Marriage A-la-Mode: 4, The Toilette

Where we left off

Rooms 2 and 3 followed the husband. Room 4 returns to the woman we met at the wedding. The bride from Room 1 is now a Countess. Silvertongue is still close.

A new title

Look at the top of the bed in the alcove. A coronet sits on the canopy, and another tops the frame of the dressing-table mirror. They are an Earl's coronets. The National Gallery points out what that means: the old Earl of Squander, the man with the family tree in Room 1, has died. His son is now the Earl, and the merchant's daughter has the title her father paid for.

A mother

Hanging from the back of the Countess's chair is a small detail that is easy to miss: a piece of coral on a red ribbon, with a little silver whistle. It is a baby's teether. The Countess has become a mother.

We do not see the baby. Hogarth only shows us the teether, hanging there among the silks. Keep it in mind.

The bedroom as a stage

Rich Londoners had picked up a French fashion: receiving visitors in the bedroom while they finished dressing. The Countess's bedroom is full. A hairdresser works on her curls and tests the heat of his tongs on a scrap of paper. A fat opera singer throws back his head, and a flute player accompanies him. A servant brings round cups of chocolate.

The guests are a gallery of their own. A young man still in his curl papers sips chocolate. A lady leans back so far in ecstasy at the music that she is almost horizontal. Nobody is here to see the Countess. They are here to be seen in the Countess's bedroom.

Silvertongue is still close

Now look past the crowd. The Countess is not watching the singer or looking in her mirror. She has turned her chair towards one man, lounging on a sofa beside her, and he is Silvertongue, the lawyer who whispered in her ear at the wedding. The National Gallery now calls him her lover.

He is already part of the furniture. High on the wall, beside her bed, hangs a large portrait of him.

The ticket

Slow down here. This is the most important object in the room, and it is the size of a playing card. In Silvertongue's hand is a small printed ticket. The National Gallery identifies it as a ticket to a masquerade, a masked ball, where nobody needs to know who anybody is. You can just read the word Door printed on it.

With his other hand he points to a painted screen behind them. It shows a masquerade in full swing, with costumed figures dressed as a friar and a nun. He is not just inviting her. He is showing her what it will be like.

What money buys

The floor is covered in shopping. The Countess has been to an auction, and her new purchases are spread out on the floor, still wearing their lot numbers: china, little figures and curiosities. High on the wall hang pictures after Correggio, the National Gallery says, of Jupiter's seduction of Io and of Lot and his daughters. The pictures in this room are about desire.

The joke with horns

In the bottom right corner, a little page boy is unpacking the auction lots. He holds up a statue of Actaeon, the hunter from Greek myth who saw the goddess Diana bathing and was turned into a stag. The boy is laughing and pointing at the statue's antlers.

Every Londoner in 1743 got the joke. Horns were the sign of the cuckold, the man whose wife is unfaithful. The National Gallery reads the antlers this way. The husband is not in the room. Hogarth brings him in anyway, as a punchline.

Status or secrecy?

This room is loud. There is music, gossip, chocolate, shopping and a hairdresser with hot tongs. But the action that moves the story forward is completely quiet: a man hands a woman a small ticket and points at a screen.

So is this room about status, or secrecy? Hogarth's answer may be that the first is the perfect cover for the second.

In Room 4, Silvertongue offers the Countess a ticket. Remember it. Room 5 begins after the masquerade.

The original hangs in the National Gallery in London with the other five rooms. Our hand-painted reproduction of The Toilette is painted in oil on canvas from the National Gallery original, and the six scenes can be ordered singly or as a set to hang in order.

This is Room 4 of The Six Rooms of a Bad Marriage.