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The Four Times of the Day: Night
1738
17 7/16” X 14 7/16” (H X W)
View the full resolution plate here.
In Night, chaos reigns, both indoors and out. Outside, riot and fire threaten the city. An overturned cart poses danger.
Indoors, barber-surgeon applies his drunken trade to a pained customer. Uglow comments on the barber-surgeon’s frightening method: "the barber draws blood while he shaves his client, squeezing his nose; the alarming sign reads, 'Shaving, Bleeding and Teeth Drawn wth a Touch' The body here is sore and foul" (309). Shesgreen notes that the “hairdresser-barber-surgeon, blind drunk, has just cut his customer who grips the chair in alarm. Because of me manner in which he holds the man's nose, he resembles a pig” (45). Fiona Haslam states that his practice was illegal under the law of the time:
His sign illustrates his other accomplishments, namely as a Bleeder and Tooth-drawer, and as
proof of the former, six dishes containing 'blood' lie on a table outside the window. The act of 1540 stated that:
no manner of psonne within the cittie of London, subburbes of the same and one myle compas .. .using barbery or shaving... shall occupy any surgery letting ofbludde or any other tiling belonging to surgery, drawing of teeth onely except... and furthermore in like manner whosoever that usith the mystery of crafte of surgery within the circuits aforesaid... shall in no wise occupye nor exercise me feate or crafte of barbarye or shaving
According to this, the barber should not carry out the operation of bleeding. Even being shaved by the drunken barber would seem to be a hazardous prcedure with inadvertent blood-letting a real danger. The lawlessness on this particular barber's part may be a deliberate demonstration by Hogarth to fit in with the lawless activities proceeding outside the shop where chaos is seen to reign. Blood-letting apparently went on both inside and outside the establishment. Hogarth wished to draw attention to the hypocrisy, drunkenness and corruption which were perpetuated in society under the cloak of darkness. (267)
Furthermore, she notes that the practice of cupping—extracting air from a cup with heat, piercing the skin and drawing the blood by pressing the cup on the skin and creating a vaccum—was a widely practiced form of blood-letting meant to balance the humours. Cupping, she notes, was often practiced at places that doubled as houses of ill repute or as places used as rendezvous locations for illicit lovers. The glass pictured here is a common cupping glass. Hogarth uses what might have been common knowledge to his audience to suggest a dual purpose to the establishment (267).
This theme of duality is also seen in the drunken freemason, widely recognized as St. Thomas de Veil, a man who decried vice.
The statue of Charles watches over the scene. Hogarth here uses Charles as an example of the decadence of the aristocracy that filters down through the other classes. A moral society must have a moral leader. This theme is also explored in Marriage à la Mode, where the Countess of middle-class background becomes exposed to, and ultimately a part of, the aristocratic licentiousness around her.
The Four Times of the Day: Night
Shesgreen, Sean. Engravings by Hogarth. (1973)
Set beside the mock pastoral “Evening,” the print “Night,” the most turbulent of the series, depicts the common city vices, miseries, violence and turmoil. The oak branches announce that it is May 29th, the day on which the restoration of Charles II was celebrated. In fact the scene is singularly devoid of any type of celebration.
In the background a cart of household furniture passes under the statue of Charles I in Charing Cross; its owners are fleeing their landlord by night. The sky above is filled with fire and smoke. On the left hang: a tavern sign portraying a wide, short glass; a brothel plaque inscribed “The New Bagnio” and a barber-surgeon’s pole with a sign showing a man in torture having a tooth pulled. The illustration belies the legend “Shaving Bleeding & Teeth Drawn wth. a Touch/ Ecce Signum” (Behold the Sign). On the other side of the street stands a “Bagnio” and a tavern bearing the sign “Earl of Cardigan.”
In the barber’s shop a hairdresser-barber-surgeon, blind drunk, has just cut his customer who grips the chair in alarm. Because of the manner in which he holds the man’s nose, the customer resembles a pig.
Outside the window stand dishes of human blood drawn from the day’s patients. Beneath the ledge on which they stand, three homeless people huddle together in sleep, and a linkboy or guide blows his torch to a flame. Next to them a wealthy freemason in ceremonial dress with his carpenter’s square around his neck lurches indecorously homeward, led with some difficulty by a patient lodge porter of smaller stature. From the window above, the contents of a chamber pot fall on his head; he responds by threatening the air with his cane; his wise and tolerant guide has confiscated his sword to avoid another battle like the one which has bloodied the mason’s forehead.
In the middle of the street “The Salisbury Flying Coach” has overturned in front of a bonfire which seems to have caused the horses to bolt. The gun of one of the riders goes off in fracas as the they scramble to get out. Their plight is observed by a butcher boy and a youth with a wooden sword. In the midst of all this chaos a man calmly smokes a pipe and pours beer into a large barrel for a street celebration of the Restoration (45).
The Four Times of the Day: Night
Uglow, Jenny. Hogarth: A Life and a World. (1997)
In the city lanes of Night, Properina becomes a gawping woman tumbled from her chariot, and Pluto a drunken Freemason, a tyrannical magistrate who holds the London underworld in thrall, but defies sobriety and justice in his own private life (303).
Days end; seasons pass. In Night, darkness and danger envelop the city. The lust of the people that seemed innocently warm at noon turns to dangerous flame at dusk. The scene is full of pain, fire and misrule: the street signs for bagnios and drinking houses point into the city like spears. The poor sheep huddled in the shadow of a stall, beneath a row of bleeding-dishes and above them the barber draws blood while he shaves his client, squeezing his notes; the alarming sign reads “Shaving, Bleeding and Teeth Drawn wth. A Touch”. The body here is sore and foul. Instead of sweet rain, or country milk, a chamber-pot showers urine which bounces off the lintel straight on the reeling Mason beneath, still in his apron, being guided home by his steward. So drunk is he, that he hardly seems to notice the chaos behind, where a bonfire flares, the Canterbury flying coach is overturned, and men stand by ready to throw firebrands at the wreckage. Fireworks, torches and candles add to the flaring light, for the particular night, judging by the oak leaves, is 29 May, anniversary of the restoration of Charles II—the “patron of brothels.”
In this final print, the anti-French jokes of Noon and the broad misogyny of Evening turn to political satire; the narrow street leads down to Charing Cross, where the statue of Charles II by Le Suer rears on it plinth, and oak-leaf wreaths are not a call for restoration of the Stuarts, but an emblem of bad leadership. The boss-eyed Mason, a lurching king of misrule, was at one recognized as the Bow Street magistrate Sir Thomas de Veil, renowned for the gulf between his severity on the bench and his wayward private life. In 1736 he was loathed by the London mob for implementing the recent Gin Act, an attempt to control the sale of spirit (since 1720 the sale of gin had risen rapidly, with over seven thousand gin shops in London and up to thirty thousand people in the trade). Londoners took to the street with mock funeral processions for “Queen Gin” and black drapes over the gin shops. In September 1736, the bookseller at the Camden’s Head in Round Court was advertising “The Deposing and Death of Queen Gin, with the Ruin of the Duke of Rum, Marquis of Nantz, Lord Sugar Cane, &c. Price 6d. As it was acted on Monday last at the New Theatre in the Haymarket”. One revenge story told of de Veil sampling a particular tot of gin, only to find out it had been replaced with piss—hence the flowing chamber pot in Hogarth’s print. So violent was the feeling against him that in January 1738 a crowds surrounded to his house in Frith Street, threatening to raze it to the ground and kill his “informers”. A local man, Roger Allen, known to be backward, was made a scapegoat and tried for inciting the mob: Westminster Hall was packed with cheering crowds on the acquittal.
Violence often exploded on public holidays. Hogarth’s print, with its fiery uproar, its bonfires and oak leaves—reminder of the Civil Wars and the fragility of “civilized” national life—spoke to Londoners not only of the unrest that dogged de Veil, but of the far worse riots against Irish labourers in Spitalfields that year. And the picture of de Veil in his cups made it clear that double standards still prevailed with a vengeance for rich and poor. A few years later, in July 1742, three young aristocrats, including the bother of the Duke of Malborough, and Lord George Graham (whose portrait Hogarth later pained), were caught in a raid on a Covent Garden bagnio, ordered by de Veil. They were released but the women with them, and others picked up in the street, were taken to St. Martin’s Lane Roundhouse. Twenty-eight women were thrust into a hole six feet square and kept there all night:
The poor creatures who could not stir or breathe, screamed as long as they had any breath left, begging at least for water: one poor wretch said she was worth at least eighteenpence and would gladly give it for a draught of water—but in vain! So well did they keep them there, that in the morning four were found stifled to death, two died soon after, and a dozen more are in a shocking way . . . several of them were beggars, who from having no lodging were necessarily found in the street, and other honest labouring women: one of the dead was a poor washerwoman, bug with child who was returning home late from washing.
No one swung for these murders: Londoners had good reason to hate their strict and hypocritical magistrates (309-311).
In one corner of Hogarth’s Night a snub-nosed boy is blowing on a lighted torch. He is probably a link-boy, making his money by lighting strangers home at night through the dark streets (326).
The Four Times of the Day: Night
Quennell, Peter. Hogarth’s Progress. (1955)
Almost equally evocative [as Morning] is the effect of Night, where the mysterious glimmering grey of summer moonshine replaces the murk of iron-clad winter. It is as sultry as its companion is icy. The streets are stifling; sashes are thrown up; and a woman’s arm empties a chamber-pot from the window of a darkened bedroom, sousing an intoxicated Masonic dignitary (believed to represent a magistrate named Sir Thomas de Veil, notorious for the campaign he waged against London houses of assignation.) who, still hung around the emblems of his craft, is staggering home on a waiter’s arm. A vehicle has been overturned—we notice that it is the “Salisbury Flying Coach”; and a barber-surgeon is bleeding, and simultaneously shaving a patient, in whom the hot weather and a too sanguine constitution have induced the fear of apoplexy. Both the place and the time have been fixed by the painter. We are in the narrowest part of Charing Cross, approaching Charles I’s equestrian statue, which can be seen in the distance between the pendant signs of the Cardigan’s Head and the Rummer Tavern, the oak-leaves wreathed round the barber’s pole and the candles stuck on the window-frames show that this is May 29th, celebrated by the Englishmen as “Restoration Day”: for among Hogarth’s contemporaries the Jacobite opposition had not yet begun to lose its strength. It was to survive the failure of the ’45 rebellion and raise its head again during the Oxfordshire Election, so fiercely contested in 1754 (150-151).
The Four Times of the Day: Night
Ireland, John and John Nichols. Hogarth’s Works. (1883)
Mr. Walpole very truly observes that this print is inferior to the three others; there is, however broad humour in some of the figures.
The wounded freemason, who, in zeal of brotherly love, has drank his bumpers to the craft till he is unable to find his way home, is under the guidance of a waiter. This has been generally considered as intended for Sir Thomas de Veil, and, from an authenticated portrait which I have seen, I am inclined to think it is, notwithstanding Sir John Hawkins asserts that “he could discover no resemblance.” When the knight saw him in his magisterial capacity, he was probably sober and sedate: here he is represented a little disguised. The British Xantippe showering her favours from the window upon his head, may have its source in that respect which the inmates of such houses as the Rummer Tavern had for the justice of the peace.
The waiter who supports his worship seems, from the patch upon his forehead, to have been in a recent affray; but what use he can have for a lantern it is not easy to divine, unless he is conducting his charge to some place where there is neither moonlight nor illumination.
The Salisbury flying coach oversetting and broken, by passing through the bonfire, is said to be an intended burlesque upon a right honourable peer, who was accustomed to drive his own carriage over hedges, ditches, and rivers; and has been sometimes known to drive three or four of his maid-servants into a deep water, and there leave them in the coach to shift for themselves.
The butcher and little fellow who are assisting the terrified passengers, are possibly free and accepted masons. One of them seems to have a mop in his hand;--the pail is out of sight!
To crown the joys of the populace, a man with a pipe in his mouth is filling a capacious hogshead with British Burgundy.
The joint operation of shaving and bleeding, performed by a drunken ‘prentice on a greasy oilman does not seem a very natural exhibition on a rejoicing night.
The poor wretches under the barber’s bench display a prospect of penury and wretchedness which I hope is not so common now as it was then.
In the distance is a cart laden with furniture, which some unfortunate tenant is removing out of the reach of his landlord’s execution.
There is humour in the barber’s sign and inscription: “Shaving, bleeding, and teeth drawn with a touch. Ecce signum!”
The Rummer Tavern still retains its old situation. It was then quaintly distinguished as the NEW BAGNIO.
By the oaken boughs on the sign, and the oak leaves in the freemasons’ hats, it seems that this rejoicing night is the 29th of May, the anniversary of our second Charles’s restoration; that happy day when, according to our excellent old ballad, “the king enjoyed his own again.” This might be one reason for the artist choosing a scene contiguous to the beautiful equestrian statue of Charles I.
In the distance we see a house on fire,--an accident very likely to happen on such a night as this (230-233).
The Four Times of the Day: Night
Trusler, Rev. J. and E.F. Roberts. The Complete Works of William Hogarth. (1800)
Night is come over Charing Cross, and we are (probably) in Harshorn Lane, where “Rare Ben Jonson” was born—looking up towards the equestrian stature of Charles—the most beautiful piece of art, of its class, in the metropolis; though, to speak positively, there is no small amount of dubiety as to our exact whereabouts; recollecting, however, that the head of the horse and the face of the rider are dead opposite to the spectator. Remark, also, that you do not behold a single lamp lit in the whole street; the borrowed lights are therefore as numerous as they are admirable in their disposal.
Charing was one of the most ancient villages within the suburban circle of the metropolis; and the pious gratitude of Edward I. had adorned the spot with a cross, which no longer remains. Spring gardens, the Mews, the Banqueting Hall, Northumberland House, and St. Martin’s Church, were subsequent supplementary additions to Charing Cross—not devoid of interest, or deficient in attraction.
Doctor Johnson remarked, that on this spot (Charing Cross) is to be found the “fullest tide of human existence in the metropolis.” He spoke, of course, by comparison; and we know now of scores of other outlets, inlets, of cross and counter channels, where the said tide, with a reflux, regurgitates, becomes packed, choked, wedged; and then, with a fierce rush, breaks its barriers, and the steady ebb and flow of the human tide goes on.
Historic memories, of a somber and solemn order, belong to Charing. Not far off stood Charles I. on the morn of his beheading. Not remote was the spot where the regicides suffered tortures worthy of Congo savages, or of Ashantee cannibals. Hugh Peters Harrison, and Cook, are names as illustrious for suffering for “conscience’ sake,” as that of Charles himself.
Here was the Rummer Tavern, where Prior was found reading Horace when a boy. At “Locket’s ordinary,” hard by, Sir George Etherage spunged upon the landlady, and, getting into debt, swore in reply to her dunning, that he would kiss her if she persisted in a prosecution. At this threat she called for her hood, and was going on at once, like a woman of spirit, to precipitate matters, defiant of the threat made by the elegant scapegrace. The polite husband stopped her. “Pr’ythee, my dear, don’t be so rash,” said he; “you don’t know what a man may do in his passion” (121-122).
The Four Times of the Day: Night
Paulson, Ronald. Hogarth’s Graphic Works. (1965)
A London street near Charing Cross with its bronze equestrian statue of Charles I (which was erected in 1675 to occupy the site of the cross that designated one of the resting spots of Queen Eleanor of Castile's coffin on its way to burial; the latter was destroyed by the Puritans). The character in the foreground, with a carpenter's square on a ribbon around his neck and a white apron, is a drunken Freemason in his regalia. He is said to be a portrait of Sir Thomas De Veil, the Bow Street Magistrate, who may also appear in A Woman Swearing a Child (see Biog. Anecd., 1782, p. 211, where Sir John Hawkins is cited as denying the identification; J. Ireland, I, 149- 50). De Veil was so strict in his condemnation of drunkenness that on one occasion a mob set fire to his house, and so corrupt as Bow Street Magistrate that Fielding used him as the model for Justice Squeezum in The Coffee-House Politician (1730). De Veil (1684-1746) entered the army as a private, retired as a colonel in 1713, and became a justice of the peace in 1727, for which service he was knighted in 1744. He was an intelligent and energetic magistrate but as corrupt as other magistrates of the time. He had twenty-five children by four marriages and was also reputed to spend much time among the prostitutes of Covent Garden, and so perhaps needed extra funds. (See Memoirs of the Life and Times of Sir Thomas de Veil, London, 1748.) He was succeeded as Bow Street Magistrate in 1746 by John Poulson and in 1748 by Fielding.
The person leading De Veil is the tyler, or doorkeeper, of his lodge. G. W. Speth argues that he is not, as was formerly supposed, a waiter or drawer of a tavern:
The dress and wig are not those of a menial, and the masonic apron rather points also to a contrary conclusion. The sword under the arm at once suggests a Tyler, and distinct resemblance may be traced between Hogarth's picture and an engraved portrait dated 1738 of "Montgomerie, garder to ye Grand Lodge," or as we should say. Grand Tyler. The cut of the coat sleeve and arrangement of the linen are also identical in both plates. What more consonant with all we know of Hogarth than the supposition that the Grand Tyler having issued an engraving of himself in 1738, the very year of Hogarth's plate, he should seize the first opportunity of caricaturing it? [Transactions of the Lodge Quatuor Coronati, 2, 1889, 116; quoted, H. B. Wheatley, Hogarth's London, London, 1909, p. 140].
The signs are of houses of ill repute ("BAGNIO" and "THE NEW BAGNIO"); of the Cardigan Head and Rummer taverns ("EARL OF CARDEGAN" and a board with a picture of a rummer, a short wide drinking glass on a low stem), the latter flourishing with the same name well into the nineteenth century; and of a barber-surgeon. The latter has a striped barber's pole projecting into the street and a sign: "Shaving Bleeding & Teeth Drawn wth a Touch Ecce Signum." The small basins on the barber's sill probably contain blood lanced from patients. Under the bulk a man and a woman are asleep in their "beggar's bagnio" (Trusler, p. 80); a link boy (who guided people through the dark London streets) stimulates his link.
The fire in the middle of the road has caused "The Salisbury Flying Coach" to overturn. The Flying Coach made its trip in a single day setting out "from the Angel inn in High-Street, Sarum, every Monday, Wednesday and Friday; and from the Bell-Savage Inn on Ludgate-Hill London, every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday" (London Evening Post, Apr. 15-17, 1746). Two men (one with a butcher's apron twisted around his middle) watch the helpless passengers; they seem to have thrown a burning link into the coach (another burns on the ground) and the butcher is holding a mop in front of him. In the distance a cart of furniture crosses the square, probably moving at night to escape a landlord’s confiscation. A large fire is burning on the horizon.
The statue of Charles I is connected with the oak leaves in the freemason’s hat (and the hat of the small man with the wooden sword) and the oak boughs on the barber’s sign, which show that it is May 29, the anniversary of Charles II’s restoration in 1660. “Restoration Day,” a Jacobite celebration, refers here to the misrule through which the off-duty justice of the peace is guided (181-182).
The Four Times of the Day: Night
Paulson, Ronald. Hogarth: His Life, Art and Times. (1971)
The third and fourth plates offer one alternative each: order or anarchy, wifely control or husbandly escape to the Freemasons’ lodge, drink, Jabobite fantasies (Restoration Day), and saturnalia. . . . And in Night heat has become an outlet, a form of destructiveness (of the coach, and of houses, in the distance), and a light to see drunken Freemasons home from their lodge meetings. De Veil, ordinarily the representative of law and order (parallel to the pride in Plate 1), is himself drunk, now less a contrast to than a part of the disorderly celebration, the fires with the gin and urine pouring, and so on. As the Restoration Day decorations and bonfires show, it is spring, and the row of pans on the barber-surgeon’s sill is a reminder that bloodletting was popular as a spring tonic. Here Hogarth has recreated what much have been a central image for him: Restoration of the Merry Monarch and Burning the Rumps at Temple Bar (vol.1 404).
The Four Times of the Day: Night
Paulson, Ronald. Popular and Polite Art in the Age of Hogarth. (1979)
As is quite clear in Hogarth’s “Night,” the fourth Time of the Day (1738), the contiguity of George I’s birthday and Restoration Day (28, 29 May) allowed for the anti-Hanoverian crowd to celebrate in a subversive way (28).
The Four Times of the Day: Night
Dobson, Austin. William Hogarth. (1907)
. . . and the fourth, the neighbourhood of Charing Cross, at night, on “Restoration Day,” with the “Salisbury Flying Coach” upset in the middle of a bonfire.
. . . the drunken freemason in Night (Sir Thomas de Veil) . . . [is] excellent (Sir Thomas de Veil, 1684-1746, was an able but not very worshipful Justice of Peace for London and Westminster, and a predecessor of Henry Fielding at Bow Street. There is an interesting account by Mr. W. Harry Rylands of this plate, and De Veil’s connection with it, in the “Transactions of the Lodge Quartuor Coronati, No. 2076, London,” Margate, vol ii. (1889), pp. 146-155.) (58-59).
The Four Times of the Day: Night
Lichtenberg, G. Ch. Lichtenberg’s Commentaries on Hogarth’s Engravings. (1784-1796). Translated from the German by Innes and Gustav Herdan (1966)
Hogarth has thought fit to present us here with a night scene which deserves the name only by the position of the sun, for we can see into the distance here just as well as at the three other times of the day, and can even read the smallest writing on signboards, mail coaches, and so on. In the first place, a bonfire is blazing in the foreground; secondly, there is a hand-lantern hard by; thirdly, fireworks are being let off, one of which is lighting: the passengers in the coach the way to the grave; fourthly, these squibs are being let off by a boy with a torch which sends its light into a deep recess and brings something to the notice of the police; fifthly, a fellow operating at a barrel has stood on it his own candle-end in an earthenware candlestick; sixthly, several houses are lit up; seventhly, the moon is shining; and eighthly, there is at the far end of the scene, just behind the bonfire, a great mal-fire, that is to say, a house ablaze. Perhaps a useful lesson on the consequences of bonfires. Thus Nature, art and chance have combined here to lend the artist their light. Boursault, if he had sought to explain this picture to his Babette, would probably have said: 'Nothing is lacking here, but the lustre of your eyes to make day complete.'
It is the night of May 29th, when the restoration of the monarchy and of King Charles II is celebrated by the supporters of that great event (and who would not be among them?) with bonfires and illuminations. That is why we see oak leaves on the houses here and on the hats, in memory of the famous Charles' Oak which has become immortal. With that in mind, the artist has chosen the scene really well, and with a degree of feeling, traces of which are none too frequent in this work. For we must know that this is the district of Charing Cross in London, where stands that masterpiece in the art of bronze casting, the statue of the unhappy King Charles I, which is seen here in the background, and which our artist thus, in a way, causes to take part in the festivities. Who among our readers will not feel a longing for some future statue of the equally unhappy Louis XVI being a witness to similar joyful celebrations? We must not allow the impression which the artist's idea must make upon every person of feeling to be obliterated by the pranks which he has put into the foreground. It could not be otherwise at the public celebrations of a great and healthy people. Every creature enjoys himself according to his taste; the butcher boys, some of whom we see here, differently from the chamberlain, and the boon companion, who is here too, differently from the arch-bishop; and in such an event the artist who wants to represent all these pleasures will surely deal with them most wisely if he selects only those which he can himself appreciate.
The old man in the foreground is a heavily drunk and wounded Free- mason still in full regalia with the square and apron. His forehead drips with blood as his mouth with wine. He glows all over and would burst into flames had he not fortunately crossed the stream of an artificial pisse-vache from the upper storey. He is being led home by the Lodge porter and candle-snuffer of the society, who has taken charge of his sword, but left him the stick. Such marked and re-marked skulls and brows as his are not afraid of a stick, but against the sword wisdom itself would not prevail. The old man is supposed to be the portrait of a certain Sir Thomas de Vale. Sir John Hawkins, who had known Sir Thomas, assured Mr Nichols that there was no resemblance whatsoever. On the other hand, Mr Ireland affirms that he very much resembles a portrait of that nobleman, which he had seen. Grammatici certant. Enough that we see here a drunken Freemason under the Pisse-vache—but this certainly is not satire upon the Order, at least not upon the true Order. It seems rather to be aimed at the drinking bouts and gaming clubs which called themselves Lodges, and with which London is inundated at every corner. Probably the cut here is even aimed at that notorious house 'The Rummer Tavern', the 'Roman Inn' where sessions of the Lodge were formerly held, but the new sign- board which it bears, 'The New Bagnio', makes it clear what sort of sessions those were.
The house on the left-hand side contains a barber's shop with a sign- board showing a head from which a hand is just about gently to extract a tooth, if the tooth does not devour the hand first, and the inscription: 'Shaving, Bleeding, and Teeth drawn with a Touch.' Ecce Signum. Through the raised window we look into the shop itself where, in fact, two of the operations which the signboard advertises are being executed upon an old head, namely shaving and bleeding, with one and the same touch. The teeth are not being extracted, it is true, but the nose of the poor sufferer is almost torn out. The barber's assistant who carries out the execution is, as one can see from the comb, a hairdresser at the same time. Comparing the fellow's dripping mouth and his razor opened at a right-angle with Sir Thomas's mouth and his Freemason's square, we are almost inclined to believe that he too belongs to the Lodge in the Rummer Tavern and has only been called away for a moment to minister to the old gentleman. And why should the old gentleman at that hour of the night find it necessary to dispose of his beard? Under the barber's display shelf a public dormitory is revealed, many of which could at one time have been found in London; a true Thieves' Caravanserai where young and old of both sexes with hen-equality and cock-prerogative publicly slept together. Thus a 'Bagnio' here, too, and a third over the way.
On the left is the Salisbury Flying Coach, just about to rest from its flight and to collapse upon the pavement, so that even the slowest and heaviest German Diligence (sometimes it should more appropriately be termed a Negligence) would have time to crawl past it. On the side where it has come to rest is the gutter, and on the other the bonfire, which already seems to have caught one of the wheels. The unhappy passengers had reckoned more upon some gentle sleep than upon this dilemma, which calls for a quick decision, whether it is preferable to be drowned or burned. The little rascal beside the dormitory has evidently thrown a squib among the horses, and is now blowing with bursting impatience at another. The boys in front of the coach are butcher boys who are tending the bonfire. They appear to take a very cheerful interest in the happy arrival of the travellers, and to welcome them to the gutter. One of them holds the sort of mop with which one first swabs down and then dries the floor, probably to swab down and dry the passengers with it. This instrument forms a good contrast with the firework, like the gutter and the bonfire. Anyone would think that with this the satire in the scene was complete. But it is not even half done; it is only just beginning. Up above there hangs upon a signboard the portrait of a somewhat broad, proud and pompous-looking gentleman, and beneath we read his name, the Earl of Cardigan. This is the inventor of the Flying Coach, who hangs here for the purpose of witnessing the execution of his idea down below, and as it were to write the epitaph over the grave of his own work. Others interpret it as merely a cut aimed at his lordship's fast and sometimes incautious driving. But whatever it may be, the lesson he gets is splendid. In a marble Pantheon his effigy would never have had the opportunity of witnessing a thing like that.
To finish with, a feature which is not easily noticeable but, once it is noticed, strikes one as one of the finest touches in the whole picture. In front of the statue there we see a cart with furniture. These are people who want to shake the dust of their residence off their feet unobserved, and move therefore at night; they are, however, unlucky enough, plan and details having probably been determined some time in advance, not only to have hit upon a night of celebration, and therefore illumination, but also to have come just between these two fires, so that, as if by the fire-balls of a besieged garrison, the silhouettes of their beds and chairs and their whole machinations become visible some hundred yards away. Should they be discovered by their creditors, they would not escape their 'Restoration' (293-297).
The Four Times of the Day: Night: Barber
Indoors, barber-surgeon applies his drunken trade to a pained customer. Uglow comments on the barber-surgeon’s frightening method: "the barber draws blood while he shaves his client, squeezing his nose; the alarming sign reads, 'Shaving, Bleeding and Teeth Drawn wth a Touch' The body here is sore and foul" (309). Shesgreen notes that the “hairdresser-barber-surgeon, blind drunk, has just cut his customer who grips the chair in alarm. Because of me manner in which he holds the man's nose, he resembles a pig” (45). Fiona Haslam states that his practice was illegal under the law of the time:
“His sign illustrates his other accomplishments, namely as a Bleeder and Tooth-drawer, and as proof of the former, six dishes containing 'blood' lie on a table outside the window. The act of 1540 stated that:
no manner of psonne within the cittie of London, subburbes of the same and one myle compas .. .using barbery or shaving... shall occupy any surgery letting of bludde or any other tiling belonging to surgery, drawing of teeth onely except... and furthermore in like manner whosoever that usith the mystery of crafte of surgery within the circuits aforesaid... shall in no wise occupye nor exercise me feate or crafte of barbarye or shaving
According to this, the barber should not carry out the operation of bleeding. Even being shaved by the drunken barber would seem to be a hazardous prcedure with inadvertent blood-letting a real danger. The lawlessness on this particular barber's part may be a deliberate demonstration by Hogarth to fit in with the lawless activities proceeding outside the shop where chaos is seen to reign. Blood-letting apparently went on both inside and outside the establishment. Hogarth wished to draw attention to the hypocrisy, drunkenness and corruption which were perpetuated in society under the cloak of darkness” (267).
Furthermore, she notes that the practice of cupping—extracting air from a cup with heat, piercing the skin and drawing the blood by pressing the cup on the skin and creating a vaccum—was a widely practiced form of blood-letting meant to balance the humours. Cupping, she notes, was often practiced at places that doubled as houses of ill repute or as places used as rendezvous locations for illicit lovers. The glass pictured here is a common cupping glass. Hogarth uses what might have been common knowledge to his audience to suggest a dual purpose to the establishment (267).
The Four Times of the Day: Night: Barber
Shesgreen
In the barber’s shop a hairdresser-barber-surgeon, blind drunk, has just cut his customer who grips the chair in alarm. Because of the manner in which he holds the man’s nose, the customer resembles a pig.
Outside the window stand dishes of human blood drawn from the day’s patients (45).
The Four Times of the Day: Night: Barber
Uglow
the barber draws blood while he shaves his client, squeezing his notes; the alarming sign reads “Shaving, Bleeding and Teeth Drawn wth. A Touch”. The body here is sore and foul (309).
The Four Times of the Day: Night: Barber
Ireland
The joint operation of shaving and bleeding, performed by a drunken ‘prentice on a greasy oilman does not seem a very natural exhibition on a rejoicing night.
The poor wretches under the barber’s bench display a prospect of penury and wretchedness which I hope is not so common now as it was then (231-232).
The Four Times of the Day: Night: Barber
Lichtenberg
The house on the left-hand side contains a barber's shop with a sign- board showing a head from which a hand is just about gently to extract a tooth, if the tooth does not devour the hand first, and the inscription: 'Shaving, Bleeding, and Teeth drawn with a Touch.' Ecce Signum. Through the raised window we look into the shop itself where, in fact, two of the operations which the signboard advertises are being executed upon an old head, namely shaving and bleeding, with one and the same touch. The teeth are not being extracted, it is true, but the nose of the poor sufferer is almost torn out. The barber's assistant who carries out the execution is, as one can see from the comb, a hairdresser at the same time. Comparing the fellow's dripping mouth and his razor opened at a right-angle with Sir Thomas's mouth and his Freemason's square, we are almost inclined to believe that he too belongs to the Lodge in the Rummer Tavern and has only been called away for a moment to minister to the old gentleman. And why should the old gentleman at that hour of the night find it necessary to dispose of his beard? Under the barber's display shelf a public dormitory is revealed, many of which could at one time have been found in London; a true Thieves' Caravanserai where young and old of both sexes with hen-equality and cock-prerogative publicly slept together. Thus a 'Bagnio' here, too, and a third over the way (295).
The Four Times of the Day: Night: Barber Pole
The barber’s sign notes his virtuoso talents: “Shaving Bleeding & Teeth Drawn wth a Touch Ecce Signum.”The pole designates that this is a barber-surgeon. The guild's symbol is still seen in the striped barbers' poles of today. The oak leaves show that this is May 29 or "Restoration Day," an irony in that we are witnessing a disintegration of order rather than a restoration of it.
The Four Times of the Day: Night: Barber Pole
Shesgreen
The oak branches announce that it is May 29th, the day on which the restoration of Charles II was celebrated. In fact the scene is singularly devoid of any type of celebration.
a barber-surgeon’s pole with a sign showing a man in torture having a tooth pulled (45).
The Four Times of the Day: Night: Barber Pole
Quennell
the oak-leaves wreathed round the barber’s pole and the candles stuck on the window-frames show that this is May 29th, celebrated by the Englishmen as “Restoration Day”: for among Hogarth’s contemporaries the Jacobite opposition had not yet begun to lose its strength. It was to survive the failure of the ’45 rebellion and raise its head again during the Oxfordshire Election, so fiercely contested in 1754 (151).
The Four Times of the Day: Night: Barber Pole
Ireland
By the oaken boughs on the sign, and the oak leaves in the freemasons’ hats, it seems that this rejoicing night is the 29th of May, the anniversary of our second Charles’s restoration; that happy day when, according to our excellent old ballad, “the king enjoyed his own again.” This might be one reason for the artist choosing a scene contiguous to the beautiful equestrian statue of Charles I. In the distance we see a house on fire,--an accident very likely to happen on such a night as this (233).
The Four Times of the Day: Night: Barber Pole
Paulson, Hogarth's Graphic Works
a striped barber's pole projecting into the street and a sign: "Shaving Bleeding & Teeth Drawn wth a Touch Ecce Signum." The small basins on the barber's sill probably contain blood lanced from patients
The statue of Charles I is connected with the oak leaves in the freemason’s hat (and the hat of the small man with the wooden sword) and the oak boughs on the barber’s sign, which show that it is May 29, the anniversary of Charles II’s restoration in 1660. “Restoration Day,” a Jacobite celebration, refers here to the misrule through which the off-duty justice of the peace is guided (181-182).
The Four Times of the Day: Night: Carriage
Shesgreen
In the middle of the street “The Salisbury Flying Coach” has overturned in front of a bonfire which seems to have caused the horses to bolt. The gun of one of the riders goes off in fracas as the they scramble to get out. Their plight is observed by a butcher boy and a youth with a wooden sword (45).
The Four Times of the Day: Night: Carriage
Uglow
In the city lanes of Night, Properina becomes a gawping woman tumbled from her chariot, and Pluto a drunken Freemason, a tyrannical magistrate who holds the London underworld in thrall, but defies sobriety and justice in his own private life (303).
the Canterbury flying coach is overturned, and men stand by ready to throw firebrands at the wreckage (309).
The Four Times of the Day: Night: Carriage
Ireland
The Salisbury flying coach oversetting and broken, by passing through the bonfire, is said to be an intended burlesque upon a right honourable peer, who was accustomed to drive his own carriage over hedges, ditches, and rivers; and has been sometimes known to drive three or four of his maid-servants into a deep water, and there leave them in the coach to shift for themselves (231).
The Four Times of the Day: Night: Carriage
Paulson, Hogarth's Graphic Works
The fire in the middle of the road has caused "The Salisbury Flying Coach" to overturn. The Flying Coach made its trip in a single day setting out "from the Angel inn in High-Street, Sarum, every Monday, Wednesday and Friday; and from the Bell-Savage Inn on Ludgate-Hill London, every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday" (London Evening Post, Apr. 15-17, 1746). Two men (one with a butcher's apron twisted around his middle) watch the helpless passengers; they seem to have thrown a burning link into the coach (another burns on the ground) and the butcher is holding a mop in front of him. In the distance a cart of furniture crosses the square, probably moving at night to escape a landlord’s confiscation (181-182).
The Four Times of the Day: Night: Carriage
Lichtenberg
On the left is the Salisbury Flying Coach, just about to rest from its flight and to collapse upon the pavement, so that even the slowest and heaviest German Diligence (sometimes it should more appropriately be termed a Negligence) would have time to crawl past it. On the side where it has come to rest is the gutter, and on the other the bonfire, which already seems to have caught one of the wheels. The unhappy passengers had reckoned more upon some gentle sleep than upon this dilemma, which calls for a quick decision, whether it is preferable to be drowned or burned. The little rascal beside the dormitory has evidently thrown a squib among the horses, and is now blowing with bursting impatience at another. The boys in front of the coach are butcher boys who are tending the bonfire. They appear to take a very cheerful interest in the happy arrival of the travellers, and to welcome them to the gutter. One of them holds the sort of mop with which one first swabs down and then dries the floor, probably to swab down and dry the passengers with it. This instrument forms a good contrast with the firework, like the gutter and the bonfire. Anyone would think that with this the satire in the scene was complete. But it is not even half done; it is only just beginning (296).
The Four Times of the Day: Night: Chamber Pot
Shesgreen
the window above, the contents of a chamber pot fall on his [the freemason’s] head (45).
The Four Times of the Day: Night: Chamber Pot
Ireland
The British Xantippe showering her favours from the window upon his [the freemason’s] head, may have its source in that respect which the inmates of such houses as the Rummer Tavern had for the justice of the peace (230-231).
The Four Times of the Day: Night: Drunks
Shesgreen
Next to them a wealthy freemason in ceremonial dress with his carpenter’s square around his neck lurches indecorously homeward, led with some difficulty by a patient lodge porter of smaller stature.
From the window above, the contents of a chamber pot fall on his head; he responds by threatening the air with his cane; his wise and tolerant guide has confiscated his sword to avoid another battle like the one which has bloodied the mason’s forehead (45).
The Four Times of the Day: Night: Drunks
Uglow
In the city lanes of Night, Properina becomes a gawping woman tumbled from her chariot, and Pluto a drunken Freemason, a tyrannical magistrate who holds the London underworld in thrall, but defies sobriety and justice in his own private life (303).
Instead of sweet rain, or country milk, a chamber-pot showers urine which bounces off the lintel straight on the reeling Mason beneath, still in his apron, being guided home by his steward (309).
The Four Times of the Day: Night: Drunks
Quennell
a woman’s arm empties a chamber-pot from the window of a darkened bedroom, sousing an intoxicated Masonic dignitary (believed to represent a magistrate named Sir Thomas de Veil, notorious for the campaign he waged against London houses of assignation.) who, still hung around the emblems of his craft, is staggering home on a waiter’s arm (150).
The Four Times of the Day: Night: Drunks
Ireland
The wounded freemason, who, in zeal of brotherly love, has drank his bumpers to the craft till he is unable to find his way home, is under the guidance of a waiter. This has been generally considered as intended for Sir Thomas de Veil, and, from an authenticated portrait which I have seen, I am inclined to think it is, notwithstanding Sir John Hawkins asserts that “he could discover no resemblance.” When the knight saw him in his magisterial capacity, he was probably sober and sedate: here he is represented a little disguised (230).
The Four Times of the Day: Night: Drunks
Paulson, Hogarth's Graphic Works
The character in the foreground, with a carpenter's square on a ribbon around his neck and a white apron, is a drunken Freemason in his regalia. He is said to be a portrait of Sir Thomas De Veil, the Bow Street Magistrate, who may also appear in A Woman Swearing a Child (see Biog. Anecd., 1782, p. 211, where Sir John Hawkins is cited as denying the identification; J. Ireland, I, 149- 50). De Veil was so strict in his condemnation of drunkenness that on one occasion a mob set fire to his house, and so corrupt as Bow Street Magistrate that Fielding used him as the model for Justice Squeezum in The Coffee-House Politician (1730). De Veil (1684-1746) entered the army as a private, retired as a colonel in 1713, and became a justice of the peace in 1727, for which service he was knighted in 1744. He was an intelligent and energetic magistrate but as corrupt as other magistrates of the time. He had twenty-five children by four marriages and was also reputed to spend much time among the prostitutes of Covent Garden, and so perhaps needed extra funds. (See Memoirs of the Life and Times of Sir Thomas de Veil, London, 1748.) He was succeeded as Bow Street Magistrate in 1746 by John Poulson and in 1748 by Fielding.
The person leading De Veil is the tyler, or doorkeeper, of his lodge. G. W. Speth argues that he is not, as was formerly supposed, a waiter or drawer of a tavern:
The dress and wig are not those of a menial, and the masonic apron rather points also to a contrary conclusion. The sword under the arm at once suggests a Tyler, and distinct resemblance may be traced between Hogarth's picture and an engraved portrait dated 1738 of "Montgomerie, garder to ye Grand Lodge," or as we should say. Grand Tyler. The cut of the coat sleeve and arrangement of the linen are also identical in both plates. What more consonant with all we know of Hogarth than the supposition that the Grand Tyler having issued an engraving of himself in 1738, the very year of Hogarth's plate, he should seize the first opportunity of caricaturing it? [Transactions of the Lodge Quatuor Coronati, 2, 1889, 116; quoted, H. B. Wheatley, Hogarth's London, London, 1909, p. 140] (181).
The Four Times of the Day: Night: Drunks
Paulson, His Life, Art and Times
De Veil, ordinarily the representative of law and order (parallel to the pride in Plate 1), is himself drunk, now less a contrast to than a part of the disorderly celebration, the fires with the gin and urine pouring, and so on (vol. 1 404).
The Four Times of the Day: Night: Drunks
Dobson
. . . the drunken freemason in Night (Sir Thomas de Veil) . . . [is] excellent (Sir Thomas de Veil, 1684-1746, was an able but not very worshipful Justice of Peace for London and Westminster, and a predecessor of Henry Fielding at Bow Street. There is an interesting account by Mr. W. Harry Rylands of this plate, and De Veil’s connection with it, in the “Transactions of the Lodge Quartuor Coronati, No. 2076, London,” Margate, vol ii. (1889), pp. 146-155.) (58-59).
The Four Times of the Day: Night: Drunks
Lichtenberg
The old man in the foreground is a heavily drunk and wounded Free- mason still in full regalia with the square and apron. His forehead drips with blood as his mouth with wine. He glows all over and would burst into flames had he not fortunately crossed the stream of an artificial pisse-vache from the upper storey. He is being led home by the Lodge porter and candle-snuffer of the society, who has taken charge of his sword, but left him the stick. Such marked and re-marked skulls and brows as his are not afraid of a stick, but against the sword wisdom itself would not prevail. The old man is supposed to be the portrait of a certain Sir Thomas de Vale. Sir John Hawkins, who had known Sir Thomas, assured Mr Nichols that there was no resemblance whatsoever. On the other hand, Mr Ireland affirms that he very much resembles a portrait of that nobleman, which he had seen. Grammatici certant. Enough that we see here a drunken Freemason under the Pisse-vache—but this certainly is not satire upon the Order, at least not upon the true Order (294-295).
The Four Times of the Day: Night: Barber's Sign
Paulson, Hogarth's Graphic Works
a striped barber's pole projecting into the street and a sign: "Shaving Bleeding & Teeth Drawn wth a Touch Ecce Signum." The small basins on the barber's sill probably contain blood lanced from patients (181).
The Four Times of the Day: Night: Rummer Tavern
Ireland
The British Xantippe showering her favours from the window upon his head, may have its source in that respect which the inmates of such houses as the Rummer Tavern had for the justice of the peace (230-231).
The Four Times of the Day: Night: Rummer Tavern
Trusler
Here was the Rummer Tavern, where Prior was found reading Horace when a boy. At “Locket’s ordinary,” hard by, Sir George Etherage spunged upon the landlady, and, getting into debt, swore in reply to her dunning, that he would kiss her if she persisted in a prosecution. At this threat she called for her hood, and was going on at once, like a woman of spirit, to precipitate matters, defiant of the threat made by the elegant scapegrace. The polite husband stopped her. “Pr’ythee, my dear, don’t be so rash,” said he; “you don’t know what a man may do in his passion” (122).
The Four Times of the Day: Night: Rummer Tavern
Paulson, Hogarth's Graphic Works
The signs are of houses of ill repute ("BAGNIO" and "THE NEW BAGNIO"); of the Cardigan Head and Rummer taverns ("EARL OF CARDEGAN" and a board with a picture of a rummer, a short wide drinking glass on a low stem), the latter flourishing with the same name well into the nineteenth century (181).
The Four Times of the Day: Night: Earl of Cardigan
The tavern sign reads “Earl of Cardigan.”
The Four Times of the Day: Night: Earl of Cardigan
Shesgreen
On the other side of the street stands a “Bagnio” and a tavern bearing the sign “Earl of Cardigan” (45).
The Four Times of the Day: Night: Earl of Cardigan
Paulson, Hogarth's Graphic Works
The signs are of houses of ill repute ("BAGNIO" and "THE NEW BAGNIO"); of the Cardigan Head and Rummer taverns ("EARL OF CARDEGAN" and a board with a picture of a rummer, a short wide drinking glass on a low stem), the latter flourishing with the same name well into the nineteenth century (181).
The Four Times of the Day: Night: Earl of Cardigan
Lichtenberg
there hangs upon a signboard the portrait of a somewhat broad, proud and pompous-looking gentleman, and beneath we read his name, the Earl of Cardigan. This is the inventor of the Flying Coach, who hangs here for the purpose of witnessing the execution of his idea down below, and as it were to write the epitaph over the grave of his own work. Others interpret it as merely a cut aimed at his lordship's fast and sometimes incautious driving. But whatever it may be, the lesson he gets is splendid. In a marble Pantheon his effigy would never have had the opportunity of witnessing a thing like that (296).
The Four Times of the Day: Night: Statue
The statue of Charles watches over the scene. Hogarth here uses Charles as an example of the decadence of the aristocracy (made manifest in his son’s reign) that filters down through the other classes. A moral society must have a moral leader. This theme is also explored in Marriage à la Mode, where the Countess of middle-class background becomes exposed to, and ultimately a part of, the aristocratic licentiousness around her.
The Four Times of the Day: Night: Statue
Ireland
By the oaken boughs on the sign, and the oak leaves in the freemasons’ hats, it seems that this rejoicing night is the 29th of May, the anniversary of our second Charles’s restoration; that happy day when, according to our excellent old ballad, “the king enjoyed his own again.” This might be one reason for the artist choosing a scene contiguous to the beautiful equestrian statue of Charles I (232).
The Four Times of the Day: Night: Statue
Quennell
We are in the narrowest part of Charing Cross, approaching Charles I’s equestrian statue, which can be seen in the distance between the pendant signs of the Cardigan’s Head and the Rummer Tavern, the oak-leaves wreathed round the barber’s pole and the candles stuck on the window-frames show that this is May 29th, celebrated by the Englishmen as “Restoration Day”: for among Hogarth’s contemporaries the Jacobite opposition had not yet begun to lose its strength. It was to survive the failure of the ’45 rebellion and raise its head again during the Oxfordshire Election, so fiercely contested in 1754 (151).
The Four Times of the Day: Night: Statue
Trusler
Night is come over Charing Cross, and we are (probably) in Harshorn Lane, where “Rare Ben Jonson” was born—looking up towards the equestrian stature of Charles—the most beautiful piece of art, of its class, in the metropolis; though, to speak positively, there is no small amount of dubiety as to our exact whereabouts; recollecting, however, that the head of the horse and the face of the rider are dead opposite to the spectator. Remark, also, that you do not behold a single lamp lit in the whole street; the borrowed lights are therefore as numerous as they are admirable in their disposal (121).
The Four Times of the Day: Night: Statue
Paulson, Hogarth's Graphic Works
A London street near Charing Cross with its bronze equestrian statue of Charles I (which was erected in 1675 to occupy the site of the cross that designated one of the resting spots of Queen Eleanor of Castile's coffin on its way to burial; the latter was destroyed by the Puritans) (181).
The statue of Charles I is connected with the oak leaves in the freemason’s hat (and the hat of the small man with the wooden sword) and the oak boughs on the barber’s sign, which show that it is May 29, the anniversary of Charles II’s restoration in 1660. “Restoration Day,” a Jacobite celebration, refers here to the misrule through which the off-duty justice of the peace is guided (182).
The Four Times of the Day: Night: Statue
Lichtenberg
For we must know that this is the district of Charing Cross in London, where stands that masterpiece in the art of bronze casting, the statue of the unhappy King Charles I, which is seen here in the background, and which our artist thus, in a way, causes to take part in the festivities (294).