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“The Queen’s Matrimonial Ladder” * was a great success. The drawings, “all by Mr. George Cruikshank,” as Mr. Hone advertised, were severely satirical throughout from the first, where the royal husband drunk, with a broken wine-glass in his hand, the garter falling from his leg, cards and dice and bottles scattered at his feet, and the candles guttering in the sockets, maunders alone to where the fat Adonis is being borne away in a barrow to the “English cry” of “Cats’ meat.” “Non mi Ricordo” was another squib of this year.
* The edition before me, dated 1820, is the thirteenth.
In the “Political Showman at Home,” with twenty-four cuts by Cruikshank, the satire is biting, and the ideas are plentiful. The showman, by way of introduction, addresses his readers: “Ladies and gentlemen, walk up! walk up! and see the curiosities and creatures—all alive! alive O! Walk up! now’s your time! Only a shilling. Please to walk up!
“Here is the strangest and most wonderful artificial cabinet in Europe!—made of nothing—but lackerd brass, turnery, and papier mâchée—all fret work and varnish, held together by steel points! Very crazy, but very curious!
“Please to walk in, ladies and gentlemen—it’s well worth seeing! Here are the most wonderful of all wonderful living animals. Take care! Don’t go within their reach—they mind nobody but me! A short time ago they got loose, and, with some other vermin that came from their holes and corners, desperately attacked a lady of quality; but, as luck would have it, I and my ‘four-and-twenty men’ happened to come in at the very moment: we pull’d away, and prevented ‘em from doing her a serious mischief. Though they look tame, their vicious dispositions are unchanged. If anything was to happen to me, they’d soon break out again, and show their natural ferocity. I’m in continual danger from ‘em myself; for if I didn’t watch’em closely, they’d destroy me. As the clown says, ‘there never was such times,’—so there’s no telling what tricks they may play yet.
“Ladies and gentlemen,—these animals have been exhibited at Court before the king and all the royal family! Indeed, His Majesty is so fond of ‘em, that he often sees’em in private, and feeds ‘em; and he is so diverted by’em, that he has been pleased to express his gracious approbation of all their motions. But they’re as cunning as the old one himself! Bless you, he does not know a thousandth part of their tricks. You, ladies and gentlemen, may see’em just as they are!—the Beasts and Reptiles—all alive! alive O! and the Big Booby—all a-light! a light O!
“Walk in, ladies and gentlemen! walk in! just a-going to begin. Stir ‘em up! stir ‘em up there with the long pole.