A Rake's Progress: Plate 1

1735

12 3/8” X 15 3/16” (H X W)

Etched and Engraved by Hogarth after his painting.

View the full resolution plate here.

The Rake's Progress, companion piece to the Harlot's story, is more politically oriented and more ambiguously concluded. Our introduction to Tom Rakewell is after the death of his miserly father. The dilapidated house denotes the austerity and conservatism of the elder Rakewell, who personifies the verbal meaning of "rake." Sean Shesgreen notes that Rakewell is here explained "in terms of a rejection of his father . .. spurning the middle class values (duty, marriage, thrift) that his father has lived by" (28).

Despite the attractiveness of these values, the elder Rakewell, has taken his miserliness to an unhealthy extreme, perhaps symbolizing the humorless severity of the Puritans. Shesgreen also notes that the elder Rakewell has desecrated the Bible, using it to make a shoe-an act of the utmost literalness as he uses the book to enrich both his soul and his sole (28).

To rebel, young Rakewell adopts the licentiousness of the Restoration and slides easily into aristocratic decadence. Already, his crimes are explicitly sexual, as his lover (Sarah Young) appears with her mother, weeping and pregnant, in possession of his letters which assuredly promise honorable intentions. Shesgreen sees Sarah as another representation of middle class values, this time of "good nature, patience and loyalty" (28). Tom's sexual misconduct is another rejection of these values (28). Eighteenth century commentator Georg Lichtenberg notes the three vices pictured with the motto "Beware" and comments on the double meaning of vice-as both an object which holds something down and as questionable behavior, both of which are excesses in their own right (200).

A Rake's Progress: Plate 1

Shesgreen, Sean. Engravings by Hogarth. (1973)

In Plate I, Hogarth explains Tom Rakewell in terms of a rejection of his father and contrasts the two very opposite characters. The plate depicts the rake spurning the middle-class values (duty, marriage, thrift) that his father has lived by. The miser has died suddenly, and the cracked, bare walls of his office—it has no home comforts—are being covered with black cloth for the wake. Funeral escutcheons, as the motto and arms of old Rakewell, already hang on the wall, showing vises (= vices) with the motto “Beware” (particularly appropriate advice to the unheeding son).

To assuage his curiosity about the extent of his newly acquired wealth, Tom has opened the closets, strongboxes and documents of the elder Rakewell (a name suited equally to father and son). The father’s diary records with equal value his only son’s homecoming and cheating someone with a fake coin (“Memordums 1721 May 3 my Son Tom came from Oxford 4th/ Dine at ye French Ordinary 5th put of my Bad Shilling”). Scattered carelessly around Tom’s feet lies the miser’s paper wealth: “India Bonds,” “Mortgages,” “Fines & Recoverys,” “Lease & Release,” and “This Indenture.” A strongbox with a triple lock holds silver plate and money; it contains three sacks labeled “1000,” “2000,” “3000.” A famished, snarling cat (the place is without food and therefore mice) guards the chest.

The last prophetic act of the miser has been to cut a sole for his show from a Bible cover; he has died before sewing the leather completely. Beside the mutilated Bible, a chest and a closet contain worthless trivia accumulated compulsively over the years ; the include a broken lantern, a shovel, a pair of shoes, an odd boot, two swords, a broken jug, a bowl and wigs. Having long ceased to entertain, the miser has stored away a spit and jack in an inaccessible wall compartment. The old man’s stick and crutch rest against the mantle, and his glasses (without lenses) hang near them.

The room is without decoration except for a picture of the miser himself who sits with a pair of scales in his hand (a comic reference to the scales of justice) counting money. Even in his portrait he wears his hat (now on the mantle beside the candlestick and candlesaver) and overcoat to avoid burning a fire. Money fearfully secreted in the ceiling spills down on his portrait. Three of the miser’s former employees attend the rake. An old servant prepares to light a blazing fire; a lawyer (identified by his baize bag used to carry documents) interrupts his inventory-taking to claim his fee surreptitiously; and an ill-dressed, economical tailor measures Tom for a mourning suit.

Already Tom’s past is troubling him. Sarah Young, a sentimental representative of middle-class good nature, patience and loyalty—everything that Tom is not—has been seduced at the university, in part by promises of marriage; in her drooping hand she holds a ring; and her mother carries love letters from Tom (“To Mrs. Sarah Young” and “Dearest Life . . . & marry you”). Pregnant, she comes to Tom with her mother who confronts Tom with animal fierceness (she resembles in expression the cat by the strongbox). Tom, a childish-faced person, callously tries to buy the mother off with his newly acquired wealth as he postures to permit the tailor to continue his work without interruption. He shows no sign of grief at his father’s death.

Hogarth’s revisions of his plates are regularly pessimistic. In earlier states of this print, the desecrated Bible is absent, Sarah looks younger and less drawn, and Tom appears more youthful, naïve and expressive. Other minor differences include a shift in the location of the dairy and the inclusion of a bill for the mourning cloth (28).

A Rake's Progress: Plate 1

Paulson, Ronald. Hogarth’s Graphic Works. (1965)

CAPTION:

Hogarth's second "Progress" is of the wealthy bourgeois who tries to ape the aristocratic rake, beginning with the fashionable seduction and abandonment of a girl--all this being at the furthest extreme from the Rake's father, who amassed his money by hoarding. In P1. 1 Hogarth contrasts the father and the son as Pope contrasts Old and Young Cotta in his Epistle to Bathurst (11. 177-218; publ. 1733; see also Tatler No. 249). Even the name "Rakewell" underlines Hogarth's point—as Stephens points out (BM Sat.), it is a name appropriate to both father and son. The dead father appears in the portrait over the fireplace (identified by the same fur cap that lies on the mantel), "raking in" gold. Hoadly's verses under the print, perhaps with Pope's lines in mind, emphasize the miserliness of the father and suggest that the spend-thrift son follows as a consequence and punishment.

The room is being hung in black to show mourning. (The roll of black cloth on the chair at the right has a draper's bill attached: "London Bought of Wm othall Woolen Draper in Covent Garden." Tothall was Hogarth's friend, one of those who made up the "Peregrination." See Mitchell, Hogarth's Peregrination, pp. xvii-xviii.) In tacking up the black hangings, a servant has uncovered a hidden horde of gold; and below in the chest into which the cat is inquiring there are money bags labeled "2000," "3000," and "1000." The bundles of papers piled on the floor are "Mortgages," "This Indenture,” “Lease & Release," "Fines & Recoverys," and "India Bonds." The funeral escutcheon of the deceased shows bearings sable, three hand-vices, proper, with the motto "BEWARE." And signs of the old man's way of life are everywhere: a spectacle-frame without glasses, a fur cap and coat in lieu of a fire, a disused spit and smoking jack stored in a cupboard high up in the wall; in the closet four old wigs, two swords, a cracked jug and bowl, and a box of old boots. A save-all is on the fireplace (for the last stub of a candle), the grate is empty, a half-starved cat is looking for food but can only find plate and money bags, and (in the third state) a Bible has been mutilated to make a sole for a shoe. A box on the floor, containing a large lantern with broken glass and a "hanging-bar" for a kitchen grate, a spade, and other objects, is marked "PG" (which a pirated version called "Positive Gripe"; see BM Sat. 2171). An open memorandum book reveals the dead miser's mind for us: (in the first state) "Memodms 1721 May 3d My Son Tom Came from Oxford 4th Dind at the French Ordinary 5th of June-Put of[f] my bad Shilling---.”

The new generation is squandering money as fast as the old accumulated it. The group around young Rakewell consists of the pregnant girl, Sarah Young, with a wedding ring, and her irate mother holding letters in her apron: "To Mrs Sarah Young in Oxford" (presumably where he was attending the University) and "Dearest Life . . . & marry you." Confronted with the consequences of his affair, Rakewell is buying her off with his father's money. And while he is concerned with this his steward (or lawyer) takes the opportunity to steal some of the money on the table. The latter is making "An Inventory of" (another paper marked "An Inventory of . . ." lies under the first) the old man's dwindling fortune (161-162).

A Rake's Progress: Plate 1

Uglow, Jenny. Hogarth: A Life and a World. (1997)

But Hogarth’s Tom Rakewell is no Lovelace, no dashing blade, conquering fashion, decoying women and terrorizing the town with nonchalant, demonic arrogance. He is young bourgeois, first seen as a trembling youth with a fresh face haloed in curls, attractive, open, innocent—and weak. Like Moll, Tom is less a seducer than an outsider who is himself seduced, ruined and killed by the city. He imitates the rakes but can never be one of them, not because his money runs out but because at every state he is also shown as a man of feeling, who rails against fate and descends into madness. In the fiery dark of the city, aspiring to beauty but sinking into filth, Tom Rakewell could even be seen as a fallen “flying man”, a prototype of the Romantic hero.

Although he follows a man’s path, buying art, fighting, gambling and whoring, to a large extent Tom is a curiously passive, feminine figure. In Hogarth’s hands, the situation of his Harlot and Rake have shadowy similarities; most of all, they are dangers to themselves. The higher Tom aims and the more he spends, the faster and deeper he galls, spirally inexorably from debt to the desperate remedies of loveless marriage and hopeless gambling, down to the prison and the madhouse floor. This reads like another brusque moral tale of the wages of sin, the hardworking bourgeois taking puritan revenge on the idle rich. But Hogarth’s mortality is more intricate, questioning how far people are responsible for their fate and how far they are the victims of others. In the first scene, the father’s notebook, lying open on the floor, notes, “1721 May 1 my son Tom came down from Oxford”, but beneath this news old Rakewell has also written “5th, Put of my bad shilling”. The miser may have foisted his dud coins on others, but now his own “bad penny” has turned up. This follows and old convention of procedure by contraries—the mean father followed by the spendthrift heir—and yet we also see Tom as a newcomer to the city being measured by other for their use (like Moll in the inn-yard being eyed by the bawd and Charteris). In this first scene, the lawyer scoops up loose change behind his back. By his side, the tailor holds a tape-measure to his thigh: the scissors Moll carried, as if to snip vainly at the Gordian knot of fate, are in the tailor’s hands.

Tom has inherited a fortune but he is also the impoverished heir of a parent’s neglect. The portrait above shows Tom’s father “raking” it in; and as a workman tacks the mourning drapes to the rotten woodwork, hoarded coins tumble from the ceiling, on to a floor littered with mortgages, leases and “India bonds”. There is no warmth here. The empty grate and hold-all for candle-ends show how the old man scrimps on heat and light, shivering in the dark in his old coat, which hangs behind the floor, and his fur hat, still on the mantle-piece. (When he revised the plate Hogarth drove the point home, including a Bible with its leather binding hacked out to sole the old man’s shoes.) His deformity was deeper than the lameness for which he needed the crutches now leaning against the wall. He was also an emotional cripple who gave his son no nourishment but gold, a hard and fatal metal, leaving him like the starving cat, sniffing vainly for food at a chest stuffed with coins.

Yet Tom is a predator as well as a victim. Whereas, in the first Progress, Colonel Charteris filled the inn-yard doorway (Moll’s route “in” to society and its vice), here Tom is already the insider—his doorway frames a weeping country girl holding a wedding ring, while her angry mother carries and apronful of letters and false promises. But Sarah Young, the seduced girl, is far from an insignificant nobody. Out of mind and sight while Tom is surrounded by sycophants or passing out in a brothel, she appears again as soon as he is down on his luck, finding money when he is arrested, trying to stop his marriage, collapsing at his suffering in the Fleet and comforting him in Bedlam. Indeed in the paintings, as compared to the reversed images of the prints, Sarah seems to frame the whole story. Her weeping figure on the left of the first painting is the first form we see, and the same figure, with her handkerchief to her eyes, is also the last as she kneels beside Tom’s collapsed body on the right of the final picture. At the beginning she weeps for herself; at the end she weeps for him.

Sarah may be a fool to stick so loyally to this heartless loser, but she is also a nobody who gains dignity by suffering so selflessly for love. Tom, by contrast, like his father before him, makes the mistake of thinking that cash can replace love. From the moment he tries to buy off the pregnant Sarah we know that he is doomed. Hogarth believed that individual natures were formed by upbringing, and their expectations by society, but he never accepted that his deprived them of freedom altogether. Moll is shown poised between the dark-walled world of the bawd and the open sky above the city washerwoman; Tom is poised between his money chests and Sarah Young, carrying his child. Both make their choice (244-246).

A Rake's Progress: Plate 1

Ireland, John and John Nichols. Hogarth’s Works. (1883)

The first print most forcibly contrasts two opposite passions,--the unthinking negligence of youth, and the sordid avaricious rapacity of age. It brings into one point of view what Mr. Pope so exquisitely describes in his Epistle to Lord Bathurst:

It represents a young man taking possession of a rich miser’s effects, and is crowded with the monuments of departed avarice. Everything, valuable or not valuable, has been hoarded. A chest of old plate, an old coat, a worn-out boot, and the caul of a periwig, are preserved with equal care. The thread-bare garments are hung up; the rusty spur put into a closet and even a spectacle-frame, without glasses, is thought worthy of preservation. The contents of his armoury are curious, and valuable as the lumbering furniture of his room: they consist of two swords, which may be considered as trophies of his youthful prowess, or protectors of his cankered pelf. The crutch and walking-stick, those unequal supporters of his feeble frame, now lean unheeded against the wall. His fur cap and greatcoat seem to have been winter substitutes for fire, as the grate in which a withered Sibyl is laying wood has no marks of even a remaining cinder. The remnant of candle in a save-all, the Jack taken down as a useless piece of furniture, and, with the spit hoisted into the high cupboard, give strong indications of the manner in which this votary of Mammon existed, for such a being could scarcely be said to live. The gaunt appearance of an half-starved cat proves not only the rigid abstinence practised by this wretched slave to his wealth, but that in his miserable mansion: “No mouse e’er lurk’d, no rat e’er sought for food.” The iron-bound chests, the hidden gold falling from the breaking cornice, and indeed every article that is displayed in this dreary tomb of buried wealth, give additional marks of a suspicious and sordid disposition. The picture of a miser counting his gold; the escutcheons, those gloomy ornaments of departed wretchedness, with the armorial bearings of avarice, three vices hard screwed, are adjuncts highly appropriate to the place; the motto, BEWARE, inscribed under the arms, is a well-directed caution, and ought to be seriously considered by those who feel a propensity to this meanest of passions. An old shoe, soled with the cover of a Bible, and the little memorandum, May 5th, 1721, put off my bad shilling, are strong proofs that extreme avarice destroys all reverence for religion, and eradicated every principle of honesty.

The introduction to this history is well delineated, and the principal figure marked with that easy, unmeaning vacancy of face which speaks him formed by nature for a DUPE. Ignorant of the value of money, and negligent in his nature, he leaves his bag of untold gold in the reach of an old and greedy pettifogging attorney (It has generally been said that this is an appraiser and undertaker; let not these venerable dealers in dust any longer suffer the disgrace of so unjust an insinuation. That the artist intended to delineate a lawyer is clearly intimated by his old, uncurled tie-wig and the bare baize bag. We cannot mistake these obtrusive ensigns of the craft, or mystery, or profession, of which this hoary villain is a member.), who is making an inventory of bonds, mortgages, indentures, etc. This man, with the rapacity so natural to his profession, seizes the first opportunity of plundering his employer. Hogarth had a few years before been engaged in a lawsuit, which gave him some experience of the PRACTICE of those pests of society.

The figure of the young woman with a wedding-ring is not alluring, neither is her face attractive; but her being pregnant, and accompanied by her mother with an apron full of letters, gives her a claim to out pity, as it clearly intimates that this is meant as a visit to entreat the promised hand of her seducer; but he violates every former protestation, refuses her marriage, and attempts by a bribe to he a release from the obligation. Her mother violently reproaches him for his conduct, and invokes the curses of offended Heaven upon his falsehood.

In this print the drawing and disposition of the figures are tolerably good, the light is properly distributed, and the perspective accurately represented; but the whole wants mass. To display the hoards, it was necessary to open the boxes and doors; and though an exhibition of the heterogeneous collection heaped together by this wretched defrauder of himself most forcibly describes the disposition of the man, it hurts the repose of the picture. Breaking the background into so many parts, destroys that breadth which ought to be considered as a leading excellence (124-127).

A Rake's Progress: Plate 1

Dobson, Austin. William Hogarth. (1907)

In the first plate “Tom Rakewell” (the name, Lichtenberg points out, is as appropriate to the penurious father as to the prodigal son) has entered suddenly upon his inheritance. In a jumble of leases, bonds, and the miscellaneous hoardings of avarice, he is being measured for his mourning. Already his knavish attorney plunders him; and he himself begins badly by casting off the poor girl (his bedmaker’s daughter) whom he has ruined while at Oxford. “Prodigus æris, Sublimis, cupidusque, et amata relinquere pernix,” his fortune is written in his face (41).

A Rake's Progress: Plate 1

Quennell, Peter. Hogarth’s Progress. (1955)

More loosely constructed than the previous series [A Harlot’s Progress], the story of Tom Rakewell is even more richly illustrated with references to the contemporary scene; and once he has introduced us to his awkward her, recently arrived from Oxford and endeavouring at the same time to take stock of his patrimony, ward off Sarah and her indignant mother, and get himself measured for a new suit, he shows us Rakewell holding his levée amid a crowd of hangers-on, who represent the various aberrations of modern taste and sportsmanship. The Man of Fashion is also a connoisseur; and it was against the vices and follies of individual human beings, that Hogarth frequently delivered his most enthusiastic diatribes. Many of his satires belong as much to the history of taste as to the study of morals and manners; and Rakewell the misguided Patron of Art is at least as important as Rakewell the dissolute frequenter of the demi-monde. Kent and other æsthetic adversaries raise their formidable heads again. The Signior may have decorated his rooms, and advised Rakewell on his choice of pictures. The “Judgement of Paris”, hung between portraits of fighting cocks, has clearly come from Italy; and a musician, seated at the harpsichord, is turning the pages of a foreign opera. Meanwhile, a group of clients contend for his interest. Charles Bridgeman, the celebrated landscape gardener, and forerunner in that field of Kent, Repton and “Capability” Brown, lurks disconsolately just behind him; but a French dancing-master minces gaily forward, and Dubois, a well-known French duelist, who is watched with sulky disdain by James Figg, the English prize-fighter, champion of broad-sword, cudgel and quarterstaff, makes a fierce lunge into the empty air. A jockey displays the cup won by “Silly Tom” at Newmarket; and a professional bully, clapping his hand on his heart, offers his experienced services as Rakewell’s private body-guard (127-129).

A Rake's Progress: Plate 1

Lichtenberg, G. Ch. Lichtenberg’s Commentaries on Hogarth’s Engravings. (1784-1796). Translated from the German by Innes and Gustav Herdan (1966)

The occasion which Hogarth has chosen for the first Plate is immediately after the old man's death, when the young gentleman has for the first time obtained free access to the departed's Holiest of Holies, I mean his treasures and his lumber, his Lombard and his Archives (for it has something of all these four). At least it cannot be long since he who had tucked so much away here has been tucked away himself, for they are only just beginning to mourn him. Probably he is not even buried yet, and consequently the upholsterer on the ladder there is employed in draping with black the room in which the corpse is to be displayed, while another, on his knees, is taking the measure of the mourning drapery in which the young heir is to show himself beside the corpse. On a heavy, somewhat antiquated chair, a piece of sacristy furniture, lies a roll of black cloth, presumably only for the upholsterer on the ladder, for the scatterbrained heir to so many thousands would hardly mourn for the testator in material which is rolled like that. Thus the tomb in which noble riches and civic plunder had slept together in churchyard-like mixture for perhaps half a century, awaiting their redemption, and the heir who in painful expectation had long awaited their resurrection, are both today simultaneously draped in black. They are mourning on the resurrection day. The Trump has sounded everywhere, and not a moment too soon; every coffer has burst and every door opened. Gold and silver and old iron and purses bulging with coins peep out of their cages and rejoice in the new day; documents of parchment and paper, inventories, savings, IOUs, rent contracts and shares with content of great import roll to the feet of their liberator, flutter around his ankles and crawl under his shoes. Even gold, which had its abode in the ceiling of that room, hears the mighty call and is raining down to the Judgment. Only some old wigs, boots and shoes, broken jars and bowls and bottles, a hat-case and a street lantern, an overcoat in Doctor Johnson's style, a tombstone and so on, perhaps conscious of their damnation, keep a timid distance. But today is only the rehearsal.

Here he stands now, our hero, Thomas Rakewell, with a youthful, still healthy but rather empty face; obviously more dupe than fripon one would say, to judge only from the head; but vis-à-vis those two women the matter looks somewhat different. Duo cumfacient idem, non est idem. The story is as follows: the young fellow comes from Oxford where he had carried on and had done everything that in Universities goes under the general term, 'studying'. With the call of the Last Trumpet summoning the parchments, there arrived also a couple of aprons with documents, more properly speaking with opuscula academica. They are both portrayed here. One of them belongs to a mother and the other to her daughter. The former, as we can see, really contains manuscripts, and the latter, to which the mother points, covers the forms to which they refer, and in particular an important outline from which may evolve in the end a Rakewell III in lima directa. The poor and, as we shall see, extremely good-natured, honest and sincere creature who stands there crying near the door had been got into trouble through the 'studies' of our good-for-nothing. The girl's mood is well brought out. What is not altogether pleasing is that she is already oldish, and could and should be more beautiful; but the delineation of beauty was never the object of its analyser. She is crying in the proper sense of the word, when the most intense pain and the highest degree of inner suffering seek rather than find alleviation in tears. Her face is not childishly distorted, but relaxed and disfigured as if by the onset of a deadly disease. Oh! how much is going on in that wounded heart. The scoundrel!

I said, she is crying in the proper sense of the word, for as one knows, that sex can produce quite another type of tears which serves not so much to give relief from pain, as to bring on the pain itself, if it is not readily forthcoming. Here we are not concerned with that type of tears.

The girl's name is Sarah Young. This we gather from the considerable collection of love letters which the mother is carrying in her apron there. The romance must have been long, or at least carried on very ardently. All that can be read of it is, first, the Oxford address, then the formula 'Dearest Life', a mere praemissis praemittendis instead of Sir, or My Lord, and finally, 'to marry you'. The artist has expressed the rest by empty space; in the originals the words were evidently of similar weight. Thus the rascal has promised the girl marriage. One sees, in fact, a ring in her hand, which she had evidently held up to him with outstretched arm to remind him, by this also, of his promise. But—it was too late to have any effect, and so the arm sank down limp against the body so faithlessly abandoned. The apron full of bills of exchange which that fellow had formerly drawn upon his heart in his own handwriting, he is now since the heart has refused payment, anxious to honour with his purse and he offers her, together with the protest, a handful of guineas. 'I am sorry my dear ("dearest life") to see you in other circumstances, but then so am I as you can see. Here is something for your trouble and kindness There are more young chaps in Oxford—You never know—Just take that If you don't want it—very well then, I'll give it to the lawyer and then you won't get a thing.'—Something like that must have issued from the little open mouth. However, the money is spurned; at least by the daughter--or her all is over. She is as little likely to grasp the money as would a marble statue m church, weeping over the um of a Saint, grasp the tip intended for the sexton who is explaining the tomb to the sightseers The mother, though very much in the flesh, perhaps even too much so also refuses it. Fists clenched like hers and supported by such a face do not accept money; still less does such an elbow, the very image of repulsion You scoundrel, is it on these scales that you weigh my daughter's honour?', she demands, and to judge from her furious look and her whole attitude, probably accompanies the question with a little storm of blessings and good wishes which for once, to the satisfaction of morals and virtue will be punctually brought to consummation. Three of that woman's fingers out of the four which are visible are adorned with rings Perhaps she has put them on specially for the purpose of this visit, whose outcome was unpredictable, so as to show that they were not so destitute as to come for the money's sake.

The young gentleman listens to all this and looks on, stiff, with arm stretched out like a signpost, and probably with just as much feeling He who could forget honour and offended innocence does not, however forget to render small services to his tailor, carefully holding back his coat-tails so as to enable him to take his measurements.

I have often heard it said that the more a tailor looks like a shoe-maker, the worse a tailor he is. If that observation is correct, this one must be a most miserable bungler, for he looks exactly like a cobbler. If I am not mistaken, the fellow is really more than half calf-leather. It also seems to me as if a sort of theosophical-apocalyptical light were playing on the brow and lips as he kneels, and this kind of beatification, even if it some- times occurs somewhat ultra crepidam in other Guilds, rarely, as far as I know, visits a tailor's face. Evidently that creature belongs to the small circle of persons who obtained from the housekeeping money of the deceased whatever they had earned, with 50 per cent rebate; maybe even in specimens from the lumber room. It is by no means impossible that he who, as we shall see, used to repair his own shoes, had, by way of compensation, appointed the family cobbler as his tailor, who then followed that trade as an amateur. To serve up a pair of trousers or a dressing-gown for the third or fourth time, as many a German writer will know without my reminding him, does not call for great skill, and then amateurs do not charge much. Our Thomas, who is sending away even his 'dearest life', keeps Theosophus as his tailor, for the present at least, out of childlike respect. Of course it is the clothes which make the man.' But Thomas is not to be 'made' here, only to be draped, pro tempore, in black.

Immediately behind our hero, and in direct contact with his upturned coat-tails, stands a table decked with documents, and with an ink-bottle and purse served up on it. Both are dishes which a certain customer, being at the time alone at the table, knows only too well. He therefore takes advantage of the little quarrel about honour and shame between the host and his 'dearest life' by making for the best dish. He cannot be sure of being offered it once the meal has begun. That cunning guest is undoubtedly one of the most eloquent heads which Hogarth has ever delineated. He is not a Valuer, as Gilpin believes, nor, as he thinks, does he just finger the money. Evidently this is a relation of the Law, a latere at least, an attorney, or something like a solicitor and notary. Under his right arm he has the green baize bag which quite unmistakably denotes that class of per- sons. They carry their papers in it, and sometimes also they carry home in it some little trifle out of the dishes served at repasts like these, to which nobody has invited them. How could Gilpin have believed that the hand which belongs to such a head would only finger money, or that his secret castles in the air could be supported merely by the ravishing sound of guineas in other people's purses? The idea in itself is beautiful, even striking, but much too finely spun for our Hogarth whose feelings were true and strong, but not tender, especially for an a latere relative of the Law, who has no feelings at all. No! the fellow is a rogue. If it was merely a platonic fingering, his expression would be more poetic. Here, however, the Rabulistic eyes are evidently on guard, while the hand is filching. He steals, but, as one can well believe, with juridical security, advancing outwardly with caution, and keeping subtle hermeneutic in reserve. I would wager that if Thomas were to turn round and see with his very eyes how his guest was slipping half a dozen guineas into the baize bag, he would only run the risk of having to pay a dozen guineas tomorrow for having seen it.

Although the old man is dead, he it is, mainly, with whom the artist makes us acquainted in this Plate. He lives here in his portrait above the fireplace, and in his dirty deeds throughout the whole room: everything that is going on here, one might say, still moves in him and through him. The portrait is excellently placed, and how subtly has Hogarth indicated by a small touch, which at first seems quite unimportant, that this is in fact a likeness of the old man! On the mantelpiece lies the original of the fur cap in the painting, and that hint at once throws light on the whole subject. The spectacles hanging there belonged on the face of the man weighing gold, and the crutches standing there were his front legs. They are of unequal length, evidently designed for hemiplegia. On old buildings props of different lengths are used; also the smaller one might some- times have served as sceptre and Commander's baton for securing respect in the household or, prompted by the spirit of discovery, as a probing instrument for use in wardrobes, or for exploring other dark corners. Here, then, Hogarth wants to say, he used to sit, here he put away his front legs when resting and here he hung his eye-crutches when weighing money in his head. He illuminated his nights when necessary by candle-ends stuck into 'save-alls', which we see here upon the mantelpiece, one completely burnt down and one kept in reserve. Probably these little lights when burning on chilly evenings represented not only the most brilliant but also the warmest part of that hearth, which here, somewhat ominously, wears a fur cap. The garment too, which the old man is wearing in the portrait, looks more like a warmth-gatherer for an open Mail- coach than a dressing-gown for comfort. Everything in that household that could bum was burnt in 'save-alls', even the little flames of life of two miserable domestic animals which we shall meet presently. Perhaps even the life of the old chap had burnt down in this cold place. There was no doctor at hand to stick up the reserve candle-end, and death thus quietly took possession of the remaining half.

People versed in allegory or in the stone language of monuments will find, without my prompting, how much Hogarth has enriched both by the arrangement round that cold hearth. Just imagine such a monument with its candle-ends in marble; the portrait of course in bas-relief elaborately worked out and displayed in some church, and then ask yourself whether any words would still be needed to describe the deceased who lay beneath, or the heir who erected it in his memory.

The upholsterer by hammering in his nails has broken off a bit of cornice, or a part has come adrift which had not been fixed firmly enough. It seems to have served for hiding treasure which had the inaccessibility of the place to thank for its security rather than its having been firmly locked away. A very good, though not a new, idea generated by the desire for safety. Dispersed money cannot be stolen so easily all at once. Besides, subtle concealment has a secret attraction for this sort of person, and capital tucked away in a warm nest, even if it comes no nearer to hatching, is often more attractive than some other sort which, though hatching dutifully every year, lies in the open where it is more easily exposed to a watchful eye, whether of the righteous or the unrighteous. What I have called concealment behind the cornice might also have been a burial on the upper floor, since money, and especially gold, as we know, has a way of moving. The golden rain is going to fall this time past the gold scales and the 'save-all' on to an old Danae's humped back, which no doubt is better acquainted with other burdens, with the attentions of the small crutch and the old man's hail of words, than with this type of rain. This poor domestic animal which not so long ago in Germany, on account of its honest face, would have been treated as fuel, is here carrying an armful of faggots. A new wind is blowing. The present regime has decreed, as one sees, that there should be a fire in the fireplace where under the previous regime the air was always in conformity with the season outside. From now on money is no longer to be counted out with stiff fingers. However, gold is still moving slowly here, and there is still no Scottish coal. An elegant and typically London grate, which should properly be fed only with such coal, is about to be replenished with rural fare, with remnants of hop poles and palings.

Beside the strong box in which gold coins are lying in their thousands, and in whose uncoined metal the day of redemption is reflected, stands the other domestic animal, the starved cat, miaowing over the chilly look of the silver. Its footstool is a book, probably a Prayer Book, and its left forepaw rests on little bags full of guineas, marked '2000' and '3000'. Poor Ribs! Looking at you, who could help thinking of the Arab who, like you, was about to die of starvation in the desert where he had lost his way, when he unexpectedly came upon a tightly-filled bag. He fingered his find. 'A thousand thanks to Allah!' he exclaimed, 'Rice, rice!' Then he undid the string to find only a priceless treasure—pearls! Alas, only pearls! he sighed, and in despair threw away the useless plunder. 'Absolutely nothing of value in these boxes,' Ribs seems to sigh, 'ne musculus quidem!' You are quite right, my good creature, but have patience! Your friend the meat-jack is still alive up there, and is freed. Its prison, where it had languished for half a century, has been thrown open as you see. It can see daylight again and soon it will survey and rule over the kitchen fires; and under a mechanical minister of that sort servants of your cloth and your honest skill have their livelihood secured.

To the side of the cat, in the left lower corner of the picture, a pair of old shoes is to be seen, one of which has been soled by the deceased him- self, and though not quite finished, is lying there as an opus posthumus. The thread still hangs out of it, and one can clearly see its end where the Goddess of Fate had got hold of it, together with a certain other thread, and had inexorably cut off both. Upon the sole is a coat-of-arms stamped in gold, which properly belongs to the binding of an old Bible lying beside it, and out of which the sole has evidently been cut. That can only mean: to trample on the word of God. That this should happen in such a household does not surprise me, since the true niggard will not tread upon anything else. But that his own god, gold, should be trampled upon, that does surprise me. Can it be perhaps that soles cut from Bible covers provide protection against something? Gout or corns? Or were they intended for pilgrimage shoes? I do not know, but what I do know is that a certain person who held religion and money in equal esteem, and highly at that, once frankly confessed that he felt the braid of his Sunday hat and what it had cost him, right down to his shoulders, even when going to church. But now such magnificence, a golden coat-of-arms, in a place like that, so utterly cast before swine! It could draw blisters on such a person! And it is not in keeping with a miser's character. Had he patched his shoes with an Evangelist printed on parchment, and his leathern breeches with the Book of Wisdom itself, I should not have wasted a word on it. But here we have evidently a case of lèse-majesté towards the only being he worships. That is unthinkable. It is said that on the earliest prints this queer touch is missing. I am too little acquainted with English heraldry, and with the book-plates of English book-collectors, to decide whether our unfathomable satirist intended by this feature to pay a compliment to some aristocrat, of the kind made to the well-known Mr Tw. . . in Ireland, after he had spoken disparagingly of that country in his published Travels. Dainty sacrificial bowls for the service of Cloacina were made with a picture of the offender inside upon the bottom, and the inscription:

On the floor in front of the young gentleman's feet, being thereby already profaned and no doubt in expectation of even greater profanation, lies another book. It is the old man's Journal (Memorandum book). By chance it has so opened that we can read quite clearly some entries of May 1721. They are all truthful memoranda, or so-called curious epoch- making events in the monarchy. None of the entries are of the type which somebody once found in the note-book of a universal patron—who also happened to be his patron—under the heading:

with underneath, his own humble, and, as he thought, already half-granted petition.

1. 'May 3rd, my son Tom came from Oxford.' Where they have been fattening up his latin. It would be funny if per nefas the arrival of the young gentleman had been a mere visit, and the 3rd of May that year been within the so-called Term, during which one has to be in the stable. We observe in passing that this is the point from which we learn that the youth's name is Thomas. An excellent use which Hogarth has made of that piece of information in the second Plate renders it worthy of remark.

2. '4th. Dine at y French Ordinary.' Most excellent. Evidently to give the young visitor a meal at which even the 'place where?', the ubi, had something tasty about it; with a French cook. For although the common people in England, and even many from the comfortable middle-classes, were of the opinion (1721) that it was impossible for a sensible man to eat his fill in France, and that the whole of French cooking consisted in fried frogs' legs and a soupe maigre upon which they scatter a few drops of grease, a belief to which our good artist almost fanatically subscribed, yet a French cook meant a great deal to the upper classes; almost as much as the upper classes themselves. But perhaps here, too, the name was everything, and the French cook-shop was just the one house in the whole of London which, by a certain law of continuity, ranked closest in quality to the Rakewell house, where not only did they not cook well, but did not cook at all; where the meat-jack sat in prison and the cats starved because the mice had emigrated.

3. '5th. Put off my Bad Shilling.' An incomparably beautiful touch whose excellence hardly needs further emphasis. My bad shilling! What intimacy between him and the bad shilling! How long may not this single false shilling have embittered his possession of millions, the mental pleasure of all his genuine, full-value gold! Perhaps he had been taken in by it once, or had got it in exchange, at a huge discount, in order to defraud with it—without having been able to do so. Thus selfishness and self-love were long and equally strongly offended by that intruder. At last, on the 5th of May, 1721, he succeeded in getting rid of it, and the event was entered in the annals of the house with deep satisfaction, like the death of a wicked wife. A single such touch would, I think, be enough to impart to the stale brew of a modish tale of chivalry a flavour of wine, and to invite its consumption.

In mourning chambers where bodies lie in state, the escutcheon of the deceased is hung up. Here we see two of them already nailed up with a candelabra in between, without save-all. The deceased, as we see, had three firmly screwed-down vices in his escutcheon with the motto 'Beware, keep what you have' (except bad shillings, of course). He had lived up to his motto. With the heir, if he keeps this rubbish at all, the motto will soon be reduced to the importance and value which such maxims on family escutcheons usually have. Family escutcheons contain only too often merely obsolete claims to virtues and talents which the forebears had possessed, just as coats-of-arms in their fields contain obsolete claims to terrain. This sort of tool is called, in English, 'a vice' and, therefore, the word means in an extended sense what can be gripped with the hand, a handful, sometimes also a paw- or talonful. All this is very much to the point. But it also means viciousness, and here I leave it to the reader's feeling whether Hogarth also had that meaning in mind. It is quite possible. The natural disposition of a people for wit, where those people are without proper culture, usually finds expression in puns. The common people of London, therefore, are specially rich in punsters. If, for example, Colonel Charters [Plate 1, A Harlot’s Progress] had driven through the streets with that coat-of-arms upon his carriage, he would surely have found a moralist at every street comer who would as little have thought of interpreting the three vices as symbols of his miserliness, as of Faith, Hope and Charity.

What has that man not hoarded up in his lumber-room and in the box standing in front of it! It is all money in some form, but of a somewhat high specific lightness. Here in a single bag lie 3,000 guineas, and there a closet and a box are needed to house a few shillings-worth. (With a ducat, so the saying goes, one might gild a strong horse, and a little shilling may be a heavy load for it.) He kept raking in without caring very much what it was. If it proved unsuitable for his little Eden, it was consigned to the manure heap, without which no Eden can thrive nowadays. The position of the old boot in the box at the door is rather curious. It looks as if it was the lower end of an English coffin in which had been deposited ad interim among the rubbish some old knight or other who was somewhat too long for it, or even the old miser himself in the bedroom slippers in which death had surprised him, until the proper coffin had been made ready and the room appropriately draped. Now some questions to end with:

1. What is the meaning of the letters PC (according to the original they might be PG) marked on the box? Do they merely stand for a name, or do they denote the erstwhile contents which would form a contrast with the present ones, an opposite example of which we had in the jewellery basket of the actresses?

2. Just what is it that is lying jumbled up in the box? Is the perforated piece an old finger-plate, or the folded cross of a yarn-winder? And is the object hanging out there a one-legged tripod, or something else that has lost its legs? The English interpreters who could so easily have found out do not trouble about these items at all. And yet it could not have escaped them that our artist has often concealed much fine satire behind such apparent trivialities. Only think of the comedy texts in the Bishop's mitre (191-201).

A Rake's Progress: Plate 1: Bible

Shesgreen also notes that the elder Rakewell has desecrated the Bible, using it to make a shoe-an act of the utmost literalness as he uses the book to enrich both his soul and his sole (28).

A Rake's Progress: Plate 1: Bible

Shesgreen

The last prophetic act of the miser has been to cut a sole for his show from a Bible cover; he has died before sewing the leather completely (28).

A Rake's Progress: Plate 1: Bible

Paulson, Hogarth's Graphic Works

A Bible has been mutilated to make a sole for a shoe (161).

A Rake's Progress: Plate 1: Bible

Ireland

An old shoe, soled with the cover of a Bible, and the little memorandum, May 5th, 1721, put off my bad shilling, are strong proofs that extreme avarice destroys all reverence for religion, and eradicated every principle of honesty (125-126).

A Rake's Progress: Plate 1: Bible

Lichtenberg

To the side of the cat, in the left lower corner of the picture, a pair of old shoes is to be seen, one of which has been soled by the deceased him- self, and though not quite finished, is lying there as an opus posthumus. The thread still hangs out of it, and one can clearly see its end where the Goddess of Fate had got hold of it, together with a certain other thread, and had inexorably cut off both. Upon the sole is a coat-of-arms stamped in gold, which properly belongs to the binding of an old Bible lying beside it, and out of which the sole has evidently been cut. That can only mean: to trample on the word of God. That this should happen in such a household does not surprise me, since the true niggard will not tread upon anything else. But that his own god, gold, should be trampled upon, that does surprise me. Can it be perhaps that soles cut from Bible covers provide protection against something? Gout or corns? Or were they intended for pilgrimage shoes? I do not know, but what I do know is that a certain person who held religion and money in equal esteem, and highly at that, once frankly confessed that he felt the braid of his Sunday hat and what it had cost him, right down to his shoulders, even when going to church. But now such magnificence, a golden coat-of-arms, in a place like that, so utterly cast before swine! It could draw blisters on such a person! And it is not in keeping with a miser's character. Had he patched his shoes with an Evangelist printed on parchment, and his leathern breeches with the Book of Wisdom itself, I should not have wasted a word on it. But here we have evidently a case of lèse-majesté towards the only being he worships. That is unthinkable. It is said that on the earliest prints this queer touch is missing (197-198).

A Rake's Progress: Plate 1: Cat

Tom’s miserly father has starved the cat. He appears to be futilely searching for food among the newly opened chests.

A Rake's Progress: Plate 1: Cat

Shesgreen

A famished, snarling cat (the place is without food and therefore mice) guards the chest (28).

A Rake's Progress: Plate 1: Cat

Ireland

The gaunt appearance of an half-starved cat proves not only the rigid abstinence practised by this wretched slave to his wealth, but that in his miserable mansion: “No mouse e’er lurk’d, no rat e’er sought for food” (125).

A Rake's Progress: Plate 1: Cat

Lichtenberg

Beside the strong box in which gold coins are lying in their thousands, and in whose uncoined metal the day of redemption is reflected, stands the other domestic animal, the starved cat, miaowing over the chilly look of the silver. Its footstool is a book, probably a Prayer Book, and its left forepaw rests on little bags full of guineas, marked '2000' and '3000'. Poor Ribs! Looking at you, who could help thinking of the Arab who, like you, was about to die of starvation in the desert where he had lost his way, when he unexpectedly came upon a tightly-filled bag. He fingered his find. 'A thousand thanks to Allah!' he exclaimed, 'Rice, rice!' Then he undid the string to find only a priceless treasure—pearls! Alas, only pearls! he sighed, and in despair threw away the useless plunder. 'Absolutely nothing of value in these boxes,' Ribs seems to sigh, 'ne musculus quidem!' You are quite right, my good creature, but have patience! Your friend the meat-jack is still alive up there, and is freed. Its prison, where it had languished for half a century, has been thrown open as you see. It can see daylight again and soon it will survey and rule over the kitchen fires; and under a mechanical minister of that sort servants of your cloth and your honest skill have their livelihood secured (197).

A Rake's Progress: Plate 1: Chest

Tom’s father has hoarded money and valuables, locking them in a chest. Neither his frugality nor Tom’s overspending are useful extremes.

A Rake's Progress: Plate 1: Chest

Paulson, Hogarth's Graphic Works

and below in the chest into which the cat is inquiring there are money bags labeled "2000," "3000," and "1000." The bundles of papers piled on the floor are "Mortgages," "This Indenture,” “Lease & Release," "Fines & Recoverys," and "India Bonds (161).

A Rake's Progress: Plate 1: Chest

Ireland

The iron-bound chests, the hidden gold falling from the breaking cornice, and indeed every article that is displayed in this dreary tomb of buried wealth, give additional marks of a suspicious and sordid disposition (125).

A Rake's Progress: Plate 1: Chest

Lichtenberg

Gold and silver and old iron and purses bulging with coins peep out of their cages and rejoice in the new day; documents of parchment and paper, inventories, savings, IOUs, rent contracts and shares with content of great import roll to the feet of their liberator, flutter around his ankles and crawl under his shoes. Even gold, which had its abode in the ceiling of that room, hears the mighty call and is raining down to the Judgment. Only some old wigs, boots and shoes, broken jars and bowls and bottles, a hat-case and a street lantern, an overcoat in Doctor Johnson's style, a tombstone and so on, perhaps conscious of their damnation, keep a timid distance. But today is only the rehearsal (191).

A Rake's Progress: Plate 1: Coat of Arms

Georg Lichtenberg notes the three vices pictured with the motto "Beware" and comments on the double meaning of vice-as both an object which holds something down and as questionable behavior, both of which are excesses in their own right (200).

A Rake's Progress: Plate 1: Coat of Arms

Shesgreen

Funeral escutcheons, as the motto and arms of old Rakewell, already hang on the wall, showing vises (= vices) with the motto “Beware” (particularly appropriate advice to the unheeding son) (28).

A Rake's Progress: Plate 1: Coat of Arms

Paulson, Hogarth's Graphic Works

The funeral escutcheon of the deceased shows bearings sable, three hand-vices, proper, with the motto "BEWARE" (161).

A Rake's Progress: Plate 1: Coat of Arms

Ireland

The picture of a miser counting his gold; the escutcheons, those gloomy ornaments of departed wretchedness, with the armorial bearings of avarice, three vices hard screwed, are adjuncts highly appropriate to the place; the motto, BEWARE, inscribed under the arms, is a well-directed caution, and ought to be seriously considered by those who feel a propensity to this meanest of passions (125).

A Rake's Progress: Plate 1: Coat of Arms

Lichtenberg

In mourning chambers where bodies lie in state, the escutcheon of the deceased is hung up. Here we see two of them already nailed up with a candelabra in between, without save-all. The deceased, as we see, had three firmly screwed-down vices in his escutcheon with the motto 'Beware, keep what you have' (except bad shillings, of course). He had lived up to his motto. With the heir, if he keeps this rubbish at all, the motto will soon be reduced to the importance and value which such maxims on family escutcheons usually have. Family escutcheons contain only too often merely obsolete claims to virtues and talents which the forebears had possessed, just as coats-of-arms in their fields contain obsolete claims to terrain. This sort of tool is called, in English, 'a vice' and, therefore, the word means in an extended sense what can be gripped with the hand, a handful, sometimes also a paw- or talonful. All this is very much to the point. But it also means viciousness, and here I leave it to the reader's feeling whether Hogarth also had that meaning in mind. It is quite possible. The natural disposition of a people for wit, where those people are without proper culture, usually finds expression in puns. The common people of London, therefore, are specially rich in punsters. If, for example, Colonel Charters [Plate 1, A Harlot’s Progress] had driven through the streets with that coat-of-arms upon his carriage, he would surely have found a moralist at every street comer who would as little have thought of interpreting the three vices as symbols of his miserliness, as of Faith, Hope and Charity (200).

A Rake's Progress: Plate 1: Draping

Tom’s father has just died, and an upholster drapes the walls in black for the wake.

A Rake's Progress: Plate 1: Draping

Shesgreen

The miser has died suddenly, and the cracked, bare walls of his office—it has no home comforts—are being covered with black cloth for the wake. (28)

A Rake's Progress: Plate 1: Draping

Paulson, Hogarth's Graphic Works

The room is being hung in black to show mourning. (The roll of black cloth on the chair at the right has a draper's bill attached: "London Bought of Wm othall Woolen Draper in Covent Garden." Tothall was Hogarth's friend, one of those who made up the "Peregrination." See Mitchell, Hogarth's Peregrination, pp. xvii-xviii.) In tacking up the black hangings, a servant has uncovered a hidden horde of gold (161).

A Rake's Progress: Plate 1: Draping

Uglow

as a workman tacks the mourning drapes to the rotten woodwork, hoarded coins tumble from the ceiling (244-245).

A Rake's Progress: Plate 1: Draping

Lichtenberg

the upholsterer on the ladder there is employed in draping with black the room in which the corpse is to be displayed, while another, on his knees, is taking the measure of the mourning drapery in which the young heir is to show himself beside the corpse. On a heavy, somewhat antiquated chair, a piece of sacristy furniture, lies a roll of black cloth, presumably only for the upholsterer on the ladder, for the scatterbrained heir to so many thousands would hardly mourn for the testator in material which is rolled like that. Thus the tomb in which noble riches and civic plunder had slept together in churchyard-like mixture for perhaps half a century, awaiting their redemption, and the heir who in painful expectation had long awaited their resurrection, are both today simultaneously draped in black. They are mourning on the resurrection day. The Trump has sounded everywhere, and not a moment too soon; every coffer has burst and every door opened (191).

A Rake's Progress: Plate 1: Lawyer

Rakwell will be robbed by many who take advantage of his naïveté about money. Here, his lawyer steals money from a purse.

A Rake's Progress: Plate 1: Lawyer

Shesgreen

a lawyer (identified by his baize bag used to carry documents) interrupts his inventory-taking to claim his fee surreptitiously (28).

A Rake's Progress: Plate 1: Lawyer

Uglow

In this first scene, the lawyer scoops up loose change behind his back (244).

A Rake's Progress: Plate 1: Lawyer

Ireland

The introduction to this history is well delineated, and the principal figure marked with that easy, unmeaning vacancy of face which speaks him formed by nature for a DUPE. Ignorant of the value of money, and negligent in his nature, he leaves his bag of untold gold in the reach of an old and greedy pettifogging attorney (It has generally been said that this is an appraiser and undertaker; let not these venerable dealers in dust any longer suffer the disgrace of so unjust an insinuation. That the artist intended to delineate a lawyer is clearly intimated by his old, uncurled tie-wig and the bare baize bag. We cannot mistake these obtrusive ensigns of the craft, or mystery, or profession, of which this hoary villain is a member.), who is making an inventory of bonds, mortgages, indentures, etc. This man, with the rapacity so natural to his profession, seizes the first opportunity of plundering his employer. Hogarth had a few years before been engaged in a lawsuit, which gave him some experience of the PRACTICE of those pests of society (126).

A Rake's Progress: Plate 1: Lawyer

Dobson

his knavish attorney plunders him (41).

A Rake's Progress: Plate 1: Lawyer

Lichtenberg

Immediately behind our hero, and in direct contact with his upturned coat-tails, stands a table decked with documents, and with an ink-bottle and purse served up on it. Both are dishes which a certain customer, being at the time alone at the table, knows only too well. He therefore takes advantage of the little quarrel about honour and shame between the host and his 'dearest life' by making for the best dish. He cannot be sure of being offered it once the meal has begun. That cunning guest is undoubtedly one of the most eloquent heads which Hogarth has ever delineated. He is not a Valuer, as Gilpin believes, nor, as he thinks, does he just finger the money. Evidently this is a relation of the Law, a latere at least, an attorney, or something like a solicitor and notary. Under his right arm he has the green baize bag which quite unmistakably denotes that class of per- sons. They carry their papers in it, and sometimes also they carry home in it some little trifle out of the dishes served at repasts like these, to which nobody has invited them. How could Gilpin have believed that the hand which belongs to such a head would only finger money, or that his secret castles in the air could be supported merely by the ravishing sound of guineas in other people's purses? The idea in itself is beautiful, even striking, but much too finely spun for our Hogarth whose feelings were true and strong, but not tender, especially for an a latere relative of the Law, who has no feelings at all. No! the fellow is a rogue. If it was merely a platonic fingering, his expression would be more poetic. Here, however, the Rabulistic eyes are evidently on guard, while the hand is filching. He steals, but, as one can well believe, with juridical security, advancing outwardly with caution, and keeping subtle hermeneutic in reserve. I would wager that if Thomas were to turn round and see with his very eyes how his guest was slipping half a dozen guineas into the baize bag, he would only run the risk of having to pay a dozen guineas tomorrow for having seen it (194-195).

A Rake's Progress: Plate 1: Money Walls

The old miser is an extreme hoarder. He has hidden money in his walls, uncovered by the upholsterer.

A Rake's Progress: Plate 1: Money Walls

Paulson, Hogarth's Graphic Works

The room is being hung in black to show mourning. (The roll of black cloth on the chair at the right has a draper's bill attached: "London Bought of Wm othall Woolen Draper in Covent Garden." Tothall was Hogarth's friend, one of those who made up the "Peregrination." See Mitchell, Hogarth's Peregrination, pp. xvii-xviii.) In tacking up the black hangings, a servant has uncovered a hidden horde of gold (161).

A Rake's Progress: Plate 1: Money Walls

Uglow

as a workman tacks the mourning drapes to the rotten woodwork, hoarded coins tumble from the ceiling (244-245).

A Rake's Progress: Plate 1: Money Walls

Ireland

The iron-bound chests, the hidden gold falling from the breaking cornice, and indeed every article that is displayed in this dreary tomb of buried wealth, give additional marks of a suspicious and sordid disposition (125).

A Rake's Progress: Plate 1: Money Walls

Lichtenberg

Gold and silver and old iron and purses bulging with coins peep out of their cages and rejoice in the new day; documents of parchment and paper, inventories, savings, IOUs, rent contracts and shares with content of great import roll to the feet of their liberator, flutter around his ankles and crawl under his shoes. Even gold, which had its abode in the ceiling of that room, hears the mighty call and is raining down to the Judgment. Only some old wigs, boots and shoes, broken jars and bowls and bottles, a hat-case and a street lantern, an overcoat in Doctor Johnson's style, a tombstone and so on, perhaps conscious of their damnation, keep a timid distance. But today is only the rehearsal (191).

The upholsterer by hammering in his nails has broken off a bit of cornice, or a part has come adrift which had not been fixed firmly enough. It seems to have served for hiding treasure which had the inaccessibility of the place to thank for its security rather than its having been firmly locked away. A very good, though not a new, idea generated by the desire for safety. Dispersed money cannot be stolen so easily all at once. Besides, subtle concealment has a secret attraction for this sort of person, and capital tucked away in a warm nest, even if it comes no nearer to hatching, is often more attractive than some other sort which, though hatching dutifully every year, lies in the open where it is more easily exposed to a watchful eye, whether of the righteous or the unrighteous. What I have called concealment behind the cornice might also have been a burial on the upper floor, since money, and especially gold, as we know, has a way of moving. The golden rain is going to fall this time past the gold scales and the 'save-all' on to an old Danae's humped back, which no doubt is better acquainted with other burdens, with the attentions of the small crutch and the old man's hail of words, than with this type of rain. This poor domestic animal which not so long ago in Germany, on account of its honest face, would have been treated as fuel, is here carrying an armful of faggots. A new wind is blowing. The present regime has decreed, as one sees, that there should be a fire in the fireplace where under the previous regime the air was always in conformity with the season outside. From now on money is no longer to be counted out with stiff fingers. However, gold is still moving slowly here, and there is still no Scottish coal. An elegant and typically London grate, which should properly be fed only with such coal, is about to be replenished with rural fare, with remnants of hop poles and palings (196-197).

A Rake's Progress: Plate 1: Papers

Documents spill from the deceased Rakewell’s hoardings.

A Rake's Progress: Plate 1: Papers

Shesgreen

Scattered carelessly around Tom’s feet lies the miser’s paper wealth: “India Bonds,” “Mortgages,” “Fines & Recoverys,” “Lease & Release,” and “This Indenture.” A strongbox with a triple lock holds silver plate and money; it contains three sacks labeled “1000,” “2000,” “3000” (28).

A Rake's Progress: Plate 1: Papers

Dobson

In the first plate “Tom Rakewell” (the name, Lichtenberg points out, is as appropriate to the penurious father as to the prodigal son) has entered suddenly upon his inheritance. In a jumble of leases, bonds, and the miscellaneous hoardings of avarice, he is being measured for his mourning (41).

A Rake's Progress: Plate 1: Papers

Lichtenberg

documents of parchment and paper, inventories, savings, IOUs, rent contracts and shares with content of great import roll to the feet of their liberator, flutter around his ankles and crawl under his shoes (191).

A Rake's Progress: Plate 1: Picture

The elder Rakewell’s sole work of art consists of a portrait of himself engaged in his favorite activity—counting money.

A Rake's Progress: Plate 1: Picture

Shesgreen

The room is without decoration except for a picture of the miser himself who sits with a pair of scales in his hand (a comic reference to the scales of justice) counting money. Even in his portrait he wears his hat (now on the mantle beside the candlestick and candlesaver) and overcoat to avoid burning a fire. Money fearfully secreted in the ceiling spills down on his portrait (28).

A Rake's Progress: Plate 1: Picture

Paulson, Hogarth's Graphic Works

The dead father appears in the portrait over the fireplace (identified by the same fur cap that lies on the mantel), "raking in" gold (161).

A Rake's Progress: Plate 1: Picture

Uglow

The portrait above shows Tom’s father “raking” it in (244).

A Rake's Progress: Plate 1: Picture

Lichtenberg

She lives here in his portrait above the fireplace, and in his dirty deeds throughout the whole room: everything that is going on here, one might say, still moves in him and through him. The portrait is excellently placed, and how subtly has Hogarth indicated by a small touch, which at first seems quite unimportant, that this is in fact a likeness of the old man! (195).

A Rake's Progress: Plate 1: Sarah

Already, Rakewell’s crimes are explicitly sexual, as his lover (Sarah Young) appears with her mother, weeping and pregnant, in possession of his letters which assuredly promise honorable intentions. Shesgreen sees Sarah as another representation of middle class values, this time of "good nature, patience and loyalty" (28).

A Rake's Progress: Plate 1: Sarah

Shesgreen

Already Tom’s past is troubling him. Sarah Young, a sentimental representative of middle-class good nature, patience and loyalty—everything that Tom is not—has been seduced at the university, in part by promises of marriage; in her drooping hand she holds a ring; and her mother carries love letters from Tom (“To Mrs. Sarah Young” and “Dearest Life . . . & marry you”). Pregnant, she comes to Tom with her mother who confronts Tom with animal fierceness (she resembles in expression the cat by the strongbox). Tom, a childish-faced person, callously tries to buy the mother off with his newly acquired wealth as he postures to permit the tailor to continue his work without interruption (28).

A Rake's Progress: Plate 1: Sarah

Paulson, Hogarth's Graphic Works

The group around young Rakewell consists of the pregnant girl, Sarah Young, with a wedding ring, and her irate mother holding letters in her apron: "To Mrs Sarah Young in Oxford" (presumably where he was attending the University) and "Dearest Life . . . & marry you." Confronted with the consequences of his affair, Rakewell is buying her off with his father's money (161-162).

A Rake's Progress: Plate 1: Sarah

Uglow

his doorway frames a weeping country girl holding a wedding ring, while her angry mother carries and apronful of letters and false promises. But Sarah Young, the seduced girl, is far from an insignificant nobody. Out of mind and sight while Tom is surrounded by sycophants or passing out in a brothel, she appears again as soon as he is down on his luck, finding money when he is arrested, trying to stop his marriage, collapsing at his suffering in the Fleet and comforting him in Bedlam. Indeed in the paintings, as compared to the reversed images of the prints, Sarah seems to frame the whole story. Her weeping figure on the left of the first painting is the first form we see, and the same figure, with her handkerchief to her eyes, is also the last as she kneels beside Tom’s collapsed body on the right of the final picture. At the beginning she weeps for herself; at the end she weeps for him. Sarah may be a fool to stick so loyally to this heartless loser, but she is also a nobody who gains dignity by suffering so selflessly for love (246).

A Rake's Progress: Plate 1: Sarah

Ireland

The figure of the young woman with a wedding-ring is not alluring, neither is her face attractive; but her being pregnant, and accompanied by her mother with an apron full of letters, gives her a claim to out pity, as it clearly intimates that this is meant as a visit to entreat the promised hand of her seducer; but he violates every former protestation, refuses her marriage, and attempts by a bribe to he a release from the obligation. Her mother violently reproaches him for his conduct, and invokes the curses of offended Heaven upon his falsehood (126-127).

A Rake's Progress: Plate 1: Sarah

Dobson

he himself begins badly by casting off the poor girl (his bedmaker’s daughter) whom he has ruined while at Oxford (41).

A Rake's Progress: Plate 1: Sarah

Lichtenberg

The girl's name is Sarah Young. This we gather from the considerable collection of love letters which the mother is carrying in her apron there. The romance must have been long, or at least carried on very ardently. All that can be read of it is, first, the Oxford address, then the formula 'Dearest Life', a mere praemissis praemittendis instead of Sir, or My Lord, and finally, 'to marry you'. The artist has expressed the rest by empty space; in the originals the words were evidently of similar weight. Thus the rascal has promised the girl marriage. One sees, in fact, a ring in her hand, which she had evidently held up to him with outstretched arm to remind him, by this also, of his promise. But—it was too late to have any effect, and so the arm sank down limp against the body so faithlessly abandoned. The apron full of bills of exchange which that fellow had formerly drawn upon his heart in his own handwriting, he is now since the heart has refused payment, anxious to honour with his purse and he offers her, together with the protest, a handful of guineas. 'I am sorry my dear ("dearest life") to see you in other circumstances, but then so am I as you can see. Here is something for your trouble and kindness There are more young chaps in Oxford—You never know—Just take that If you don't want it—very well then, I'll give it to the lawyer and then you won't get a thing.'—Something like that must have issued from the little open mouth. However, the money is spurned; at least by the daughter--or her all is over. She is as little likely to grasp the money as would a marble statue m church, weeping over the um of a Saint, grasp the tip intended for the sexton who is explaining the tomb to the sightseers The mother, though very much in the flesh, perhaps even too much so also refuses it. Fists clenched like hers and supported by such a face do not accept money; still less does such an elbow, the very image of repulsion You scoundrel, is it on these scales that you weigh my daughter's honour?', she demands, and to judge from her furious look and her whole attitude, probably accompanies the question with a little storm of blessings and good wishes which for once, to the satisfaction of morals and virtue will be punctually brought to consummation. Three of that woman's fingers out of the four which are visible are adorned with rings Perhaps she has put them on specially for the purpose of this visit, whose outcome was unpredictable, so as to show that they were not so destitute as to come for the money's sake (192-193).

A Rake's Progress: Plate 1: Sarah's Mom

This is Sarah’s mother. Already, Tom’s crimes are explicitly sexual, as his lover (Sarah Young) appears with her mother, weeping and pregnant, in possession of his letters which assuredly promise honorable intentions. Shesgreen sees Sarah as another representation of middle class values, this time of "good nature, patience and loyalty" (28).

A Rake's Progress: Plate 1: Sarah's Mom

Shesgreen

Already Tom’s past is troubling him. Sarah Young, a sentimental representative of middle-class good nature, patience and loyalty—everything that Tom is not—has been seduced at the university, in part by promises of marriage; in her drooping hand she holds a ring; and her mother carries love letters from Tom (“To Mrs. Sarah Young” and “Dearest Life . . . & marry you”). Pregnant, she comes to Tom with her mother who confronts Tom with animal fierceness (she resembles in expression the cat by the strongbox). Tom, a childish-faced person, callously tries to buy the mother off with his newly acquired wealth as he postures to permit the tailor to continue his work without interruption (28).

A Rake's Progress: Plate 1: Sarah's Mom

Paulson, Hogarth's Graphic Works

The group around young Rakewell consists of the pregnant girl, Sarah Young, with a wedding ring, and her irate mother holding letters in her apron: "To Mrs Sarah Young in Oxford" (presumably where he was attending the University) and "Dearest Life . . . & marry you." Confronted with the consequences of his affair, Rakewell is buying her off with his father's money (161-162).

A Rake's Progress: Plate 1: Sarah's Mom

Ireland

The figure of the young woman with a wedding-ring is not alluring, neither is her face attractive; but her being pregnant, and accompanied by her mother with an apron full of letters, gives her a claim to out pity, as it clearly intimates that this is meant as a visit to entreat the promised hand of her seducer; but he violates every former protestation, refuses her marriage, and attempts by a bribe to he a release from the obligation. Her mother violently reproaches him for his conduct, and invokes the curses of offended Heaven upon his falsehood (126-127).

A Rake's Progress: Plate 1: Sarah's Mom

Lichtenberg

The girl's name is Sarah Young. This we gather from the considerable collection of love letters which the mother is carrying in her apron there. The mother, though very much in the flesh, perhaps even too much so also refuses it. Fists clenched like hers and supported by such a face do not accept money; still less does such an elbow, the very image of repulsion You scoundrel, is it on these scales that you weigh my daughter's honour?', she demands, and to judge from her furious look and her whole attitude, probably accompanies the question with a little storm of blessings and good wishes which for once, to the satisfaction of morals and virtue will be punctually brought to consummation. Three of that woman's fingers out of the four which are visible are adorned with rings Perhaps she has put them on specially for the purpose of this visit, whose outcome was unpredictable, so as to show that they were not so destitute as to come for the money's sake (192-193).

A Rake's Progress: Plate 1: Tailor

A tailor measures Tom, possibly for his mourning, possibly for the fine wardrobe that his new wealth will afford him.

A Rake's Progress: Plate 1: Tailor

Dobson

the first plate “Tom Rakewell” (the name, Lichtenberg points out, is as appropriate to the penurious father as to the prodigal son) has entered suddenly upon his inheritance. In a jumble of leases, bonds, and the miscellaneous hoardings of avarice, he is being measured for his mourning (41).

A Rake's Progress: Plate 1: Rake

Our introduction to Tom Rakewell is after the death of his miserly father. To rebel, young Rakewell adopts the licentiousness of the Restoration and slides easily into aristocratic decadence. Already, his crimes are explicitly sexual, as his lover (Sarah Young) appears with her mother, weeping and pregnant, in possession of his letters which assuredly promise honorable intentions.

A Rake's Progress: Plate 1: Rake

Shesgreen

He shows no sign of grief at his father’s death (28).

A Rake's Progress: Plate 1: Rake

Paulson, Hogarth's Graphic Works

Hogarth's second "Progress" is of the wealthy bourgeois who tries to ape the aristocratic rake, beginning with the fashionable seduction and abandonment of a girl--all this being at the furthest extreme from the Rake's father, who amassed his money by hoarding. In P1. 1 Hogarth contrasts the father and the son as Pope contrasts Old and Young Cotta in his Epistle to Bathurst (11. 177-218; publ. 1733; see also Tatler No. 249). Even the name "Rakewell" underlines Hogarth's point—as Stephens points out (BM Sat.), it is a name appropriate to both father and son. The dead father appears in the portrait over the fireplace (identified by the same fur cap that lies on the mantel), "raking in" gold. Hoadly's verses under the print, perhaps with Pope's lines in mind, emphasize the miserliness of the father and suggest that the spend-thrift son follows as a consequence and punishment (161).

A Rake's Progress: Plate 1: Rake

Uglow

But Hogarth’s Tom Rakewell is no Lovelace, no dashing blade, conquering fashion, decoying women and terrorizing the town with nonchalant, demonic arrogance. He is young bourgeois, first seen as a trembling youth with a fresh face haloed in curls, attractive, open, innocent—and weak. Like Moll, Tom is less a seducer than an outsider who is himself seduced, ruined and killed by the city. He imitates the rakes but can never be one of them, not because his money runs out but because at every state he is also shown as a man of feeling, who rails against fate and descends into madness. In the fiery dark of the city, aspiring to beauty but sinking into filth, Tom Rakewell could even be seen as a fallen “flying man”, a prototype of the Romantic hero.

Although he follows a man’s path, buying art, fighting, gambling and whoring, to a large extent Tom is a curiously passive, feminine figure. In Hogarth’s hands, the situation of his Harlot and Rake have shadowy similarities; most of all, they are dangers to themselves. The higher Tom aims and the more he spends, the faster and deeper he galls, spirally inexorably from debt to the desperate remedies of loveless marriage and hopeless gambling, down to the prison and the madhouse floor. This reads like another brusque moral tale of the wages of sin, the hardworking bourgeois taking puritan revenge on the idle rich (244).

Tom, by contrast, like his father before him, makes the mistake of thinking that cash can replace love.

From the moment he tries to buy off the pregnant Sarah we know that he is doomed. Hogarth believed that individual natures were formed by upbringing, and their expectations by society, but he never accepted that his deprived them of freedom altogether. Moll is shown poised between the dark-walled world of the bawd and the open sky above the city washerwoman; Tom is poised between his money chests and Sarah Young, carrying his child. Both make their choices (246).

A Rake's Progress: Plate 1: Rake

Ireland

The first print most forcibly contrasts two opposite passions,--the unthinking negligence of youth, and the sordid avaricious rapacity of age. It brings into one point of view what Mr. Pope so exquisitely describes in his Epistle to Lord Bathurst:

It represents a young man taking possession of a rich miser’s effects, and is crowded with the monuments of departed avarice (124).

A Rake's Progress: Plate 1: Rake

Dobson

the first plate “Tom Rakewell” (the name, Lichtenberg points out, is as appropriate to the penurious father as to the prodigal son) has entered suddenly upon his inheritance. In a jumble of leases, bonds, and the miscellaneous hoardings of avarice, he is being measured for his mourning (41).

A Rake's Progress: Plate 1: Rake

Quennell

More loosely constructed than the previous series [A Harlot’s Progress], the story of Tom Rakewell is even more richly illustrated with references to the contemporary scene; and once he has introduced us to his awkward her, recently arrived from Oxford and endeavouring at the same time to take stock of his patrimony, ward off Sarah and her indignant mother, and get himself measured for a new suit, he shows us Rakewell holding his levée amid a crowd of hangers-on, who represent the various aberrations of modern taste and sportsmanship. The Man of Fashion is also a connoisseur; and it was against the vices and follies of individual human beings, that Hogarth frequently delivered his most enthusiastic diatribes. Many of his satires belong as much to the history of taste as to the study of morals and manners; and Rakewell the misguided Patron of Art is at least as important as Rakewell the dissolute frequenter of the demi-monde. Kent and other æsthetic adversaries raise their formidable heads again. The Signior may have decorated his rooms, and advised Rakewell on his choice of pictures. The “Judgement of Paris”, hung between portraits of fighting cocks, has clearly come from Italy; and a musician, seated at the harpsichord, is turning the pages of a foreign opera. Meanwhile, a group of clients contend for his interest. Charles Bridgeman, the celebrated landscape gardener, and forerunner in that field of Kent, Repton and “Capability” Brown, lurks disconsolately just behind him; but a French dancing-master minces gaily forward, and Dubois, a well-known French duelist, who is watched with sulky disdain by James Figg, the English prize-fighter, champion of broad-sword, cudgel and quarterstaff, makes a fierce lunge into the empty air. A jockey displays the cup won by “Silly Tom” at Newmarket; and a professional bully, clapping his hand on his heart, offers his experienced services as Rakewell’s private body-guard (127-129).

A Rake's Progress: Plate 1: Rake

Lichtenberg

The occasion which Hogarth has chosen for the first Plate is immediately after the old man's death, when the young gentleman has for the first time obtained free access to the departed's Holiest of Holies, I mean his treasures and his lumber, his Lombard and his Archives (for it has something of all these four). At least it cannot be long since he who had tucked so much away here has been tucked away himself, for they are only just beginning to mourn him. Here he stands now, our hero, Thomas Rakewell, with a youthful, still healthy but rather empty face; obviously more dupe than fripon one would say, to judge only from the head; but vis-à-vis those two women the matter looks somewhat different. Duo cumfacient idem, non est idem. The story is as follows: the young fellow comes from Oxford where he had carried on and had done everything that in Universities goes under the general term, 'studying'. With the call of the Last Trumpet summoning the parchments, there arrived also a couple of aprons with documents, more properly speaking with opuscula academica. They are both portrayed here. One of them belongs to a mother and the other to her daughter. The former, as we can see, really contains manuscripts, and the latter, to which the mother points, covers the forms to which they refer, and in particular an important outline from which may evolve in the end a Rakewell III in lima directa. The poor and, as we shall see, extremely good-natured, honest and sincere creature who stands there crying near the door had been got into trouble through the 'studies' of our good-for-nothing. The girl's mood is well brought out. What is not altogether pleasing is that she is already oldish, and could and should be more beautiful; but the delineation of beauty was never the object of its analyser. She is crying in the proper sense of the word, when the most intense pain and the highest degree of inner suffering seek rather than find alleviation in tears. Her face is not childishly distorted, but relaxed and disfigured as if by the onset of a deadly disease. Oh! how much is going on in that wounded heart. The scoundrel! (191-192)