What's The Point of Bishop Hoadly?
BIT OF HISTORY/THROWBACK Random Stuff from Annette's Collection: Annette's Unexpected Companion
This is Benjamin Hoadly, Bishop of Winchester, and he hangs over my desk. It's an odd choice.
Visitors might assume he’s there because I have written about Church of England ministers. Which I have.
But I didn't write about Bishop Hoadly. I wrote about lowly clerics and their diverse parishioners in colonial America. I’m not nearly as interested in the Church of England as an institution, or its leaders through the ages.
Basically, what one eighteenth-century bishop said to another doesn’t interest me any more than (just a hunch) it interests you.
And Bishop Hoadly was very much the sort of leading clergyman who talked mostly to politicians and other bishops. Hoadly was a posh parson from the start: He was appointed King George I’s chaplain in 1714, and that was when his career really took off. He wasn’t really into dealing with lowly clergy or ordinary people. He seldom even visited his diocese. Mostly, he stayed in London, and dabbled in politics.
The guys I wrote about, the poor saps who ended up as missionaries to America, were the complete opposite of Bishop Hoadly. Despite Cambridge or Oxford degrees, they could only find poorly-paid part-time work as curates, with no job security.
Think of them as the 18th century version of adjunct professors, and Bishop Hoadly as a high-ranking university administrator. While he sipped sherry in London, my guys were galloping on their horses around some remote English backwater, schlepping from parish to parish, doing all the actual work of giving sermons, visiting parishioners, and so on.
So, no, Bishop Hoadly is not really connected with their work, or mine.
I didn’t hang up Bishop Hoadly’s picture in my study because he's easy on the eyes, either.
Why’s he there, then?
Because I could afford him.
I love pictures with lots of things going on in them. If Where’s Waldo had been around when I was a kid, I would never have outgrown him.
That's why I love the work of William Hogarth. He’s the artist who painted Hoadly, and his portraits are striking. But he's best known for his detailed satirical scenes of London, indoors and out, often painted in series, with humor and a moral message. He pretty much invented political cartoon strips, only with much more detail. His work can be read like a book. Here’s just one example, the first picture of a six-part series:
Hogarth had trained as an engraver, and he came along at the right time, when wealthy 18th century Brits (including those in America) were building big houses, and buying lots of stuff to fill them. He ran a successful business selling prints of his paintings, and these were popular in early America, too. His prints were expensive, even at the time. Needless to say, the 18th century originals are a lot more expensive now.
It was 1992. I was a graduate student, doing doctoral dissertation research in London. In those pre-web days, my adviser suggested asking a couple of historians of Britain in Los Angeles if they thought I would find any relevant research materials. They were sure I would. After all, I had a long list of names of known letter-writers to look up.
I spent ten weeks in England finding out they were absolutely wrong. It was a gamble that didn't pay off. Complicated travel arrangements (I was booked to spend three months in Colonial Williamsburg afterward) were too expensive to change. I just had to make the best of it.
Since I had a rail pass and time, a typical adventure was me taking a train all the way from London to Scotland to look at a few promising letters held at the University of Glasgow. The letters were useless. Only years later, and then by good luck, did I find 18th century letters in London, at the British Library, that were worth a trip across the pond. Most letters vanish without trace. In fact, most people do.
If I have any regrets about that 1992 trip, it’s that I didn’t goof off more. Desperate to make it worthwhile, I ended up commuting to Oxford University, diligently reading the originals of the documents I could have more easily read in California on microfilm, and feeling a bit defeated.
The most memorable things about that stay in London? Having the luxury of a few months in the city. Going to plays. Visiting museums and galleries. The delightful company of my dear friend Mary, who not only put up with me staying in her flat for two months, but, unaccountably, invited me to come back.
And shopping.
London was then a treasure trove of eccentric little specialized antiques stores, of places where a grad student could enjoy browsing, if not buying.
One gray day found me standing outside The Print Room on Museum Street. This shop specialized in actual Hogarth prints, 18th century originals. It was just a few yards from the entrance to the British Museum, and right next door to The Museum Tavern, where Karl Marx had hefted more than a few pints between marathon sessions in the Museum’s reading room.
I stood there in the drizzling rain, because I was afraid to go inside. I look back in amazement at how little confidence I had in those days. This shop looked very posh, and I wasn’t. I had had bad experiences of being treated with disdain in such places.
But although I knew I couldn’t afford an original Hogarth print, I very much wanted to look. Finally, to the loud tinkle of the doorbell, I pushed on the heavy door.
The prints were wrapped in cellophane, together with stiff backing boards, arranged in displays like records in an upmarket vinyl shop. The shop assistant must have been busy, because I started looking through them by myself. My heart sank at the prices.
“Can I help you?” Too often, at shops like this, those words were spoken to a young woman by a middle-aged man in a tone that made it clear they meant “What are you doing here? Unhand our merchandise at once.” But this young shopkeeper seemed friendly.
It was time for me to come clean.
“I wish you could,” I said, “I love Hogarth. But I think these are too much for my budget.”
She smiled. “Would you mind a picture of Bishop Hoadly? He’s the least expensive print we have. A good one is about 35 pounds.”
I could see why he wasn’t expensive. He has none of the charm of Hogarth’s more lively pieces. But he’s a Hogarth nonetheless.
“This one,” she said, flipping through several identical prints, “is from the last good year of Hogarth’s original copperplates in the early 19th century. They start to fade a bit after that. See?”
I did. Suddenly, I didn’t care how unappealing the picture was. The last good year of Hogarth’s original copperplates. Wow. Hogarth did not live to see my picture printed in the early 19th century. But he cast his very own eyes on the copperplates that printed the picture that would now be mine.
Sold.
In my suitcase, in a cardboard tube, Bishop Hoadly safely crossed the Atlantic. The irony? To my dismay, framing him in Los Angeles cost me more than twice what he had cost me to buy in London.
I couldn’t afford acid-free mats, so I don’t doubt Bishop Hoadly is ruined as a collector’s item.
I have wondered about the commercial potential of his portrait at the time. Why did Hogarth think there was a demand for prints of Bishop Hoadly? I can only conclude it's because his progressive view of Christianity had admirers.
But this isn't what drew me to buy this print, centuries later. The Bishop became my unlikely connection to William Hogarth, who is my kind of artist: One whose work rewards attention to his details, and which has a sense of fun. It’s too bad that both these qualities are missing from his portrait of Hoadly. But you can’t have everything.
Like most of the small specialist shops that served antique collectors in London, The Print Room on Museum Street is long gone. The web and rising rents have devastated most of the interesting shops in London, the kind that inspired J.K. Rowling’s Diagon Alley. The current tenant of the space is a restaurant, and in a year or ten or thirty, I expect something else will take its place. London never stays still. You never visit the same city twice.
Still. A small part of that London frozen in 1992, of a little shop on Museum Street, has hung on my wall for nearly three decades, reminding me of the kindness (and good business sense) of its owner, one happy rainy day on an unsuccessful research trip that became a memorable stay in London, all those years ago.
Gotta love the screaming painting at the upper left. A disapproving relative, I assume?
OOPS - admired the complexity of Hogarth's work. Thank you for helping me remember that.