Engraving the Eighteenth-Century Blues: Hogarths Representations

of Depression
Peter Wagner
Studies in the Literary Imagination, Volume 44, Number 1, Spring 2011,
pp. 19-41 (Article)
Published by Department of English, Georgia State University
DOI: 10.1353/sli.2011.0005
For additional information about this article
Access provided by Pontificia Universidad Catlica de Chile (14 May 2014 19:36 GMT)
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/sli/summary/v044/44.1.wagner.html
19
Peter Wagner
ENGRAVING THE EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY BLUES:
HOGARTHS REPRESENTATIONS OF DEPRESSION
One reason why Hogarths painted and engraved work has proven so fas-
cinating for scholars from a variety of disciplines (history, literature, medi-
cine, to name just the most important apart from art history and media
studies) is the fact that it can be studied as a meeting ground or palimpsest
where established popular and polite forms of discourse mingle to produce
ambiguous, satirical meaning. This includes the subject of depression and
what was known about it in the eighteenth century. In what follows, I want
to discuss some of Hogarths prints in detail, with a few occasional glances
at paintings, while trying to unearth the discourses behind his representa-
tions. Hogarth drew both on the medical and paramedical knowledge of
his day and on traditional forms of verbal and visual representations, but
also on sign language and theatrical gestures. On the one hand, then, I will
read some Hogarthian images in view of their integration of depression,
and on the other hand I will also try to show that Hogarths graphic art is
not a realistic comment on the subject but rather a re-presentation of many
dj lus/vus in word and image, a re-presentation that was adapted to the
new Augustan middle-class mentality, which he helped shape.
Let me begin with some remarks about Hogarths self-portraits that
suggest his own gradual sliding into depression in the final decade of his
life. Hogarths earliest self-representation, entitled Self-Portrait with Palette
(c. 173540), is today in the Yale Center for British Art in New Haven,
Connecticut (see back cover of this volume). Produced in the wake of
the stupendous success of his first two narrative cycles, A Harlots Progress
(1732) and, after he had initiated the so-called Hogarth Act, A Rakes
Progress (1735), this portrait is, according to Elizabeth Einberg, a
fine unfinished study [that] has the penetrating gaze of a man
observing himself inquiringly in a mirror, without the guarded
distance of a face presented to the public, and is full of flashes of
unresolved painterly experiment. He first painted himself wearing a
black velvet cap, the outline of which is barely concealed by the wig
which he later decided to paint over it. This is left loosely blocked
Studies in the Literary Imagination 44.1, Spring 2011 Georgia State University
Engraving the Eighteenth-Century Blues
20
in and was never taken further towards being evened out with
smooth detail and finishing glazes. The same goes for the deep scar
over his right eyebrow (a feature of which he is said to have been
rather proud), which is blocked in with energetic, impastoed brush
strokes, but lacks the finishing glazes that would have shaded it in.
(94, ellipsis in original)
What we have here, then, is the image of a painter as he wanted himself
to be seen: proud of his achievements, confident, and critical. There is a
guarded expression in the eyes, and the lips are slightly open while the
corners of the mouth (a give-away for psychiatrists) suggest the soupon
of a smile.
Hogarth used the same face-mask, tidied up and smoothed out, in his
Self-Portrait with Pug, finished in 1745 and subsequently engraved in 1749
but begun much earlier. In this self-portrait (fig. 1), he elaborated the man-
ifesto-theme with a palette bearing his ideal Line of Grace and Beauty. It
is interesting again that he first painted himself in a wig, and later changed
it to a Montero cap, a circumstance that (together with the Latinized name
Gulielmus) shows his characteristic restless search for a self-image to share
with the public (Einberg 94). He used this print as a frontispiece for bound
volumes of his engravings. Ronald Paulson, Hogarths hagiographer and
surely the best known expert on his works, has nothing to say on the facial
expression here. What is important for my subject, I believe, is the implied
resemblance between the ideas suggested by a gruffy dog and a satirical
artist: Hogarths lips, incidentally, are now closed but the facial expression
in toto still suggests bemusement.
Ten years later, when he had reached the height of his career, he showed
himself surrounded by the paraphernalia indicating his success in Hogarth
Painting the Comic Muse (fig. 2). The finished print has him seated in
a chair composed of serpentine lines before a canvas with a study of
Comedy sketched in chalk. This shows Thalia, the comic muse, with
a book (hinting at rhetoric). Hogarths treatise, The Analysis of Beauty
is propped against the easel while the caption proudly announces W.
Hogarth Serjeant Painter to His Majesty, a title he had craved for many
years and received in 1757. The subtitle also makes clear that he had
engraved the face himself (he employed a number of engravers, some of
them French, for his prints). This is all the more important in view of the
changes he made to this self-representation just before his death. Until the
portrait of 1758, Hogarth has represented himself smiling or bemused, the
smile now disappears (fig. 3). Hogarth had become involved in politics,
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21
taking sides while satirizing Wilkes in the Wilkes scandal of 1763. As a
consequence he was attacked by Wilkess friend Charles Churchill in a
satirical epistle that decreased the price and sales of his works (Paulson,
Hogarth 3: 40001). Churchills Epistle, which claimed the reduction to
nothing of Hogarths once effective talent, immensely hurt Hogarths pride
Fig. 1. Self-Portrait with Pug, finished in 1745 and subsequently engraved in 1749.
Engraving the Eighteenth-Century Blues
22
and may have contributed to his failing health (qtd. in Hogarth 3: 403). The
St. James Chronicle even reported in July 1763 that Mr Hogarth is much
indisposed with a Paralytic Disorder, at his House in Leicester-Fields (qtd.
in Hogarth 3: 405). One of his housemaids reported that after Churchills
verses, Hogarth never smiled again (Hogarth 3: 417). Whether this was
true or not is a matter of debate. He was certainly well enough in the same
month to meditate revenge and respond with an anti-Churchill plate (The
Bruiser, 1763) in which Hogarths dog acts on behalf of his master. More
important for my subject, however, are the changes Hogarth made to his
Fig. 2. Hogarth Painting the Comic Muse, 1758.
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23
self-portrait in the months just before his death. We have several states of
the print: in the sixth state his title, Serjeant Painter, has been marked
out with diagonal lines and his typical smile has disappeared; he changed
from the comic to the satiric muse; the muse is now held in black lines,
her face has been scored with tragic lines, and the mask she holds has
horns and the expression of a satyr. The pessimistic revisions, as Paulson
terms them, also include the face of the artist, newly redrawn and dark-
ened (Hogarths 170). In the seventh and final stage of the print we find the
corners of the mouth drooping and a new title, William Hogarth1764;
Fig. 3. Self-portrait (1764) 6th State.
Engraving the Eighteenth-Century Blues
24
this is very reminiscent of the dejection that dominates his last work, Tail
Piece, which he finished just before his death in 1764.
While it is tempting to read the erasure of Hogarths smile in terms of
personal disappointment and dejection, one caveat needs to be mentioned
that also concerns the representation of depression in Hogarths works in
general: the disappearance of the smile and the changing from the comic
to the satiric muse also reflect a convention of Juvenalian satire (see my
Hogarthian). This form of satire, based on the idea that in dark times,
a darker, more severe tone must be taken, was adopted by, among others,
Smollett (in his 1766 Travels Through France and Italy) and Fielding,
who had imposed a Juvenalian convention on his last novel Amelia and
included a self-critical scene in his autobiographical Journal of a Voyage to
Lisbon, where he shows himself as a helpless invalid (Paulson, Hogarth 3:
417). In other words, Hogarths final, pessimistic self-representation, while
no doubt expressive of a form of depression, is part of an eighteenth-
century literary syndrome in England that entailed growing pessimistic
with age, feeling that ones personal decline implied the decline of ones
environment, ones personal loss of empathy the breakdown of all com-
munication and order (Hogarth 3: 417).
In his engraved satirical works, Hogarth represents distinct forms of
depression that reach from those brought on by alcoholic consumption
and professional and personal disappointment (for example, in love or
marriage) to sexual exhaustion; and he also comments, sometimes rather
cynically, on occasional consequences of depression, such as madness and
death. Let us look at some examples.
Psychiatrists generally agree that the consumption of drugs can lead to
reactions ranging from euphoria to depression. If we consider alcohol as
a drug, it is interesting to look at Hogarths representations of the conse-
quences of alcoholic consumption. His engravings incorporate both the
general medical knowledge of the day as well as popular beliefs. To begin
with, one needs to keep in mind that in the eighteenth century people
drank what might be called Bavarian quantities of beer, gin, and wine.
Similarly, by todays standards, enormous amounts of meat were consumed
during meals (Henry Fielding was just one of many who suffered from
gout because of this habit). If Hogarth reacted, together with Fielding,
against the consumption of gin (see his Gin Lane), it was because it had
developed into a social evil. But as the accompanying print of the mini-
series, Beer Street, suggests, it was not the drinking of alcohol that was at
issue, it was drinking to excess, particularly excess as targeted by Augustan
satire.
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In A Midnight Modern Conversation (fig. 4), whose caption explains that
the vice, not the persons represented, is being lashed, Hogarth depicts
the different stages, degrees, and types of drunkenness. Contrasted with
the tranquil scene on the punch bowl, the men in what is said to be St.
Fig. 4. A Midnight Modern Conversation (1733).
Engraving the Eighteenth-Century Blues
26
Johns Coffee-House in Shire Lane, London, are maudlin, sick, stupefied,
pensive, delirious, and so forth. Art-historically speaking, A Midnight
Modern Conversation is a parody conversation picture and owes a lot to
Dutch drinking scenes. More importantly, Hogarths attempt to render
the beginning stages of depression, or states very close to depression, in
some of the men (the second from the left, the one near the fireplace,
and the prostrate man in the foreground) must be related to what artists
knew about the expression of the passions in physiognomy. Hogarths
training as an engraver included the studying and copying of the Raphael
CartoonsRaphael being much admired for precision of physiognomy
(Bindman 22). But the most important source for Hogarth and his con-
temporaries was Charles Le Bruns study of passions and their expressions
in the human face and body. Le Bruns various treatises (for example,
Mthode pour apprendre dessiner les passions, 1696; or Confrence [...] sur
lexpression gnrale et particulire, enrichie de figures graves par B. Picart,
1698) were translated into English early in the eighteenth century (the
latter in 1701) and were well known to Hogarth. In fact, the chapter On
the Face of his Analysis of Beauty comments on Le Bruns notions of the
expression of passions, including extreme despair:
But least I should be thought to lay too great a stress on outward
shew, like a physiognomist, take this with you, that it is acknowledgd
there are so many different causes which produce the same kind of
movements and appearances of the features, and so many thwart-
ings by accidental shapes in the make of faces, that the old adage,
fronti nulla fides [no reliance on appearance; do not judge a book
by its cover], will ever stand its ground upon the whole; and for
very wise reasons nature hath thought fit it should. But, on the other
hand, as in many particular cases, we receive information from the
expressions of the countenance, what follows is meant to give a
lineal description of the language written therein.
It may not be amiss just to look over the passions of the mind,
from tranquillity to extreme despair; as they are in order described
in the common drawing-book, called, Le Bruns passions of the
mind; selected from that great masters works for the use of learners;
where you may have a compendious view of all the common expres-
sions at once. (9697)
In Le Brun, he would find visual models, accompanied by explanatory
text, such as the following on sorrow or sadness (see fig. 5).
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27
Hogarth may also have been familiar with the English reaction to Le
Brun such as James Parsonss 1746 lectures to the Royal Society entitled
Human Physiognomy Explained, apparently the first attempt by a medical
man to investigate what really happens to the muscles of the face during
its various expressive movements (Montagu 101). In the second lecture,
Parsons attacked Le Brun for his alleged ignorance of anatomy and exag-
gerations in his expressions of facial movements. The result of Parsonss
toning down of expressive detail was to give a curiously wooden effect
in his illustrations,
especially the eyebrows
(Montagu 101). Parsons
denied that in fear and
terror parts of the eye-
brow can move in con-
trary directions, thus
undermining the whole
theoretical foundation
of Le Bruns system
(Montagu 102). These
lectures were too late
to influence Hogarths
series on the harlot
and rake, but still early
enough to impact his
series on the appren-
tices and the prints
published afterwards.
While expressing a
certain distrust in the
prevalent theories of
physiognomy that saw
the face as a mirror
of the mind or soul,
Hogarth nevertheless
seems to have believed
in what he terms a lan-
guage written in the
face. This belief, too,
has a long history fed
by both popular and
Fig. 5. Illustrations from Charles Le Bruns Confrences: La
Tristesse and Douleur corporelle.
Engraving the Eighteenth-Century Blues
28
paramedical writings. As Simon Swain explains in his Seeing the Face,
Seeing the Soul, there were treatises such as Polemons Physiognomy that
held sway over many centuries and in which you could read, if you were
able to read, that
Black hair announces cowardice and great craftiness, excessively
yellow and pale white hair ignorance, and clumsiness and wild-
ness, and that which is gently yellow points towards an aptitude
for learning, gentleness, and skill in art. Unmixed fiery hair like
the flower of the pomegranate is not good, since for the most part
28
Fig. 6. A Rakes Progress (1735). Plate 6.
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29
their characters are beastlike and shameless and greedy. (qtd. in
Burnyeat 3)
As the physiognomists (quite a few of them self-appointed experts) focused
on the face and the head (Polemon, for instance, argued: Eyes that are
moist and shine like pools reveal good character [qtd. in Burnyeat 3]), art-
29
Fig. 7. Marriage -la-Mode (1745). Plate 1.
Engraving the Eighteenth-Century Blues
30
ists and theoreticians like Le Brun made the human face the landscape of
the soul. Hogarth certainly knew his Le Brun and copied the Frenchmans
examples in several instances. Hence his representations of the stupor and
dejection brought on by drinking in A Midnight Modern Conversation (fig.
4) or by gambling (and drinking) in Plate 6 of A Rakes Progress (fig. 6),
set in a Covent Garden gambling house, all owe much to Le Bruns idea
that each face in a group should be meaningful in itself and express one
particular passion. In the latter case, we find representations of mad-
ness and melancholy. Having lost all his wifes fortune, the rake is wigless
and frantic, with the dog barking at him. In fact, in most of Hogarths
prints representing some form of madness, a dog is shown barking at the
madman, implying that the animal has obviously recognized the altered
(mental) state of the human being. The man by the fire grate, a high-
wayman, has gambled away his loot; in his melancholy he does not notice
the boy who has brought him a drinkhe is also eavesdropping so he can
later rob the winners.
While Hogarth certainly drew on a traditional and established grammar
of representing the passions in art, one should also take into consideration
the intermedial relations of his prints with the popular and paramedical
discourse on melancholia and depression brought on by various causes,
including genetic ones. Starting with the latter, I would like to comment
briefly on Marriage -la-Mode, Hogarths satirical series on arranged mar-
riages published in 1745 (see Cowley). In the first scene (fig. 7), entitled
the marriage contract, the viscount and future earl, near the mirror at
right, is marked as a doomed figure in several ways that suggest congenital
and mental diseases. On his neck, we can see a beauty patch meant to
enhance his looks but probably also hiding the first symptoms of syph-
ilis.
1
Like Lichtenberg, who terms the patch a very meaningful bon-ton
plaster, I prefer to read the black mark on the young noblemans neck as
an indexical signifier that denotes both a beauty spot (it is part of his fash-
ionable makeup and dress) and a plaster (293). The satirical point is that
the spot has several denotations and connotations. Given the prominent
subject of hereditary and venereal diseases in the family (see the child in
Marriage 6 wearing steel braces), including melancholy or depression, we
find a host of connotations. The viscounts melancholy is associated with
Narcissus through his looking into a mirror, where if he were really looking
and not concerned with his own image, he might see the reflection of the
lawyer, Counsellor Silverman, who is about to seduce the viscounts bride.
Melancholy is here connected with too much concern with ones self and
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31
lacking empathy. In fact, the earl remains a dejected figure throughout
almost the entire series.
His depression has not gone away in plate 2. The scene is the young
couples home, and the husband has come in from a night of revelry. He
collapses in a chair, still with the facial expression of the melancholic,
while ignoring his middle-class wife and her very expressive body lan-
guage. If he is present in the boudoir scene in plate 4 (fig. 8)and I
think he ishis melancholy seems to have increased. Commentators
Fig. 8. Marriage -la-Mode (1745). Plate 4.
Engraving the Eighteenth-Century Blues
32
are actually divided over the figure sporting hair rollers (papillotes)
and sipping chocolate beside the Italian singer. While Paulson, in his
catalogue raisonn of Hogarths works, argues that the thin man next to
the singer has been identified as Herr Michel, a Prussian envoy, Bindman
perceives an effeminate foreign dancing master (109). Christine Riding
joins Bindman in telling us that we are faced with an effeminate French
Fig. 9. The Four Times of the Day (1738). Plate 3: Evening.
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33
dancing master sipping chocolate (Hallet and Riding 149). I tend to side
with Lichtenberg, who in my opinion is one of the best commentators
on Hogarth and far ahead of his time in his semiotic approach. In his
calendar commentaries on Hogarth, meant for the larger German public,
the German wunderkind and philosopher argued that the figure drinking
chocolate has puzzled commentators who generally believe him to be a
visitor. But, says Lichtenberg, why could it not be Lord Squanderfield,
the master of the house? If we do not see the plaster on his neck, it is
because we have not so far seen this side of his face. In Lichtenbergs view,
several details suggest that we see the husband here: the resemblance of
the face with those in plates 1 and 2, the papillotes linking him with
his lady (whose hair is also being done) while hinting at cuckoldry, and
what Lichtenberg terms die kummervolle Miene, the sorrowful facial
expression of the earl who will be killed in the evening (fig. 8, the penul-
timate scene of the series; see Lichtenberg 8081). Marked by a congenital
disease, the viscount and later earl stands out in the series as the typical
melancholic, a Narcissus whose eyes are turned inward and who will not
or cannot see what is going on around him.
If this artistic characterization of a nobleman draws on the popular
knowledge of Greek myth and Renaissance ideas of the melancholic,
other Hogarthian representations engage with even better known dj
vus/lus, always on the assumption that the viewer will be familiar with
the discourses that shaped notions of depression. A well-known example
is the henpecked husband, the cuckold, a familiar figure in Restoration
comedy and in Hogarths time. In Evening, the third plate of Hogarths
series The Four Times of the Day (fig. 9), we encounter the sad figure of
the horned husband. Ordinarily, the scene in this established series would
have included Diana or Hesperus on the upper level and strolling lovers as
well as shepherds. Hogarth, however, shows a large, dominating wife and a
tiny, obviously henpecked husband. She is a formidable Diana indeed, her
fan showing Venus detaining Adonis from the chase or, more plausibly,
the story of Actaeon, which is confirmed by the horns of her husband (an
optical illusion attaches the cows horns to his head). The children to the
left create a parallel with the adults as both males are henpecked, a condi-
tion that has obviously led to depression in the case of the dyer carrying
his daughter.
Stereotypes of this kind, and their accompanying notions, had a sur-
prisingly long history in both art and literaturewhich is precisely the
reason they form such a strong, unspoken basis of the popular mentality
to which Hogarth appealed time and again. In the eighteenth century,
Engraving the Eighteenth-Century Blues
34
melancholia was still considered the Englishmans malady. When, shortly
after 1600, Robert Burton was at work on his gigantic The Anatomy of
Melancholy (first published in 1621, with ever enlarged editions following
until 1651), he could draw on both visual and verbal representations of
his topic. Shakespeares Hamlet, the epitome of the aristocratic Elizabethan
melancholic, is, for us, the best example, although melancholy had
already become something of a fashionable attitude by 1600.
2
Burton
refers to one of the key images in the long history of the representation
of human depression, praising Albrecht Durer for the way he captured
in an almost encyclopedic manner the many contradictory aspects of the
melancholic temperament in his Melencolia I of 1514. Yet, as Jean Clairs
excellent survey of melancholy in history demonstrates, the malady had
been known from antiquity on and had been represented in art in the
Middle Ages as well as in the Renaissance (see, for instance, Geertgen Tot
Sint Janss The Temptation of St Antony [1490s] and Lucas Cranach the
Elders Melancholie [1532]). What we tend to ignore, however, is the way
in which popular discourses shaped peoples thinking and found their way
into artistic representation. It is precisely because the cuckold had been
cast, time and again, as a figure of ridicule in folk tales, comedy, and fic-
tion that Hogarth can appeal to his observers knowledge of this stereotype
while suggesting that the experience of cuckoldry may lead to depression.
There is, however, also a conservative, sexist message here that is far from
enlightening yet part of Hogarths Augustan aesthetics: sexually active
women are liable to bring on depression in their husbands.
We find such a sexually active woman in Hogarths mini-series Before
and After (1736), which his wife Jane had suppressed in the collections
of his works published after his death. A triptych of sorts with the middle
part left out, the two pictures are deeply influenced by eighteenth-century
treatises on sexuality and the consequences of sex, such as the post-coital
depression we witness in the After scene. For all its comedy (comedy must
be introduced to avoid pornography), the print also alludes to what many
people considered serious writing about sex and depressionthe treatise
on the floor, allegedly by Aristotle, shows the sentence attributed to him,
omne animal post coitum triste, a paraphrase of passages in Aristotles Of
the Generation of Animals and Problems. But in the contemporary observers
mind, the name Aristotle would also recall one of the paramedical, titil-
lating best-sellers on the market of early-eighteenth-century erotica.
Entitled Aristotles Masterpiece, this was a combination sex guide and
obstetrical instruction manual that went through more than thirty regis-
tered editions in the eighteenth century. Offering advice on the Organs of
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35
Generation in Women and the use and action of genitals and copulation,
the book had a strong pornographic appeal and was sold together with
erotica as well as another paramedical best-seller, Onania or the Heinous
Sin of Self-Pollution. An enormously successful publication in 1708 by a
clergyman cum quack, the booklet grew from 60 to 194 pages, receiving
a supplement of 142 pages in its sixteenth edition. Spreading false news
about the evil effects of masturbation and providing an erroneous inter-
Fig. 10. A Harlots Progress (1732). Plate 6.
Engraving the Eighteenth-Century Blues
36
pretation of the account of Onan in Genesis 38.411, where the reference
is to coitus interruptus and not to masturbation, the book appealed to the
prurient with its ever growing collection of readers confessing in detail to
having masturbated. The erotic, even pornographic, appeal of the book
is obviousI have discussed these and related issues in my Eros Revived.
Seen in this light, Hogarths erotic scenes owe more to the eighteenth-
century popular discourse on sex than first meets the eye. Take the last
plate of his famous Harlot series (fig. 10). Paulson, the worlds leading
Fig. 11. A Rakes Progress (1735). Plate 7.
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37
expert on Hogarth, tells us about the scene at left: The parson is using
his hat to conceal what his right hand is up to, but in his concentration he
spills his Nantz (brandy) (Hogarths 83). This is wisely observed, but it
tells us little about the parsons facial expressionthe prostitute, inciden-
tally, casts a come-on look at the observer, one of the very few examples in
Hogarths art where theatricality is abandoned and the characters challenge
the viewer directly. Most observers of the time, however, would also have
thought of Onania and the consequences of masturbation described there.
I would argue that Hogarths little erotic scene, while certainly contrib-
uting to the overall idea of moral and sexual corruption at work in this last
supper of sorts, also plays with the alleged consequences of masturbation
described in minute detail in the treatise. Admittedly, there is a hint of a
smile on the clergymans face, but the forlorn look of his eyes may also
allude to the mental disorders and even madness that the booklet Onania
attributed to masturbation. In fact, the melancholic look of the parson is
very close to the facial expression given to the mad (and hence cheap)
servant we see in the final scene of Marriage -la-Mode.
If masturbation can lead to depression and madness, as some paramed-
ical treatises argued, it was also believed that melancholia might render
one mad and that, ultimately, it could be lethal. Hogarth alludes to this
belief in A Rakes Progress. In plate 7 of the series (fig. 11), Tom Rakewell,
the eponymous anti-hero, having lost all his wifes money in the gambling
house, can be seen in Fleet Prison, the debtors jail. He is harangued by
his old one-eyed wife as his true love Sarah Young, accompanied by their
child, falls into a convulsion at the latest bad news. This news explains the
rakes body language and especially his facial expression of dejection. Both
are directly connected with the manuscript on the table. For a gentleman
in those days, playwrighting was one way to recoup ones financial losses.
Rakewell, too, has triedand failed: we notice that the manuscript has
been returned to him with a letter by John Rich (manager of the Covent
Garden Theatre): Sr I have read your Play & it will not doe yrs J.R. .h.
Many other details in this print indicate that the rakes depression is the
consequence of several efforts to get out of his dire financial straights:
witness the pair of wings on top of the four-poster bed (also a pun on
the Icarus story) and the alchemists forge at the rear with a busy person
in front of it trying to make gold. The rake has also sought and found no
solace in reading (see the books on the shelf with one marked philo-
sophical) and star gazing (a telescope protruding through the bars of the
window). In addition to playwrighting he tried his luck as pamphleteer
an unkempt male drops a scroll on which is written Being a New Scheme
Engraving the Eighteenth-Century Blues
38
for paying ye Debts of ye Nation by T : L: now a prisoner in the Fleet,
and another marked Debts. Through these allusions many connec-
tions can be established with contemporary scandals (such as the South
Sea Scheme), criminal behavior, and desperate efforts to make fast money.
To express his heros desperation, Hogarth again resorts to well-known
catalogues listing the representation of the passions. The expression he
gave to Tom Rakewell seems to be a combination of Le Bruns rendering of
anger (no. 195) and weeping (no. 189) (Confrence 150).
Fig. 12. A Rakes Progress (1735). Plate 8.
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39
The rakes death in the final plate of the series (fig. 12) gave Hogarth
an opportunity not only to create parallels between his protagonist and
the life of Christ (see also the final scene of the harlot series: the Last
Supper)an Italian piet is quite obviously the source of the group at
leftbut also to attack the conditions in eighteenth-century madhouses.
We are given no information about the rakes arrival in this hospital of
sortsalthough one can imagine quite a few scenarios between plates 78.
This freedom of the reader to bring into play her own imagination in filling
the gaps is one of the attractions of the Hogarthian series.
3
Smolletts novel
Launcelot Greaves gives us some good examples of life in Englands hardly
enlightened madhouses while showing how easily a person could be sent
there by his or her family. The scene in Rake 8 is probably the eponymous
Bedlam (Bethlehem Hospital), a place for the poorer sort of patients.
Judging by his facial expression, Rakewell has gone from depression to
total insanity. Apparently, he has just had a fit; a patch on his chest (one of
the many allusions to Jesus Christ) may designate an unsuccessful (or suc-
cessful?) attempt to take his own lifeyour interpretation, including the
question whether or not the rake is already dead, depends on the reading
of details (are Rakewells chains being removed or is he being manacled?).
Paulson believes that Toms pose and his expression do not support the
supposition that he is deadbut we are not sure, the smile could be rigor
mortis (Hogarths 97).
The inmates and the female visitors in the print have attracted the
attention of commentators, but we learn little about those patients suf-
fering from depression or melancholia, obviously considered one form of
madness in the eighteenth century. Apart from the rake, who has already
drifted off into insanity, there is a curious sufferer on the right, among the
group on the staircase. This group is comprised of a mad musician, a man
who fancies himself the Pope, and the artistic visualization of depression
caused by love. This melancholy lover sports a picture of a woman and a
band of straw around his neck. One would probably not go wrong in asso-
ciating the carving on the stair rail with the unfortunate lover. Charming
Betty Careless, the name of a contemporary prostitute, can be deciphered
there. Perhaps, if she passed on syphilis to the man on the stairs, the name
represents a double cause for his present state. Towards the end of his
career, Hogarth was to return to the representation of love sickness in his
final attempt to gain universal approbation as an English history painter:
a sentimental and shocking piece, Sigismunda found no buyer and when
even the planted press responses that he organized for an exhibition in
1761 produced no result, he withdrew the painting in anger.
Engraving the Eighteenth-Century Blues
40
To return to Rake 8, there are numerous intertextual and intermedial
allusions in this print as Hogarth depicts both stages of madness and
depression as well as contemporary attitudes towards mental diseases.
Apart from the visual parody of the piet (for example, Corregios Piet in
Parma or the one by Annibale Carracci in the National Gallery, London),
the two visiting ladies recall the madhouse in The Digression on Madness
in Swifts Tale of a Tub, while the figures of Tom Rakewell and the religious
fanatic in cell no. 54 constitute a parodic allusion to Caius Gabriel Cibbers
statues of Melancholy and Raving Madness, which at that time were over
the portal of Bedlam and are today in a gallery at Bethlem Royal Hospitals
current location in Beckenham. If we also consider the body language of
the characters (for example, the rakes scratching his head in a manner that
suggests perplexity and helplessness) in the context of the language of
the face as Hogarth saw it, we get a rich panorama of the different forms
and stages of madness, these including melancholy, with some hints at
causes and contemporary reactions.
University of Koblenz-Landau
NOTES
1
See my Spotting, which is concerned with the tradition in cosmetics and art of using
and placing such spots.
2
See Meslays article on the melancholy of Elizabethan murderers.
3
See my Minding on the ellipses in Hogarths serial art.
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