“A bishop’s worn-out wig, an infant’s caul,—
Were paid for down, and sent to Harrier Hall.”
“The Rights of Women; or, a View of the Hustings with Female Suffrage, 1853.” George Cruikshank, whose hand was turned to the illustration of nearly every event which occurred in his long career, had produced election satires like his contemporaries at the beginning of the century. Later on, we find him turning his somewhat waning vigour to utilize the agitation for “Female Enfranchisement,” which, as a branch of “Women’s Rights,” appears to have come before the public in 1852-3. A fanciful and farcical prospect of the hustings when lady voters should rule the day presents the rival aspirants pictured as “The Ladies’ Candidate” and “The Gentlemen’s Candidate.” The latter is quite left to desolation. “Screw-driver, the Great Political Economist,” beyond his boardmen, stands alone. Although a placard is mounted advising the electoral community not to vote for “Ignorant puppies,” the “Champion of the Fair” seems to have a lively time of it; Cupid, or his representative, upholds the appeal, “Vote for Darling and Parliamentary Balls Once a Week;” the committee and supporters of Sir Charles are ladies, apparelled in the height of the fashions for 1852. Behind the tigerish candidate for parliamentary honours is a group of melancholy troubadours, travestied much as Cruikshank and Thackeray used to depict those worthy guitar-strummers at the now-obsolete “Beulah Spa.” Great unanimity prevails in the mob; not only are the newly enfranchised fair ones giving their own votes, they go farther, and coerce the sterner sex, for all the well-regulated males are brought forward, under the influence of beauty, to record their votes for the chosen of the ladies. On the extreme left is seen one forlorn individual who has evidently lingering doubts of Sir Charles’s programme, or an inclination to support the political economist, “Ugly Old Stingy;” but his wife is forcibly arguing him into an obedient frame of mind. The voters all carry bouquets and wear extensive favours. “Husband and Wife” voters are arrived first at the poll; and, following a mounted champion “in armour clad” with a heart for his device, comes the last section of “Sweetheart Voters,” the “male things” docilely following the mistresses of their affections. “The Friends of Sir Charles Darling are Requested to Meet this Evening at the Assembly Rooms—the Hon. Mrs. Manley in the Chair. Tea and Coffee at 7 o’clock.” Even Cruikshank’s imagination had not risen to the elevation of lady candidates for senatorial as well as electoral honours, or he would doubtless have favoured the public with some original (pictorial) views on this question.
The general election which took place in July, 1857, found two famous men in the annals of literature contesting for senatorial honours, when W. M. Thackeray and his friend James Hannay were hopefully canvassing, on opposite political platforms, two constituencies, the former for Oxford, the latter for Dumfries, which his father, the Scotch banker, had unsuccessfully fought in the Conservative interest at the successive general elections of 1832 and 1835.
James Hannay again discovered, in 1857, that the electors of Dumfries remained consistent to Whig principles. The novelist and essayist was beaten at the hustings; but he has left something more characteristic than the average of parliamentary orations in the delightful essay upon “Electioneering,” contributed to the Quarterly Review, with the writing of which the defeated candidate immediately consoled himself for his recent disappointment.
The canvassing rejoiced Hannay’s enthusiastic temperament. The varieties of the genus voter are so infinite that his eye for character was constantly studying original types; he discovered that the work is hard, and that the qualities a good canvasser must combine are as various as the dispositions he has to encounter.
“He must have unwearied activity, imperturbable good temper, popular manners, and a wonderful memory. Every person who has made a trial of electioneering can testify to the exhaustion and fatigue of the first canvass, the swarm of new faces seen and flitting through the mind in strange confusion, the impossibility of distinguishing between the voter who had a leaning to you, but doubted your fidelity to the Maynooth Grant, and his next-door neighbour who was coming round to you against his former prejudice, because of your freedom from religious bigotry. The mental eye wearies of the kaleidoscope that has been turning before it for hours. The hand aches with incessant shaking. The head aches with incessant observation. You fling yourself wearied at nightfall into an easy chair in your committee-room, and plunge eagerly into sherry and soda-water. You could lie down and sleep like a general after a battle. But your committee is about to meet, as a staring blue bill on the hotel wall informs the public; and a score of people have news for you. Tomkins, the hatter, is wavering—a man who can influence four or five; the enemy have set going a story that you beat your wife, and you must have a placard out showing that you are a bachelor. A gang are drinking champagne at the Blue Boar (one of the enemy’s houses), fellows whose potations are usually of the poorest kind; your opinion is wanted on a new squib; the manager of the theatre is below, waiting to see if you will patronize his theatre with an early ‘bespeak night,’ and whether you will have ‘Black-Eyed Susan,’ or ‘Douglas;’ a deputation of proprietors of donkeys wants to hear your views on the taxation of French asses’ milk. Who, under such circumstances, can retain in his memory all the details of the canvass of the day?”
However galling the temporary disappointment experienced by Hannay and Thackeray respectively, their readers had no reason to regret that, as the great novelist wrote, philosophically accepting his defeat, “they were sent back to take their places with their pens and ink at their desks, and leave their successful opponents to a business which they understood better.” The test of tact and temper was certainly applied to the two novelists when competing for seats in the Commons.
Thackeray aspired to take the place in Parliament for the city of Oxford which his friend Neate, at the time Professor of Political Economy in that university, had lost for an alleged contravention of the Corrupt Practices Act, thus described by Thackeray at the hustings: “He was found guilty of twopennyworth of bribery which he never committed.” This was Thackeray’s ostensible motive for his candidature: “A Parliament which has swallowed so many camels, strained at that little gnat, and my friend, your representative, the very best man you could find to represent you, was turned back, and you were left without a man. I cannot hope, I never thought, to equal him; I only came forward at a moment when I felt it necessary that some one professing his principles, and possessing your confidence, should be ready to step into the gap which he had made.”
The author of the electioneering squib directed for “Young Liberal Glory” as against “Old Tory Glory” in 1837, was, twenty years later, found consistently advocating the Liberal principles which had inspired his early writings in the Constitutional. Thackeray appeared as an advocate of the ballot, was “for having people amused after they had done their worship on a Sunday;” while, “as for triennial Parliaments, if the constituents desire them, I am for them.”
The following passages from his address enlightened the electors of Oxford upon Thackeray’s political convictions:—