This is the moment seized by Cruikshank in the broadside here reproduced. Before the half-open door of “St. Stephen’s,” behind which is seen a crowd of members, Lord Cochrane fires, from a mortar decorated with a full-bottomed wig, a {66} cannon-ball labelled “casting vote.” This, striking the duke full in the rear, drives him towards a bank on which stand three grenadiers, the Princess of Salm (recognisable by the flag which she carries, labelled “Psalms”) and her little boy, who sings—
My daddy is a grenadier And he’s pleas’d my Mammy O, With his long swoard and broadswoard And his bayonet so handy O.
The duke, from whose hand falls his petition, and whose head is adorned with a cuckold’s horns, cries aloud, “Pity the sorrow of a poor young man”; whilst Cochrane thunders out, “No, no, we’ll have no petitions here. Do you thint (sic) we are not up to your hoaxing, cadging tricks? You vagrant, do you think we’ll believe all you say or swear? Do you think that your services or your merits will do you any good here? If you do, I can tell you from experience that you are cursedly mistaken. So set off and don’t show your ugly face here again. If you do, shiver my timbers if I don’t send you to Ellenborough Castle: aye, aye, my boy, I’ll clap you in the grated chamber, where there’s neither door, window, {67} onr (sic) fireplace. I’ll put you in the Stocks! I’ll put you in the Pillory! I’ll fine you. I’ll, I’ll play hell with you! D—— me, I think I have just come in time to give you a shot between wind and water.”
On the ground below the flying duke lie documents recording his pensions and salaries.
No wonder, you will say, that such a scandalous attack upon a personage so near the throne should be suppressed with a high hand. The marvel is that artist and publisher should have escaped the fate of Henry White and the pamphleteer Phillips. But you will be more surprised than ever when you learn that not only did artist and publisher go scot-free, but that the plate, so far from being suppressed, was published and scattered broadcast amongst the people without protest.
Why, then, it will be asked, does it take its place in a treatise on suppressed plates? I will tell you.
Do you not notice in the darker impression of the plate here reproduced—darker because the original has been painted—that such perspective as the picture has is destroyed by a great black blot {68} which reaches from the feet of the three soldiers right down to the path in the right-hand lower corner of the design? Well, that great black blot covers what would have inevitably landed George Cruikshank and Mr. W. N. Jones of 5 Newgate Street, publisher, in a larger building higher up the same street, if it had not been for a happy afterthought of Mr. W. N. Jones, which took shape in a liberal use of lamp-black.[18]
On the space so covered the reckless George, unmindful of the fate of Henry White, had etched the scantily clothed figure of the unhappy valet Sellis, with bleeding throat, crying aloud, “Is this a razor that I see before me? Thou canst not say I did it.”
[18] This use of lamp-black has its parallel in the case of one of the tailpieces to Bewick’s Birds, in the first edition of which an apprentice was employed to veil certain indelicacies with a coat of ink. Unfortunately, from want of density, the colouring rather serves to accentuate than hide the offending details. In the next edition a plug was inserted in the block and two bars of wood engraved in the interests of decency.
After but one or two proofs had been pulled, George and his publisher would seem to have become appalled at their temerity, and the plate was only issued coloured and with the peccant {69} figure blotted out. For many years I hoped and hoped in vain to come across an uncoloured proof displaying the hidden figure. But it was not until 1905 that I was fortunate enough to light upon the probably unique proof here reproduced, which had passed out of the Bruton collection into that of the omnivorous collector, the late Edwin Truman.