it so anxiously to prevent that division of the apple other eye, one would almost be inclined, judging from her face, to regard her as the father. For head and headgear are entirely masculine, and nautical to boot, and for the sake of touches like these one could overlook a few small items such as, for instance, that she wears a skirt and is apparently again in an unmistakably interesting condition. That the beadle is about to chop up the child with his left hand is again no argument against Mr Riepenhausen's omission to reverse the original painting. Solomon here holds the sceptre in his right hand, as we feel sure he always held it. His wisdom required this of him, and this way of re- presenting him must therefore be the rule for every artist who undertakes to portray him in all his glory. What does a single left-handed rogue of an inferior official matter? Oh, if we were immediately to reverse the whole picture because some inferior official performs something with his left hand that a wise governor has ordained with his right—there would be no end to reversals in this world.
Apart from this Old Testament story, Hogarth has hung two other pictures from the Newest Testament, which offer a peculiar contrast, if not with the wall paper, at least with one another. The one, we are assured, is the portrait of a certain Moll Flanders, a notorious Drury Lane trollop (Mr Ireland calls her, in his somewhat peculiar language, 'notified'). At the first glance, her appearance has something repulsive in it, which how- ever more or less disappears once one has discovered the happy union of cowherd and affected fine lady, and it vanishes completely as soon as the intention of the whimsical artist is revealed, for he has really put her here in the pillory. She has a squirrel perched on her hand, a little dandy too, and behind is a parrot in its ring, also a chatterbox, evidently a cut at other affected damsels, not those of the cowshed but of the bel-étage of the house itself. But joking apart, such companions really have something to contribute. These little animals lend to lady owners of a certain age something of their own daintiness and, what is hardly less valuable, divert somewhat the lover's attention where too much of it might become embarrassing. In a word, as soon as two lovers, desiring to entertain one another, begin to forget their mother-tongue, which sometimes happens in the third quarter of life, or if they find themselves at a loss for something to talk about, or hesitate and wait for the prompter in their head, then a parrot and a squirrel may work wonders. The object which hangs down there from her right hand I have always regarded as the head of a riding crop. Mr Ireland, however, states dogmatically it is a butcher's steel. Possibly it is, but what in all the world could that woman have to steel or to sharpen? Now for the pillory. With genuine roguishness and with truly appropriate malice, our artist has hung the picture of this piece so that the legs of one of the fellows in Solomon's Swiss Guard on the wallpaper appear to be hers, and it looks as if her skirt had been cut off above the knee without her even having noticed it. This last circumstance makes the matter really interesting. That lucky cut, to be sure, transforms the creature into a Highlander, without the Highlander's famous second sight having given her the slightest inkling of it, although it happened in such close proximity that there was not even any need for a special gift of vision to discover it.
The second picture hanging on the wallpaper is—the mirror. And why? Oh! it was certainly not without intention that Hogarth hung the mirror there, so that its frame becomes at the same time a frame for the head of the dying man. 'If,' he seems to adjure foolish vanity, 'If you do not feel cured of your madness by a glance in that first mirror with the Highlander and the squirrel, very well, then look into the second! How's that? Do you recognize the make-up which covers those cheeks? What do you say? Oh! whoever in the world you may be, sooner or later the time will surely come when your mirror will look back at you like this one, little though you may then be capable of realizing that the features which it reflects with its wonted truthfulness are your own.'
Over the door hangs a third picture, which deserves attention. This time the subject is taken from the New Testament and, as can be seen from the halo of the man with the bull, evidently represents the apostle Luke, known to be the patron of artists, as Mr Ireland has correctly observed. He thus portrays here the remarkable story, and, as one sees, with the utmost zeal and close attention. Even the horned animal appears to be curious about what is going on down there. Perhaps it has the scent of the one who has just been butchered, at whose papillotes yesterday morning brother Acteon so mysteriously pointed. But I believe this is by no means all there is to it, and venture therefore an additional explanation, the more readily since it has obtained the full approval of a discerning Englishman and an expert on Hogarth's inexhaustible fund of allegory. London has, in common with all large towns, apart from a number of private lunatic asylums, two great public institutions for that purpose, which are pretty well known everywhere, Bedlam and St Luke's. The latter is particularly for incurables. That name and the hospital which bears it are so well known and their association so familiar to everyone that out of a hundred who hear the name pronounced, ninety-nine will think of the lunatic asylum rather than the apostle. Now our Saint Luke here, although the patron of painters, but just as surely also the patron of the hospital, evidently holds a pen, not a pencil, in his hand, as we can see very clearly in the original engraving. Thus he is writing. Might he not therefore be entering in his register the names of those three candidates as very deserving inmates for his institution? They have lived madly enough at least, all three of them, and incurable they are too in another sense. It is possible to draw with a pen, to be sure, but this does not invalidate the last suggestion; on the contrary, the satire gains, through just that re- inforcement, its two-edgedness.
A slight emendation to end with. It is possible that Lord Squanderfield, after learning that his bed-fellow had been seen together with her lover in a house of ill-fame, proceeded more cautiously and more in accordance with English law than I have indicated above. He may have obtained a warrant, and thus arrived, together with the constable, at the house which without that measure he could not have ventured to enter by force. They burst the door open together, under the protection of the police. His Lordship drew his sword, the civil war between Squanderfield & Co. broke out and was concluded; all in five minutes. Had it not even come to a fight, such witnesses would always have been welcome for the sake of the divorce. If this was his secondary purpose, then he achieved it too. The marriage is divorced. There, under the shadow of the fire-tongs, lies what cut the marriage bond (129-138).
Marriage a la Mode: Plate 5: Arrest
The watch enters the door, indicating that Silvertongue’s hasty departure will not be successful. The cross on the door, and that on the ceiling and in the bundle of twigs help to illuminate Hogarth’s crucifixion references in the pose of the dead count.
Marriage a la Mode: Plate 5: Arrest
Lichtenberg
In the uproar, the night-watch awakes, rouses the landlord, finally even the police. There they stand, the whole bunch, in the doorway, partly visible, partly indicated, and arranged in the most natural order in the world, namely according to the interest of the parties. First of all, the landlord, with the five exclamation marks on his left hand and a face which, if times do not soon improve, might well be worth storing among the printing blocks. The honour of his house is at stake. Behind him stands the constable, the representative of the police, with his staff. A lovely figure, and one that can be seen by the hundred in England; a genuine tough composition of beef and pudding, tawny red, shining, stocky and stout with enough behind for two; slightly in advance of him a digestive apparatus of the most comfortable curvature, the true symbol of national debt and taxation pressure. His right hand rests admonishingly on the landlord's shoulder; he seems to recommend cool blood and caution. It is no use having too much heart in cases like this, especially when naked swords are flashing about; if it were wine-glasses, or fragments of them, one might perhaps do something more. The night-watchman, still more cautious than the police, heads the detachment, from behind; he dare not do anything nor does he want to; he does not even issue orders, he merely holds the light. We see nothing of him but the right hand holding the lantern, whose ventilation holes are projected on to the ceiling of the room according to the rules of perspective and there become a sort of canopy over a throne, which we shall mention in its proper place. Mr Silvertongue, though sure of his victory, yet takes to flight on account of that small detachment. As an advocate he would know better than anyone that the welfare belly there in the door belonged to the lesser troops of an invincible corps, namely the English Criminal Law Administration, and that this corps is rarely far away when such advance troops appear on the scene. But he seems especially apprehensive about a certain person employed only occasionally in that service, quite an unimportant person, by the way, whose acquaintance, however, cannot always be avoided, and who then becomes something of a nuisance—the hangman (131-132).
Marriage a la Mode: Plate 5: Cross
Another cross appears here in the bundle of twigs. Crosses also appear on the door and on the ceiling as a pattern cast by the lantern of the entering watch. These underscore the crucifixion references in the pose of the dying count.
Marriage a la Mode: Plate 5: Cross
Lichtenberg
Next to the corset lies something else for unlacing, to wit, a bundle of faggots; not unlike the former in appearance and very similar in stiffness. We may be sure that our artist has not thrown these two fascines so closely together for nothing; nor, in all probability, the two sticks which in the form of a sword point murderously at the nearer bundle. That almost looks like suicide (133).
Marriage a la Mode: Plate 5: Discarded
The wife’s discarded clothing and mask indicate that she has been to a masquerade. Terry Castle’s fascinating study of masquerade culture links the parties with the compromise of female virtue. She writes:
Promiscuous freedom enjoyed by women at masquerades is a constant theme in anti-masquerade writing . . . [Masquerades are a] comprehensible reaction to the horrific repression enjoined upon respectiable women . . . middle-class women were expected to show few signs of sexual desire, even within marriage (43-44).
Marriage a la Mode: Plate 5: Discarded
Quennell
Masquerade costumes, pulled off in haste, are scattered on the uncarpeted floor; beside the Countess’s discarded bodice and shoes, a fire-lit mask lies staring upwards from beneath the rim of her hooped skirt; even the two hoods have a look of complicity, huddled together by a chair-leg (176).
Marriage a la Mode: Plate 5: Silvertongue
The countess and her lover, the lawyer Silvertongue (not insignificantly the writer of the marriage contract), have retired for post-masquerade dalliances, only to be surprised by the count. When a duel ensues, the count is killed, and Silvertongue is escaping as the night watch bursts into the room.
Cowley states that Silvertongue is the “nearest to indecency” (130) of any figure in Hogarth.
Marriage a la Mode: Plate 5: Silvertongue
Uglow
Now the lawyer, bare-legged, is clambering from the window, lit by a guttering candle (381).
Marriage a la Mode: Plate 5: Silvertongue
Quennell
Silvertongue, challenged to draw, has transfixed his opponent with a panic-stricken thrust. He is now scrambling desperately out through the window (176).
Marriage a la Mode: Plate 5: Silvertongue
Dobson
The Counsellor, naked, vanishes through the window into the darkness (81).
Marriage a la Mode: Plate 5: Silvertongue
Lichtenberg
We can almost see Mr Silvertongue in his entirety up to his silver mouth, which is concealed here by his shoulder. What a ridiculous figure is cut by guilt when forced to expose itself in the so-called robe of innocence, from an angle which even innocence would regard as double nakedness. His position is awkward: he is about to leap out of the window from the second floor (for we do not see any window-sill), and straight down, silver mouth first, without climbing. It will be a dangerous jump. But then, what will a man not do to avoid acquaintance with the lower officials of the administration of Criminal Justice? It almost seems as if he wanted to throw something down in advance, perhaps a pillow, or something in the nature of an overcoat, or some underwear especially. For if Hogarth had intended to expose him on the street to the passers-by, or since they would be asleep, to some night-watchman, without pants, then he would probably have shown us somewhere the pants without the man. But of these there is no trace, although parts of the battlefield are strewn with armaments which might properly be termed their counterparts, such as whale-bone harness of all sorts for hand-to-hand and distant fighting, corsets and crinolines, hoods, masks, embroidered dancing slippers, swords and scabbards, and so on. In its sudden sortie from the bastion the young garrison came by mistake, it seems, upon the field medicine chest, knocked it over, and broke open some little boxes, releasing a hail of grape-shot (which pharmacy has taught us to cast from a well-known cold liquid metal), or whatever diabolic concoction that may be which is rolling about there under the address of that fine establishment and its landlord, as if under the protection of a patent (132-133).
Marriage a la Mode: Plate 5: Bride
The countess and her lover, the lawyer Silvertongue (not insignificantly the writer of the marriage contract), have retired for post-masquerade dalliances. Her husband is dead, slain by her lover, and she surprisingly seems to lament his passing. Commentators have noted her Magdalen-like pose as she attends the body of Squanderfield who is in the pose of Christ.
Marriage a la Mode: Plate 5: Bride
Uglow
His young wife kneels like a Magdalen, clasping her hands in penitence. Part of the shock comes from the sense of blasphemous travesty, yet this too is 'a la mode' --from the Restoration onwards grand ladies of the Court had, as Pope said, enjoyed being painted as Magdalens. Yet beneath the double irony there is that familiar, ironic Hogarthian insistence that real life can be a crucifixion, without a mythic promise of redemption (382).
Marriage a la Mode: Plate 5: Bride
Dobson
His wife, in an agony of terror and remorse, has flung herself on her knees at his feet (81).
Marriage a la Mode: Plate 5: Bride
Paulson, His Life, Art and Times
In painting and blockprints of the Crucifixion and Descent from the Cross, the female figure who, like the countess, “stood near” Christ wringing her hands, or spreading her arms wide, or kissing his feet, was Mary Magdalen; while Mary the Mother was some distance away silently watching or being supported by an apostle (Life vol. 1 486).
Marriage a la Mode: Plate 5: Bride
Lichtenberg
There she kneels now, the modish wife, barefoot, in her shift only, before the Beadle and the Watch, craving forgiveness for her crime, and suffering for it. If she were to hold in her hand the light which stands beside her, I would say she is actually repenting and praying for forgiveness, as did formerly the French king's murderers, as long as there were only a select few. How closely and convulsively she clasps her hands! Hands so folded must surely be trembling, and the arms, too. This is no mode, it is pure nature. Her eye stares at the sinking features of that picture of despair, where the years of expected life are now dwindling to seconds. Each dull sound from the moaning man becomes a peal of thunder to her sleeping conscience, and even her numbed sense of honour seems re-awakened through the disgrace which in so manifold form has overtaken her (129-130).
Marriage a la Mode: Plate 5: Groom
The countess and her lover, the lawyer Silvertongue (not insignificantly the writer of the marriage contract), have retired for post-masquerade dalliances, only to be surprised by the count. When a duel ensues, the count is killed, and Silvertongue is escaping as the night watch bursts into the room. The placement of the swords indicates the emasculation of the count.
Thus, although Squanderfield engages in immoral behavior himself, his death results from his wife’s dalliances.
Commentators have noted the artificiality of the pose and also that it recalls that of Christ being taken from the cross. Thus, Squanderfield, as a martyr, is somewhat redeemed from his earlier sins. The resurrection of his broken sword from the second plate is further support for this reading.
Marriage a la Mode: Plate 5: Groom
Shesgreen
Hearing of the lawyer’s and Countess’s assignation, the young Earl has come to their dreary meeting place, challenged the councilor to a duel and died in the defense of a virtue which he neither honored nor valued in a woman he did not love (55).
Marriage a la Mode: Plate 5: Groom
Uglow
The pursuing Earl has burst in upon them and in a fast, chaotic duel Silvertongue has stabbed him to the heart (381).
The dying husband with blood staining his shirt strains back against the table, his body curved like Christ's in a Renaissance deposition, but with no one to support him (382).
Marriage a la Mode: Plate 5: Groom
Paulson, His Life, Art and Times
It is especially useful because the dying count calls for explanation: it can only be an echo, and a conscious one, of a Descent from the Cross. As if the bring the point home, Hogarth has outlined a cross on the door to cast such a shadow without recourse to poetic license. Hogarth must have taken the count’s pose straight from a painting, probably Flemish, seen in France on his 1743 tour, not even adjusting for the absence of the man supporting Christ’s body under the arms (Life vol. 1 486).
Marriage a la Mode: Plate 5: Groom
Lichtenberg
There he sways, the modish husband, stabbed by the lover of his faithless wife. His knees are giving way beneath him. The only support left him, his arm, grows more and more powerless with each precarious beat of his pierced heart. He may stand for a few moments longer and then—never again. His breaking eye no longer sees the light, that light which illumines for us here the signs of approaching death in his sunken cheek and fallen jaw. In vain does the whine of despairing depravity rise up to him from the lips of that abandoned woman; in vain her supplication for mercy for crime discovered. His ears no longer hear them, and his mouth no longer responds. Between the two of them, accusation and defence have come to an end; the case is closed this side of the grave. The remainder of the hearing and the judge's sentence await her in another world (129).
At this point, a few words about the falling sword. As a telling detail in the delineation of the story itself it hardly calls for explanation. A moment ago the dying man still held it in his hand, that is what the artist wants to say, and the very next moment, that is, the one which has here been seized and fixed by art, it is already too heavy for him; it falls, or rather it stands there—like its master. That is all. Now a little about this presentation, partly as a work of art, partly about the present reproduction of the picture; not through literary importunity, but because of certain criticisms which have been raised by friends of mine, and which might easily be made by some of my readers. I start with the last point. In the original engraving, which must be clearly distinguished from the original picture, the dying man supports himself with his left arm, and the sword thus seems to have fallen from his right hand. What is more natural than that, one would say, for surely he held the sword in his right? But this apparently justified objection can immediately be countered by the fact that in the original engraving his Lordship wears that part of the sword belt on which the sword had been hanging, on his right, whereas in our reproduction it hangs properly on the left. His Lordship, while he was still standing unsupported, apparently flung the sword away and sank against the table which stood on his right. In our reproduction we also see the right hand of the scribe, or whoever he is up there over the doorway, restored to its eternal and unalienable right which in the original engraving it had apparently ceded to the left. Thus here, too, Mr Riepenhausen's reproduction is in agreement with the original painting. Now to the first point. It has pleased me not a little that almost everyone to whom I have shown these engravings has found the position of the sword unnatural. And why did it please me? Answer: because I am confident that I could easily elicit from anybody who felt like that after some slight subjection to Socrates' torture, some theorems of higher mathematics. He feels, without expressly knowing it, that the painter of the living and moving— just because his painted representation is still and without life—ought to present only an infinitely small moment of time, and he also feels that the infinitely small moments of time must preserve their relations with one another, for otherwise the falling of a sword inclined towards the horizon, with its heavy sword hilt on top, could not be found unnatural if compared with the falling of its master. Now the sinking master could still hold, or have held, himself up; not so the sword. There lies the difference. On the coat-of-arms of a knight on the point of falling we might still read the device, but we could hardly do so with the name of the sword-smith or the factory of a sword falling in that way. The position of his Lordship approaches that of rest, that of the falling sword more the motion of the cannon ball which in the first picture flew out of the hero's trouser pocket (134-135).
Marriage a la Mode: Plate 5: Moll
Another reference to this marriage as a form of prostitution is seen in the portrait of the prostitute and her squirrel in the visual center of the picture.
Marriage a la Mode: Plate 5: Moll
Paulson, Hogarth's Graphic Works
A portrait of a prostitute in the costume of a shepherdess, a squirrel perched on one hand, a parasol in the other, is completed by the heavy legs of a soldier on the tapestry that protrude from under the frame of the picture (274).
Marriage a la Mode: Plate 5: Moll
Lichtenberg
the portrait of a certain Moll Flanders, a notorious Drury Lane trollop (Mr Ireland calls her, in his somewhat peculiar language, 'notified'). At the first glance, her appearance has something repulsive in it, which how- ever more or less disappears once one has discovered the happy union of cowherd and affected fine lady, and it vanishes completely as soon as the intention of the whimsical artist is revealed, for he has really put her here in the pillory. She has a squirrel perched on her hand, a little dandy too, and behind is a parrot in its ring, also a chatterbox, evidently a cut at other affected damsels, not those of the cowshed but of the bel-étage of the house itself. But joking apart, such companions really have something to contribute. These little animals lend to lady owners of a certain age something of their own daintiness and, what is hardly less valuable, divert somewhat the lover's attention where too much of it might become embarrassing. In a word, as soon as two lovers, desiring to entertain one another, begin to forget their mother-tongue, which sometimes happens in the third quarter of life, or if they find themselves at a loss for something to talk about, or hesitate and wait for the prompter in their head, then a parrot and a squirrel may work wonders. The object which hangs down there from her right hand I have always regarded as the head of a riding crop. Mr Ireland, however, states dogmatically it is a butcher's steel. Possibly it is, but what in all the world could that woman have to steel or to sharpen? Now for the pillory. With genuine roguishness and with truly appropriate malice, our artist has hung the picture of this piece so that the legs of one of the fellows in Solomon's Swiss Guard on the wallpaper appear to be hers, and it looks as if her skirt had been cut off above the knee without her even having noticed it. This last circumstance makes the matter really interesting. That lucky cut, to be sure, transforms the creature into a Highlander, without the Highlander's famous second sight having given her the slightest inkling of it, although it happened in such close proximity that there was not even any need for a special gift of vision to discover it (136-137).
Marriage a la Mode: Plate 5: Mural
Marriage a la Mode: Plate 5: St. Luke
The portrait of St. Luke observes the tragic scene.
Marriage a la Mode: Plate 5: St. Luke
Shesgreen
Above the door St. Luke, patron of artists, seems to record the scene in amazement (55).
Marriage a la Mode: Plate 5: St. Luke
Uglow
Above the door where the watch bursts in hangs a portrait of St. Luke with his ox—patron of doctors (too late) and also of the artists, recording and freezing the action (386).
Marriage a la Mode: Plate 5: St. Luke
Paulson, Hogarth's Graphic Works
Over the door is St. Luke, the patron saint of artists, his ox at his side, taking inspiration from the scene before him in the room (274).
Marriage a la Mode: Plate 5: St. Luke
Lichtenberg
Over the door hangs a third picture, which deserves attention. This time the subject is taken from the New Testament and, as can be seen from the halo of the man with the bull, evidently represents the apostle Luke, known to be the patron of artists, as Mr Ireland has correctly observed. He thus portrays here the remarkable story, and, as one sees, with the utmost zeal and close attention. Even the horned animal appears to be curious about what is going on down there. Perhaps it has the scent of the one who has just been butchered, at whose papillotes yesterday morning brother Acteon so mysteriously pointed. But I believe this is by no means all there is to it, and venture therefore an additional explanation, the more readily since it has obtained the full approval of a discerning Englishman and an expert on Hogarth's inexhaustible fund of allegory. London has, in common with all large towns, apart from a number of private lunatic asylums, two great public institutions for that purpose, which are pretty well known everywhere, Bedlam and St Luke's. The latter is particularly for incurables. That name and the hospital which bears it are so well known and their association so familiar to everyone that out of a hundred who hear the name pronounced, ninety-nine will think of the lunatic asylum rather than the apostle. Now our Saint Luke here, although the patron of painters, but just as surely also the patron of the hospital, evidently holds a pen, not a pencil, in his hand, as we can see very clearly in the original engraving. Thus he is writing. Might he not therefore be entering in his register the names of those three candidates as very deserving inmates for his institution? They have lived madly enough at least, all three of them, and incurable they are too in another sense. It is possible to draw with a pen, to be sure, but this does not invalidate the last suggestion; on the contrary, the satire gains, through just that re- inforcement, its two-edgedness (137-138).