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It might be called the 'Demon Lighthouse. For a moment, in picturesque gloom, watching the shadows cast by the Hogarthian gateway, I may be thinking of our great English painter sitting sketching the lean Frenchwomen, noting, too, the portal where the English arms used to be, when suddenly the 'Demon Lighthouse' directs his glare full on me, describes a sweep, is gone, and all is dark again.
This play is supposed to have given rise to Hogarth's series of prints of the Idle and Industrious Apprentice; and there is something exceedingly Hogarthian in the view both of vulgar and of genteel life here displayed. The character of Gertrude, in particular, the heroine of the piece, is inimitably drawn.
The Eucles occupied the artist during the remainder of 1828, and early in 1829 he began a new Hogarthian subject, a Punch and Judy show. He was still painting portraits when he could get sitters, and on April 15, he notes: 'Finished one cursed portrait have only one more to touch, and then I shall be free. I have an exquisite gratification in painting portraits wretchedly.
On the table were scattered playing cards, a chair was overturned, under the cactus plant lay what looked like a fiddle, and the only two pictures on the wall were very indecent old drawings taken apparently from some Hogarthian prints. Peter stared at all this in amazement. It was, after the grim approach and the deserted garden, like finding an Easter egg in a strong box.
The first Letters from II. to V. describe with Hogarthian point, prejudice and pungency, the town and people of Boulogne. The second group, Letters VI.-XII., deal with the journey from Boulogne to Nice by way of Paris, Lyon, Nimes, and Montpellier. The third group, Letters XIII.-XXIV., is devoted to a more detailed and particular delineation of Nice and the Nicois.
Though the colours are much faded from exposure to the weather, traces of Hogarthian humour can be detected. A man is staggering under the weight of a woman, who is on his back. She is holding a glass of gin in her hand; a chain and padlock are round the man's neck, labelled "Wedlock."
Beside them hung an engraving of the "Raising of Lazarus," and a Hogarthian lithograph of "The Drunkard's Progress." Mr. Hamlin closed his eyes; he was dreaming certainly not one of those wild, fantastic visions that had so miserably filled the past long nights of pain and suffering, but still a dream!
Goya was not booming at the moment, but he would come again; and, looking at that portrait, Hogarthian, Manetesque in its directness, but with its own queer sharp beauty of paint, he was perfectly satisfied still that he had made no error, heavy though the price had been heaviest he had ever paid. And next to it was hanging the copy of "La Vendimia."
He knew what was in store for him and her. When he looked over this Hogarthian gathering, and saw, despite its festive, convivial mood, hidden lusts of every description, crippled passions, secreted envy, and mysterious vindictiveness spread about like the stench of foul blood, he felt it was quite futile to cherish delusions of any kind as to what was before him.
Vivid as this Hogarthian night-scene was to me, I saw beside it another scene: a great panelled room, a grim old woman in a high-backed chair, and, restless on a stool at her feet an extraordinary little nephew with masses of auburn hair and with tiny hands clasped in supplication 'Tell me more, Aunt Ashburnham, tell me more!
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