A MAD DOG IN A DINING-ROOM.
April 21, 1809. The Comforts of Matrimony. A Good Toast. Published by Reeve and Jones.—The picture represents a scene of domestic felicity of the most touching completeness. The husband is browning a muffin for tea; his wife's arm is wound round his neck during this delicate operation; his children are enjoying their peaceful meal; an infant is tranquilly slumbering in the cradle; and a cat, surrounded by her family of kittens, carries out the unity of the subject. Another of the series partly published in 1808, in which a rude facsimile of the original drawings has been attempted, without much success.
The Tables Turned. Miseries of Wedlock. A pendant to the preceding.—The domestic horizon is clouded by storms. The late happy pair are only kept from demolishing each other by the table placed between them, which is being wrecked in the struggle. The wife, in a fury, is holding on to her husband's hair with all her force, while he has a firm grasp of his unfortunate spouse's head, at which he is aiming a pewter-pot; children, chairs, crockery, cutlery, and food, are alike devoted to destruction; the infants are frantic, and general misery prevails. The execution of these subjects is commonplace, and the engraver has not done justice to the originals.
April 29, 1809. [Oh! you're a Devil. Get along, do!] Published by Reeve and Jones, 7 Vere Street, New Bond Street.—A dashing young officer, a gallant adventurer, probably crippled with debts, and with nothing but his commission to support his extravagances, is laying ardent siege to the ordinary person of a rich dowager, fat, not fair, and decidedly forty; indeed, the lady is more than old enough to be the mother of her insidious admirer, who is probably looking forward to the possession of the foolish inamorata's fortune to 'whitewash' his liabilities, and exchange him from one slavery to another; preferring the fetters of Hymen to the captivity of a debtor's prison. The lady, a vain piece of antiquated and frivolous vulgarity, is loaded with massive jewellery, which her hopeful lover no doubt looks forward to melting for his own purposes, after he has staked the relict's money-bags on the gambling-table; her feathers are profuse, and she wears a boa of an extinct kind, famous in the annals of contemporary fashions, known as a rattle-snake.[10]
June 20, 1809. A Tit-bit for a Strong Stomach.
July 31, 1809. [The Huntsman Rising.] [The Gamester going to bed.] Published by T. Rowlandson, 1 James Street, Adelphi. (See [1811].)
1809. Rowlandson's Caricatures upon the Delicate Investigation, or the Clarke Scandal (Mrs. Mary Anne Clarke and the Duke of York).—In order to make the caricatures, published by Rowlandson, on the Clarke scandal intelligible, it is desirable to recapitulate the circumstances, which are given in condensed form from the writer's 'Life of James Gillray the Caricaturist.'[11]
