Morning In
Morning, a lady makes her way to church, shielding herself with her fan from the shocking view of two men pawing at the market girls. The scene is the west side of the
piazza at
Covent Garden, indicated by a part of the
Palladian portico of
Inigo Jones's
Church of St Paul visible behind ''
Tom King's Coffee House, a notorious venue celebrated in pamphlets of the time. Henry Fielding mentions the coffee house in both The Covent Garden Tragedy and Pasquin''. At the time Hogarth produced this picture, the coffee house was being run by Tom's widow,
Moll King, but its reputation had not diminished. Moll opened the doors once those of the taverns had shut, allowing the revellers to continue enjoying themselves from midnight until dawn. The mansion with columned portico visible in the centre of the picture, No. 43
King Street, is attributed to architect
Thomas Archer (later 1st
Baron Archer) and occupied by him at the date of Hogarth's works. It was situated on the north side of the piazza, while the coffee house was on the south side, as depicted in Hogarth's original painting. In the picture, it is early morning and some revellers are ending their evening: a fight has broken out in the coffee house and, in the melée, a wig flies out of the door. Meanwhile, stallholders set out their fruit and vegetables for the day's market. Two children who should be making their way to school have stopped, entranced by the activity of the market, in a direct reference to Swift's
A Description of the Morning in which children "lag with satchels in their hands". A small object hangs at her side, interpreted variously as a nutcracker or a pair of scissors in the form of a skeleton or a miniature portrait, hinting, perhaps, at a romantic disappointment. Although clearly a portrait in the painting, the object is indistinct in the prints from the engraving. Other parts of the scene are clearer in the print, however: in the background, a quack is selling his
cureall medicine, and while in the painting the advertising board is little more than a transparent outline, in the print,
Dr. Rock's name can be discerned inscribed on the board below the royal crest which suggests his medicine is produced by royal appointment. The salesman may be Rock himself. Hogarth's opinion of Rock is made clear in the penultimate plate of ''
A Harlot's Progress'' where he is seen arguing over treatments with
Dr Misaubin while Moll Hackabout dies unattended in the corner. Hogarth revisited
Morning in his bidding ticket,
Battle of the Pictures, for the auction of his works, held in 1745. In this, his own paintings are pictured being attacked by ranks of
Old Masters;
Morning is stabbed by a work featuring
St. Francis as Hogarth contrasts the false piety of the prudish spinster with the genuine piety of the Catholic saint.
Noon The scene takes place in
Hog Lane, part of the slum district of
St Giles with the church of
St Giles in the Fields in the background. Hogarth would feature St Giles again as the background of
Gin Lane and
First Stage of Cruelty. The picture shows
Huguenots leaving the French Church in what is now
Soho (or perhaps the
Huguenot Chapel on West Street, St Giles). The Huguenot refugees had arrived in the 1680s and established themselves as tradesmen and artisans, particularly in the silk trade; and the French Church was their first place of worship. Hogarth contrasts their fussiness and high fashion with the slovenliness of the group on the other side of the road; the rotting corpse of a cat that has been stoned to death lying in the gutter that divides the street is the only thing the two sides have in common. The older members of the congregation wear traditional dress, while the younger members wear the fashions of the day. The children are dressed up as adults: the boy in the foreground struts around in his finery while the boy with his back to the viewer has his hair in a net, bagged up in the "French" style. At the far right, a black man fondles the breasts of a woman, distracting her from her work, her pie-dish "tottering like her virtue". Confusion over whether the law permitted slavery in England, and pressure from abolitionists, meant that by the mid-eighteenth century there was a sizeable population of free black Londoners; but the status of this man is not clear. The black man, the girl and bawling boy fill the roles of
Mars, Venus and
Cupid which would have appeared in the pastoral scenes that Hogarth is aping. In front of the couple, a boy has set down his pie to rest, but the plate has broken, spilling the pie onto the ground where it is being rapidly consumed by an urchin. The boy's features are modelled on those of a child in the foreground of Poussin's first version of
The Abduction of the Sabine Women (now held in the
Metropolitan Museum of Art). 's first rendition of the
Rape of the Sabine Women.|alt=See caption The composition of the scene juxtaposes the prim and proper Huguenot man and his immaculately dressed wife and son with these three, as they form their own "family group" across the other side of the gutter. In the top window of the "Good Woman", a woman throws a plate with a leg of meat into the street as she argues, providing a stark contrast to the "good" woman pictured on the sign below. Ronald Paulson sees the
kite hanging from the church as part of a trinity of signs; the kite indicating the purpose of the church, ascent into heaven, just as the other signs for "Good Eating" and the "Good Woman" indicate the predilections of those on that side of the street. and suggests that Hogarth uses the early hour to highlight the debauchery occurring opposite the church, yet the print shows the hands at a time that could equally be half past twelve, and the painting shows a thin golden hand pointing to ten past twelve. Understanding of Hogarth's intentions with this image is ambiguous, as the two sides of the street, one French the other English, seem equally satirised. In the early nineteenth century, Cooke and Davenport suggested that in this scene Hogarth's sympathies seem to be with the lower classes and more specifically with the English. Although there is disorder on the English side of the street, they suggested, there is an abundance of "good eating" and the characters are rosy-cheeked and well-nourished. Even the street girl can eat her fill. The pinch-faced Huguenots, on the other hand, have their customs and dress treated as mercilessly as any characters in the series. The husband, whose stained hands reveal he is a
dyer by trade, looks harried as he carries his exhausted youngest daughter. In earlier impressions (and the painting), his hands are blue, to show his occupation, while his wife's face is coloured with red ink. The placement of the cow's horns behind his head represents him as a
cuckold and suggests the children are not his. Behind the couple, their children replay the scene: the father's cane protrudes between the son's legs, doubling as a
hobby horse, while the daughter is clearly in charge, demanding that he hand over his
gingerbread. A limited number of proofs missing the girl and artist's signature were printed; Hogarth added the mocking girl to explain the boy's tears. the sluggish pregnant dog that looks longingly towards the water; and the vigorous vine growing on the side of the tavern. As is often the case in Hogarth's work, the dog's expression reflects that of its master. The family rush home, past the
New River and a tavern with a sign showing Sir
Hugh Myddleton, who nearly bankrupted himself financing the construction of the river to bring running water into London in 1613 (a wooden pipe lies by the side of the watercourse). Through the open window other refugees from the city can be seen sheltering from the oppressive heat in the bar. While they appear more jolly than the dyer and his family, Hogarth pokes fun at these people escaping to the country for fresh air only to reproduce the smoky air and crowded conditions of the city by huddling in the busy tavern with their pipes.
Night The final picture in the series,
Night, shows disorderly activities under cover of night in the
Charing Cross Road, identified by
Hubert Le Sueur's equestrian statue of
Charles I of England and the two pubs; this part of the road is now known as Whitehall. In the background the passing cartload of furniture suggests tenants escaping from their landlord in a "moonlight flit". In the painting the moon is
full, but in the print it appears as a crescent. Traditional scholarship has held that the night is 29 May,
Oak Apple Day, a public holiday which celebrated the
Restoration of the monarchy (demonstrated by the oak boughs above the barber's sign and on some of the subjects' hats, which recall the royal oak tree in which
Charles II hid after losing the
Battle of Worcester in 1651). Alternatively, Sean Shesgreen has suggested that the date is 3 September, commemorating the battle of Worcester itself, a dating that preserves the seasonal progression from winter to spring to summer to autumn. Charing Cross was a central staging post for coaches, but the congested narrow road was a frequent scene of accidents; here, a bonfire has caused the Salisbury Flying Coach to overturn. Festive bonfires were usual but risky: a house fire lights the sky in the distance. A
link-boy blows on the flame of his torch, haphazardly shaves a customer, holding his nose like that of a pig, while spots of blood darken the cloth under his chin. The surgeons and barbers had been a single profession since 1540 and would not finally separate until 1745, when the surgeons broke away to form the
Company of Surgeons. In the foreground, a drunken
freemason, identified by his apron and
set square medallion as the
Worshipful Master of a
lodge, is being helped home by his
Tyler, as the contents of a
chamber pot are emptied onto his head from a window. In some states of the print, a woman standing back from the window looks down on him, suggesting that his soaking is not accidental. The freemason is traditionally identified as Sir
Thomas de Veil, who was a member of Hogarth's first Lodge,
Henry Fielding's predecessor as the
Bow Street magistrate, and the model for Fielding's character Justice Squeezum in
The Coffee-House Politician (1730). He was unpopular for his stiff sentencing of gin-sellers, which was deemed to be hypocritical as he was known to be an enthusiastic drinker. He is supported by his Tyler, a servant equipped with
sword and candle-snuffer, who may be Brother Montgomerie, the Grand Tyler. All around are pubs and brothels. The
Earl of Cardigan tavern is on one side of the street, and opposite is the
Rummer, whose sign shows a rummer (a short wide-brimmed glass) with a
bunch of grapes on the pole. Masonic lodges met in both taverns during the 1730s, and the Lodge at the
Rummer and Grapes in nearby Channel Row was the smartest of the four founders of the Grand Lodge. The publican is
adulterating a
hogshead of wine, a practice recalled in the poetry of
Matthew Prior who lived with his uncle Samuel Prior, the Landlord successively of both the
Rummer and Grapes and the
Rummer. The 6th
Earl of Salisbury scandalised society by driving and upsetting a stagecoach. John Ireland suggests that the overturned "Salisbury Flying Coach" below the "Earl of Cardigan" sign was a gentle mockery of the Grand Master
4th Earl of Cardigan, George Brudenell, later
Duke of Montagu, who was also renowned for his reckless carriage driving. It also mirrors the ending of Gay's
Trivia in which the coach is overturned and wrecked at night. ==Reception==