A Rake's Progress: Plate 2
1735
12 3/16” X 15 1/4” (H X W)
Etched and Engraved by Hogarth after his painting.
View the full resolution plate here.
Derek Jarrett sees Rakewell’s “real turning point” (England 192) here in Plate II, where he rejects the traditional clothing of his father for the current French fashions. He was being measured by a tailor in the previous plate for the latest stylish clothes on which he will spend his late father’s carefully hoarded money. Here he is outfitted in the result.
Tom is surrounded by an interesting crowd. He consults with a figure consistently identified as an assassin for a purpose never identified in the series. The figure next to this austere gentleman has been alternately identified as a musician or a frustrated huntsman futilely blowing his horn. A jockey displays the trophy that Tom’s horse, “Silly Tom,” has won. A fencing master demonstrates his skill as does a dancing master. The two Englishmen, fighter James Figg and gardener Charles Bridgeman, are pushed to the back of the crowd. Handel plays the score of a new opera at the harpsichord, and Rakewell’s name appears at the end of a long scroll of donors to the wildly famous castrato, Farinelli.
Another indictment of his character is his poor taste in art; he places The Judgment of Paris between pictures of gamecocks, ostensibly his own fighting chickens. Paris’s decision to choose among the goddesses was the downfall of Troy, and Rakewell’s problematic choices likewise have larger implications. He succumbs to the feminizing and foreign influences presented here, wasting money on gambling, racehorses and lavishing gifts upon celebrities.
A Rake's Progress: Plate 2
Shesgreen, Sean. Engravings by Hogarth. (1973)
Tom’s transition from a bourgeois life to an aristocratic one, prodigal and inappropriate, is complete. The miser’s dreary room has been replaced by a grand house, bright, spacious and fully appointed; here, at his morning reception, Tom receives—not his noblemen peers—but commercial people, each representing a separate aristocratic vice, affectation or entertainment.
In the center of these tradesmen stands Tom, dressed in a fashionable morning gown, giving his attention to a professional assassin; in his hand he holds a letter reading, “Sr. the Capt. is a Man of Honour. his Sword may Serve you Yrs. Wm. Stab.” The grim-faced mercenary stands with one hand on his weapon and the other over his heart in an affectedly earnest profession of honor. Beside him a huntsman, one hand wearily in his pocket, sounds his horn impatiently. Below the rake a jockey displays a trophy won by his master’s horse inscribed, “Won at Epsom/ Silly Tom.”
On the left a French dancing instructor and a fencing master perform ostentatiously before their employer. In contrast to their artificial vivacity two stolid Englishmen stand in the background; both wear defeated looks on their faces that signal a consciousness of the disadvantages of their position in the presence of voguish foreign competition. At the harpsichord a figure (perhaps Handel) plays “The Rape of the Sabines. a New Opera.” The “Performers” are famous contemporary foreigners. “Romulos Sen: Fari[nel]li I Ravisher Sen: Sen[esi]no 2 Ravisher Sen: Car[esti]ne 3 Ravisher Sen: Coz-n Sabine Women Senra: Str-dr. Senra: Ne-gr * Senra: Ber[tol]le.” Hogarth’s title, The Rape of the Sabines, is hit at the paradoxical combination of castrati and promiscuous women in the cast.
Behind the harpsichordist’s chair another testament to the rake’s taste for the foreign reads, “A List of the rich Presents Signor Farinelli the Italian Singer Condescended to Accept of ye English Nobility & Gentry for one Nights Performance in the Opera Artaxerses—A pair of Diamond Knee Buckles Presented by --- A Diamond Ring by --- A Bank Note enclosed in a Rich Gold Case by --- A Gold Snuff box Chace’d with the Story of Orpheus Charming ye Brutes by T: Rakewell Esq: 100[£] 20[0£] 100 [£].” On the floor at the dancing master’s feet lies a title page inscribed, “A Poem dedicated to T. Rakewell Esq”; it pictures Farinelli on a pedestal before a group of women crying in homage, “One G-d, one Farinelli”; two hearts burn below the singer.
In the wing, another passel of tradesmen wait; they include a milliner, tailor, wigmaker and a poet (who tries to separate himself from the commercial people). The Judgment of Paris, a technically inept picture of foreign manufacture passed off on the rake as a masterpiece, is surrounded tastelessly by pictures of the rake’s gamecocks (29).
*Cuzzoni, Strada and Negri.
A Rake's Progress: Plate 2
Paulson, Ronald. Hogarth’s Graphic Works. (1965)
CAPTION:
Prosperity, (with Horlot's smiles,
Most pleasing, when she most beguiles,)
How soon. Sweet foe, can all thy Train
Of false, gay, frantick, loud & vain,
Enter the unprovided Mind,
And Memory in fetters bind;
Load faith and Love with golden chain,
And sprinkle Lethe o're the Brain!
Pleasure on her silver Throne Smiling comes, nor comes alone;
Venus moves with her along,
And smooth Lyaeus, ever young;
And in their Train, to fill the Press,
Come apish Dance, and swolen Excess,
Mechanic Honour, vicious Taste,
And fashion in her changing Vest.
From the scroll on the floor and the roll under the poet's arm we learn that the Rake's name is "T. Rakewell." The scene is his morning levee (his nightcap is still on his head); he has become a man of the town, surrounded by rapacious hangers-on (already hinted at in the thieving steward). The landscape gardener holding a "Garden plan" is supposed to be Charles Bridgeman (d. 1738), a member of the Burlington group and gardener to both George I and George II; he advised Pope on his garden at Twickenham, planned the park at Stowe, began the replanning of Kensington Gardens for Queen Caroline, and was responsible for the introduction of the ha-ha into English landscape gardening (see Biog. Anecd., 1782, p. 177).
The harpsichord is marked "I. Mahoan Fecit" (Joseph Mahoon was harpsichord-maker to the king). The musician at the harpsichord may (as Trusler claimed, p. 27) be intended for Handel himself, who was famous in his younger days for performances on the harpsichord in fashionable drawingrooms (N. Flower, George Frideric Handel, New York, 1948, p. 108). At this time Handel was fighting for survival against the rival company at the King's Theatre directed by Niccola Porpora, but while the inscriptions surrounding him could contain an ironic reference to the setbacks he was suffering, they are more likely an attempt to generalize Handel and Porpora into one figure. The score on the harpsichord is "The Rape of the Sabines, a New Opera." The "Performers" are:
Romulos | Sen: Fari[nel]li
1 Ravisher | Sen: Sen[esi]no
2 Ravisher | Sen: Car[esti]ne
3 Ravisher | Sen: Coz—n [Senora Cuzzoni]
Sabine Women | Senra Str—dr [Strada]
Senra Ne—gr [Negri]
Senra Ber[tol]le
Carestini and Strada were Handel's singers, the others having deserted him for Porpora; Farinelli was Porpora's recent discovery. Hogarth's imaginary opera plays upon the irony of eunuchs as "ravishers" (rapists and causes of rapture) and of notoriously loose sopranos as Sabine "virgins." Cuzzoni figures as a ravisher because of her great popularity (Cf. Masquerades and Operas, Cat. No. 34). The long scroll reads:
A List of the rich Presents Signor Farinelli the Italian Singer Condescended to Accept of yr English Nobility & Gentry for one Nights Performance in the Opera Artaxerses—A pair of Diamond Knee Buckles Presented by ——— A Diamond Ring by ——— A Bank Note enclosed in a Rich Gold Case by ——— A Gold Snuff box Chac'd with the Story of Orpheus charming ye Brutes by T: Rakewell Esq: 100l 20[ol.] 100[l.].
At the end of the scroll lies an engraving of Carlo Broschi, called Farinelli, on a pedestal being worshipped, and with two hearts burning at his feet. Ladies are crying "One G-d one Farinelli." This is the engraved title page of "A Poem dedicated to T. Rake-well Esq." Farinelli (1705-82), the great castrato soprano, made his triumphant English debut on October 29, 1734 in Hasse's Artaxerxes and was showered with gifts. While his salary was £1,500 a year, his income was closer to £5,000 (R. A. Streatfeild, Handel, London, 1909, p. 135). In 1737 he departed, intending to return the next season, but he was persuaded instead to go to Madrid and sing four arias from Artaxerxes each night to the King of Spain at £3,000 a year. "One God, one Farinelli" is said to have been uttered by a lady at a public entertainment to express her rapture at Farinelli's singing (Daily Journal, June 6, 1735, a sonnet "on a Raptur'd Lady"). According to Horace Walpole's MS note in his copy of Biographical Anecdotes (Lewis Coll.), she was Lady Rich (née Elizabeth Griffith, c. 1692-1773), a well-known patroness of operas.
The painting on the wall of The Judgment of Paris shows that Rakewell has been sold a "dark picture" and become a connoisseur, as well as implying the analogy between his situation among these people and Paris' among the goddesses, and the terrible consequences of both choices.
Sporting activities are also engrossing Rakewell. On either side of The Judgment of Paris are the cocks he fights at Newmarket, and a jockey is kneeling with a trophy that one of Rakewell's racing horses, “Silly Tom" (its master's namesake), has "Won at Epsom." A man blows a horn used for calling hounds to the chase. Next to Rakewell sword drawn, is a hireling "man-of-honor"; the letter in Rakewell's hand reads, “Sr the Capt is a Man of Honour, his Sword may Serve you yrs Wm Stab" (i.e. if Rakewell needs to fight a duel). And the rest of the group is made up of Rakewell's French dancing master, violin in hand and his quarter-staff and fencing masters. The fencing master was one Dubois; he had been run through by an Irishman of the same name and profession on May 10, 1734, and died twelve days later (Daily Post May 11, 1734; Grub-street Journal, May 16). The quarter-staff player has traditionally been identified as James Figg the prizefighter; cf. the portrait painted by John Ellis and engraved in mezzotint by John Faber (1729). (See Biog. Anecd., 1782, pp. 177-78. For Figg, see also Cat. Nos. 128 and 131, and the Ticket for James Figg, p. 313.) The cocks may be an allusion to Rubens' Cock and Pearl (Aachen).
In the room through the archway we see a woman with a box who is probably a milliner, a tailor with a new coat on his arm, and an old poet with a roll of paper, reading "Epistle to Rake ..." (162-163)
A Rake's Progress: Plate 2
Uglow, Jenny. Hogarth: A Life and a World. (1997)
The second scene shows him, still in his nightcap, receiving a host of hangers-on at his morning levee. John Hoadly’s verses for the print stressed the way that the spiritual poverty and loss of mental freedom illustrated here must lead to Tom’s final fetters. His own wealth provides the chains:
Prosperity (with Harlot’s smiles,
Most pleasing when she most beguiles,)
How soon, Sweet foe, can all thy Train
Of false, gay, frantick, loud & vain,
Enter the unprovided Mind,
And Memory in fetters bind;
Load faith and Love with golden chain,
And sprinkle Lethe o’re the Brain!
This scene is the one in which Hogarth catered most to his gossipy, portrait-hunting readers; de delayed finishing his paintings so that he could add more well-known figures in 1734. The outer room is crowded with tailors and milliners and poets with their offerings, while Tom holds court beneath a Judgement of Paris (another omen of false choice) foisted on him by the picture-dealers. The men clustered around him represent two different sides of the Rake’s life, one being that of smart London salons and the other that of the “bloods” who enjoy the old squierarchical pleasures of gaming cocks, racing, quarter-staff fighting and hunting. Tom is dabbling in all these, and winning at first, to judge by the rose bowl his jockey holds, but the solid English prize-fighter James Figg is being pushed into the background by a French fencing teacher. This was a portrait of Dubois, who died in May 1734 after a duel (oddly, with an Irishman of the same name), and Tom holds a note from “a man-of-honour”, a mercenary who will stand in if he has to fight a duel himself. Strains of violence underlie the outer show.
The fine (and expensive) taste of the Palladians is now shaping Tom’s world: the man holding a plan if Charles Bridgeman, a landscape gardener beloved by the Burlingtonians, gardener to the Royal Family, adviser to Alexander Pope at Twickenham and famous for the introduction of the “ha-ha”, that hidden ditch between the smooth pak and the wild country. The scene is the epitome of “politeness”, invisibly shielding culture from chaos. In the centre stands a smirking dancing master, pointing his well-shod toe, while a musician sits at a harpsichord marked “I, Mahoan”, (Joseph Mahoon, the maker of instruments for royalty). Tom is aiming high. In the painting, the music book bears the initials “F.H.”, for Frederic Handel, and the title makes it clear that his is the score of a new opera, The Rape of the Sabines. Discord is implied, not harmony, for Handel was currently engaged in a losing battle with the rival impresario and composer Nicola Antonio Porpora, who had just brought over the charismatic castrato Carlo Broschi, “Farinelli”. And all aficionados would get the joke against opera in general when they saw that in the long roll of the cast list, flung over the musician’s shoulder in the third and fourth states of the print, the parts of the “pure” virgins were given to scandal-laden sopranos, while the four “ravishers” were played by the rapacious Cuzzoni and the three castrati, Senesino Carestino, and Farinelli.
Fashionable women collected Farinelli’s portraits and busts, sent him love letters, screamed and fainted at his performances. Most famously, at one performance a rich patroness screamed the blasphemous tribute “One God, One Farinelli”—and this is inscribed on the engraved title page of the poem that lies on the floor, “dedicated to T. Rakewell Esq.”, showing a portrait of the singer o his pedestal. There was something strange and powerful about the sway Farinelli held over women by the sheer force of his art, and yet he was emasculated. He might look like an exploiter and a ravisher but his virility, like Tom’s, had been sacrificed to the fashionable taste.
Tom, too, is a victim on the altar of fashion. He wins an illusory popularity among his parasites but he loses his integrity—and his money. And what of the people not in this picture, the Sarah Youngs, the poor creditors and the artists and builders and caterers and musicians who furnish these gilded amusements? In 1737 :Hercules MacSturdy”, in a satire on Vauxhall pleasure-goers, was only one of those who pointed out that the indulgences of the rich (while in theory they fuelled the general economy) were all too often enjoyed at the expense of the poor, of the tradesman with their bills unpaid, whose children starved in consequence. His indictment of aristocratic carelessness has echoes both of Tom and of Moll’s rich benefactor:
Here sits my Lord, with the Best of Gold emboss’d,
And there his Tayor sighing for the Cost.
One month will see him to the Prison sent
Where, six months past, his Lordship’s Butcher went . . .
. . . No matter—tho he’s in the Butcher’s Brooks,
His Bills unpaid, not so his new French Cooks,
Besides my Lord, when he was to be paid,
Had lost six hundred pounds at the Masquerade,
Had given Farinelli fifty more
And laid out twenty on a Monkey for his Whore! (246-249).
A Rake's Progress: Plate 2
Ireland, John and John Nichols. Hogarth’s Works. (1883)
The sordid avarice of the wretched miser is in this print contrasted by the giddy profusion of his prodigal heir. The old man pined in the midst of plenty, starved while surrounded by abundance, and refused himself enjoyment of the absolute necessities of life from an apprehension of future poverty:
Not so his son; he mark’d this oversight,
And quite mistook reverse of wrong for right.
Three years have elapsed, and out giddy spendthrift, throwing of the awkwardness of a rustic, assumes the character and apes the manners of a modern fine gentleman. To qualify himself for performing the part, he is attended by a French tailor, a milliner, a Parisian dancing-master, a Gallic fencing master (one Dubois, a Frenchman, memorable for his high opinion of the science of defence, which he declared superior to all other arts and sciences united. On the 4th of May 1734, he fought a duel with an Irishman of his own name—and was killed.), an English prize-fighter (Figg, the famous prize-fighter, who raised himself to the pinnacle of the temple of fame by conquering a number of hardy Hibernians, before that time deemed invincible Under a print of his head is the following inscription: A FIG FOR THE IRISH), and a teacher of music (This has been generally said to be intended for Handel and bears a strong resemblance to his portrait.). Besides this crows of masters of arts, he has at his levee a blower of the French horn, an improver of gardens (Old Bridgeman, eminent for his taste in the plans of gardens and plantations. As he was a worshipper of the modern style, scorned the square precision of the old school, and attempted to “create landscape, to realize painting, and improve nature,” Hogarth might have given him a better design than that which he holds in his hand; it has all the regular formality that distinguishes the aquatic froggery of a Dutch burgonmaster: “Grove nods at grove, each alley has a brother,/ And half the platform just reflects the other.”), a bravo (A bravo is more properly an Italian than an English character; but even in England, the aid of an assassin may be useful, when a man dare not resent an affront in propria persona. This gunpowder hero being introduced, and evidently waiting for orders, seems covertly to imitate that Thomas Rakewell, Esq., in addition to his other excellent qualities, is a coward.), a jockey (On the silver cup which the jockey is presenting, we see inscribed, “Won at Epsom by Silly Tom.” Our sagacious esquire seems to have lent his own name to his favourite horse.), and a poet! the latter having written a panegyric in honour of this exalted character, already anticipates approbation and reward. Surrounded by such a multitude of attentive fiends and warm admirers, the dissolution of his fortune is inevitable; it must melt like snow beneath the solar beam.
How exactly does Bramston describe the character in his Man of Taste:
Without Italian, and without an ear,
To Bononcini’s music I adhere.
To boon companion I my time would give,
With players, pimps, and parasites I’d live;
I would with jockeys from Newmarket dine,
And to rough riders give my choicest wine.
My evenings all I would with sharpers spend,
And make the thief-taker my bosom friend;
In Figg the prize-fighter by day delight,
And sup with Colley Cibber every night.
On the back of the musician’s chair hangs a list of presents which Farinelli, an Italian singer, received the day after his performance of a favourite character at the Opera House. Among others, a gold snuff-box, chased with the story of Orpheus charming the brutes from T. Rakewell, Esq.
Another memento of musical extravagance is the frontispiece to a poem lying on the floor, and dedicated to Esquire Rakewell, in which the ladies of Great Britain are represented as sacrificing their hearts to this idol of sound, and crying out with great earnestness, One God, one Farinelli! This intimates the violent rage of the fashionable world for that most frivolous of all amusements, the Italian Opera. The taste which our prodigal has imbibed for the turf is pointed out by the jockey presenting a silver punchbowl, which one of his horses is supposed to have won; his passion for another royal amusement, by the portrait of two fighting-cocks, hung up as the ornaments of his saloon. A picture which he has placed between them bears a whimsical allusion; it is the “Judgment of Paris.” The figures in the background consist of such persons as are general attendants in the ante-chamber of a dissipated man of fashion. The whole is a high-wrought satire on those men of rank and fortune whose follies render them prey to the artful and rapacious.
Of the expression in this print we cannot speak more highly than it deserves. Every character is marked with its proper and discriminative stamp. It has been said by a very judicious critic (The Reverend Mr. Gilpin), from whom it is not easy to differ, without being wrong, that the hero of this history, in the first plate of the series, is unmeaning; and in the second, ungraceful. The fact is admitted; but, for so delineating him, the author is entitled to our praise rather than our censure. Rakewell’s whole conduct proves he was a fool, and at that time he had not learned how to perform an artificial character; he therefore looks as he is, unmeaning and uninformed. But in the second plate he is ungraceful—granted. The ill-educated son of so avaricious a father could not have been introduced into very good company; and though, by the different teachers who surround him, it evidently appears he wishes to assume the character of a gentleman, his internal feelings tell him he has not attained it. Under that consciousness, he is properly and naturally represented as ungraceful and embarrassed in his new situation.
The light, it must be acknowledged, is very ill distributed, and the figures most inartificially grouped. To infer from hence, with Mr. Gilpin, that the artist was at a loss how to group them, is not quite fair: his others compositions prove that he was not ignorant of the art, but in many of them he has been inattentive to it. In this he may have introduced in his print figures which were not inserted in the sketch, merely because they were appropriate to his story. The expression of the actors in his drama was always his leading object; composition he considered as secondary, and was little solicitous about their situation on the stage (128-132).
A Rake's Progress: Plate 2
Dobson, Austin. William Hogarth. (1907)
The next plate (The Levee) transforms the clumsy lad into an awkward man-of-fashion. His antechamber is thronged with milliners, wigmakers, tailors, and hatters. The “dealers in dark pictures” have equipped him as a connoisseur—witness the Judgment of Paris on the wall. A much bewigged musician is trying over “The Rape of the Sabines” at a harpsichord; a French hornplayer preludes noisily upon his instrument. He dabbles in Bridgeman’s landscape gardening, and maintains one poet, if not two. But the majority of the visitors at his reception are professors of those sterner arts which in 1732-5 no gentleman could be without. He must have his cocks at Newmarket, and his racers at Epsom, where his horse, “Silly Tom,” has won a cup. Essex must instruct him in dancing; Monsieur Dubois in the small sword; the great Figg himself in quarterstaff. And lest his proficiency in the two latter sciences should fail to save his skin, he must enlist the hireling “man-of-honour” who comes recommended by “Wm. Stab.” Roistering “blood” who finish their revels at the “Shakespear’s Head” or the “Rose” by broiling a waiter or “pinking” a chairman, sometimes require the aid of henchmen like the Captain, when their ingenious exploits fall flat among unsympathetic spectators (41-42).
A Rake's Progress: Plate 2
Quennell, Peter. Hogarth’s Progress. (1955)
In the engraved version of the second plate, Hogarth has inserted a long paper scroll, trailing across the carpet from the musician’s chair. It contains a list of valuable tributes recently offered by his admirers to the castrato singer Farinelli, the last item being, “a gold snuff-box, chased with the story of Orpheus charming the Brutes, from T. Rakewell, Esq.”. Near it lies an emblematic print which exhibits the virtuoso enthroned amid his feminine devotees, with the sacrilegious legend “One God, One Farinelli!”—words said to have been actually uttered by a “lady of distinction” during a crowded performance at the London opera-house. Rakewell holds the centre of the stage, in slippers and velvet cap and a rose-pink dressing-gown, magnificently frogged with gold and lined with tender sky-blue. His new-found dandyism, however, still fits him rather awkwardly; and he is probably more at ease exploring the primitive delights of the Covent Garden neighbourhood (129).
A Rake's Progress: Plate 2
Paulson, Ronald. Hogarth: His Life, Art and Times. (1971)
In the Rake’s Progress (1735) the early scenes imply mythological analogues, the second plate connecting the Rake’s choice with Paris’ and the third a brothel scene with a Feast of the Gods or a Bacchanal; the final scene in Bedlam shows the Rake in the arms of Sarah Young, in the pose of a Pietà (vol. 1 271)..
Plate 2, perhaps the Rake’s Progress in general, is Hogarth’s most Swiftean satire (vol. 1 332)
A Rake's Progress: Plate 2
Lichtenberg, G. Ch. Lichtenberg’s Commentaries on Hogarth’s Engravings. (1784-1796). Translated from the German by Innes and Gustav Herdan (1966)
This Chapter could well be entitled: 'The finishing touches.’ As we can see, the crude block which was sent to Oxford to be polished into Latin has already passed the coarse chisel, and comes now under the finer one. The bearing is still, of course, somewhat awkward, and the mouth still that of a lout; but in the former the line of beauty is not entirely lacking, and the latter is rattling on already over his shoulder, and that is much for so short a time. Soon everything will improve.
Our young gentleman has just risen, thrown on a light casaquin with gold tassels, put on some slippers and is holding his levee. But in order not to miss Aurora's genial influence, he snatches her last but most potent rays, I mean those that shine between 11 and 1, avidly and in all haste, and takes five lessons at once—in the French horn, the piano, fencing, dancing and pugilism. At the same time he attends to some important domestic business and, in general, gives audience.
Whatever the sceptic may say or think about this style of education, it certainly cannot be said to lack encyclopaedicity; nor is it, after all, so rare as one might think. One only has to look at it from the right angle. Hogarth, who in presenting the truth had to employ the language of pictures, could hardly have achieved his object otherwise if he wanted to express clearly what happens in many a scholar's head every day although invisibly, yet all the more encyclopaedically. A Jacob asleep is easily painted; if, however, one wants to paint him dreaming of the ladder to Heaven, I cannot see any other way out of the difficulty than, as in Weigel’s Illustrated Bible, to stand the ladder beside him let it lean upon the clouds above, and thus to let the angels climb it up and down What I really want to say is this: if many a head which appears to be silently following instruction were to be depicted with all the little angels that were occupying it at the time, and to whom it was giving audience the result would be not like Jacob's ladder, but—like Rakewell's Levee.
There are eight people in the Audience Chamber who enjoy the favour of his immediate presence, and behind are six others in limbo. Thus there are fourteen people altogether whom we shall now examine more closely for they really deserve it, and we shall identify them as far as we can.
The man in the (probably) dark brown overcoat with whom Rakewell is conversing and at the sight of whom it is almost impossible to avoid thinking of cannons or powder and lead, is a so-called Bravo a fire-eater, who against a small consideration strikes blows for others and occasionally, as we see from the plaster on his nose, receives them too The letter which Rakewell has in his hand is a letter of recommendation which that man has just handed to him, and whose content is as follows:
‘The Capt is a Man of Honour; his sword may serve you.’ ‘Are you the Captain?' Rakewell seems to ask. 'Yes,' is the reply; 'I, I am the man, upon which he puts his right hand to his sword, and his left upon what is assumed to be the seat of honour, in whose cause alone he would draw it, as well as the source of the courage and strength with which he would wield it once it was drawn. It is, however, worth noting that the letter is signed William Stab, which is about the equivalent of William Knife-thrust. From this one would be inclined to conclude that the Captain was a man who, to save his employers' honour, sometimes used other blades which were not quite so long as the one hanging by his side and not worn so low either, but somewhat nearer the seat of courage and below overcoats. Roucquet in his booklet finds fault with our artist for introducing this character here, since he is not an English type, but an Italian, and it seems to me Roucquet was right. In the peculiar character of the English nation there is nothing of the bandit, be he employer or employed, even in the lowest stratum of the people; though there are of course people everywhere who will do a special job for money on occasion But evidently Hogarth's meaning was not as sinister as all that He probably only wanted to say: the young fellow here in his nightcap and slippers counts poltroonery among his other manly virtues; his honour has recently received a blemish which must be erased by the sword and in such a predicament a Second who, for a small consideration, would do something special, or who in the guise of a father or guardian would take the whole matter upon himself, would indeed be of value. In a word our hero appears to have received from Nature, together with his womanish face, that charming need for protection of the defenceless sex, so that his heart is impressed by nothing more easily than by the insignia of protection and security, sash and ruff, together with whiskers. Thus the scene between Rakewell and the Jingo which at the first glance looked so bandit-like becomes at once a sort of marriage pact. Why should not two hearts of the same sex unite for protection and attack, and become one whole just as two of opposite sex unite for protection and love; deux courages comme deux coeurs? An interpreter must halt when he comes as far as this with a difficult locum—enough of it.
Behind the Bravo stands the French-horn player, with his left hand in his trouser pocket. The Captain's letter of recommendation is certainly enhanced by the heroic hunting call which the horn player produces Music acts on the relationship of souls like warmth on the physical body It expands and refines through expansion; those who had hitherto re- pulsed one another or had lain beside one another in lifeless contact be- gin to mingle their more subtle matter, and in the end the whole flows together. Marriages are made in Heaven, so they say; one should say— m Heaven, but if it does not come off there, in dance-halls and music-halls That horn-player is certainly drawn from Nature. Hogarth must have seen a man blowing his horn just like that, keeping his hand in his trousers, and having the lower part of his coat buttoned up to hide this Perhaps Hogarth did not know himself the reason for that attitude. But I remember having seen in my youth a horn-player standing just like that when he was blowing, and I knew for certain that he did so in order not to rupture himself. The purpose of the position of his hand was unmistakable; for if he altered it when playing piano, he would always return to it again at the next forte.
The man in the centre of the picture who seems about to parade before Rakewell in a sort of turkey strut with outspread tail is a French dancing- master of those days, and undoubtedly some grand and eccentric personage. As one can see, he is uplifted by the enthusiasm and the in- flammable temper of his nation, and only just touches the ground with his toes. Some consider the figure exaggerated, and wrongly drawn as well. But where is the dancing master, especially if he is, like this one, so utterly lost in the spiritual enjoyment of his own being, who would not occasionally exaggerate and draw himself wrongly? It may happen to a master of the language of gesture, as it happens to many masters of the Latin language: they can no longer express themselves naturally, through a surfeit of syntaxis ornata. That the left leg looks so utterly like a right one may be, partly, the fault of the chair which was less willing to yield to the fine, undulating lines of movement of his body or his dress than the air for which those movements were meant. The greater the refinement, the more easily can it be wrecked. Over a little straw which the normal pedestrian does not even feel, a dancing master may break his neck. This happy mortal (and that he is happy, everything in that beatific face declares that is capable of so doing; the eye closed to the outer world, and open merely to the images of Fancy, and ah! the little honey-mouth slit across with contentment), this happy mortal, I say, is executing bodily a pas frisé, which, however, his inner being, unencumbered by shoe and shoe-buckle, and under the purest form of never realized lines of beauty, contemplates with inexpressible satisfaction. What peace of soul! To be sure, Truth itself must be amazed when it sees here a pair of feet carrying their volatile possessor to the goal which he might have missed a dozen times, even with Wisdom's own head upon his shoulders.
Behind the dancing master stands Dubois, a French fencing master; a portrait. He is about to venture a lively pass with his rapier into the air, and therewith to challenge that opponent. The man is remarkable for his tragic end; on May 11, 1734, he was run through in a duel with an Irishman of the same name, also a fencing master; he walked home from the field of battle, but died a few days later from the wound he had received. Of course, the same name, the same profession, and such a profession as that, in one and the same town, may well have given rise to all kinds of bitter and offensive confusions and nicknames. Since they were both privileged dispensers of the specific remedy against offended honour, each prescribed it for the other in a brotherly fashion, and in this way the evil was happily removed, to their mutual advantage.
Although this man has here no adversary before him whose thrust he could parry, yet he has one behind him who casts at him such a glance as a world of Dubois could not parry, namely a glance of calm, quiet contempt based upon a clear consciousness of his own lofty superiority. This quiet adversary is the man behind there close to the wall, who with a pair of considerable cudgels under his arm looks more or less like a third himself. His name was Figg, and he was one of the greatest rowdies of his time, and without quibbling over words, really a great man. With his fist he could have felled an ox, and with his quarter-staff a whole menagerie of Dubois at one blow. This quiet combination of the British athlete and the French fencing master is certainly one of the happiest: the British firm, enduring oak opposite the trembling French aspen, the cudgel of Hercules beside the rapier, and the lion beside the crowing cock. How the strong-fisted Figg leans there against the wall and looks down upon the droll fencing solo of Dubois, with an expression on his broad, placid face which leads one to believe that not only is he man enough to cut Dubois in pieces, but that, should it be required of him, he would be quite prepared to devour them afterwards!
On Figg's left, and in conjunction with the Venus on the wall, stands the old landscape gardener, Bridgeman, with the plans of a garden which he is about to lay before Rakewell who, however, is much too occupied at present with the utile to pay much attention to the duke. This head, it seems to me, is clearly a portrait. How honest and genuine he looks! Perhaps the most honest person in the whole picture, and on that account he is being treated by the master of the house to his backside. A face like that is really an annuity, though, of course, by now nearing its end. In nature we could well imagine a little deafness or paralytic shaking of the head to go with it. The artist has been reproached for putting here into the hand of that famous beautifier of gardens and the first to banish from them the cold symmetry of the Dutch, a plan which bears witness to exactly the contrary. But how if it were just to indicate the young master's lack of taste; perhaps he has already turned down a better one, or what is still more probable, suppose Mr Bridgeman, who is evidently holding more than one plan here, wanted to put his employer to the test? But this is perhaps too far-fetched. For the purpose of a hieroglyph, the Dutch type is really more suitable than the English, and the description 'Garden Plan' was not so necessary here as it would have been under many a genuinely English one. Incidentally this excellent man is also said to have been the first to banish the topiary treatment of trees and hedges and to have invented the so-called Ha-ha's.
In front of our hero kneels a jockey who in his service and with his horses has won a heavy silver bowl which he here presents on his knees, probably because, on account of its great weight, this is the easiest way for him to hold it until his master has finished with his more important business. The father would perhaps have forgotten his immortal soul for the hundredth part of such a trophy. Upon the bowl itself are engraved the pictures of the horse and jockey. Above are the words 'Won at Epsom', and underneath 'Silly Tom', the name of the horse. This is the application which Hogarth makes of Rakewell's Christian name, to which we have alluded earlier. His horse is called Little Thomas, and so is he; it is ridden by other people to their advantage, and so is he; it would not allow that if it were cleverer, and suffers it merely because it is a bit silly, like him. By the word 'silly' the English denote good, simple-minded fellows with whom one can do what one likes, and who do not know how to look after themselves; thus are somewhat foolish. In some parts of Germany the Thomases are called by the common people Tumme. According to this. Silly Tom could be construed Dumme-Tumme, which does not sound unlike Dun-Don, the name of an excellent race-horse which the writer himself saw in October 1774 win against five or six others. Don denotes the breed and dun the colour. Whether in that name Silly Tom there is not perhaps the faint sound of 'filly', at least from afar, can only be decided by an English ear. Of course, 'filly' means a young mare, and thus does not suit the name Tom, but in horse-racing fillies are so often spoken of, and the name appears so often upon the programmes, so many fillies are running in a race, and the name is so often found on engravings that I have twice already known it happen that an Englishman trying to read that inscription read 'filly' at the first attempt, being misled by the picture of the horse. Nobody would readily imagine the name 'Silly' under the picture of an English race-horse, so noble and lovely a creature which, in the scale of animal perfection, activity, and sensibility, stands certainly a number of rungs higher than other horses, and sometimes than the master himself. The animal only seems to have been debased here somewhat by the artist for his master's moral instruction. But I shall cut short this tirade lest the word 'filly' should begin to resound in the reader's ear, at least from afar.
Rakewell keeps race-horses, and, as we see from the two portraits of combatants on the wall, fighting cocks as well. Were he in addition to distribute golden apples to such fighting hens as Paris on the wall there has before him, then the history of our young gentleman would become thoroughly intelligible. At the piano sits a man, no longer young apparently, and quite respectable-looking, from behind at least. He has before him the music of a new Opera, The Rape of the Sabines.
Upon the right-hand page stand the names of the actors, beginning with Romulus Sen. Far.—no doubt Signer Farinelli, a famous Bistoury-tuned singer of that time, of whom we shall hear more presently. Then follow the Ravishers, very funnily numbered like violinists: first, second, third Ravisher, with their abbreviated names following, in which surely no one is interested. What gives relish to this idea of Hogarth's is, first, that these terrible ravishers were probably all artificial sopranos, and second that in English the word 'ravish' has the secondary meaning of 'rape', whereas the German word expresses rather a forced abduction which might also lead to a happy ending. To an English ear, the expression would sound rather like, 'first Raper, second Raper', and so on. One might also think of a third meaning, but one which Hogarth would hardly have hit upon. Namely, 'to ravish' has in English the same meaning as ravir in French, to overpower with delight, and in this sense Farinelli with his voice was a great Ravisher and Rayisseur, especially of ladies' hearts, a quite definite expression of which we shall find upon this Plate. These were the ravishers, now come the Virgins: Signora Str . . . dr, Signora Ne.gr. and so on, although natural sopranos yet false virgins and great ravisseuses in more senses than one. They all belong to the well-known order of the Sabines who wander through Europe singing and, in addition, blackmailing the male sex into paying fines because of the lost innocence of their female forebears, which they requite with a miserable imitation of the unhappy story, and in the end carry everything back to the Agro Sabino.
From the pianist's chair-back hangs a long scroll covered with close writing. From a cursory glance one would almost take it for a petition addressed to somebody, and the assembled company as a Press Gang for obtaining subscribers to it. It is nothing of the kind, however, but something much more real, namely an inventory of presents made to the ravisher Farinelli, who at that time had almost acquired a ducal estate through his voice. It runs as follows:
‘A List of the rich Presents Signer Farinelli the Italian singer condescended to accept of the English Nobility and Gentry for one Night's Performance in the Opera Artaxerxes.
A Pair of Diamond Knee Buckles Presented by ... ;
A Diamond Ring by ...
A Bank Note enclosed in a Rich Gold Case by ...
A Gold Snuff Box Chased with the story of Orpheus charming the Brutes by T. Rakewell Esq.' (Bravo! So among the charmed brutes there was also an animal called 'Silly Tom').
These are merely the Pretiosa; now comes the cash money, first 100, then 200, and again 100, evidently guineas. The remainder is rolled up. Under the roll lies an engraving attached to a eulogy upon Farinelli, which the poet, according to the inscription, has dedicated to our Rakewell. Thus race-horses, fighting cocks, whores, and poets; they could get through something in a year.
The engraving itself represents Farinelli above an altar on which hearts are burning. Before it stand and kneel ladies who have brought burning hearts as an offering to him. A queer sacrifice for such a deity who could never properly understand the meaning of these night-lights. The High Priestess exclaims: 'One G-d, one Farinelli.' It is said that some lady in a fit of the then rampant Tarantism, enraptured by the singing of the castrate, shouted these words aloud from her Box in the Theatre. Such a creature would really have deserved the punishment of Midas; everything she touched ought to have been changed—into worshipped gold. However, all the ladies hold their hearts in their hands (one of them even grips hers at the top, right in the flame) and this circumstance makes the sacrifice understandable. They were mere Sunday hearts which some may even raise to Heaven without incommoding their real heart in the least. The satire is directed, as one sees, against the rage for Italian opera, and is therefore very proper, only not nearly sharp enough, and quite incommensurate with the genius of our artist. There is really nothing to choose between a strip of paper with writing hanging down from the back of a chair like a towel, or rising like tobacco smoke in front out of a mouth! If after a contemplation of these ingeniously drawn heads one happens on so heterogeneous a device, one has a curious sensation, almost as if (I beg pardon of the Fine Arts for this simile) with a substantial roast the gravy were to be read out of a cookery book.
But who now is the man sitting there in the chair, if the figure is in- tended to represent some one then living? Opinions on this are divided, even among the English interpreters, and no foreigner could decide it. It is certainly not Farinelli himself. To such a figure no young lady would sacrifice her heart, not even her Sunday one. It is impossible to find any in such a creature. Put whatever you like on the altar for them, marble or wood, but for goodness sake only youth, youth! And Farinelli as he sits over there in Heaven really seems to possess that, since even in the microscopic representation one can see that the head-gear is of a man not yet thirty. A fairly common interpretation is that the figure is our great countryman Handel. Trusler affirms this, and only a few weeks ago obtained a written assurance, supposedly based upon the statement of a man who claims to have known our artist personally, that it is indeed Handel. Nichols is against this, but he bases his opinion purely upon an argumentum a priori which Sir John Hawkins once expressed to him: 'Handel,' said Sir John, 'had far too high a sense of his own value ever to have put himself into such a position. That being so, the artist could hardly have had the idea of putting him into the picture. He must have meant some other composer of operas.' The same argument is repeated by Mr Ireland. Of course, it may well be that the figure is not Handel, and as the matter now stands, it will hardly be possible to decide it until Hogarth's own notes appear, which, as I see from the papers, are now said to have been found. But this much, I believe, can be said, that Sir John Hawkins's proof that it could not be Handel is no proof at all. It shows but a poor acquaintance with the spirit of satire in general, and Hogarth's in particular, to credit it with so much conscience. Handel's figure, which our artist and a thousand others may have seen more often from behind, seated at the piano, than from in front, may have appealed to him. And therefore, just because it was familiar to the public, it could stand as a sort of generally recognizable symbol for music, like Bridgeman's head for the art of Horticulture. I readily admit it would have been contemptible flippancy to have portrayed Handel's face in such a scene, but as it is—it is Handel's art which sits here and not Handel's noble and lofty character. The greater facility for depicting the likeness of a man in that position, combined with the probability that many must have seen him from that angle, deprives the idea of the character of a studied intention which alone could make it appear malicious. But if it is indeed Handel, then Hogarth has made ample amends, through the trailing manifesto, for whatever offence he might have given. 'To this man here', the inscription appears to say, 'is due what you, my country, are wasting on miserable sycophants. If you would reward a foreigner, at least reward him whose melodies do not enervate your manly feelings, but enhance them through their magic power, and incite you to deeds which are worthy of you. As to the others—
Give them brickbats for bread.'
So much for that figure if indeed it does represent Handel, and for the evidence that, despite Sir John Hawkins's opinion, it might represent him. However, that it really is Handel seems to me somewhat unlikely after all, since I have read that Handel was a big man and was specially remarkable for his large hands and thick fingers. Now for a brief glance into the ante-chamber.
The second complement for these morning hours is assembled there already, waiting for the bell to ring. A milliner waits with great resignation, listening to some man's rather violent remarks. From the gestures he makes with his hat we conclude that it is only a petty quarrel, possibly about precedence. He is afraid of being number six at the presentation. Had the girl not come, he might have been the fifth. He may be a shoemaker. Next to him, according to Gilpin, stands a French tailor, and beside him a French wig-maker; the one with a new evening suit upon his arm, the other with a new wig in the box. What a tailor compared with the village Theosoph who took the measure of the mourning suit! But then, this one here carries the garment for the festival day of resurrection in the great world. Just as the other smelt utterly of cobbler, this one here, despite some slight similarities in their faces, is every inch the titular Acting Counsellor. Evidently both tailor and wig-maker have made their way hither in a carriage. Who might that long figure be beside the mirror? It appears to be a creature on half-pay, or even an unemployed. He certainly has nothing to bring with him, except perhaps a few claims to benevolence, and he utilizes the isolation which he has to endure among these people for putting them into the best possible form. But now the poet! The poet with the Epistle to Rakewell in his hand! He who cannot taste and feel the bliss of that man who reads his own verse aloud, perhaps for the hundredth time, has certainly never been himself a begetter of verses, and consequently is a stranger to one of the greatest domestic joys with which Heaven has thought fit to brighten the lives of all those who write in rhythm and rhyme, whether in a garret or at Femey or Twickenham. Only see how tenderly and with what paternal joy he gazes on his beloved metric progeny, lisping childishly back to him. The right hand rests on his heart and begs it to bear witness to the truth of his feeling; hand and mouth do everything in their power, and so does the wig, for it is the very spit of the late Voltaire's. Did we not already know that Hogarth wrote verses, we might guess it from that lightly drawn poetaster's head. Otherwise he could not possibly have known that among all those in this world who offer sacrifices, the poet is the only creature who mirrors himself in his sacrificial wine, even at the moment when he pours it on the altar. However, what may seem difficult to anyone else is often easy for the genius. The best comfort in such depressing experiences is to believe that one has achievements of one's own which other honest people would find very difficult to attain, be it only the gift for writing such wise notes as these to interpret a caricature.
One the wall between the two fighting cocks hangs the Judgement of Paris. The arrangement of the pictures testifies to the owner's taste, or perhaps only his steward's, or maybe the steward was a sly fox and the fighting cocks are a subtle pass at poor Paris. Really the two animals stand there, one opposite the other, as if the three goddesses were three hens, and Paris as if he were another cock. Is this picture supposed to be a copy of the one in the possession of King Francis I, and which our Rakewell has been sold for the original? Francois I, Roi de France, avail un tableau, que l'on disait être sans défauts; il permit à toutl le monde de le venir considerér et ordonna qu'on lui fit parler tous ceux qui y trouveraient des défauts; ce tableau représentait Junon, Venus, Pallas et Paris, nus. Rabelais après l'avoir examiné longtemps, dit qu'il y trouvait un grand défaut de jugement: on le fit parler au Roi, qui lui demanda quel était ce défaut; il répondit à sa Majeste que Paris, étant au milieu des trois plus belles Déesses du Ciel, ne devait pas être représenté d'un si sang-froid, et que c'etait se tromper lourdement, que de penser que ce Prince, jeune et vigoureux, fût ainsi demeuré, sans donner quelque signe qu'il êtait homme, devant trois Déesses nues qui tachaient à l'envie de lui plaire.
That passage has been adopted by the anonymous interpreter of Hogarth, and Ireland has it from him. It may therefore stand here also. But how did it come about that neither of them remembered how their great fellow-countryman, Burke, solved the puzzle with the philosophical acuity so characteristic of him? The passage is in his Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, Part IV, Sect. 19, 7th Edition, p. 286, etc. One must read the passage there. If brought into juxtaposition with the one just quoted, it would give rise through affinity to a third, which by its form might do harm. Chemistry provides many similar examples, and Cupid upon the picture there is a clever Cupid.
On the front of the piano is the name of the instrument maker, and if I am not mistaken, for it is almost unreadable in the original, it is J. Makoon fecit. Probably this is another allusion to the owner's thriftlessness or lack of taste. The English interpreters are completely silent about such features, although it ought to have occurred to them that what would have been easy enough for them to ascertain at the time would be no longer so for posterity. Since Hogarth elected to engrave the name of an artist there, it is certain he must have chosen the best and most relevant for his story (202-214).
A Rake's Progress: Plate 2: Assassin
Tom consults with a figure consistently identified as an assassin for a purpose never identified in the series. We are never sure why he might need a second for a duel, but Tom’s status as a rake may make him the target of many attempting to protect the honor of their sisters, daughters and wives.
A Rake's Progress: Plate 2: Assassin
Shesgreen
In the center of these tradesmen stands Tom, dressed in a fashionable morning gown, giving his attention to a professional assassin; in his hand he holds a letter reading, “Sr. the Capt. is a Man of Honour. his Sword may Serve you Yrs. Wm. Stab.” The grim-faced mercenary stands with one hand on his weapon and the other over his heart in an affectedly earnest profession of honor (29)
A Rake's Progress: Plate 2: Assassin
Paulson, Hogarth's Graphic Works
Next to Rakewell ,sword drawn, is a hireling "man-of-honor"; the letter in Rakewell's hand reads, “Sr the Capt is a Man of Honour, his Sword may Serve you yrs Wm Stab" (i.e. if Rakewell needs to fight a duel) (163).
A Rake's Progress: Plate 2: Assassin
Ireland
Besides this crows of masters of arts, he has at his levee . . . a bravo (A bravo is more properly an Italian than an English character; but even in England, the aid of an assassin may be useful, when a man dare not resent an affront in propria persona. This gunpowder hero being introduced, and evidently waiting for orders, seems covertly to imitate that Thomas Rakewell, Esq., in addition to his other excellent qualities, is a coward.) (129).
A Rake's Progress: Plate 2: Assassin
Dobson
he must enlist the hireling “man-of-honour” who comes recommended by “Wm. Stab.” Roistering “blood” who finish their revels at the “Shakespear’s Head” or the “Rose” by broiling a waiter or “pinking” a chairman, sometimes require the aid of henchmen like the Captain, when their ingenious exploits fall flat among unsympathetic spectators (42).
A Rake's Progress: Plate 2: Assassin
Lichtenberg
The man in the (probably) dark brown overcoat with whom Rakewell is conversing and at the sight of whom it is almost impossible to avoid thinking of cannons or powder and lead, is a so-called Bravo a fire-eater, who against a small consideration strikes blows for others and occasionally, as we see from the plaster on his nose, receives them too The letter which Rakewell has in his hand is a letter of recommendation which that man has just handed to him, and whose content is as follows:
‘The Capt is a Man of Honour; his sword may serve you.’ ‘Are you the Captain?' Rakewell seems to ask. 'Yes,' is the reply; 'I, I am the man, upon which he puts his right hand to his sword, and his left upon what is assumed to be the seat of honour, in whose cause alone he would draw it, as well as the source of the courage and strength with which he would wield it once it was drawn. It is, however, worth noting that the letter is signed William Stab, which is about the equivalent of William Knife-thrust. From this one would be inclined to conclude that the Captain was a man who, to save his employers' honour, sometimes used other blades which were not quite so long as the one hanging by his side and not worn so low either, but somewhat nearer the seat of courage and below overcoats. Roucquet in his booklet finds fault with our artist for introducing this character here, since he is not an English type, but an Italian, and it seems to me Roucquet was right. In the peculiar character of the English nation there is nothing of the bandit, be he employer or employed, even in the lowest stratum of the people; though there are of course people everywhere who will do a special job for money on occasion But evidently Hogarth's meaning was not as sinister as all that He probably only wanted to say: the young fellow here in his nightcap and slippers counts poltroonery among his other manly virtues; his honour has recently received a blemish which must be erased by the sword and in such a predicament a Second who, for a small consideration, would do something special, or who in the guise of a father or guardian would take the whole matter upon himself, would indeed be of value. In a word our hero appears to have received from Nature, together with his womanish face, that charming need for protection of the defenceless sex, so that his heart is impressed by nothing more easily than by the insignia of protection and security, sash and ruff, together with whiskers. Thus the scene between Rakewell and the Jingo which at the first glance looked so bandit-like becomes at once a sort of marriage pact. Why should not two hearts of the same sex unite for protection and attack, and become one whole just as two of opposite sex unite for protection and love; deux courages comme deux coeurs? An interpreter must halt when he comes as far as this with a difficult locum—enough of it (203-204).
A Rake's Progress: Plate 2: Dancing Master
A fencing master demonstrates his skill as does this dancing master. His prominence in the plate, his ostentatious dress and exaggerated pose suggest Hogarth’s concern with foreign and feminizing influences.
A Rake's Progress: Plate 2: Dancing Master
Shesgreen
On the left a French dancing instructor and a fencing master perform ostentatiously before their employer. In contrast to their artificial vivacity two stolid Englishmen stand in the background; both wear defeated looks on their faces that signal a consciousness of the disadvantages of their position in the presence of voguish foreign competition (29).
A Rake's Progress: Plate 2: Dancing Master
Uglow
In the centre stands a smirking dancing master, pointing his well-shod toe (248).
A Rake's Progress: Plate 2: Dancing Master
Lichtenberg
The man in the centre of the picture who seems about to parade before Rakewell in a sort of turkey strut with outspread tail is a French dancing- master of those days, and undoubtedly some grand and eccentric personage. As one can see, he is uplifted by the enthusiasm and the in- flammable temper of his nation, and only just touches the ground with his toes. Some consider the figure exaggerated, and wrongly drawn as well. But where is the dancing master, especially if he is, like this one, so utterly lost in the spiritual enjoyment of his own being, who would not occasionally exaggerate and draw himself wrongly? It may happen to a master of the language of gesture, as it happens to many masters of the Latin language: they can no longer express themselves naturally, through a surfeit of syntaxis ornata. That the left leg looks so utterly like a right one may be, partly, the fault of the chair which was less willing to yield to the fine, undulating lines of movement of his body or his dress than the air for which those movements were meant. The greater the refinement, the more easily can it be wrecked. Over a little straw which the normal pedestrian does not even feel, a dancing master may break his neck. This happy mortal (and that he is happy, everything in that beatific face declares that is capable of so doing; the eye closed to the outer world, and open merely to the images of Fancy, and ah! the little honey-mouth slit across with contentment), this happy mortal, I say, is executing bodily a pas frisé, which, however, his inner being, unencumbered by shoe and shoe-buckle, and under the purest form of never realized lines of beauty, contemplates with inexpressible satisfaction. What peace of soul! To be sure, Truth itself must be amazed when it sees here a pair of feet carrying their volatile possessor to the goal which he might have missed a dozen times, even with Wisdom's own head upon his shoulders (205-206).
A Rake's Progress: Plate 2: Englishmen
Shesgreen
On the left a French dancing instructor and a fencing master perform ostentatiously before their employer. In contrast to their artificial vivacity two stolid Englishmen stand in the background; both wear defeated looks on their faces that signal a consciousness of the disadvantages of their position in the presence of voguish foreign competition (29).
A Rake's Progress: Plate 2: Englishmen
Paulson, Hogarth's Graphic Works
The landscape gardener holding a "Garden plan" is supposed to be Charles Bridgeman (d. 1738), a member of the Burlington group and gardener to both George I and George II; he advised Pope on his garden at Twickenham, planned the park at Stowe, began the replanning of Kensington Gardens for Queen Caroline, and was responsible for the introduction of the ha-ha into English landscape gardening (see Biog. Anecd., 1782, p. 177) (162)..
The quarter-staff player has traditionally been identified as James Figg the prizefighter (163).
A Rake's Progress: Plate 2: Englishmen
Uglow
the solid English prize-fighter James Figg is being pushed into the background by a French fencing teacher. This was a portrait of Dubois, who died in May 1734 after a duel (oddly, with an Irishman of the same name) (248).
The fine (and expensive) taste of the Palladians is now shaping Tom’s world: the man holding a plan if Charles Bridgeman, a landscape gardener beloved by the Burlingtonians, gardener to the Royal Family, adviser to Alexander Pope at Twickenham and famous for the introduction of the “ha-ha”, that hidden ditch between the smooth pak and the wild country. The scene is the epitome of “politeness”, invisibly shielding culture from chaos (248).
A Rake's Progress: Plate 2: Englishmen
Ireland
he is attended by . . . an English prize-fighter (Figg, the famous prize-fighter, who raised himself to the pinnacle of the temple of fame by conquering a number of hardy Hibernians, before that time deemed invincible Under a print of his head is the following inscription: A FIG FOR THE IRISH).
Besides this crows of masters of arts, he has at his levee. . . an improver of gardens (Old Bridgeman, eminent for his taste in the plans of gardens and plantations. As he was a worshipper of the modern style, scorned the square precision of the old school, and attempted to “create landscape, to realize painting, and improve nature,” Hogarth might have given him a better design than that which he holds in his hand; it has all the regular formality that distinguishes the aquatic froggery of a Dutch burgonmaster: “Grove nods at grove, each alley has a brother,/ And half the platform just reflects the other.”) (128-129).
A Rake's Progress: Plate 2: Englishmen
Lichtenberg
On Figg's left, and in conjunction with the Venus on the wall, stands the old landscape gardener, Bridgeman, with the plans of a garden which he is about to lay before Rakewell who, however, is much too occupied at present with the utile to pay much attention to the duke. This head, it seems to me, is clearly a portrait. How honest and genuine he looks! Perhaps the most honest person in the whole picture, and on that account he is being treated by the master of the house to his backside. A face like that is really an annuity, though, of course, by now nearing its end. In nature we could well imagine a little deafness or paralytic shaking of the head to go with it. The artist has been reproached for putting here into the hand of that famous beautifier of gardens and the first to banish from them the cold symmetry of the Dutch, a plan which bears witness to exactly the contrary. But how if it were just to indicate the young master's lack of taste; perhaps he has already turned down a better one, or what is still more probable, suppose Mr Bridgeman, who is evidently holding more than one plan here, wanted to put his employer to the test? But this is perhaps too far-fetched. For the purpose of a hieroglyph, the Dutch type is really more suitable than the English, and the description 'Garden Plan' was not so necessary here as it would have been under many a genuinely English one. Incidentally this excellent man is also said to have been the first to banish the topiary treatment of trees and hedges and to have invented the so-called Ha-ha's (207).
A Rake's Progress: Plate 2: Fencing
This fencing master demonstrates his skill as does a dancing master. He is a more prominent figure than the English prize fighter, highlighting Hogarth’s concern with foreign influence.
A Rake's Progress: Plate 2: Fencing
Shesgreen
On the left a French dancing instructor and a fencing master perform ostentatiously before their employer. In contrast to their artificial vivacity two stolid Englishmen stand in the background; both wear defeated looks on their faces that signal a consciousness of the disadvantages of their position in the presence of voguish foreign competition (29).
A Rake's Progress: Plate 2: Fencing
Paulson, Hogarth's Graphic Works
The fencing master was one Dubois; he had been run through by an Irishman of the same name and profession on May 10, 1734, and died twelve days later (Daily Post May 11, 1734; Grub-street Journal, May 16) (163)..
A Rake's Progress: Plate 2: Fencing
Uglow
the solid English prize-fighter James Figg is being pushed into the background by a French fencing teacher. This was a portrait of Dubois, who died in May 1734 after a duel (oddly, with an Irishman of the same name) (248).
A Rake's Progress: Plate 2: Fencing
Ireland
he is attended by . . . a Gallic fencing master (one Dubois, a Frenchman, memorable for his high opinion of the science of defence, which he declared superior to all other arts and sciences united. On the 4th of May 1734, he fought a duel with an Irishman of his own name—and was killed.) (128).
A Rake's Progress: Plate 2: Fencing
Lichtenberg
Behind the dancing master stands Dubois, a French fencing master; a portrait. He is about to venture a lively pass with his rapier into the air, and therewith to challenge that opponent. The man is remarkable for his tragic end; on May 11, 1734, he was run through in a duel with an Irishman of the same name, also a fencing master; he walked home from the field of battle, but died a few days later from the wound he had received. Of course, the same name, the same profession, and such a profession as that, in one and the same town, may well have given rise to all kinds of bitter and offensive confusions and nicknames. Since they were both privileged dispensers of the specific remedy against offended honour, each prescribed it for the other in a brotherly fashion, and in this way the evil was happily removed, to their mutual advantage.
Although this man has here no adversary before him whose thrust he could parry, yet he has one behind him who casts at him such a glance as a world of Dubois could not parry, namely a glance of calm, quiet contempt based upon a clear consciousness of his own lofty superiority. This quiet adversary is the man behind there close to the wall, who with a pair of considerable cudgels under his arm looks more or less like a third himself. His name was Figg, and he was one of the greatest rowdies of his time, and without quibbling over words, really a great man. With his fist he could have felled an ox, and with his quarter-staff a whole menagerie of Dubois at one blow. This quiet combination of the British athlete and the French fencing master is certainly one of the happiest: the British firm, enduring oak opposite the trembling French aspen, the cudgel of Hercules beside the rapier, and the lion beside the crowing cock. How the strong-fisted Figg leans there against the wall and looks down upon the droll fencing solo of Dubois, with an expression on his broad, placid face which leads one to believe that not only is he man enough to cut Dubois in pieces, but that, should it be required of him, he would be quite prepared to devour them afterwards! (206-207).
A Rake's Progress: Plate 2: Handel
Shesgreen
At the harpsichord a figure (perhaps Handel) plays “The Rape of the Sabines. a New Opera.” The “Performers” are famous contemporary foreigners. “Romulos Sen: Fari[nel]li I Ravisher Sen: Sen[esi]no 2 Ravisher Sen: Car[esti]ne 3 Ravisher Sen: Coz-n Sabine Women Senra: Str-dr. Senra: Ne-gr * Senra: Ber[tol]le.” Hogarth’s title, The Rape of the Sabines, is hit at the paradoxical combination of castrati and promiscuous women in the cast (29).
A Rake's Progress: Plate 2: Handel
Paulson, Hogarth's Graphic Works
The harpsichord is marked "I. Mahoan Fecit" (Joseph Mahoon was harpsichord-maker to the king). The musician at the harpsichord may (as Trusler claimed, p. 27) be intended for Handel himself, who was famous in his younger days for performances on the harpsichord in fashionable drawingrooms (N. Flower, George Frideric Handel, New York, 1948, p. 108). At this time Handel was fighting for survival against the rival company at the King's Theatre directed by Niccola Porpora, but while the inscriptions surrounding him could contain an ironic reference to the setbacks he was suffering, they are more likely an attempt to generalize Handel and Porpora into one figure. The score on the harpsichord is "The Rape of the Sabines, a New Opera." The "Performers" are:
Romulos | Sen: Fari[nel]li
1 Ravisher | Sen: Sen[esi]no
2 Ravisher | Sen: Car[esti]ne
3 Ravisher | Sen: Coz—n [Senora Cuzzoni]
Sabine Women | Senra Str—dr [Strada]
Senra Ne—gr [Negri]
Senra Ber[tol]le
Carestini and Strada were Handel's singers, the others having deserted him for Porpora; Farinelli was Porpora's recent discovery. Hogarth's imaginary opera plays upon the irony of eunuchs as "ravishers" (rapists and causes of rapture) and of notoriously loose sopranos as Sabine "virgins." Cuzzoni figures as a ravisher because of her great popularity (Cf. Masquerades and Operas, Cat. No. 34) (162-163)..
A Rake's Progress: Plate 2: Handel
Uglow
a musician sits at a harpsichord marked “I, Mahoan”, (Joseph Mahoon, the maker of instruments for royalty). Tom is aiming high. In the painting, the music book bears the initials “F.H.”, for Frederic Handel, and the title makes it clear that his is the score of a new opera, The Rape of the Sabines. Discord is implied, not harmony, for Handel was currently engaged in a losing battle with the rival impresario and composer Nicola Antonio Porpora, who had just brought over the charismatic castrato Carlo Broschi, “Farinelli” (248).
A Rake's Progress: Plate 2: Handel
Lichtenberg
At the piano sits a man, no longer young apparently, and quite respectable-looking, from behind at least. He has before him the music of a new Opera, The Rape of the Sabines.
Upon the right-hand page stand the names of the actors, beginning with Romulus Sen. Far.—no doubt Signer Farinelli, a famous Bistoury-tuned singer of that time, of whom we shall hear more presently. Then follow the Ravishers, very funnily numbered like violinists: first, second, third Ravisher, with their abbreviated names following, in which surely no one is interested. What gives relish to this idea of Hogarth's is, first, that these terrible ravishers were probably all artificial sopranos, and second that in English the word 'ravish' has the secondary meaning of 'rape', whereas the German word expresses rather a forced abduction which might also lead to a happy ending. To an English ear, the expression would sound rather like, 'first Raper, second Raper', and so on. One might also think of a third meaning, but one which Hogarth would hardly have hit upon. Namely, 'to ravish' has in English the same meaning as ravir in French, to overpower with delight, and in this sense Farinelli with his voice was a great Ravisher and Rayisseur, especially of ladies' hearts, a quite definite expression of which we shall find upon this Plate. These were the ravishers, now come the Virgins: Signora Str . . . dr, Signora Ne.gr. and so on, although natural sopranos yet false virgins and great ravisseuses in more senses than one. They all belong to the well-known order of the Sabines who wander through Europe singing and, in addition, blackmailing the male sex into paying fines because of the lost innocence of their female forebears, which they requite with a miserable imitation of the unhappy story, and in the end carry everything back to the Agro Sabino (209).
But who now is the man sitting there in the chair, if the figure is in- tended to represent some one then living? Opinions on this are divided, even among the English interpreters, and no foreigner could decide it. It is certainly not Farinelli himself. To such a figure no young lady would sacrifice her heart, not even her Sunday one. It is impossible to find any in such a creature. Put whatever you like on the altar for them, marble or wood, but for goodness sake only youth, youth! And Farinelli as he sits over there in Heaven really seems to possess that, since even in the microscopic representation one can see that the head-gear is of a man not yet thirty. A fairly common interpretation is that the figure is our great countryman Handel. Trusler affirms this, and only a few weeks ago obtained a written assurance, supposedly based upon the statement of a man who claims to have known our artist personally, that it is indeed Handel. Nichols is against this, but he bases his opinion purely upon an argumentum a priori which Sir John Hawkins once expressed to him: 'Handel,' said Sir John, 'had far too high a sense of his own value ever to have put himself into such a position. That being so, the artist could hardly have had the idea of putting him into the picture. He must have meant some other composer of operas.' The same argument is repeated by Mr Ireland. Of course, it may well be that the figure is not Handel, and as the matter now stands, it will hardly be possible to decide it until Hogarth's own notes appear, which, as I see from the papers, are now said to have been found. But this much, I believe, can be said, that Sir John Hawkins's proof that it could not be Handel is no proof at all. It shows but a poor acquaintance with the spirit of satire in general, and Hogarth's in particular, to credit it with so much conscience. Handel's figure, which our artist and a thousand others may have seen more often from behind, seated at the piano, than from in front, may have appealed to him. And therefore, just because it was familiar to the public, it could stand as a sort of generally recognizable symbol for music, like Bridgeman's head for the art of Horticulture. I readily admit it would have been contemptible flippancy to have portrayed Handel's face in such a scene, but as it is—it is Handel's art which sits here and not Handel's noble and lofty character. The greater facility for depicting the likeness of a man in that position, combined with the probability that many must have seen him from that angle, deprives the idea of the character of a studied intention which alone could make it appear malicious. But if it is indeed Handel, then Hogarth has made ample amends, through the trailing manifesto, for whatever offence he might have given. 'To this man here', the inscription appears to say, 'is due what you, my country, are wasting on miserable sycophants. If you would reward a foreigner, at least reward him whose melodies do not enervate your manly feelings, but enhance them through their magic power, and incite you to deeds which are worthy of you. As to the others—
Give them brickbats for bread.'
So much for that figure if indeed it does represent Handel, and for the evidence that, despite Sir John Hawkins's opinion, it might represent him. However, that it really is Handel seems to me somewhat unlikely after all, since I have read that Handel was a big man and was specially remarkable for his large hands and thick fingers (211-212)..
A Rake's Progress: Plate 2: Huntsman
The figure next to this austere gentleman [the assassin] has been alternately identified as a musician or a frustrated huntsman futilely blowing his horn.
A Rake's Progress: Plate 2: Huntsman
Shesgreen
Beside him [the assassin] a huntsman, one hand wearily in his pocket, sounds his horn impatiently (29).
A Rake's Progress: Plate 2: Huntsman
Lichtenberg
Behind the Bravo stands the French-horn player, with his left hand in his trouser pocket. The Captain's letter of recommendation is certainly enhanced by the heroic hunting call which the horn player produces Music acts on the relationship of souls like warmth on the physical body It expands and refines through expansion; those who had hitherto re- pulsed one another or had lain beside one another in lifeless contact be- gin to mingle their more subtle matter, and in the end the whole flows together. Marriages are made in Heaven, so they say; one should say— m Heaven, but if it does not come off there, in dance-halls and music-halls That horn-player is certainly drawn from Nature. Hogarth must have seen a man blowing his horn just like that, keeping his hand in his trousers, and having the lower part of his coat buttoned up to hide this Perhaps Hogarth did not know himself the reason for that attitude. But I remember having seen in my youth a horn-player standing just like that when he was blowing, and I knew for certain that he did so in order not to rupture himself. The purpose of the position of his hand was unmistakable; for if he altered it when playing piano, he would always return to it again at the next forte (204-205).
A Rake's Progress: Plate 2: Jockey
A jockey displays the cup that Tom’s horse has won. Certainly its name, “Silly Tom,” could refer both to the horse and its owner.
A Rake's Progress: Plate 2: Jockey
Ireland
On the silver cup which the jockey is presenting, we see inscribed, “Won at Epsom by Silly Tom.” Our sagacious esquire seems to have lent his own name to his favourite horse (129).
A Rake's Progress: Plate 2: Jockey
Dobson
his horse, “Silly Tom,” has won a cup (41).
A Rake's Progress: Plate 2: Jockey
Lichtenberg
In front of our hero kneels a jockey who in his service and with his horses has won a heavy silver bowl which he here presents on his knees, probably because, on account of its great weight, this is the easiest way for him to hold it until his master has finished with his more important business. The father would perhaps have forgotten his immortal soul for the hundredth part of such a trophy. Upon the bowl itself are engraved the pictures of the horse and jockey. Above are the words 'Won at Epsom', and underneath 'Silly Tom', the name of the horse. This is the application which Hogarth makes of Rakewell's Christian name, to which we have alluded earlier. His horse is called Little Thomas, and so is he; it is ridden by other people to their advantage, and so is he; it would not allow that if it were cleverer, and suffers it merely because it is a bit silly, like him. By the word 'silly' the English denote good, simple-minded fellows with whom one can do what one likes, and who do not know how to look after themselves; thus are somewhat foolish. In some parts of Germany the Thomases are called by the common people Tumme. According to this. Silly Tom could be construed Dumme-Tumme, which does not sound unlike Dun-Don, the name of an excellent race-horse which the writer himself saw in October 1774 win against five or six others. Don denotes the breed and dun the colour. Whether in that name Silly Tom there is not perhaps the faint sound of 'filly', at least from afar, can only be decided by an English ear. Of course, 'filly' means a young mare, and thus does not suit the name Tom, but in horse-racing fillies are so often spoken of, and the name appears so often upon the programmes, so many fillies are running in a race, and the name is so often found on engravings that I have twice already known it happen that an Englishman trying to read that inscription read 'filly' at the first attempt, being misled by the picture of the horse. Nobody would readily imagine the name 'Silly' under the picture of an English race-horse, so noble and lovely a creature which, in the scale of animal perfection, activity, and sensibility, stands certainly a number of rungs higher than other horses, and sometimes than the master himself. The animal only seems to have been debased here somewhat by the artist for his master's moral instruction. But I shall cut short this tirade lest the word 'filly' should begin to resound in the reader's ear, at least from afar (208-209).
A Rake's Progress: Plate 2: List
Shesgreen
Behind the harpsichordist’s chair another testament to the rake’s taste for the foreign reads, “A List of the rich Presents Signor Farinelli the Italian Singer Condescended to Accept of ye English Nobility & Gentry for one Nights Performance in the Opera Artaxerses—A pair of Diamond Knee Buckles Presented by --- A Diamond Ring by --- A Bank Note enclosed in a Rich Gold Case by --- A Gold Snuff box Chace’d with the Story of Orpheus Charming ye Brutes by T: Rakewell Esq: 100[£] 20[0£] 100 [£].” On the floor at the dancing master’s feet lies a title page inscribed, “A Poem dedicated to T. Rakewell Esq”; it pictures Farinelli on a pedestal before a group of women crying in homage, “One G-d, one Farinelli”; two hearts burn below the singer (29).
A Rake's Progress: Plate 2: List
Paulson, Hogarth's Graphic Works
From the scroll on the floor and the roll under the poet's arm we learn that the Rake's name is "T. Rakewell." The long scroll reads:
A List of the rich Presents Signor Farinelli the Italian Singer Condescended to Accept of yr English Nobility & Gentry for one Nights Performance in the Opera Artaxerses—A pair of Diamond Knee Buckles Presented by ——— A Diamond Ring by ——— A Bank Note enclosed in a Rich Gold Case by ——— A Gold Snuff box Chac'd with the Story of Orpheus charming ye Brutes by T: Rakewell Esq: 100l 20[ol.] 100[l.].
At the end of the scroll lies an engraving of Carlo Broschi, called Farinelli, on a pedestal being worshipped, and with two hearts burning at his feet. Ladies are crying "One G-d one Farinelli." This is the engraved title page of "A Poem dedicated to T. Rake-well Esq." Farinelli (1705-82), the great castrato soprano, made his triumphant English debut on October 29, 1734 in Hasse's Artaxerxes and was showered with gifts. While his salary was £1,500 a year, his income was closer to £5,000 (R. A. Streatfeild, Handel, London, 1909, p. 135). In 1737 he departed, intending to return the next season, but he was persuaded instead to go to Madrid and sing four arias from Artaxerxes each night to the King of Spain at £3,000 a year. "One God, one Farinelli" is said to have been uttered by a lady at a public entertainment to express her rapture at Farinelli's singing (Daily Journal, June 6, 1735, a sonnet "on a Raptur'd Lady"). According to Horace Walpole's MS note in his copy of Biographical Anecdotes (Lewis Coll.), she was Lady Rich (née Elizabeth Griffith, c. 1692-1773), a well-known patroness of operas (163).
A Rake's Progress: Plate 2: List
Uglow
And all aficionados would get the joke against opera in general when they saw that in the long roll of the cast list, flung over the musician’s shoulder in the third and fourth states of the print, the parts of the “pure” virgins were given to scandal-laden sopranos, while the four “ravishers” were played by the rapacious Cuzzoni and the three castrati, Senesino Carestino, and Farinelli.
Fashionable women collected Farinelli’s portraits and busts, sent him love letters, screamed and fainted at his performances. Most famously, at one performance a rich patroness screamed the blasphemous tribute “One God, One Farinelli”—and this is inscribed on the engraved title page of the poem that lies on the floor, “dedicated to T. Rakewell Esq.”, showing a portrait of the singer o his pedestal. There was something strange and powerful about the sway Farinelli held over women by the sheer force of his art, and yet he was emasculated. He might look like an exploiter and a ravisher but his virility, like Tom’s, had been sacrificed to the fashionable taste (248-249).
A Rake's Progress: Plate 2: List
Ireland
On the back of the musician’s chair hangs a list of presents which Farinelli, an Italian singer, received the day after his performance of a favourite character at the Opera House. Among others, a gold snuff-box, chased with the story of Orpheus charming the brutes from T. Rakewell, Esq. (130).
A Rake's Progress: Plate 2: List
Quennell
In the engraved version of the second plate, Hogarth has inserted a long paper scroll, trailing across the carpet from the musician’s chair. It contains a list of valuable tributes recently offered by his admirers to the castrato singer Farinelli, the last item being, “a gold snuff-box, chased with the story of Orpheus charming the Brutes, from T. Rakewell, Esq.”. Near it lies an emblematic print which exhibits the virtuoso enthroned amid his feminine devotees, with the sacrilegious legend “One God, One Farinelli!”—words said to have been actually uttered by a “lady of distinction” during a crowded performance at the London opera-house (129)
A Rake's Progress: Plate 2: List
Lichtenberg
From the pianist's chair-back hangs a long scroll covered with close writing. From a cursory glance one would almost take it for a petition addressed to somebody, and the assembled company as a Press Gang for obtaining subscribers to it. It is nothing of the kind, however, but something much more real, namely an inventory of presents made to the ravisher Farinelli, who at that time had almost acquired a ducal estate through his voice. It runs as follows:
‘A List of the rich Presents Signer Farinelli the Italian singer condescended to accept of the English Nobility and Gentry for one Night's Performance in the Opera Artaxerxes.
A Pair of Diamond Knee Buckles Presented by ... ;
A Diamond Ring by ...
A Bank Note enclosed in a Rich Gold Case by ...
A Gold Snuff Box Chased with the story of Orpheus charming the Brutes by T. Rakewell Esq.' (Bravo! So among the charmed brutes there was also an animal called 'Silly Tom') (209-210).
A Rake's Progress: Plate 2: Paris
Another indictment of his character is his poor taste in art; he places The Judgment of Paris between pictures of gamecocks, ostensibly his own fighting chickens. Paris’s decision to choose among the goddesses was the downfall of Troy, and Rakewell’s problematic choices likewise have larger implications. He succumbs to the feminizing and foreign influences presented here, wasting money on gambling, racehorses and lavishing gifts upon celebrities.
A Rake's Progress: Plate 2: Paris
Shesgreen
The Judgment of Paris, a technically inept picture of foreign manufacture passed off on the rake as a masterpiece, is surrounded tastelessly by pictures of the rake’s gamecocks (29).
A Rake's Progress: Plate 2: Paris
Paulson, Hogarth's Graphic Works
The painting on the wall of The Judgment of Paris shows that Rakewell has been sold a "dark picture" and become a connoisseur, as well as implying the analogy between his situation among these people and Paris' among the goddesses, and the terrible consequences of both choices (163).
A Rake's Progress: Plate 2: Paris
Ireland
A picture which he has placed between them bears a whimsical allusion; it is the “Judgment of Paris” (130-131).
A Rake's Progress: Plate 2: Paris
Lichtenberg
Rakewell keeps race-horses, and, as we see from the two portraits of combatants on the wall, fighting cocks as well. Were he in addition to distribute golden apples to such fighting hens as Paris on the wall there has before him, then the history of our young gentleman would become thoroughly intelligible (209).
On the wall between the two fighting cocks hangs the Judgement of Paris. The arrangement of the pictures testifies to the owner's taste, or perhaps only his steward's, or maybe the steward was a sly fox and the fighting cocks are a subtle pass at poor Paris. Really the two animals stand there, one opposite the other, as if the three goddesses were three hens, and Paris as if he were another cock. Is this picture supposed to be a copy of the one in the possession of King Francis I, and which our Rakewell has been sold for the original? Francois I, Roi de France, avail un tableau, que l'on disait être sans défauts; il permit à toutl le monde de le venir considerér et ordonna qu'on lui fit parler tous ceux qui y trouveraient des défauts; ce tableau représentait Junon, Venus, Pallas et Paris, nus. Rabelais après l'avoir examiné longtemps, dit qu'il y trouvait un grand défaut de jugement: on le fit parler au Roi, qui lui demanda quel était ce défaut; il répondit à sa Majeste que Paris, étant au milieu des trois plus belles Déesses du Ciel, ne devait pas être représenté d'un si sang-froid, et que c'etait se tromper lourdement, que de penser que ce Prince, jeune et vigoureux, fût ainsi demeuré, sans donner quelque signe qu'il êtait homme, devant trois Déesses nues qui tachaient à l'envie de lui plaire.
That passage has been adopted by the anonymous interpreter of Hogarth, and Ireland has it from him. It may therefore stand here also. But how did it come about that neither of them remembered how their great fellow-countryman, Burke, solved the puzzle with the philosophical acuity so characteristic of him? The passage is in his Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, Part IV, Sect. 19, 7th Edition, p. 286, etc. One must read the passage there. If brought into juxtaposition with the one just quoted, it would give rise through affinity to a third, which by its form might do harm. Chemistry provides many similar examples, and Cupid upon the picture there is a clever Cupid (213-214).
A Rake's Progress: Plate 2: Gamecock 1
Another indictment of his character is his poor taste in art; he places The Judgment of Paris between pictures of gamecocks, ostensibly his own fighting chickens. Paris’s decision to choose among the goddesses was the downfall of Troy, and Rakewell’s problematic choices likewise have larger implications. He succumbs to the feminizing and foreign influences presented here, wasting money on gambling, racehorses and lavishing gifts upon celebrities.
A Rake's Progress: Plate 2: Gamecock 1
Shesgreen
The Judgment of Paris, a technically inept picture of foreign manufacture passed off on the rake as a masterpiece, is surrounded tastelessly by pictures of the rake’s gamecocks (29).
A Rake's Progress: Plate 2: Gamecock 1
Lichtenberg
Rakewell keeps race-horses, and, as we see from the two portraits of combatants on the wall, fighting cocks as well. Were he in addition to distribute golden apples to such fighting hens as Paris on the wall there has before him, then the history of our young gentleman would become thoroughly intelligible (209).
A Rake's Progress: Plate 2: Gamecock 2
Another indictment of his character is his poor taste in art; he places The Judgment of Paris between pictures of gamecocks, ostensibly his own fighting chickens. Paris’s decision to choose among the goddesses was the downfall of Troy, and Rakewell’s problematic choices likewise have larger implications. He succumbs to the feminizing and foreign influences presented here, wasting money on gambling, racehorses and lavishing gifts upon celebrities.
A Rake's Progress: Plate 2: Gamecock 2
Shesgreen
The Judgment of Paris, a technically inept picture of foreign manufacture passed off on the rake as a masterpiece, is surrounded tastelessly by pictures of the rake’s gamecocks (29).
A Rake's Progress: Plate 2: Gamecock 2
Lichtenberg
Rakewell keeps race-horses, and, as we see from the two portraits of combatants on the wall, fighting cocks as well. Were he in addition to distribute golden apples to such fighting hens as Paris on the wall there has before him, then the history of our young gentleman would become thoroughly intelligible (209).
A Rake's Progress: Plate 2: Rake
Derek Jarrett sees Rakewell’s “real turning point” here in Plate II, where he rejects the traditional clothing of his father for the current French fashions (England 192). He was being measured by a tailor in the previous plate for the latest stylish clothes on which he will spend his late father’s carefully hoarded money. Here he is outfitted in the result.
A Rake's Progress: Plate 2: Rake
Paulson, Hogarth's Graphic Works
The scene is his morning levee (his nightcap is still on his head); he has become a man of the town, surrounded by rapacious hangers-on (already hinted at in the thieving steward (162).
A Rake's Progress: Plate 2: Rake
Uglow
The second scene shows him, still in his nightcap, receiving a host of hangers-on at his morning levee. John Hoadly’s verses for the print stressed the way that the spiritual poverty and loss of mental freedom illustrated here must lead to Tom’s final fetters. His own wealth provides the chains:
Prosperity (with Harlot’s smiles,
Most pleasing when she most beguiles,)
How soon, Sweet foe, can all thy Train
Of false, gay, frantick, loud & vain,
Enter the unprovided Mind,
And Memory in fetters bind;
Load faith and Love with golden chain,
And sprinkle Lethe o’re the Brain! (246-247)
Tom, too, is a victim on the altar of fashion. He wins an illusory popularity among his parasites but he loses his integrity—and his money. And what of the people not in this picture, the Sarah Youngs, the poor creditors and the artists and builders and caterers and musicians who furnish these gilded amusements? In 1737 :Hercules MacSturdy”, in a satire on Vauxhall pleasure-goers, was only one of those who pointed out that the indulgences of the rich (while in theory they fuelled the general economy) were all too often enjoyed at the expense of the poor, of the tradesman with their bills unpaid, whose children starved in consequence. His indictment of aristocratic carelessness has echoes both of Tom and of Moll’s rich benefactor:
Here sits my Lord, with the Best of Gold emboss’d,
And there his Tayor sighing for the Cost.
One month will see him to the Prison sent
Where, six months past, his Lordship’s Butcher went . . .
. . . No matter—tho he’s in the Butcher’s Brooks,
His Bills unpaid, not so his new French Cooks,
Besides my Lord, when he was to be paid,
Had lost six hundred pounds at the Masquerade,
Had given Farinelli fifty more
And laid out twenty on a Monkey for his Whore! (249)
A Rake's Progress: Plate 2: Rake
Ireland
The sordid avarice of the wretched miser is in this print contrasted by the giddy profusion of his prodigal heir. The old man pined in the midst of plenty, starved while surrounded by abundance, and refused himself enjoyment of the absolute necessities of life from an apprehension of future poverty:
Not so his son; he mark’d this oversight,
And quite mistook reverse of wrong for right.
Three years have elapsed, and out giddy spendthrift, throwing of the awkwardness of a rustic, assumes the character and apes the manners of a modern fine gentleman (128)..
A Rake's Progress: Plate 2: Rake
Quennell
Rakewell holds the centre of the stage, in slippers and velvet cap and a rose-pink dressing-gown, magnificently frogged with gold and lined with tender sky-blue. His new-found dandyism, however, still fits him rather awkwardly; and he is probably more at ease exploring the primitive delights of the Covent Garden neighbourhood (129).
A Rake's Progress: Plate 2: Rake
Lichtenberg
This Chapter could well be entitled: 'The finishing touches.’ As we can see, the crude block which was sent to Oxford to be polished into Latin has already passed the coarse chisel, and comes now under the finer one. The bearing is still, of course, somewhat awkward, and the mouth still that of a lout; but in the former the line of beauty is not entirely lacking, and the latter is rattling on already over his shoulder, and that is much for so short a time. Soon everything will improve.
Our young gentleman has just risen, thrown on a light casaquin with gold tassels, put on some slippers and is holding his levee. But in order not to miss Aurora's genial influence, he snatches her last but most potent rays, I mean those that shine between 11 and 1, avidly and in all haste, and takes five lessons at once—in the French horn, the piano, fencing, dancing and pugilism. At the same time he attends to some important domestic business and, in general, gives audience (202).
A Rake's Progress: Plate 2: Tradesmen
Paulson, Hogarth's Graphic Works
In the room through the archway we see a woman with a box who is probably a milliner, a tailor with a new coat on his arm, and an old poet with a roll of paper, reading "Epistle to Rake ..." (163).
A Rake's Progress: Plate 2: Tradesmen
Lichtenberg
The second complement for these morning hours is assembled there already, waiting for the bell to ring. A milliner waits with great resignation, listening to some man's rather violent remarks. From the gestures he makes with his hat we conclude that it is only a petty quarrel, possibly about precedence. He is afraid of being number six at the presentation. Had the girl not come, he might have been the fifth. He may be a shoemaker. Next to him, according to Gilpin, stands a French tailor, and beside him a French wig-maker; the one with a new evening suit upon his arm, the other with a new wig in the box. What a tailor compared with the village Theosoph who took the measure of the mourning suit! But then, this one here carries the garment for the festival day of resurrection in the great world. Just as the other smelt utterly of cobbler, this one here, despite some slight similarities in their faces, is every inch the titular Acting Counsellor. Evidently both tailor and wig-maker have made their way hither in a carriage. Who might that long figure be beside the mirror? It appears to be a creature on half-pay, or even an unemployed. He certainly has nothing to bring with him, except perhaps a few claims to benevolence, and he utilizes the isolation which he has to endure among these people for putting them into the best possible form. But now the poet! The poet with the Epistle to Rakewell in his hand! He who cannot taste and feel the bliss of that man who reads his own verse aloud, perhaps for the hundredth time, has certainly never been himself a begetter of verses, and consequently is a stranger to one of the greatest domestic joys with which Heaven has thought fit to brighten the lives of all those who write in rhythm and rhyme, whether in a garret or at Femey or Twickenham. Only see how tenderly and with what paternal joy he gazes on his beloved metric progeny, lisping childishly back to him. The right hand rests on his heart and begs it to bear witness to the truth of his feeling; hand and mouth do everything in their power, and so does the wig, for it is the very spit of the late Voltaire's. Did we not already know that Hogarth wrote verses, we might guess it from that lightly drawn poetaster's head. Otherwise he could not possibly have known that among all those in this world who offer sacrifices, the poet is the only creature who mirrors himself in his sacrificial wine, even at the moment when he pours it on the altar. However, what may seem difficult to anyone else is often easy for the genius. The best comfort in such depressing experiences is to believe that one has achievements of one's own which other honest people would find very difficult to attain, be it only the gift for writing such wise notes as these to interpret a caricature (212-213).