Famous American Belles of the Nineteenth Century

mpossible to decide which of these five red-brick houses is the one that was theirs, for the only evidence of their tenancy consists of certain letters preserved at the British Museum,

lies buried in the parish churchyard. One other link Pope has with Chiswick-he wrote a rather poor epigram on

f Chiswick,

Kent gave a

st coin, I'm

churchman

o likewise lived at Chiswick in Pope's day, and was m

SON'S ROW

style, with a quaint, overhanging bay window, and stands in a large, walled garden, not far from the parish church. For many years this was Hogarth's summer residence-his "villak

Washington Irving went to live after, him; and he spent nearly all his life in the neighbourhood of Leicester Square. He was rarely absent from London at all, and never for long; even when he was

anbourne Alley, leaving his mother with his two sisters, who had opened shop as mercers, at the old Long Lane address. He engraved for them a shop card, duly setting forth that "Mary and Ann Hogarth, from the old Frock Shop, the corner of the Long Wall, facing the Cloysters, Removed to ye King's Arms joining to ye Little Britain Gate,

oolmaster. It was Nollekens, the sculptor, who said that he frequently saw Hogarth sauntering round Leicester Square, playing the nurse, "with his master's sickly child hanging its head over his shoulder." That was in the early days, when he was still serving his time to Gamble, and not eve

prints we read." He protests against confounding "the painting of subjects in common or vulgar life with the being a vulgar artist. The quantity of thought which Hogarth crowds into every picture would alone unvulgarise every subject he might choose. Let us take the lowest of his subjects, the print called 'Gin Lane.' Here is plenty of poverty and low stuff to disgust upon a superficial view; and accordingly a cold spectator feels himself immediately disgusted and repelled. I have seen many turn away from it, not being able to bear it. The same persons would, perhaps, have looked with great complacency upon Poussin's celebrated picture of the 'Plague of Athens.' Disease and death and bewildering terror in Athenian garments are endurable, and come, as the delicate critics express it, within the 'limits of pleasurable sensation.' But the scenes of their own St. Giles's, delineated by their own countryman, are too shocking to think of.... We are for ever deceiving ourselves with names and theories. We call one man a great historical painter because he has taken for his subjects kings or

zza, at the corner of James Street, Covent Garden. And Sir James soon seems to have taken a particular interest in his pupil, and had him as a frequent visitor to his house at 75 Dean Street, Soho; and on March 23rd, 1729, he el

730 he was engaged with Sir James Thornhill on their famous picture of "The House of Commons"; and a year later, when he was engr

ORNHILL. 75

the Arts Club at the Turk's Head, in Gerrard Street; and, after the latter's death, he took over Thornhill's art school, and transferred it to Peter's Court, St. Martin's Lane. Occasionally he visited Richardson, the novelist, in Salisbury Court; and it wa

r his right eye, and wearing a fur cap." Allan Cunningham furnishes a more vivid description of his personal appearance in his Lives of the Painters, where he says he was "rather below the middle height; his eye was peculiarly bright and piercing; his look shrewd, sarcastic, and intelligent; the forehead high and round. He was active in person, bustling in manner, and fond of affecting a little state and importance. He was of a

wick. He had a favourite dog, a pet cat, and a bullfinch, which he buried in his Chiswick garden, commemorating them with tablets that have now vanished from the wall, the bird's epitaph being "Alas, poor Dick

S HOUSE.

Wilkes. By way of retaliation, Wilkes wrote a scathing attack upon Hogarth in his paper, the North Briton, in which he made a sneering reference to Mrs. Hogarth. This stirred Hogarth to anger; and when Wilkes was presently arrested on a charge of high treason, he sat in court and sketched the prisoner, immortalising his villainous squint, and accentuating all the worst qualit

y let

h Genius wove a

should envy

abour to repla

lled stands, a

ise to the mos

or th

forth-I dare t

urt where Consci

solemn bar ho

om, on what acc

sider well;-fr

fe, weigh eve

ember from thy

ust judge thee,

ance where, s

king place of

equal eye did

erit what was

erit are a s

ickens at the

so foolish

tar he is do

ilty pleasure

f execution

ats, enjoys th

self by cruelt

n thee, Hogarth

dol of thy aw

ll measure of

ile, prate long,

th friends all ga

th babble Hogar

symptoms of a

ickness pinche

s, lank cheeks, an

of tune, the n

velled up, th

kets deep, thy w

eight unable

e scarce tremblin

illed by honest

ault, from men wh

thus, thy thought

l things else,

to thy closet

ntance wash

men to shame

ge of death, le

the regard you profess to me, that you don't tilt at my friend Hogarth before you see me. He is a great and original genius. I love him as a man, and reverence him as an artist. I would not for all the politics and politicians in the universe that you two should have the least cause of ill-will to each other. I am sure you will not publish against him if you think twice." One could honour Garrick if it were for nothing else but that letter;

NDOW. HOGA

from Dr. Franklin" (Benjamin Franklin was, by the way, dwelling at this time in Bartholomew Close; he did not remove to 7 Craven Street, Strand, until three years later), "he drew up a rough draft of an answer to it; but, goi

1771 his friends erected a monument over him,

reat Painter

the noblest

ed morals ch

the eye corr

ire thee, R

ouch thee,

move thee

honoured dus

criticised them, and offered him a revised version,

f Art here

he essential

as closed th

manners in

tly altered, as it now appears; but Johnson'

ections of her as a stately old lady, wheeled to the parish church on Sundays in a bath-chair, and sailing in up the nave with her raised head-dress, silk sacque, black calash, and crutched cane, accompan

Cary, the translator of Dante, who was one of Charles Lamb's many fr