Mary Hogarth beautiful and light-hearted". When Robert Story visited the Hogarth household in 1836, he described Hogarth as "the fairest flower of spring". Dickens showed particular affection to Hogarth, and described her as "a close friend, an exceptional sister, a companion at home." It is believed that Hogarth was the first person to read "The Pickwick Papers" and "Oliver Twist", as Dickens valued Hogarth's input and feedback more than his wife's. In the early hours of 7 May 1837, after Hogarth had returned from a showing of "Is She His Wife?" at the St James's Theatre with the Dickens couple, she collapsed
William Hogarth a truthful, vivid full-length portrait of his friend, the philanthropic Captain Coram for the Thomas Coram Foundation for Children, now in the Foundling Museum, and his unfinished oil sketch of a young fishwoman, entitled "The Shrimp Girl" (National Gallery, London), may be called masterpieces of British painting. There are also portraits of his wife and his two sisters, and of many other people, among them Bishop Hoadly and Bishop Herring. For a long period of his life, Hogarth tried to achieve the status of history painter, but had no great success in this field. Examples of his history pictures are