Marriage A-la-Mode: 2, The Tête à Tête

This is the second scene in Hogarth’s series of six paintings titled Marriage A-la-Mode, which satirise the upper classes. They were painted to be engraved and then sold after the engravings were finished.It is now a few months after the wedding of the Earl of Squander’s son to the Alderman’s daughter. The phrase ‘tête à tête’ implies an intimate conversation but the newly-weds in their new home (completed with the Alderman’s money) look anything but intimate. At least, not with each other. A wall clock shows the time to be shortly after noon. The bride stretches sleepily, apparently after a whole night playing cards. The groom sprawls in his chair, his hands thrust in his pockets, exhausted from a night of debauchery on the town – the small dog tugs a girl’s muslin cap out of his pocket, and a second muslin cap is wound round the hilt of his sword. The large black spot used by Hogarth to denote syphilis is clearly visible on his neck. The sword is broken, perhaps implying that the Viscount himself is impotent. This image of the Viscount is probably the best-known single figure in all Hogarth’s work. The modelling of the face was particularly praised for the way it expressed both the Viscount’s youth and the physical evidence of his dissipation.Two fiddle cases lie on top of one another on an overturned chair, suggesting that the Viscountess has been spending the evening in activities more intimate than simply playing whist. She seems to regard her husband with an air of sly triumph. Several details imply she is probably enjoying an affair of her own. A man’s head carved on the mantelpiece beside her suggests that there is a third party in this tête à tête. The painting covered with a curtain in the adjoining room reveals a large bare foot resting on a bed, causing one to think it depicts an activity so indecent that the picture cannot be displayed and also that something clandestine has been going on. The Viscountess may be signalling to someone with her small folding pocket mirror.The drawing room is a battleground for the silent dislike between the couple and the disharmony of their possessions.The unmistakable message of the whole scene is that the Squanderfields have bad taste – the battered antique bust on the mantelpiece is placed among a collection of fashionable but bogus Chinese figures. The wall clock is of a particularly absurd design, comprising two fish, a cat and a Buddha with a pair of twisted candleholders sticking out of his loins, all emerging from an excess of foliage. A slovenly servant still in his hair curlers stumbles about in the adjoining room and the steward of the household rolls his eyes up to heaven as he exits with a wad of unpaid bills. The single piece of paper on the steward’s spike records the date of the painting itself: 1743.