Marriage A-la-Mode: 5, The Bagnio

This is the fifth scene of Hogarth’s series of six paintings titled Marriage A-la-Mode. After the masquerade, the Countess and her lover Silvertongue have taken a room above the Turk’s Head – a Turkish baths, or Bagnio. Turkish merchants established Turkish baths in London, often with coffee houses attached. Although some were respectable establishments, others became known as houses of ill repute, as seems to be the case here.The scene is set at night by firelight; the Countess is dressed in her nightgown and cap, and her hooped underskirt, fashionable shoes and mask have been discarded on the floor beside the rumpled four-poster bed. Such was the abandon with which the Countess threw off her whalebone corset that it has toppled the rush-seated chair. The lace of the corset falls over the bundle of faggots – at the time, derogatory slang for a prostitute – and begins to smoulder against the burning tip of a faggot fallen from the fire, recalling the proverb ‘Kindle not a fire that you cannot extinguish’.The Earl has burst into the room and been fatally stabbed by Silvertongue, who now flees in his nightshirt out of the open window. The Countess falls to her knees before her husband and begs for his mercy. Hogarth depicts the Earl in a slow, dying fall, his long ungainly legs about to cave in. His head is framed by the looking glass behind him, reminding us of his first appearance, when he was idly contemplating his own reflection in the mirror. As death overcomes the Earl, the syphilitic black spot on his neck is as conspicuous as ever.Silvertongue’s blood-soaked sword lies on the floor across the shadow of a pair of fire tongs, which echo the Earl’s long ungainly legs. A tapestry of the Judgement of Solomon hangs on the back wall. The woman in the portrait hanging above the table holds a squirrel, also derogatory slang for a prostitute, and dangles the handle of a parasol beneath her waist; the man’s legs that appear on the tapestry below the picture add to its lewd implications. The legs may be intended to remind contemporary viewers of Samuel McPherson, Corporal in the Higland Regiment, who was shot for desertion in 1743 and was the subject of a popular engraving. McPherson’s legs are next to the bare legs of Silvertongue as he deserts the Countess and flees out of the window. A candle flame below the picture flickers wildly in the draft between the open window and the open door as the proprietor of the Turk’s Head bursts in to investigate the cause of the commotion. He has summoned a constable who carries his staff of office and a night watchman with his lantern held aloft.The Countess’s tears, glistening on her cheek, cannot extinguish the fire she has started. Her husband is mortally wounded and her murderous lover has deserted her and fled. The painted woman’s parasol handle points down to the kneeling Countess to suggest that they are just as bad as each other.