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, wnsophisti- 
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. at oo 
227 15* 
