CHAPTER X 

 HOGARTH HOUSE, CHISWICK 



OMEWHERE about the year 1750, in the reign of the 

 Second George, William Hogarth, of Leicester Fields, 

 in the parish of St. Martin, in the county of Middlesex, 

 Painter and Engraver, he being at the time some 53 years old, and 

 a prosperous man deemed it right and necessary that he and his 

 wife, like other well-to-do London " cits," should have a " country 

 box " of their own, wherein to pass the summer days. 



Born in 1697, within the sound of Bow Bells and baptized in the 

 beautiful church of St. Bartholomew the Great Hogarth was a 

 Londoner, every inch of him, and never looked for the subject of 

 his brush or his graver, in country life ; the men and women whom he 

 loved to study, and whom by laughing at their foibles and showing 

 up their vices, he sought to reform, were not picturesque, unsophisti- 

 cated rustics, nor yet the country gentry who in those days of slow 

 travelling, on roads infested by highwaymen, seldom stirred beyond 

 the boundaries of their own estates ; they were the denizens of 

 town alone. Therefore it is a little surprising to find that the 

 country attracted him to the extent of inducing him to buy a 

 residence there. 



Before finally settling down in a village to the far west of Charing 

 Cross, we may be quite sure that he and his wife explored the 

 districts, north, east, and south of the confines of the metropolis. 

 But evidently the beauty of the Thames made a strong appeal to 

 the painter, for in the course of his peaceful, uneventful life we find 

 record of " summer lodgings " at South Lambeth, and at Isle- 

 worth ; and he eventually purchased a small house in a large 

 garden, within easy reach of the river, at Chiswick. 



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