Other subjects of this year are the following: And when Ahitophel saw that his Counsel was not followed, he Saddled his Ass, and arose and went and Hanged himself; O! O! there’s a Minister of the Gospel; The Royal Extinguisher, or the King of Brobdingnag and the Liliputians (etched after the design of Isaac Robert). Six subjects, La Diligence and La Doriane, Venus de Medici and Mer de Glace, Visit to Vesuvius and Forum Boarium, and Nosing the Nob at Ramsgate, a coarsely executed satire aimed at his Majesty and his eccentric subject, Alderman Sir William Curtis.
Sir William Curtis, alderman, trader, and formerly member for the 1822.
Sir William Curtis. city, is one of the most prominent figures in the satires of his time. Making every allowance for caricature drawing, the likeness must have been on the whole a faithful though an exaggerated one; for in all the numerous comical sketches in which he makes an appearance, we never fail to recognise his ruby nose and ponderous figure. We have already seen him figuring by way of ludicrous contrast with Claude Ambroise Seurat, the “living skeleton,” and we shall now find him associated by the caricaturists with no less a person than the king himself. When his majesty, in 1822, paid his visit to Scotland, and by way of compliment to the country and her traditions assumed the “garb of old Gael,” Alderman Sir William Curtis, who followed his sovereign at a respectful distance, out of compliment to the country, her traditions, “his most gracious majesty,” and himself, put his own corpulent form into fancy costume, and likewise donned the Highland garb. The absurdly ludicrous result is told us by Lockhart. “The king at his first levee diverted many, and delighted Scott by appearing in the full Highland garb—the same brilliant Stewart tartans, so-called, in which certainly no Stewart, except Prince Charles, had ever before presented himself in the saloons of Holyrood. His majesty’s Celtic toilette had been carefully watched and assisted by the gallant Laird of Garth, who was not a little proud of the result of his dexterous manipulations of the rough plaid, and pronounced the king ‘a vara pretty man.’ And he did look a most stately and imposing person in that beautiful dress; but his satisfaction therein was cruelly disturbed when he discovered, towering and blazing among and above the genuine Glengarries and Macleods and MacGregors, a figure even more portly than his own, equipped from a sudden impulse of loyal ardour in an equally complete set of the self-same conspicuous Stewart tartans:—
| ’He caught Sir William Curtis in a kilt— While throng’d the chiefs of every Highland clan To hail their brother, Vich Ian Alderman.’[80] |
In truth this portentous apparition cast an air of ridicule and caricature over the whole of Sir Walter’s celtified pageantry. A sharp little bailie from Aberdeen, who had previously made acquaintance with the worthy Guildhall baronet, and tasted the turtle soup of his voluptuous yacht, tortured him as he sailed down the long gallery of Holyrood, by suggesting that after all his costume was not quite perfect. Sir William, who had been rigged out, as the auctioneer’s advertisements say, ‘regardless of expense,’ exclaimed that he must be mistaken, begged he would explain his criticism, and, as he spoke, threw a glance of admiration on his skene dhu (black knife), which, like a true ‘warrior and hunter of deer,’ he wore stuck into one of his garters. ‘Oo ay! Oo ay!’ quoth the Aberdonian; ‘the knife’s a’ right, mon—but faar’s your speen?’ (where’s your spoon?) Such was Scott’s story; but whether he ‘gave it a cocked hat and walking cane,’ in the hope of restoring the king’s good humour, so grievously shaken by this heroical doppel ganger, it is not very necessary to inquire.”[81]
Which indeed of the absurd pair looked the most ridiculous it would be hard to say: a great-grandson of George the Second in the Highland garb of “Bonnie Prince Charlie,” was perhaps as absurd an anachronism as a fat cockney alderman in the same fancy costume. Our friends the caricaturists were fully alive to these puerilities. An anonymous caricature of the day celebrates the ludicrous event in a satire entitled, Equipt for a Northern Visit, which represents the fat king and the fat alderman in kilts, the point of the pictorial epigram lying in the fact that the corpulent king recommends his corpulent subject to lay aside the costume as unbecoming to a man of his proportions. George has several pictorial satires on the same fertile theme; one of these, Bonnie Willie, depicts the huge man in Highland garb. A rare and most amusing caricature shows us the supposed unfortunate Results of this Northern Excursion. The fat king and his fat subject have caught the northern complaint vulgarly termed the “Scottish fiddle,” and are vigorously going through the traditionary process of rubbing themselves against the post, blessing the while his grace the Duke of Argyle. An English acquaintance, not unnaturally afraid of infection, refuses the alderman’s proffered hand.
A caricature of altogether another kind commemorates a raid made by the Bow Street officers on the numerous gaming establishments of 1822. It is called, Cribbage, Shuffling, Whist, and a Round Game, is divided into six compartments, and is most humorously and admirably treated. The principal performers are the knaves of cards. One of the compartments shows us the knaves on the treadmill, which is marked “Fortune’s Wheel;” while in another a knave is undergoing the discipline of the “cat,” and calling out at every stroke “E. O.! E. O.! E. O.!”[82]
Sir Richard Westmacott’s statue of Achilles was executed in 1822. Statue of Achilles. The nude, undraped colossal figure, which was subscribed for by the ladies of England in honour of the Duke of Wellington and his soldiers, was the occasion of numerous contemporary satires—most of them (in those plain-spoken days) of the broadest possible character. One of the most indelicate (*) (drawn by the artist from the sketch or suggestion of another) gives a burlesque front and back view of the figure, which is surrounded by a number of people (principally ladies), among whom we recognise a caricature likeness of the “Dook.” The inscription runs as follows: “To Arthur à Bradley, and his jolly companions every one, this brazen image of Patrick O’Killus, Esq., is inscribed by their countrywomen.”[83] Besides the foregoing, we meet this year with A Lollipop-Ally Campagne and Brandy Ball (*); Premium, Par, and Discount; Showing-off—Bang up—Prime (*); and A Sailor’s description of a Chase and Capture (*).
A large proportion of his satires for 1823 are aimed at Louis the 1823. Eighteenth’s Spanish expedition, the object of which we have already related. One of these shows us France the great Nation driven by the North into the South; in another, Ferdinand the Seventh and the Duc d’Angoulème figure respectively as a Spanish Mule and a French Jackass; A French Hilt on a Spanish Rapier, is likewise dedicated to the Duc d’Angoulème; another shows us Old Bumblehead the 18th trying on Napoleon’s Boots; a fifth is entitled, A Hint to the Blind and Foolish, or the Bourbon Dynasty in Danger; while a sixth shows us Louis the Fat troubled with Nightmare and Dreams of Terror. In all these caricatures, the figure of Napoleon, already sleeping his last sleep at St. Helena—the place of his exile and of his grave—is represented by way of contrast to the unwieldly and incompetent Bourbon. Another caricature, the point of which I fail to see, bears the title of The Tables Turn’d, or the Devil Outwitted and Cruelly Punished,—a Scene on the Portsmouth Treadmill; this last, though said to be “designed by an amateur,” and “etched by G. Ck.,” is unquestionably all his own.
Drilling One-tenth of the Military in the Manual Exercise, and 1824. Saint Shela (two subjects), have reference to the Tenth Hussars and Battier scandal, mentioned in a previous chapter;[84] other subjects of 1824 are: Parisian Luxury (a man being shaved in a bath); Preparing for a Duel; and The Ostend Packet in a Squall; all etched by George from the designs of other artists. The mania for joint-stock companies in 1825, was scarcely equalled by the speculation mania which inaugurated the passing in our own time of the “Limited Liability Act.” In 1824 and the beginning of 1825, two hundred and seventy-six companies had been projected, of which the aggregate capital (on paper only) represented £174,114,050. Thirty-three of these were established for the construction of canals and docks, forty-eight of railroads, forty-two for the supply of gas, six of milk, and eight of water, four for the working of coal, and thirty-four of metal mines; twenty new insurance companies were started, twenty-three banks, twelve navigation and packet companies, three fisheries, two for boring tunnels under the Thames, three for the embellishment and improvement of the metropolis, two for sea-water baths, and the rest for miscellaneous purposes; it is a somewhat significant fact that two only had for their object the establishment of newspapers. Notwithstanding the manifest absurdity of many of these projects, the shares of several—especially of the mining adventurers in South America—rose to enormous premiums. Among the last may be mentioned those of the Real del Monte, the price of which, between the 10th of December and the 11th of January, rose from £550 to £1350, and the United Mexican during the same period from £35 to £1550. On these last shares only £10 had been paid, and on the former only £70. Speaking of this mania, the Rev. T. F. Dibdin (in his “Reminiscences”) says, “If it did not partake of the name, it had certainly all the wild characteristics of the South Sea Bubble. To-day you had only to put your name down to a share or shares in the Rio de la Plata or other South American mines, and to-morrow a supplicant purchaser would give you fifty per cent. for every share taken. The old were bewitched ... the young were in ecstasies. Everybody made a rush for the city. A new world of wealth had been discovered. It was only to ask and have.” George Cruikshank refers to this state of things in a caricature called, A Scene in the Farce of Lofty Projects, as Performed with great success for the benefit and amusement of John Bull. Besides these, he gives us The Four Mr. Prices (High Price, Low Price, Full Price, and Half Price).
I can assign no date to Waiting on the Ladies; The Death of the Property Tax, or Thirty-seven Mortal Wounds for Ministers and the Inquisitorial Commissioners; or to The Court at Brighton, à la Chinese, one of the most admirable of the whole series. In this last, the fat prince habited as a mandarin, is seated on a sofa between the Princess Charlotte and an enormously fat woman, probably intended for the Marchioness of Conyngham. He is handing to a Chinese official a paper inscribed “Instructions for Lord Amhurst, to get fresh patterns of Chinese deformities to finish the decorations of Pavilion G. P. R.” A specimen of regency taste and sympathies stands on a pedestal in the form of the Hottentot Venus, while a statuette of the fat prince himself, habited in a red coat, white waistcoat, yellow inexpressibles, and silk stockings, is labelled the “British Adonis.” The princess recommends her papa to order the officer to bring her over “a Chinaman, instead of getting her a husband among our German cousins.” A variety of miscellaneous articles are strewn about the floor, among them a box containing the Regent’s wigs and whiskers, a treatise on “The Art of making Punch,” the indispensable hamper of champagne, and a pair of curling irons; while no one will fail to recognise the interior of the Brighton Pavilion as the scene where this admirable satire is laid. Another undated satire remains to be noticed: it represents a young man in a boat with three young women, one of them of considerable personal attractions, that is to say from a Cruikshankian point of view, and evidently a likeness. On the shore stands another young woman and her child, whom the young spark has evidently left behind him. In the stern of the boat is a hamper of wine and a goblet fashioned out of a skull; a noseless man rows the boat, while three sailors in an adjoining vessel make ribald observations in reference to the young man’s female companions. By the star on his coat, the turned-down collar, profile, and the arrangement of the hair, we take it that the person thus satirized is Lord Byron. Any doubts we may have on the subject seem removed by the words of the song he is supposed to be singing while waving his hat to the disconsolate woman on the shore:—