“Never mind, Mr. Bull; if we have thought it necessary to take off both your legs, you will find the others very good substitutes; this Revolutionary Bolus and decoction of disloyalty are very harmless, but they will restore the general equality of the intestines and remove any obstruction which may prevent us from effecting a Radical Reform in the system.”
The victim of these experiments is by no means assured as to his future—
“Maybe, gentlemen,” he replies to these plausible assurances; “but you have taken all the honest good blood out of my veins; deprived me of my real supporters, and stuck two bad props in their place, and if you go on thus, I shall die before ever my constitution can be improved.”
The real supporters, “Mr. Bull’s two legs—Church and State,” are consigned to a coffin, “to be entombed in the vaults of St. Stephen’s Chapel.” A formidable array of nostrums are displayed in the vicinity: Burdett has soporifics and opiates handy—a huge bottle, labelled “Burdett’s Mixture,” contains a red, white, and blue republican decoction, “Hobhouse’s Newgate-proof Purity,” and “Whitbread’s Entire;” a large packet of “Cartwright’s Universal Grease,” with a phial of “Wooler’s Black-drops;” “Old Bailey Drops” (the bottle broken); ditto, “Dr. Watson’s White + Comfort;” a packet of “Hunt’s Powder,” and a full supply of “Cobbett’s Hellebore Ratsbane”—enough, in all conscience, to kill or cure.
CHAPTER XIII.
ELECTIONEERING, POLITICAL WARFARE, AND PARLIAMENTARY REFORM UNDER WILLIAM IV., 1830-32.
The last parliament of George IV.’s reign met November 14, 1826. Towards the close of the session, as is shadowed in Doyle’s early cartoons, the nation was tiring of the Tories, and the unpopular and somewhat antiquated Wellington Ministry found the country in distress and clamorous for retrenchment, to each of which complaints the rigid disciplinarian in chief command turned a deaf and unsympathetic ear. Towards the middle of the year 1830 the king’s condition was threatening, and with his impending decease the close of the session was anticipated. The situation is pictorially summed up in one of HB’s sketches as the “Present State of Public Feeling Partially Illustrated” (May 28, 1830). The views entertained by various individuals upon the king’s illness are illustrated in their persons: a dandy regrets the postponement of routs and balls, a speculator complains of the dulness of the funds, a merchant finds business at a standstill, while a lady of fashion is resigned to the will of Providence by the opportune reflection that should the king die there would be the gayer prospect of a queen and Court—an advantageous exchange for a sovereign shrouded from his subjects. John Bull good-naturedly declares he hopes George may recover, “he was such a fine princely fellow!” But the part of this picture which applies most pertinently to the subject in hand is found in a member of the Tory Government, who is reflecting “That should there be a change in the ministry—then I must walk out. That would be very inconvenient at the present. I wish most sincerely His Majesty won’t die yet!” while another M.P. is filled with apprehension: “There will he a dissolution of parliament, and I shall lose my seat, and with it all chance of preferment. Oh, I pray God to preserve His Majesty’s life these many years.” Swiftly indeed, and somewhat unexpectedly too, came the end of the king’s reign and the inauguration of a more liberal régime.
The next day appeared HB’s version of the “Mourning Journal—Alas! Poor Yorick” (May 29, 1830), showing the Duke of Cumberland and Lord Eldon as mutes in attendance on the (to them) melancholy occasion of their chief’s decease. “The Magic Mirror, or a Peep into Futurity” (June 8, 1830), shows a magician favouring John Bull with the prospect he might anticipate: the youthful Princess Victoria becoming the point of contention on the one hand between her mother, the Duchess of Kent, and her uncle, Prince Leopold, of Liberal proclivities, and the Tory pressure of her uncle, the Duke of Cumberland, assisted by the Duke of Wellington, on the other.
While the dissolution was impending, Doyle indicated the revival of Whig prospects, “The Gheber worshiping the Rising Sun” (July 6, 1830) shows Mr. (afterwards Lord) Brougham paying his devotions to “William IV. Rex,” the head of the king on the gold coin, known as “a coronation medal,” rising over the waters, and taking the place of the orb of day. Parliament dissolved on July 24th. Owing to some intrigues of the old campaigner at this emergency, the Duke of Wellington was made to appear as “A Detected Trespasser,” ordered off the slopes of Windsor by “John Bull, Ranger:” “Halloa, you sir; keep off the grass (see anecdote, Times, July 19th).”
Another pictorial version of strategies in high life is entitled “Anticipation; or, Queen Sarah’s visit to Bushy” (July 27, 1830). At the door of the Lodge at Bushy, where resided the Duke and Duchess of Clarence, is the carriage of Lady Jersey, with attendants in her handsome liveries. One of her footmen is imparting the unwelcome intelligence, “Duchess not at home, my lady.” The Duke of Wellington, who is on horseback at the other side of the carriage, is consoling Lady Jersey’s disappointment: “Never mind, never mind, I’ll get you a key to what is going on here thro’ my dear little St. James’s Marchioness.” The duchess’s footman, in the royal livery, cannot fathom the intrigue: “I wonder what brings her down here now? I have been in this place these twelve years, and never saw her here before!”
