Note 11 — William Hogarth: PAINTER, ENGRAVER, AND PHILOSOPHER. Essays on the Man, the Work, and the Time.

Dr. Misaubin lived at 96, St. Martin’s lane. Of his staircase, painted by Clermont, the Frenchman, I have already spoken. Those were the days when “Mrs. Powell, the colourman’s mother, used to make a pipe of wine every year from the vines that grew in the garden in St Martin’s Lane.” Traces of its old rurality may also be found in the name of one of its noisomest offshoots—the “Hop Gardens.” Dr. Misaubin “flourished” in 1732. He was not a Frenchman born, but of French Huguenot extraction. He was an arrant and impudent quack, but a good-natured man, and dispensed the huge fortune he amassed liberally enough. More anent him when he grows older and more wrinkled, in the Marriage à la Mode. All this man’s gold, however, turned in the end to dry leaves. His grandson, Angiband, dissipated the pill and nostrum fortune, and died of Geneva-on-the-brain in St. Martin’s Workhouse. Engraver Smith (J. T.) says that Misaunbin’s father was a Protestant clergyman, and mentions a “family picture” representing the Doctor in all his glory, with his son on his knees, and his reverend papa at a table behind, and arrayed in full canonicals.